Claudio Saavedra

Go forward in time to July 2005.

Wed 2005/Jun/29

• As Carolinne pointed out today, there are 34 days left for our fly. I'm a little nervious about it.

Tue 2005/Jun/28

• I can't understand why there is people who sends you Word documents that you haven't requested to notify you of things that fit perfectly in plain text files.

  My email got overquota this weekend because of this. It pisses me off.

Sat 2005/Jun/25

• For my course Taller de Desarrollo de Software we must write a paper on some selected theme, based on the study of actual research in the area. I've choosen the Software Requirements Engineering in the Open Source development model as a case of study, so I'm now searching for published papers about it. At the moment, this is the list of publications that I've found interesting enough to print and read.

  • Multi-Modal Modeling, Analysis and Validation of Open Source Software Requirements Processes, Walt Scacchi, Chris Jensen, John Noll, and Margaret Elliott, revised version to appear in Proc. First Intern. Conf. Open Source Software, Genova, Italy, July 2005.

  • Understanding Continuous Design in OSS Projects, Gasser, L., Scacchi, W., Penne, B., and Sandusky, R., Proc. 16th. Int. Conf. Software & Systems Engineering and their Applications, Paris, December 2003.

  • Understanding the Requirements for Developing Open Source Software Systems., Scacchi, W. (2002), IEE Proceedings . Software, volume 148, number 1, pp. 24-39.

  If someone outhere have some interesting reads about requirements in open source, please let me know, I'll appreciate it.

Thu 2005/Jun/23

• Went yesterday to Talca. We had a entire morning meeting with people from the University regarding the scholarship of the DAAD. They showed worried about our knowledge of chilean history and economy so they made two interesting talks for us. At the beginning I felt a little embarrased because I don't feel like an ignorant regarding chilean history, but the points of view of the two lecturers were very interesting and the discussion that we started too.

  After a lunch with Andrea and the others guys, i returned to Curicó. It was all funny but the oportunity cost of being in Talca was high. This semester has been very hard and I don't feel like being at the level of it, so every lost second is a waste.

Tue 2005/Jun/21

• I haven't had the time to post about it, but I wanted to write a few things about the recently Reunión de Formación de Hackers para GNOME.

  The meeting was really cool, as we had the oportunity to meet many young guys that are interested in GNOME. Some of them have already tried to contribute to some projects but they haven't done it properly. I'll explain with an example.

  A guy told me that he hacked once an application, adding to it a little feature. He was really happy with his work, and sent the author a tarball of his modified version of the software. He hacked a published version instead of HEAD or any other development version, and he received a response from the maintainer that was not really empathic, saying him that he wasn't anymore the maintainer, and that he wasn't supposed to tarball a modified version of the application.

  Moreover, if I remember correctly, the feature he added was already added in a newer version of the software.

  The problem here was that our protohacker had no idea about the codes and methods on the free software communities. He had no idea what a patch is, had no idea what is a HEAD version and that leaded him to waste his valious time and energy in work that nobody else than him appreciated. And that is a terrible experience for any human being.

  That's why I think that the presentation on GNOME Hacking that Pedro and I gave that morning was really valuable. You can give all the tutorials on coding techniques that you want, you can lecture all that you want about API's, but no matter how good you are, nobody is going to learn much from your slides as he will learn from the reference manual if he have the enough motivation. But nobody is going to learn faster than 3 months the codes and methodologies of our comunity, and that's fundamental for anyone interested on contributing.

  In the afternoon, I gave a really improvised talk on my experience on Gyrus. I sayed it from the beginning: I wasn't interested in no other thing than showing how much you can learn and how much you can get from being brave and exposing your code to other's eyes and hands. I talked about the amazing response that I am getting for such a small project, something that one year ago i couldn't have imagined. I encourage the presents to be brave and go on their little projects, to expose them, and not to be discouraged if they didn't get a inmediate feedback, but to keep on going with love and intelligence.

  At the end of the talk I felt that I went able to share some of my feelings really good. Some guys went back home that evening very motivated and I hope they will show up soon with its own projects or contributing to some of the things we are working on. Probably they'll need to learn some things and get closer to the project but if we keep on motivating I know they will.

  We cannot approach the lack of chilean hackers only with technical stuffs. If we do not show first why it is enriching to contribute to a software community, the process of integration of the chilean protohackers will be terribly slow and tiring. For us the motivation can be obvious, but not for all our attendants.

Mon 2005/Jun/20

• The weekend was totally rushed but still lovely. I spent the entire friday night in the Facultad hacking on a assigment on Nachos. I didn't sleep until I was in the bus, at 12.00 of Saturday.

  I arrived at Santiago on Saturday at 14.30 and called my father to announce him my visit. He was totally surprised and happy to see me after three months. We lunched together and talked a lot about all the things that happened to us during this time. In spite of being totally tired, I was really happy.

  Later on that raining evening I went to visit Kady. Unfortunately she wasn't home, so I decided to go to sleep, because friday and saturday were two really tiring days.

  On sunday dad and I spend more time together. I got very surprised on the fact that he didn't really knew many things about my future stay in Germany, so I realized that so many things have changed in this few months.

  I came back to Curicó on the evening. I am happy of the short time in Santiago. I love that city enormously and always makes me a little nostalgic to leave it, specially on cold sunday evenings when the street lights look so beautiful.

Sat 2005/Jun/18

• This morning I'm going to Santiago, after three months without being there. In spite of having a lot of things to do the "Father's Day" is the propice moment to freeze everything else and take the time to visit daddy.

  I'm not the kind of person who uses to celebrate these dates, but this year I'm a little more sensible. The fact of knowing that I won't be able to see my dad for a long time plus the months apart makes imperious to me to see him soon.

  Unless he read my blog, he won't know of my visit until I get home. I hope the weekend will be a lot of fun for both of us.

Thu 2005/Jun/16

• One of the most common mistakes I've seen in developers when they are news to CVS is to add dependedencies to some source code files they have in their local copies but forgetting to make a cvs add before commiting that code. That's ok, but everyone should checkout a fresh copy after making a commit when newbie to see if everything builds and works as expected.

  In open repositories, people is so cautious when newbie that normally it is imposible to see such a mistake. However, when using CVS for a college course like "Taller de Desarrollo de Software", things are totally different.

  We have been using CVS during this semester in Taller, and with the hope that at this moment, about one month before finishing the development of our project, everybody should be familiar to CVS, we are all developing in a central module.

  Unfortunatly, today that utopia has proved to be so. Someone added a few dependencies to sources of his own creation and forgot to make a cvs add to that files. That crashes the build of the project one day before we should be delivering a beta version of the software.

  As everything can't be so terrible, after 6 hours the guys received those conflictive files and added them to the project. Now everyone can get back to work looking forward to get something interessing for tomorrow.

• I've just received a document (a paper, not an e-mail) from Bonn regarding the healt insurance for my stay in Germany. That means that my application has been accepted by the DAAD.

  Yesterday I filled the application for the visa. The people from Relaciones Internacionales will go to the German Embassy in Chile in order to get the visa for us. That's very nice because we are under hard pressure from our courses.

  Now we just have to wait for the visa. I hope that the next week will be in our hands and the last remaining thing will be the tickets.

Wed 2005/Jun/15

• Because baboon seems to be irregularly up and I don't want to disturb Jorge, I've decided to move my home to my account in master.gnome.org.

  Currently, I've put only the blog on line. I need to filter the pictures and find a suitable way to reconstruct the galleries without using PHP. Maybe galleries constructed with GThumb can be enough, but I'll wait until I have more time.

  Sorry to non-english readers.

Sat 2005/Jun/11

• Mirando el screenshot del sistema de reportes de Alejandro, me di cuenta de que a Gyrus le hace falta mostrar en el título de la ventana principal el servidor al que está conectado, tal como los navegadores con tabs, por ejemplo, muestran en el título de la ventana el título de la página que está visible.

  Para ejemplificar, hice este horrible mockup:

  

  La idea es que el título de la ventana siempre muestre el nombre de la conexión que está activa en el GtkNotebook de la aplicación.

  Estoy convencido de que alguna de las personas que asistió el sabado a la charla de GTK+ que hizo Pedro podría enviar un parche que haga esto. ¿Alguien se anima?

  Abrí un bug para poner en práctica lo que conversamos en la charla sobre contribuciones a GNOME. Si alguien quiere asignarse el bug, que me escriba, yo puedo guiarlo en la generación de parches y el envío a bugzilla, además de otros detalles relacionados con GTK+ y la API de Gyrus.

  ¡Adelante! ¡Manos a la obra!

• Siempre he querido una de estas billeteras, así que si alguien quiere hacerme un regalo de despedida, ya sabe que comprar:

  

Thu 2005/Jun/09

• Hoy terminé de documentar todas las funciones públicas relevantes de Gyrus. De esta manera nadie podrá reclamarme más de que cuesta entender el código y por eso no puede implementar lo que necesita. Alejandro, cvs -z3 update.

• Publiqué algunas de las fotos que sacó Pedro el fin de semana.

Wed 2005/Jun/08

• Hoy jugó Chile con Venezuela por las eliminatorias del mundial de Alemania 2006. El partido se jugó en Santiago a las 19.00 y Chile venció por 2 goles contra 1.

  Como era de esperarse, no pude ver el partido. A esa misma hora estaba en la Facultad realizando un laboratorio de Automatización, del que me desocupé después de las 21.00.

  No es la primera vez que me pierdo un partido de las eliminatorias desde que estoy estudiando. Puedo recordar un partido Chile-Argentina el 2003, Chile-Perú el año pasado, etc. Deben ser como 6 ó 7 partidos los que no he podido ver. Incluso para una persona no tan futbolizada como yo, es una maldita tragedia.

Tue 2005/Jun/07

• Hoy fuí al Registro Civil a sacar pasaporte. En una semana lo tendrán. Me dolió el estómago pagar los casi $ 40.000 que me costó, pero es uno de los pocos gastos que voy a tener que hacer. No se puede pedir todo.

Sun 2005/Jun/05

• Escribo esto mientras el Bus va dejando Concepción. Este ha sido mi segundo viaje a esta ciudad, y por primera vez tuve algo de tiempo para recorrerla un poco, al menos en auto y bus. Realmente es una ciudad agradable, con muchos lugares interesantes que visitar y conocer.

  Algunas de las vias principales me hicieron sentir como en Santiago: amplias, con mucho verde, comercio activo de verdad, gente por las calles. Es una lástima no tener una cámara.

  La ruta que une la carretera 5-Sur con la ciudad tiene parajes bellísimos. Se pueden apreciar a ambos lados de la vía bosques y mucho verde. Increiblemente lindo.

  La gente es muy amable. Me sorprendió mucho el hecho de que ayer mientras esperabamos a Andrés cerca de su casa, el dueño de un almacén nos invitó a pasar a ver el partido Chile-Bolivia. Por otro lado la madre de Andrés preparó sopaipillas para todos los que llegamos a invadir su casa, las cuales comimos mientras veiamos el partido y la carne del asado se preparaba.

  Me queda una sensación de que Concepción ha de ser un lugar bellisimo para vivir y me voy con algo de tristeza por no haber tenido el tiempo para conocer un poco más. Ojalá las cosas se den y en algún tiempo pueda volver y conocer alguno de los lugares que me faltan: La Universidad de Concepción, Talcahuano, el Bío-Bío.

  Gracias a Andrés y al DuocUC por haber hecho posible esta visita tan agradable.

Fri 2005/Jun/03

• lun.cl me sigue sorprendiendo. Atención a las noticias de la sección de deportes, son extremadamente deportivas:

  

Wed 2005/Jun/01

• Este sabado 4 de junio, el instituto DuocUC, sede Concepción, hospedará en conjunto con GNOME Chile la 6a Reunión de Formación de Hackers para GNOME.

  La inscripción es gratuita, y hasta el momento hay 39 personas inscritas.

  Junto con Pedro abriremos la jornada con una charla sobre como contribuir a GNOME. Como ambos hemos estado en el último tiempo metiendo mano en el Bugzilla y el CVS del proyecto, creo que tenemos más de algo interesante que compartir con el resto, así que si están en Concepción o alrededores, no se pierdan la charla.

  Fuera de la autopromoción corespondiente, debo mencionar que Alejandro hará un taller sobre Docbook, el cual será muy útil para todos quienes deseen colaborar con la documentación para GNOME, dado que todos los documentos del proyecto utilizan este sistema.

  En general, el programa está muy entretenido, así que si tienen tiempo, ¡asistan!

Go backwards in time to May 2005.