Claudio Saavedra

csaavedra@gnome.org

Go forward in time to September 2005.

Mon 2005/Aug/29
  • gyrus now has its own mailing list. If you're interested in the development of this software or want to give us feedback about it, please join the list.

Sun 2005/Aug/28
  • Went last night to Peggy's birthday. Peggy was one of our German teachers in the Intensivkurs in Talca, and so she invited many of the students that are right now in Germany to her party.

    Lovely, a bunch of the Chilean students that are right now in the TU-Berlin came Dresden for the party. It was wonderful to see them again after one month, and to share the cultural differences between Dresden and Berlin.

Fri 2005/Aug/26
  • Visited today the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, one of the picture galleries that make Dresden proud. This gallery is in the Zwinger mit Semperbau, in the Altstadt from the city, besides the well known Semperoper.

    This gallery has pictures from artist of the weight of Raffael, Rembrandt, de Silvestre and Correggio, so is very impressive even for people that's not fan of art. The fact of seeing pictures from the 15th century in such a perfect state it's exciting. Everything is arranged in a perfect order to make the visit even more interesting; for example, the location of the pictures on the gallery is geographically sorted as if the gallery were a map of Europe, so you can find Italian pictures in the room south of the room with German pictures, and so on. Pretty nice.

    Unfortunately, you need to pay 5 € extra if you want to go inside of the gallery with your camera, so we decided to leave our cameras in the lockers and just enjoy the visit.

    The most beautiful picture, in my opinion, is the Sixtinische Madonna by Raffael. The mystery behind every single detail of the picture, the composition of the scene and the two little angels in the bottom make it something impacting. At the moment of seeing the picture I just felt like a useless man, in front of a masterpiece created for a genius. I don't know if that's art about, but I enjoyed that feeling of insignificance.

    Other beautiful paints are the ones by Bernardo Bellotto. This Italian artist from the 18th century did a lot of paints of Dresden in times totally different from today. In these paints it is possible to see many of the buildings that still remains in the city, but surrounded by horses instead of Straenbahn and buses. Nice if you want to see a little of graphical history of the city.

    After the visit I did some pictures to the Zwinger mit Semperbau. This baroque castle has many sculptures, a beautiful park, and it's surrounded by a lake. It is great to see this kind of buildings still conserved even when Dresden was destroyed by the allies forces during the WW2. I'm not sure, but I think that the Zwinger was also destroyed and after the War was reconstructed.

    Finally, I went to Theaterplatz, outside of the Zwinger and made some pictures to the Semperoper. There were some guys selling tickets for the tonight's show, a Shakespeare's opera. Obviously the prices are high enough to scare students. That's pretty sad.

    But what can I say? I just love Dresden. No matter the prices and the fucking winter that comes soon, the architecture of this city is great and it worth everything. I'm so happy of being here.

Tue 2005/Aug/23
  • After some hours of work, gyrus now supports IMAP Cyrus servers using the UNIX mailbox hierarchy separator. Initially I was allowing to users to set it, but then I realized of how easy is to get the separator directly from the server, so I also added an autodetect function.

    Mario has been working hard on getting gyrus connecting through secure connections, using GNU TLS. I think that soon this will be possible so we'll be completing one of the most asked features right now.

  • Last Friday went to Pillnitz, a Castle and Park close to Dresden, with the students from the Sommerkurs organized by TUDIAS.

    The park is just beautiful and the constructions are really great. Not only the Elbe river goes through the park, moreover there is a little lake with ducks swimming here and there. It is a great place and not to away from my house, so I think that one day I'll pick my computer and will get there to code between the trees and squirrels.

  • My German class goes fine. Today we saw the subjunctive of auxiliary verbs, so I'll be able to say the things that I would like to do instead of being hacking the entire afternoon. It is the first useful new thing that I learn during this 2 weeks of class.

  • Went today to Groer Garten to run through the park. After 30 minutes running under an incessant and ultrapowered rain I came back home with all my clothes wet. Luckily, I think that I won't get a cold or something.

  • The Stadtfest in Dresden this weekend was just great. The city has now 799 years of existence and the people went to the streets to celebrate eating Wurst and drinking beers. On Saturday there were Fireworks around the Elbe that I saw from my balcony.

    Yesterday went to the Altstadt to enjoy the collective happiness, and I became totally happy. I feel almost a Dresdner.

Thu 2005/Aug/18
  • Carolinne and I made tonight a little trip around the Elbe. The night was great and we took some pictures of the Altstadt and the river. The weather tonight was so cool: clear sky, 20C, and also a lot of people walking around us. I love this city.

    I still need to get used to my camera capabilities so I fucked up many pictures, but some of them are nice.

Sun 2005/Aug/14
  • Holy god. I can't believe that someone integrated devhelp with EMACS. Hey you, the one who did this, I owe you a beer.

  • Last night I gave gyrus the ability to understand [ALERT] server messages, as specified in the RFC 2060.

    The code is in CVS right now but I would like to receive feedback before considering the bug fixed, so if your IMAP server uses [ALERT] messages, please give it a try.

  • The day has been totally dark and raining in Dresden. Here the weather changes really fast in summer, for instance, past Friday was a warm day but suddenly in the night started raining with lightnings and all.

    I took that picture yesterday, in a little garden around my Wohnheim. I'm really happy with the camera I bought. It is a Nikon Coolpix 7600 and I think that it is really good.

Sat 2005/Aug/13
  • The last week the Finnish band Nightwish came to Dresden to play in the Junge Garten, so we were there to hear the music, because we didn't wanted to buy the tickets, that costed approx. 32 .

    The Junge Garten is a small portion of a bigger Park called Groer Garten. The place is beautiful, you can see a lot of people in rollers, bikes, and also there are beautiful squirrels playing in the trees. There is a little train that cross the park, apparently only the weekends and it is very nice.

    We seated in the grass around the place where Nightwish was going to play. There were a lot of people making picnic, drinking beers, playing volleyball and waiting for the music to begin.

    The band played during 1:30, the music was really cool, and I got really excited because it wasn't supposed that we were going to be received with such a great band playing in the right moment in the right city. In their performance they included a Pink Floyd cover that Marco Hietala singed really good. It was good to hear Nightwish for the second time, as I went to their show in Santiago in July 2002.

Thu 2005/Aug/11
  • What can I say? I'm finally in Dresden, Germany. Everything has gone fine until now, there are a lot to talk about, but I think that I'll try to resume.

    The last days in Santiago were kind. I made a little party and had the opportunity to say goodbye to my closest friends. José Miguel and I finished looking for something to eat in Ñuñoa streets at 9.00 on Sunday. It wasn't at all an easy task.

    Kady invited me to lunch that day so after sleeping two hours went to her house. Her mother cocked lasagna and I thought it was a miracle, as I love lasagna and had not eaten it for a long time.

    On Monday finished making my luggage. I brought two bottles Pisco, one bottle wine, a leche condensada and three indios pícaros to Germany. Pisco here is so expensive that it worth it. The bottle wine is a gift by Jano from the Facultad that is reserved for the next September 18th. The leche condensada will be the only way to eat panqueques con manjar here, so it is very important. The indios pícaros... well, seeing a person discovering what is a indio pícaro, it's one of the most funny things in earth, so I had to do it :-)

    Early on Tuesday, dad, Catalina, my aunt Ruth and Andrés went to kick me of from Chile to the airport. Because of our inexperience with the new highway, we got lost, but no so lost to miss the fly. In the airport there were all the students that were about to fly that day, and also a big huge mass of parents, boyfriends, girlfriends and friends.

    It was hard to say goodbye to my sister. I tried to make the adiós as short as possible and to leave without crying, and I did it, even when I said "chau hermana" I could feel the tears in my eyes so I better left to Interpol quick, as I didn't wanted to let people crying. I know how much she wanted me to stay and probably she misses me right now but it is what it is.

    The flight was good. We made a scale in Sao Paulo, and then flied till Frankfurt. In Frankfurt airport we splited off according to the destiny city. We had only 20 minutes to go from one corner of the biggest airport in Europe to the other. It was a fucking race with something like 40 kgs. and we almost do not make it... all to know that the plane was going to leave 20 minutes late.

    Once in Dresden, Pancho, our Chilean tutor from DAAD in the TU-Dresden and Peggy, one of our German teachers in the Deutschintensivkurs from Talca leaded us to our Wohnheims. Normally, the Chilean students lived together in the Wohnheim from St. Peterburgst., but this year we are splitted in four different ones. Carolinne, Jorge and I were assigned to the Wohnheim in Güntzst. as is the closest one to the Fakultät Informatik that is only of our interest.

    My room is not too big, but it has all that I need: a desktop, a closet, a private bathroom, many shelves, a little balcony and a beautiful view. I share the kitchen with four more guys, three Germans and a guy from Ukraine. Two of them study Computer Science and the other two Medicine.

    After making a lot of papers last week, like the inscription on the city, the inscription on the university library, etc. Last Monday we started our Deutschintensivkurs. This time no teacher speaks Spanish, we have classes even on Saturdays, and here the teachers make coffee breaks that lasts only 5 German minutes, in contrast with 5 Chilean minutes, that normally are 15 or 20 really. It has been tiring, but needed, as our German is too poor to understand the people from Saxony and its curious dialect.

    There are a lot of things to talk about but I think that my readers are as tired as I am now. I'll keep on writing so stay tuned :-)

Go backwards in time to July 2005.

Thu 2005/Aug/11 21:29:44 +0200