Claudio Saavedra

claudio@codemonkey.cl

Tue 2009/Nov/17

• Maemo Summit '09 gave me the chance to visit Amsterdam for the second time. A city I love and can't get enough of it.

  

  All photos of Amsterdam, in its flickr set.

• Also, Berto and I took a couple of days of holidays after the summit. We visited Den Haag (flickr set):

  

  Delft (flickr set):

  

  and last but no least, Rotterdam (flickr set):

  

• Of course, I also made some pictures during the summit. Not all of these are so great as this one, though:

  

Wed 2009/Nov/04

• I read the other day in a Finnish newspaper that the Chilean musicologist Alfonso Padilla was awarded by the Student Union of the University of Helsinki as the best international teacher.

  Of course, this is not very relevant to be in the Chilean news. We all care much more about Pellegrini's career in Real Madrid, and whether he is fired or not after every match.

Tue 2009/Nov/03

• Arrived in Helsinki yesterday evening after a rocking Igalia Summit near Padrón in Galicia. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it with me.

  This is the third time in a row that my luggage doesn't make it with me (same happened when I came back in August after spending two months in A Coruña and on my trip to Amsterdam for the Maemo Summit in October). Downside is not having things I need with me, positive side is that it's comfortable to get your luggage delivered to you instead of having to carry it all the way from the airport. Of course it would be nice if this would be predictable, in order to have the important stuff in the hand luggage instead.

  Hopefully, it will arrive safely as it did the other two times.

Wed 2009/Oct/28

• Do you see anything harmful in this chunk of code? You can read the GTK+ docs but please don't look at the implementation of the called methods.

  GtkTreePath *path;
  GtkTreeIter filter_iter;
  
  for ( /* an iteration on all iters in a GtkTreeModel */) {
    path = gtk_tree_model_get_path (base_model, &iter);
    gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_iter_to_iter (filter,
                                                      &filter_iter, &iter);
    if (gtk_tree_selection_iter_is_selected (selection, &filter_iter)) {
      /* do something with path */
    }
  }

  The code looks harmless, but it's not really. Looking at the implementation of gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_iter_to_iter() you'll see that the actual conversion is done by obtaining the GtkTreePath for the base model iterator and calling gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_path_to_path(). Similarly, gtk_tree_selection_iter_is_selected() internally calls gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected(). So, you are calling gtk_tree_model_get_path() three times in total when you only need to do it once. Just use the GtkTreePath equivalents.

  Is this obvious for everyone but me? I mean, without looking at an oprofile callgraph and/or the GTK+ sources. I am not so sure.

Fri 2009/Oct/02

• One thing that the N900 is missing is a way to scrobble the listening habits to last.fm. Since I am sort of addict to last.fm scrobbling, I couldn't wait for someone else to do it and wrote myself a last.fm scrobbler for mafw, the Media Application Framework used since Fremantle in Maemo.

  After a few weeks smoke testing it and fixing things here and there, I released today mafw-lastfm 0.0.1. This is the initial release and it does the basic stuff quite well: playing-now status and scrobbling. It has several rough edges but it was working good enough for me not bother to work on them. Releasing, I guess, is a good way to push me to do it, when anyone complains.

  The git repository is in gitorious, there's a garage page with some resources for those curious, and I pushed binary packages to Fremantle's extras-devel repository. Happy scrobbling!

• In August I took a few weeks off from work, and spent a wonderful time with Maria in Paris and Fontainebleau, in France. Paris is a wonderful city but it has just too many things to see and do, so you can easily go back home needing holidays from your holidays. To avoid that, we spent several days in the small town of Fontainebleau, around an hour south from Paris. The town is quite small but charming anyway, life is way more relaxed, and it served its purpose of giving us some rest from the crazy Paris experience.

  The crazy Champs-Élysées:

  

  One of the lovely fontaine Wallace, decorating many corners of Paris:

  

  A random restaurant in Fontainebleau:

  

  Yesterday, I managed to finish uploading some of the pictures from Paris and Fontainebleau to flickr. The quality of these proves that I still have a lot to learn about reflex cameras.

Thu 2009/Sep/10

• magit is one of those gems that one always discovers late, and then regrets not having started using earlier. If you are an emacs and git user, this is what you are missing to get those perfect commits.

• Wonderful article on Ricardo Baeza R., my Professor for Applied Math and Linear Algebra back in the Facultad, awarded now with the Chilean National Prize for Exact Sciences 2009.

Thu 2009/Aug/27

• So, now that Maemo 5 has been officially launched and the N900 phone has been unveiled I guess now I can tell my parents what I was doing in Finland.

  

  GTK+, GNOME, and hildon going mainstream. This is certainly an exciting time to be around :)

Sat 2009/Aug/01

• I've been neglecting this corner lately, so I'll try to give a quick summary of what has been going on lately.

• I've spent the last month in A Coruña. Finally sharing a flat with two mates and two cats. I seem to have developed some kind of allergy to two of them -- I still can't figure out whether it's the cats or the flatmates :)

• Weekends since in A Coruña have been pretty active, mostly thanks to the kind Antía, who has been showing me the wonders of Galicia. A few weekends ago, we travelled through Vimianzo, Camariñas, Cabo Vilán, and the Praia do Lago to end up at the festival Cultura Quente '09 in Caldas de Reis, where among others, The Wedding Present was playing.

  

• Last weekend, was the time for the Festas do Apostol, in Santiago de Compostela. I met a good bunch of nice people on the travel there, enjoyed the fireworks burning the Catedral de Santiago, and the tons of bands playing at the festival. The Festas do Apostol seem to be very important and one of the biggest touristic attractions in Galicia, so I'm glad to have been here in time.

  On Saturday, I was planning to attend the religious service at the Catedral, including the traditional Botafumeiro swinging tradition, but the sleeping conditions in the tend didn't allow proper sleep and I overslept and didn't attend it in the end.

  

  The weekend continued with a trip through several small towns and beaches on the Atlantic coast, including Ribeira, Porto do Son (where the great SonCelta festival was taking place), Noia, and the Igrexa at the Rio San Xusto. Galicia is full of beautiful towns and beaches and I guess it would take a lifetime to know them well enough.

Thu 2009/Jul/09

• Yesterday, Berto and I presented the Hildon 2.2 toolkit, during the mobile track of GUADEC at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. The slides for our talk:

  

Mon 2009/Jul/06

• And the party has already started:

  

  Igalia will be sponsoring the GNOME Party tonight. If we are lucky enough, we will have a few music instruments for a jam session. Check Juanjo's blog for more details.

• If you have GCDS pictures, add them to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit flickr group.

Fri 2009/Jul/03

• As all the other cool kids in town, I'm flying to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, to attend the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. In practical terms, this means GUADEC, GUADEC Hispana, Akademy, and, eventually, other conferences/activities that might be arranged during the big event.

  Partly because of laziness, partly because of having really busy weeks lately (both work and life-wise), I won't be presenting anything during GUADEC Hispana, although I would have liked to. However, Berto and I will be giving a talk on the new Hildon toolkit for Maemo 5, during the Mobile Day. Besides introducing the new widgets and UI style for Fremantle, we will also talk about the difficulties we have been facing during this major revamp of the toolkit, which will hopefully serve to clarify some of the doubts spread around lately.

Wed 2009/Jul/01

• Joaquim, one of our new superheroes at Igalia, has been porting the Eye of GNOME to Maemo 5 using the Fremantle Beta SDK and the widgets in the new Hildon toolkit.

  Joaquim's work is a live example of the look 'n feel of Fremantle-style applications. I'd recommend to anyone writing or porting applications for Fremantle to have a look at his screencast and, of course, the application.

Wed 2009/May/13

• Now I start to wonder whether we should have a Canarias City Run during GUADEC (cf. [1], [2], [3], [4]).

  Jokes aside, during conferences and travels it's always easy to break the training routine (unless you are really into it), so having an excuse to actually run, let's say, 10k would probably be a good idea.

Tue 2009/May/12

• I just noticed that the examples and documentation packages for libhildon are not present in the Maemo 5 SDK Beta. If you want to have a look at the API using Devhelp or want to toy with the examples, I'd recommend you to either 1) get the source package and build it (good) or 2) clone the git repository and build it from there (better).

  At some point in the very near future, I'd like to start publishing updated tarballs regularly in the garage page, but at the moment a few (probably quite trivial) issues prevent us from doing it. If I find a bit of time this week, I might fix them. If you want to help, just clone the repo, run make distcheck and see for yourself. The mailing list is waiting for your patches.

Sun 2009/May/10

• Yesterday was the 1/2 Marathon: Helsinki City Run. I took part in it and learned the hard way what it means to run more than 20k (is there an easy way?).

  Originally, I had been running since January in the cold Helsinki, around Töölönlahti, sometimes with around -10⁰C, with icy and slippery roads, starting from around 5k to 15k in my best moment. Motivated by Dirk-Jan and Ann-Christin, I had the idea to run the Helsinki City Run but due to external factors I wasn't sure if I would even be in Helsinki for this date and didn't sign up.

  A bit demotivated when the deadline passed, and affected by a flu during the last two weeks, I had stopped my running routine, waiting to feel better. In the meantime, Iván recommended me a book by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about running. In this book, Murakami writes about his experience as a long-distance runner, his motivations to run, and how running helped him to become the writer he is. Certainly an interesting read for any runner (and probably even for non runners), that somehow managed to rise my motivation to run. But still, running the City Run wouldn't be possible.

  But thanks to one of these great coincidences, things turned out in a favorable direction. On Friday afternoon I got a call from Ann-Christin, telling me that she was picking up the runner's pack from the Olympic Stadium and had found out that, since Marius wouldn't run, it was possible for me to take his place. After thinking for 3 seconds about how lazy I had been in the last weeks and doubting, I went crazy and told her to sign me up. Went home, had spaghetti for dinner, and started drinking water as crazy. I would finally run the HCR.

  Saturday turned up to be a cold, rainy, and windy day. Nervous about the race I didn't manage to sleep well enough but as time of the race approached, I started to feel full of energy. Drank lots of water and ate mostly cereals and bread up to two hours before the race, and got to the stadium. I was certainly excited about all this!

  The competition had about 11.000 participants. The Olympic stadium, although windy and cold, was looking beautiful. Runners of all ages, colors, and shapes were warming up all around the place. Adrenalin could just go higher as the start approached. And once we started running I couldn't feel happier. Of course, I had no idea how painful this would turn to be.

  The first 10k were absolutely fine. The circuit went along my beloved Töölönlahti, and it felt like home while I tried to make my way between all the people. Between 10k and 12k I was still feeling things to go well, but entering the 13k was the beginning of the real race. Starting from there, it only got more and more difficult. With each kilometer pain in my legs increased and feet friction started to bug me. Hydration and breathing were however fine, so I knew that it would only be a matter of pushing enough and I would make it. But, of course, this belief decreased as the distance completed increased.

  After 17k, pain was starting to get really annoying. Being the first time I ran more than 15k this was completely new and it was hard to know whether I would get all the cramps at some point or whether I could even walk to the finish line. Of course, I didn't want to retire nor walk the last kilometers, so I just kept pushing, and pushing.

  When we finally reached the 20k mark, just around the Olympic Stadium, I knew I would make it, even when my legs were almost not responding. The last few hundred meters before entering the stadium are basically a small uphill. Were these actually more than 100mt? I don't even know, but these certainly felt like a few km. People were just walking at that point, but I wouldn't give in. I had managed to run all the way there, no way I would walk this bloody hill.

  Entering the stadium was probably one of the most exciting moments. For whatever reason, entering the running track brought all the energy back and I ran through the finish line with a smile on my face. An official time of 2:25:00 for the 21,097 m that I thought it would be impossible to achieve. I got the medal, some bananas, and water. Found a warm spot where to cover me with my towel, pullover, and jacket, and met Luc, Dirk-Jan, Ann-Christin and the other runners. Champagne to celebrate, and then the real pain started.

  Looking back at yesterday's experience and how good I have felt since, I have to say that running is now definitively something I'll be doing more seriously. I know very well that 2:25:00 is not a time to feel proud of, but given the circumstances, I am more than happy with it. I'll probably start running shorter distances, since I would like to start swimming as well, but running a half marathon under 2 hours is going to be the goal for the next season. Let's see how it goes.

  

Wed 2009/Apr/29

• I finally took the three seconds I needed to copy my blogging script to my home laptop, which means that I should be writting a bit more frequently from now on.

• Yesterday, the Maemo 5 SDK Beta was released. From the Application Framework team perspective, I can say that it's been a lot of hard work to get it to the state in which is now, but there's still plenty of work to do.

  But there are more good news, yes sir. In a joined effort of Nokia and Igalia, we've finally convinced the right people to move libhildon, the GTK+ widgets library for Maemo, to a public repository. Not only that, we also have a garage project page with a mailing list where we expect to discuss with application developers from the community about the status of the library and get feedback, patches, and interesting discussion.

  So, if you are a Maemo developer and want to join the fun, be at the bleeding edge before Maemo 5 is released, feel free to clone the git repository, join our mailing list, report bugs, and in the end, help us make libhildon 2.2 the best release ever.

Wed 2009/Mar/18

• Last night was Jethro Tull's 40th anniversary concert in Helsinki. Marius, Eugene, and I attended and were delighted with the performance. 40 years is a log time and these guys are still rocking!

  

• A few weeks ago, Vicente Amigo, a flamenco guitarist from Córdoba played in Espoo. Maria and I attended and the performance was impeccable. He even had an amazing bailaor dancing for some of the songs. Awesome.

• On a different note, since my university decided to outsource the email service to Windows Live@Edu (a service provided by Microsoft) and I am not willing to activate it, I am not getting any emails to my account in @alumnos.utalca.cl. Please remove this from your address book.

Tue 2009/Feb/24

• On my trip to Chile, last November, I bought a small bunch of books from the Latin American authors I've been interested to read for a while but never managed. During the idle time in A Coruña (which was much more than what I would normally like), the vacations in Germany, and now in the Helsinki winter, I managed to read them almost all.

  One of the most interesting ones was El Roto, by Joaquín Edwards Bello. This novel from the beginning of the XX century describes in a very direct way the Chilean society and the enormous social differences (something that unfortunately is still a problem), while criticizing the role the Catholic Church had on this. It is not a big surprise that this book was censured on its first publications, in times when the Church had a huge influence in the Chilean society.

  Also read Llamadas Telefónicas, by Roberto Bolaño. The short stories are quite interesting to read, nothing really brilliant, but somehow the writing style of Bolaño caught me. Most of the main characters in these stories share an inability to remember somewhat important details on what they are telling, so phrases like "she told me her last words, or maybe not really her last words but something important, the point is that I don't remember anymore" are quite common. I wonder if that's a reflection of Bolaño's personality.

  Anyway, I also read a couple of compilations by Cortázar (Bestiario and Todos los fuegos el fuego), and I'm currently reading a compilation of poems by Nicanor Parra and Vargas Llosa's La Fiesta del Chivo. It had been a while since I last felt so passionate about reading, so that partly explains why I've been a bit away from computers in my free time.

Thu 2009/Feb/12

• On Monday, I came back from Brussels after FOSDEM '09. This was the first time I attended this event and I am certainly impressed by the huge amount of people who gathers during these two days. Not only I met many old GNOME friends, but I also got to know many fellow hackers that I had worked with but never meet before. Pretty cool.

  I attended the talks in the GNOME, Crossdesktop, Mozilla, and Embedded developer rooms. It was a good opportunity to know a bit more about many different projects that I unfortunately haven't managed yet to try on my own but interest me in different ways (like nevimer, rygel, and all the stuff around geoclue and geolocation). I think now I have more reasons to play with them, when I finally get a bit of extra energy.

  One special thing of this FOSDEM was that, finally, Lucas, Felix, and I were in the same event, meaning that the whole current Eye of GNOME team got to finally meet. It was the first time that Felix attended an event involving GNOME people, so Lucas and I were introducing him to some of the guys. Jokes here and there, we could realize how well defined the roles in our team are: Felix does all the hardcore work, I do the releases, and Lucas gets the all the credits as the maintainer (partly a joke, partly true, since lately Felix has been really rocking on making eog pretty rock solid. Dude, you rock!). We discussed some of the things we would like to do in the near future. Somehow I feel an extra motivation after this meeting, so I will be trying to summarize these points and what we agreed and mail them to the eog mailing list. If you are interested, please join (and poke me with a stick if I take too long to write this mail down).

  Other cool thing that happened was to meet Jorge Bustos, a Chilean friend from my times in the Universidad de Talca, who is currently working in Madrid with the people from Libresoft. We randomly met in one of the corridors and the expression of surprise of both of us was just amazing. There are not that many Chileans abroad working in FLOSS related projects, and when it's about a friend, this is a one in a million coincidence (although I have to say that I also met another Chilean, who works for Nokia/Trolltech, and also Duncan Mac-Vicar from the Kopete/Yast fame was around).

  In general, a nice experience. I only wish the schedule wasn't so packed and Belgian beer wasn't that good, but that's just complaining for free.

Sat 2009/Jan/17

• Thanks to the kind support of Igalia, I'm going to FOSDEM this year. I've never been in Belgium, so this will be an interesting trip. Of course, many friends will be there, so it's gonna be a good opportunity to catch up with all of them.

  

Sat 2009/Jan/10

• Felix did the final work to remove the Eye of GNOME dependency on libgnome. Great work, dude!

Sun 2009/Jan/04

• Vacations ended up being really cool, in spite of having lost the initial connections and having had to spend the night in a scary terminal of Berlin-Tegel. That night ended up being really funny, as I met some backpackers in a similar situation and realized that getting stuck on a terminal is a fundamental part of life. I decided that, later at some point, I will take a few months to backpack the world that I still don't know. Then, I'm sure I will find my Tegel experience just irrelevant.

  I spent Christmas in Zuschendorf, at Marie's parents. This was the most German Christmas I've experienced ever, with pyramids, Räuchermänner, Klösse, beer, and so on. I even tried ice skating and proved to be completely useless for it. I should definitively try again here.

  

  Later, Prague. Francisco, Edgardo and I went for a few days to the Czech capital. I enjoyed once again the delicious Czech food and beer. We took a few walks through the typical places, and made lots of pictures. Weather was nice: although it was always under 0 degrees, we didn't see a cloud during the three days. Not bad.

  

  For new year, we traveled to Berlin –the good thing of Dresden is that you can reach many interesting cities in less than two hours– and met other Chilean DAAD scholars. We made it through the crowd in the Strasse des 17. Juni until the Brandenburger Tor, and enjoyed the fireworks and party afterward. It was really cold (probably around -5 or -7 degrees), but Glühwein, continuous movement, and dancing stopped us from freezing.

  

  Then I spent the days after walking around Berlin-Mitte and Berlin-Kreuzberg. There is quite a lot to see, and I definitively will need to visit the city again, as time and energy weren't enough to go all the places I wanted to see. At last, I was so exhausted because of this trip, that I ended up sleeping more than 12 hours a day during the last three days. Crazy.

• So, I'm back in the North pole after my nearly two months world tour. During the last two months I visited Santiago de Chile, Talca, Curicó, Lima, A Coruña, Dresden, Zuschendorf, Prague, and Berlin. Fortunately, the last few days have been quiet enough for me to recover energies and I am already missing work. Let's get it on!

Go backward in time to January 2009.