• 
• .com
• /weblog

Category archive: Random

• F1 tortellini

• Quattro-fromage tortellini with sun-dried tomatoes in mildly chili-spiced cream sauce. Side-dish of garlic bread with grill-crispy gouda cheese recommended. Good for F1 matches. No reason.

• at night, Sunday 14 September 2008
  Food, Mini-Post | F1 tortellini (Comment!)

---

• Late FUDCon Brno photos & recap

• Upon returning from FUDCon, I had a lot of things needing attention, so here’s a wrap-up post on this uber-cool conference.

  

  First of all, I think I’ll agree with Max that this was probably our best FUDCon so far. Not wanting to decrease the importance of other FUDCons, the fact that the folks at Brno put up their best to have every little detail covered was pretty much obvious to the participants. Content, venue, wireless, food, hotel — everything was good. Thumbs-up to everyone who put a helping hand!

  
  Nicu

  As usual, I took the chance of the conference to invade people’s comfort zones by taking portrait photos of them. I like doing so in events, since I think it’s a good way one can describe the atmosphere of an event. I’ve just uploaded a bunch of pictures taken from my camera (either by me, cmpahar or anyone who got a hold of it):

  /photos/events/fudcon-brno-08/

  Barcamp

  The second day was the Barcamp. I attended a few quite interesting presentations. Jeroen held a Custom Spins one and answered a few technical questions of mine. Max dealt with some Fedora-related questions I also had, like what different levels of ‘officiality’ spins there are (3rd party, approved, and releng-supported ones). The idea of having a framework in place for localized spins got into my mind once again — would be great if we either torrent-shipped language-specific and/or location-specific spins. For example, I learned from Diego that the word ‘OpenOffice’ is trademarked in Brazil and they have to replace the package with BrOffice. Having an framework that allows local communities build, host, and support more or less these spins would be a pretty good thing IMO. Now, if only I could make days longer. :-)

  
  JonRob

  The OLPC folks discussed a feature they’re working on which personally I’m looking forward to it in great anticipation: Sugar on Fedora. The package is already there, but those hackers are working with Greg to make it seamlessly available as a normal Desktop, available through GDM and stuff. Amazing. This could turn normal PCs in schools into OLPC-like ecosystems, lowering the barrier of a school (and country) to experiment and use these modern educational tools. They’re also working in getting the spin they’re using as close to Fedora as possible — working with upstream more, and of course, as a benefit, reduce their maintenance costs. Looking forward to both features.

  

  My talk was right after lunch. I wrote a few things in the previous post, not much more to say about it. I’ll try to transcribe it in this week, however I’m not good at predicting these kind of stuff. Let’s just hope I’ll be able to grab a couple of hours from an evening or night of mine and get this done, as a couple of people has requested it. Will try, as I think I still haven’t got a proper rest from the event.

  A little later Francesco Ugolini described a few idea he has on the Ambassadors project. Listening to them made me very happy, as I realized that some discussions we had with him and other folks in the project are gradually becoming a reality. The Ambassadors project is all about having a global effort for spreading the word on Fedora — it has a budget, a very active central committee, and is extremely good in organizing these stuff. The Localization Project, on the other hand, is very good in forming local teams working on Fedora; both on technical stuff (translations) as well as on local LUG presentations, meetings, release parties. So it makes total sense to help both projects get more by working together. For example, a bunch of Fedora folks in Italy want to spend a weekend fixing bugs or having a translation marathon? The Ambassadors project (with the Community Architecture team) can help them get there, maybe by buying them the pizza and drinks. So, I really think we’ve got a good ecosystem in both projects that serves different purposes, and using them together can help us achieve more. :-)

  

  FUDPub included, as usual, good food and loads of beer. Some Fedorans were singing with guitars, while the rest of us chatting and taking lots of photos (some well-lit, some not).

  Day 3

  Next day it was hacking day again. Transifex packaging, work on adding translation statistics support, and talking with people. Later on we went to the Brno city center for sightseeing. Yet another pub in the evening, making a 5 out of 5 evenings with beer in Brno.

  Other notable FUDCon happenings:

  • Nicu‘s FUDCon web comic “Size matters” was fantastic. Everyone in the amphitheater burst into laughs when they read it.
  • The event’s T-shirt is fantastic. Judging by his smile, I think Max enjoyed giving them out as much as we enjoyed receiving them.
  • Chris Bacharakis once again gave us some good laughs. Returning to Patras a few people were actually asking “tell us a funny story that happened with Chris”. And of course there are many, including the one where Chris tried to ask the tram to stop at the tram stop by pressing the red button on top of the door. The tram of course stopped. Immediately. A guy in the 70s was ejected on the front glass, an old lady almost took off, and we were trying to realize what just happened.

  

  • Had a good laugh at the pub on the last day, where me, as a guy that avoids meat as much as possible, had to order something from the steakhouse’s menu (haven’t eaten all day). I ordered what seemed the most innocent choice on the menu… which ended up being the biggest dish of the 15-something others on the table. It was a leg knuckle, apparently, which was bigger than my plate.

  Next day I took the train for Vienna, and then the plane to Athens, wondering when and where the next European FUDCon will take place, and what I’ll present there.

  Until next time then!

  /photos/events/fudcon-brno-08/

  (More photos on Flickr FUDCon and FUDCon Brno pools, FUDCon tag, by fcrippa and nicu)

• at night, Sunday 14 September 2008
  Fedora, Personal | Late FUDCon Brno photos & recap (Comment!)

---

• FUDCon Brno on its way

• Yes! A small window of time to blog about what’s up in Brno!

  T-1 FUDCon

  • Vienna. Delicious food, museums. Tourist guides neglect to mention that apparently Vienna causes burned-out feet. And a good-night’s sleep didn’t seem to help.
  • Travel to Brno by train was pretty cool. Diego found it a bit strange that taking a 1.5-hour train from Vienna can buy beer 700% cheaper. And mind you, some beers in Brno are darn good.
  • Next day we’re at the Brno Red Hat office with David. More or less hacked all day long, among discussions with office-locals Marek, Josef and Radek. Some major things accomplished were a good discussion with Diego and Christos from Greece on plans for reusable data validations in Tx and API completion along with the CLI. I went into deep meditation for a few minutes drawing on the blackboard deciding how to handle the merging of all the branches we have around (7 of them?).
  • Mexican lunch brought a discussion with the Anaconda team on their localization challenges, and tips on how to debug similar issues. Glad to meet in person a few developers like Nils Philippsen, Lubomir Kundrak who are using Transifex to localize their apps and with whom we had a few good online discussions.
  • End of day0, had an International dinner which proved not international enough — no Czech person to help us communicate with the waitresses! Next time I’ll try to be careful for both what I’m saying in CZ and the way I’m waving my hands, as I managed to order a 3-person Greek salad for each person on the table. Oops.
  • Learned a lot while walking to the venue of day one about the challenges inherit in the OLPC efforts. Change is difficult, and it’s even a bigger challenge

  Hackfest

  • Ah, the hackfest. Rough day for me — was on the mobile phone for most of the day with European Parliament members for some urgent issues. Had the chance to work on a few issues on our Damned Lies (@$#) instance, but not much time (and energy) left to do something more important. Looking forward for tomorrow.

  Jumping a day later: Tx presentation went pretty well. We were around 20 people from various groups: Developers, translators, project managers. Got some good questions and more energy to get a common instance up and going soon.

  Off for the social event now. More updates tomorrow.

• at night, Saturday 6 September 2008
  Fedora, Transifex | FUDCon Brno on its way (Comment!)

---

• Tx hacking at FUDCon

• Here we are, at FUDCon Brno! A big thanks to the folks at the RH Brno office for taking care of everything we might need so far. Hotel, breakfast, venue, network — all is good, so off for a full day of hacking.

  Transifex is one of the 6 hacking sessions today. I’m sitting with Diego and a few other hackers, and we’ve put up for consideration a few goals for the weekend:

  • Package Transifex (both server and client) in Fedora (yum install rocks)
  • Add support for translation statistics in Transifex
  • Complete the API and add respective features in the CLI

  The task for today is statistics support. The plan is laid out on the wiki page, and we’ll probably hack our way through: work will be split in file operations (find the translation files in the code, prepopulate the DB table with them), stats calculation (get a file, calculate stiff) and presentation (UI, templates etc).

• at night, Friday 5 September 2008
  Fedora, Transifex | Tx hacking at FUDCon (Comment!)

---

• Fedora at Athens Digital Week

• Yup, it’s official. We’ll be there. More info to come. Join fedora-el-list to participate!

• at night, Wednesday 27 August 2008
  Fedora, Mini-Post | Fedora at Athens Digital Week (Comment!)

---

• Έλληνες στο FUDCon Μπρνο

• 110 και πλέον άτομα θα είναι σε 10 ημέρες στο Fedora User and Developer Conference στο Μπρνο της Τσεχίας, εκ των οποίων 2 Έλληνες. Για όσους άλλους ψήνονται, τσιμπήστε την απευθείας πτήση για Βιέννη με Ολυμπιακή στα 200 €, hostel για 1-2 ημέρες και μετά τρένο για Μπρνο για να αρχίσει το code hacking (Transifex hackfest session, yay!) και τα υπόλοιπα καλά.

• at night, Tuesday 26 August 2008
  Fedora | Έλληνες στο FUDCon Μπρνο (Comment!)

---

• Kothbiro

• Song of the day: Kothbiro, by Ayub Ogada (“En Mana Kuoyo” album, Kenya, 1993). Atmospheric nyatiti harp sounds, from Kenya’s ‘Luo’ tribe (amazon mp3 link).

• at night, Sunday 17 August 2008
  Books/music/films, Mini-Post | Kothbiro (Comment!)

---

• On community support

• I’m in love with the Django community. It’s so vibrant it’s scary. There’s a solution out there for every problem I face. Amazing.

• at night, Saturday 16 August 2008
  Foss, Linux, Mini-Post, Tech/web, Transifex | On community support (Comment!)

---

• Workrave: Protecting my health

• The one best thing I’ve done today: yum install workrave. Awesome. Thank you.

• at night, Thursday 14 August 2008
  Mini-Post, Tech/web | Workrave: Protecting my health (Comment!)

---

• Data model day

• /me ’s working on big data model changes in Tx.

• at night, Wednesday 13 August 2008
  Mini-Post, Transifex | Data model day (Comment!)

---

• Όμορφη Κέρκυρα

• Όμορφο νησί, όμορφες παραλίες, όμορφες. παρουσίες, Η μίνι-τενοντίτιδα ακόμη με ενοχλεί (λίγο η αναρρίχηση, λίγο το hacking), παρόλες τις ημέρες ξεκούρασης και το gel mouse pad.

  Canal d’amour Σιδάρι, Κέρκυρα (Corfu)

• at night, Monday 11 August 2008
  Personal, Thoughts | Όμορφη Κέρκυρα (Comment!)

---

• Linux printing in 2008

• One sudo yum install foo2xqx, and my new USB printer is available in CUPS, A4 page all centered and stuff. Strangely (not), I’m not feeling nostalgic of the old days at all. (Note to myself: Buy twaugh a beer.)

• at night, Monday 11 August 2008
  Foss, Linux, Mini-Post | Linux printing in 2008 (Comment!)

---

• Η σονάτα του σεληνόφωτος

• Κι ὅταν κλείνεσαι μέσα σ᾿ αὐτὸν τὸν ἦχο τοῦ πετάγματος νιώθεις κρουστὸ τὸ λαιμό σου, τὰ πλευρά σου, τὴ σάρκα σου, κι ἔτσι σφιγμένος μὲς στοὺς μυῶνες τοῦ γαλάζιου ἀγέρα, μέσα στὰ ρωμαλέα νεῦρα τοῦ ὕψους, δὲν ἔχει σημασία ἂν φεύγεις ἢ ἂν γυρίζεις οὔτε ἔχει σημασία ποὺ ἄσπρισαν τὰ μαλλιά μου, δὲν εἶναι τοῦτο ἡ λύπη μου - ἡ λύπη μου εἶναι ποὺ δὲν ἀσπρίζει κ᾿ ἡ καρδιά μου. Ἄφησέ με νἄρθω μαζί σου.

  Τὸ ξέρω πὼς καθένας μοναχὸς πορεύεται στὸν ἔρωτα, μοναχὸς στὴ δόξα καὶ στὸ θάνατο. Τὸ ξέρω. Τὸ δοκίμασα. Δὲν ὠφελεῖ. Ἄφησέ με νἄρθω μαζί σου.

  Γιάννης Ρίτσος, “Η σονάτα του σεληνόφωτος” (1956)

• at night, Monday 11 August 2008
  | Η σονάτα του σεληνόφωτος (Comment!)

---

• Πώς να χάνεις πελάτες συμβουλή #24

• Κρατήσεις εισιτηρίων Blue Star Ferries: “Πρέπει να έχετε IE 5.5 για να δείτε αυτήν την ιστοσελίδα”. Μπορεί, αλλά μόλις αποφάσισα να μην τη δω.

• at night, Wednesday 6 August 2008
  Mini-Post, Tech/web | Πώς να χάνεις πελάτες συμβουλή #24 (Comment!)

---

• Dawn

• Hey, look! The twilight of dawn. So beautiful. :-)

• at night, Tuesday 5 August 2008
  Mini-Post, Random | Dawn (Comment!)

---

• hg changeset ID locality

• Sudden realization: There is a possibility of an hg repo closely following another one to lose sync of changeset IDs (contrary to changeset hashes which are unique). Committing in both, pulling to each other and merging creates different intermediate IDs. I need to remember looking at the chanset ID in the upstream Tx repo before linking to the changeset when closing tickets.

• at night, Saturday 2 August 2008
  Mini-Post, Tech/web, Transifex | hg changeset ID locality (Comment!)

---

• Transifex 0.3.1 “A Clockwork Orange” released

• Transifex v0.3.1 “A Clockwork Orange” released today as a semi-minor release. Highlights: New theme, pypi packaging. Read all about it in the original announcement.

  

• at night, Saturday 2 August 2008
  Foss, Linux, Transifex | Transifex 0.3.1 “A Clockwork Orange” released (Comment!)

---

• Flashback: DDOT

• Re-playing Day of the Tentacle. Again.

• at night, Tuesday 29 July 2008
  Mini-Post | Flashback: DDOT (Comment!)

---

• L10n infrastructure hackers wanted

• Fedora L10n is looking for Python|RPM|server admins eager to help administrate our toolchain. Drop by #fedora-l10n for more info.

• at night, Tuesday 29 July 2008
  Fedora, Mini-Post | L10n infrastructure hackers wanted (Comment!)

---

• Status: Κομμάτια

• Nιώθω λίγο κομμάτια από τη χθεσινή αναρρίχηση (σκλερό 6c+), αλλά κάτι φαίνεται να βγαίνει από δουλειά. Αργότερα έχει γαμάτο επιτραπέζιο.

• at night, Sunday 27 July 2008
  Mini-Post | Status: Κομμάτια (Comment!)

---

Post archive

• CHOICES

  • Weblog homepage
  • About the author
  • About this blog
  • Archive
  • Contact

• SEARCH

• FEEDS

  • All articles (atom)
  • Main articles (atom)
  • Mini-posts (atom)
  • Comments (atom)

• COMMUNITIES

  Belonging

  • planet ελλακ,
  • planet Fedora,
  • Fedora greece,
  • gnome.gr,
  • django.gr,
  • transifex,
  • digitalrights.gr,
  • patras lug

  Hanging around

  • gallery,
  • twitter,
  • identi.ca,
  • del.icio.us,
  • #ellak on Freenode

  Using

  • webfaction,
  • dreamhost,
  • radio paradise

  Participating

  • fudcon,
  • athens digital week,
  • foss.in,
  • GUADEC,
  • patras freecycle

π