Diego, el gnomo » planetdebian

Debian free chocolate bonanza

diegoe — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:57:47 +0000

If you are in Cáceres for Debconf and happen to fix a bug (any) in Debian, look around for me and I’ll give you a quite incredibly most awesome too damn good peruvian chocolate. It’s amazing, you have no excuse to not fix some extra bugs.
Extra surprise even more omg awesomeness bonus for the most evil bugs and release-critical ones.

Python common mistakes

diegoe — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:09:58 +0000

When starting with Python or just when you haven’t read PEP 8 you usually fall into some frequent mistakes. Mostly because you take your experience in other languages to Python and your mind gets confused with the new conventions (or something like that).

Some of these errors and their explanation:

if a == None:
Really common. None is a singleton, so you can (well, actually, have) to compare to it like ‘if a is None‘ or ‘if a is not None‘.
if (condition):
This is not really pythonic, if doesn’t take () around the condition in python, () purpose is grouping, you can use them in an if but only to clarify a really complex condition or similar stuff. Please don’t clutter code with unneeded characters.
if len(list):
This is a misunderstanding of Python way of things, any empty sequence (string, list, tuple) is False. So if you want to make sure a list is empty, just check if it’s False. Same for tuples, and in some ocassions for strings.
if type(obj) is type(1):
This is killing kittens, there’s a builtin function for this purpose, it’s called -surprise- isinstance(object, type). For example isinstance(123, int)

Read more about this and other conventions in PEP 8.

Still locked out of Google

diegoe — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:04:58 +0000

Google continues to lock me out of my account apparently just for fun. NOT A SINGLE ANSWER I have got from their bazillion of forms.

I’m obviously pissed off by this, so far the best I have got have been automated replies from forms spitting standard answers to me, answers also in the GMail web help. Yes, that kind of answer “please check that the router is ON”.

Google: you are making me unhappy, I have been happy to recommend you to friends, but doesn’t seem like I will keep doing it after this.

I have bazillions of stuff rotting in queue because of this.

Locked out of Google world

diegoe — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:24:38 +0000

So, seems like Google locked me out of my account today. Apparently for my own protection. Perhaps they are right and they are preventing me from being harmed.

In case you sent me a million dollar offer or something really important, this is why I haven’t replied.

Sigh.

Accepted for a summer job

diegoe — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:21:38 +0000

Yesterday, after a lot of expectation I got great news: my proposal for Debian’s SoC was accepted!
This is great news for me, because it means I’ll get the chance to contribute to another project I also like and owe a lot: Debian

For the curious, my proposal is finishing and enhancing the web UI for the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS for short). Which is a great system but lacks some features that as a GNOME developer have learned to love and, from my humble point of view, think that Debian would benefit from. If you have ever used Debian’s BTS after getting used to GNOME’s Bugzilla, you know what I mean.

Regarding this great news, I’m also happy and confident to say that I’ll be able to keep up with GNOME and Debian work without a hitch. Lots of engineering went through my head to ensure I’ll be able to give my best in what I’m currently doing.

Also, my dear friends Marco Villegas and Manuel Cerón (of LunarEclipse fame) got selected for Drupal and Mono respectively.
Marco will be creating the infrastructure needed for Drupal.org to go the git way and Manuel will be doing some MonoDevelop crack (actually a visual class designer).

It was a great day!

PD: Hello Planet DebianSoC! perhaps you want to read a short intro of myself in this old post.