Category: personal

New cycle

Lot of time without write a single post… too bad…

The thing is I was thinking about my live these last months… And after awhile I decided to make a big change: leave my job and move back to Canaries

After 6 years living in Seville and working at Emergya I found there was the end of a cycle so I have to move forward and start new things.

These 6 years have been great. I’ve learnt a lot and met great people. I truly wish the best for my (now) former company and the people there. They deserve it. They will be always my family 🙂

Now I like to have a bit of personal time to learn new things, to have back my technical skills (mostly programming) and try new projects. I have some ideas in my mind that I hope to share (as code) soon and I also hope some of them to be useful for GNOME developers, testers and translators. Will see…

Happy haking from my new life at Canarias! 🙂

I’m going to FOSDEM 2010

Well, last year was my first time in Brussels and FOSDEM. It was great, but I guess this time, as Barney would say: it’s going to be legen…. wait for it…. dary!!! 😛

This time a lot of friends are going and I hope to meet new not-yet-friends up there.

I’m going with my good friend from Emergya and also great Guadalinex developer, Roberto. Here we are at some spanish FLOSS congress….

Juanje and Rober at the Hispalinux congress
Juanje and Rober at the Hispalinux congress

We are the two guys in the middle… If you are at the FOSDEM we look (kind of) like in the photo.

BTW, If you see the girls you can also tell us 😛

See you there 😉

I'm going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting

Back to the community

It’s been awhile since my last post. I’ve been busy with my personal life and some changes on my professional life…

Actually, I left my last company (Emergya) because I was needing a change and I had the possibility of start to work on Guadalinex (Ubuntu based distribution from Andalusia, Spain) full time. Guadalinex is a very important project for the Spanish FLOSS community and It’s very important for me as well.

There were some problems to start at my new position and I’ve been something like two month off, waiting for my job.

Meanwhile I’ve been a bit disconnected of the GNOME, Ubuntu, Debian and floss world in general, and I’ve been more focused on recovering and improving my health. I came back to doing climbing, running, Ninjutsu, some parkour, I’ve been eating more vegetables and fruits, I’ve been visiting my physiotherapist… You know, trying to fix a bit my sedentary life.

But there were more problems with my new position which made me worry about my future and my economy… :-/

Then my previous company offered me another position, this time it was a very good job, the one I was looking for last time I was working there. And because of several reasons (which weren’t easy decisions at all) I took that job 🙂

So, I’m about to start a new stage of my personal and professional life and that is very linked to the FLOSS world 🙂

They call the position Community Manager, but it’s not “online community manager“. It is not about create online community around our products and so, it is about build (or to get stronger) free software community inside the company and putting the means for our developers to be able of sharing knowledge with people from other communities (GNOME, Ubuntu, Debian, Drupal, gvSIG, Redmine, Rails…).

We’ve been very focused on looking for good clients, growing up as a small-medium company and we have a bunch a good developers with very good skills and know how, but not all of them come from the free software world and they need to know how to share all that knowledge and how interact with  the community. The rest, just need tools and opportunities for working as they want, in a open way.

Connect our GIS people with open GIS projects, our Drupal hackers with the Drupal developers, our distro experts with Ubuntu, Debian and GNOME people and so on, plus a few more things is going to be my life in, at least, one year from now.

I’m very excited about this and I think is going to be great for all of us and, I hope, for the communities we’ll try to help. We’ve been receiving so much from them and it is time to give a bit back to them.

Well, this is all by now, but I’ll come back here to tell you all our progress and to share knowledge and experiences.

Thank you folks for read this boring long post and:

Happy Hacking! 😉

Python helps you with your running sessions

Time back I was trying parkour, but I got some old injures that didn’t let me practice it properly. Also there was too much sedentary life… I needed to start from the beginning. I needed to create a good baseline for my training.

I also started of doing some rock climbing again. Sport that I really love 🙂

I was gaining some strength and I could doing again some pull ups and some boulders. But I found, as I did before with the parkour that I needed some stamina.

I also realized that parkour is a way to run, so I should be able to run. And I wasn’t…

So I’ve decided to start to run. I used to do it time ago when I got into the university. And I liked to be a bit methodical, so I could see the progress and train better. So I decided to buy a good pair of running shoes, a pulsometer and chrono. Then I realized that things have changed since I was at the university and there are a lot of stuff and software to help you with your training.

But the most of the applications I found weren’t open source and neither for Linux. Very fancy stuff like Ipod+Nike , but nothing for Linux. Nothing until I found Pytrainer !!! 🙂

Pytrainers years stats
Pytrainer's years stats

This is a Python + Gtk+ application oriented to track your sessions and show you your progress. It’s for running, bike and mountain bike, but I think you can add other sports alike those ones.

It has also plugins for that fancy Ipod+Nike system and others. It seems to me a really cool stuff. I have to test it more, but I hope someone with more running training skills than me, test it and give me (and to the developers 😉 ) some feedback.

Well, let’s run! 😛

Hello Planet Ubuntu

This is a short post just to say hello to everybody at the Ubuntu Planet 🙂
I’ve been around Ubuntu since its first version (back in the 2004) and now my work got me closer again to Ubuntu, so I’ve decided become a member of this community and start my process of developer in here.

I was always a very Debian guy, but for different reasons I found Ubuntu interesting and a project that I had to keep eye on. I still like Debian, but I use Ubuntu for my work and my home (well, actually I use Guadalinex).

I hope my work let me keep pushing bugs, translations, patches, branches and more no just to Ubuntu but Debian, GNOME and more interesting projects out there that we use.
That’s it for now. Soon, some news about the last Guadalinex version. Stay tuned 😉

University Free Software Contest

The last 7th of May I was at the III University Free Software Contest‘s final fase. That event is a really interesting and (IMHO) very important for the free software community world in Spain.

The event takes place at several universities in Spain and have this final fase in Seville. In each university, the student that want to participate, have to start a free software project and follow some rules:

  • The project must be register in a public forge with public Subversion, wiki, maillist and so on.
  • They have to public their progress in a blog, so the people can follow the projects. All the projects’ blogs are syndicated in the contest’s planet.
  • They also have more points if they create a community around their projects.
  • And, of course, the project must have some kind of free software license.

I’ve have the pleasure and honor to be member of the jury to evaluate those projects and it’s really hopeful to see those young students learning how to develop a project with free software tools and methodologies. And some projects are really amazing and are already in few distributions or even OS.

This initiative is very helpful to the people from the universities who have great ideas, but they don’t know how the community works or even the normal developing tools. You know… sometimes at the universities the knowledge is too much theoretically… At least in Spain.

I have to apologize to the organization because in this edition I didn’t do my duty as a member of the jury. The work, my mess with the mail and the chaos inside of my head… But I have no excuses, really and I do regret no to have evaluated the projects, because there were some quite interesting…

Thanks anyway to all the organization and the rest of the jury. By the way, this event is good for me also because some members of the jury are very good friends (and GNOMErs :-P) but living in other places and they come for the final fase so I can meet them 🙂

For example, there are Carlos Garnacho and Alvaro López (alo) 🙂

Well, I do hope this initiative will be replicated in other countries because the students learn a lot and after the contest there are always some interesting projects which are free software 🙂

Some updates

It’s been awhile since the last post. I’ve been a bit busy with Guadalinex and some personal stuff. So here I leave some updates to keep my personal log no so empty…

Parkour:

I’ve got some problems with my back and I had to quit (for a while) with this new passion… Anyway, it was useful because it farce me to go to the doctor make a real check and found old and deeper problems. And what it’s better, it also force me to keep doing some exercise, which is helping me in many ways 🙂

Rock Climbing:

I leave parkour by now, but I’ve started to climb walls again. It sounds kind of weird, but this was a previous passion for me and it’s helping me with my back.

Ok, I’m not climbing like I was doing 8 years ago (that was more or less the last time…), but I’ve decided to start slow. Step by step.

I had to much injuries from my previous climbing period. I don’t want to do the same mistakes again.

I found some artificial walls for climbing but I’m actually doing some boulder in “el Puente de Triana” (the Triana bridge), here in Seville. There are always people climbing and people are very nice and open.

I hope soon I will be able to go to some real rock outside of  Seville…

This reminds me that in Gran Canaria are really good spots for climbing (also fot others mountain activities) so if anyone who is going to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit like to know places, let me know. I¡m from there and I know quite well those places. Just let me know before the summit and we can do some excursion or something 😉

Guadalinex:

There is already the Ubuntu Jaunty, the one we use as base to derive. We were quite busy setting up all the building systems, updating our projects for being working on Jaunty and trying to help Ubuntu a bit with translations, bugs and patches.

No so many patches as I would like, but we are very few people and we spend a lot of time learning how Ubuntu works. There is a lots of procedures, documentation, wiki pages, tools, place from where get info… We are still learning, but I thing the next version and collaboration will be much smoother. And we’ll be more useful for them 🙂

We have alpha already in the streets and we are close to have a beta, which will be more Guadalinex alike.

Ubuntu Jaunty is a really good base. I have to said that for me is one of the best Ubuntu versions in many ways, so I expect Guadalinex be at least as good as Jaunty.

We’ll change some things from Ubuntu, as the notifications stuff. We like the new notifications but we need interaction on them for one of our main projects: Hermes. And the new notification system doesn’t allow to do any interactions.

By now we’ll deactivate this and we’ll use the standard of GNOME, at least, until the new notification implement some kind of solution for those use cases.

Few days off (offline):

I’ll go tomorrow to Vigo (Galician) until Sunday and I’ll be very offline those days. It’s my first time in Galician and I know I will love it 🙂

So many time wanting to go there and just 3 days there… But sure it’s just the FIRST time and not the last 😛

Break and FOSDEM have finished

It was a really good experience going to the FOSDEM. It was my first, but I hope it won’t be the last.

I had the opportunity of knowing a bit Brussels: the beer, the chocolate, the waffles, the city center… very nice place… errr, but the weather… rains and cold… not really my type.

The FOSDEM itself was amazing. So many people from so different projects (hackers and users).

Kudos for the organization people, they did just great. Huge and great work! 😉

I missed some friends over there but I met new friends and I could talk a lot about the GCDS (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit), which is going to be a very important event. It seems that people from GNOME and KDE are ready for collaborate as much the time over there let us.

I very exciting about the event and all the think are coming with it.

By the way, there are new mail list for the event:

http://mail.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/mailman/listinfo/gcds

Stay tuned! 😉

The other thing I want to write is about my break.  I was in a break of my job for having time for me and some personal stuff. Well, that break is now over 🙂

On Monday I come back, but I have some changes. I’m going to work on a six months project, out of the office (actually at the client office) but in a good a nd interesting (at least for me) Spanish free software project.

I’m really exciting about this too, but I’ll wait until I start (on Monday) to talk about the project and what I’m going to do in it.

Well, I’m keep reading, learning and searching some stuff more that on Monday I have to be prepared 😉

See you! Happy hacking! 😉

A little break and FOSDEM

I’ve been three years working at Emergya. I did the third year two weeks ago…. When I arrived we where 12 people (plus me) and I supposed to be there just for a month… 😛

Three years later I was still there… And now they are fifty people.

Emergya is a company about free software, full of young guys and girls (well, as at any IT company, much less girls and we would like, but…) with passion for the technology, good persons, good friends. They work on GNU/Linux distros (Guadalinex and much more), web applications (with zope/plone, Rails, java, Drupal and more), GIS applications (MapServis and more) and more interesting stuff.

So, nice people, working with and on free tools and projects in a very familiar and nice environment… in Seville (which is not Las Palmas, but still is nice place to live…)… I couldn’t say no to stay more than I’ve promised 🙂

But three years is a very long time for me being in one place. Even if it’s so nice. So I decide to make some changes.

Actually, my work here didn’t let me so much time to update my knowledge, take care of personal stuff I’ve been leaving stopped for awhile and so.

But, I’m no leaving fullly the company. This is more a little (few weeks, maybe a month or so) break to take care of my own personal business.

One of the thing I like to do in this time is updating myself. I need to read and learn a lot stuff about the new (or not so new) GNOME and Freedesktop technologies (I feel so outdated….). I’d like to code again. I miss that a lot.

But this is personal time, so health is one of my goals as well. Better food (cooked by myself instead of with rush in a bar close to the office…), good rest, some exercises, some checking at doctor. Stuff like that.

And I feel I need improve my English. I learn a lot when I was living in Dublin, but was more pub conversations what I learn than an appropriated speak for business or so.

Also my written English is so poor and I don’t feel comfortable enough (and I write soooo slow…) to chat with people by jabber or irc, which some times is necessary to collaborate on some projects.

I guess this is just matter of practise. Read more, write more, try, fail and learn 🙂

I repeat, if someone read my posts and see something wrong or something sounds weird on my English, I will appreciate (so much) to teach me my errors and mistakes.

By the way… Im going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting

I hope see good hacker and friends over there 🙂 And meet more interesting people.

See you there guys! 🙂

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 España
This work by Juanje Ojeda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 España.