Journal of an Open Sourcee

Coffee Cup

A while back I wrote about how I first got hooked on coffee and received some really good comments and suggestions for new coffees to try. I was immediately attracted to one coffee in particular: Zoka! Don’t ask me what it was but there was something about the name that tickled my fancy. So I sent their customer service department an email and asked if they would send me a few samples. The very next day I received a reply and the promisse that they would send me a couple of bags. Since I had also received 2 other bags of coffee from friends to try I figured I’d report here how the “coffee experiment” went.

Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert or a connoisseur and my oppinion here is nothing but, well… my own oppinion and is not meant to influence what brand of coffee you should buy. I just enjoy drinking coffee and hope you’ll find this useful.

The Great Coffee Experiment

Zoka‘s coffee arrived at my doorstep a few days later on a Friday afternoon. With names such as “Costa Rica Calle de Copey” and “Tangletown Blend“, the two neatly packed bags of whole beans looked very organic-y. The neat label in the front telling you when that specific bag was put together was a nice touch, almost like someone took their time to hand pick the coffee beans and gently places them into the bag (and it smelled great too!).

I first tried the “Costa Rica Calle de Copey” with its promisse to deliver a rich, fruity flavor. After grinding (espresso) enough coffee for my wife and I and impatiently waiting for the brew, we were both impressed with the strong flavor of melon and hints of lemon! I mean, I usually drink my coffee black with sugar (though I’ve drastically cut down on how much sugar I’m using now) and am not too fond of fruity coffee. Maybe because most of the time fruity coffee is a bit too acidic for me. I must say however that I was not put off by this blend and I can see myself drinking it out on the back porch after dinner.

First GNOME Board Meeting

Today I attended my very first GNOME Board of Directors meeting. Though I won’t be able to vote on issues until July 1st, it was great to witness how the process works and be able to ask questions and receive answers directly from current and former board members.

I must say that the entire meeting felt very streamlined and ran smoothly, partially because of people like Vincent, Brian, Germán and Paul who seem to be on top of everything and juggling several balls at the same time! Stormy must sleep very well at night knowing she can count on people of this caliber to steer the project.

Emily and Bastien, new members like myself, also made their presence felt by asking questions and getting involved in some topics that were discussed. I asked  a few questions myself and tried to absorb as much as possible, juggling work and the action taking place on Gobbi and IRC.

I feel bad for not being able to attend GUADEC this year as I’ll probably be the only Board member not to be present… but I am looking forward to working with these guys and gals and fill the shoes of those who are departing this year!

Django 1.2 E-Commerce

“Django 1.2 E-Commerce“ starts with a very ambitious goal: design, develop and deploy a functionam ecommerce web site for the fictional CranStore.com company. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

I started flipping through the usual introductory pages explaining what Django is and why use it for a project like this. It was all fairly brief which already led me to believe that knowledge of Django’s inner works and basic setup and configuration was required to follow along.

Well, the instructions are not as streamlined as other programming books I’ve read and it could be fairly tricky to follow the examples and logic if you’re not already familiar with how Django works. There are several typos in the example code as well, mostly due to missing spaces between the commands and arguments. Adding to the confusion is the style the author chose to deliver his explanation of specific code changes, displaying snippets of code that will leave the reader wondering what specific file is being discussed.

Now, if none of these things sound scary to you, you’ll be happy to know that the project itself is fairly well designed and worth your time. It was also the first time I saw an example of integrating Django with Google Checkout to set up a “shopping cart” mechanism, and by the time you’re done with the second chapter, you will have a very basic but functional ecommerce web site.

The subsequent chapters were a blur, talking about adding external modules and services to enhance your site’s searching capabilities as well as exposing the data from your “store” via APIs and generating reports with ReportLab. The author also talks about making use of javascript to add that AJAX-y feeling that we’ve come to expect of most modern sites and how to take advantage of S3 storage to sell your product.

The last chapter finally walks you through a few different ways you can deploy your final project to the world out there. I thought it was interesting to see Fabric being mentioned as a driver for deployment, as I have been playing with it at work to help me perform a series of tests on several different hosts for QAing purposes. Come to think of it, this may have been the first time I’ve seen it mentioned in a book, so I’m glad that this project seems to be picking up steam.

Overall, even with the issues of poor proof checking of the source code and the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to the first chapters, if you’re not new to Django and need to get some ideas on how to design and develop an ecommerce website, you may want to check out this book. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Another busy week at work means a quiet week here…

Heck of a week and GNOME Foundation Board of Directors

137 issues resolved and counting!

One important piece of news is that I have been elected to the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors together with other 6 members! Thank you all of you who voted for me! I intent to devote a bigger chunk of my time to be a proactive[...]

It’s been another crazy/hectic week for me at work, so blogging and pretty much all other activities had to take the back seat.

137 issues resolved and counting!

One important piece of news is that I have been elected to the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors together with other 6 members! Thank you all of you who voted for me! I intent to devote a bigger chunk of my time to be a proactive, hands on and very vocal member of this group and will strive to blog about my experience as much as I can!

Next week should be just as crazy as the last 2 but I will try to blog at least once to let people know what’s going on in my neck of the woods!

Three more days until my birthday! Want to take a look at my wish list?

It was a very busy week, so I didn’t spend the same amount of time writing as the previous weeks. Thank you for the kind wishes on my birthday!

Also, thank you Conzar, Aigars Mahinovs, Paulo Dias, Tassos Bassoukos and Rodney Dyer for the awesome tips related to playing World of Warcraft on Linux!

Playing World of Warcraft on Linux with Wine

Yes, I’m still alive and kicking. Been really busy at work and haven’t had the time or energy to write anything here. I have however kept my New Year’s resolution of reading a book during lunch break every day! I’m currently reading 2 books at the same time (check what other books I have read and those I have still waiting on my queue in the front page of my blog):

• For The Win by Cory Doctorow
• The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester

I feel that it is impossible to read Doctorow’s book and not feel the urge to play World of Warcraft (WoW). Impossible! I think the last time I played this game[...]

World of Warcraft

Yes, I’m still alive and kicking. Been really busy at work and haven’t had the time or energy to write anything here. I have however kept my New Year’s resolution of reading a book during lunch break every day! I’m currently reading 2 books at the same time (check what other books I have read and those I have still waiting on my queue in the front page of my blog):

• For The Win by Cory Doctorow
• The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester

I feel that it is impossible to read Doctorow’s book and not feel the urge to play World of Warcraft (WoW). Impossible! I think the last time I played this game I still lived in Northern New Jersey and was an Ubuntu user (yeah, I’ve matured since then).

So I wanted to play WoW really bad after reading a chapter but wasn’t sure how to do it since I only run GNU/Linux and didn’t feel like setting up a Windows VM just to play a game! Talking to my long time friend Vinny I suddenly realized that I never tried to run the game using Wine, so I decided that once I got home I’d take it for a spin.

After downloading a 3.3MB installer from Blizzard, and installing Wine (sudo conary update wine), I went ahead and ran wine TryWoW.exe. What followed was a series of screens where I simply accepted the defaults and clicked my way through. There were times when a dialog with no messages popped up where all you could do was click on the OK button… so I did.

The installation did require access to the internet and a bundle of approximately 35MB was downloaded in the process. Once the wizard finished I had the option to play the game right there and then! How exciting!

The game takes a few extra seconds to start but eventually I was face to face with the login window. However, I noticed that I had no audio and the video quality lacked a bit. Googling around brought me to these instructions. So I modified my configuration file to include:

SET gxApi “opengl”

SET Sound_SoundOutputSystem “1″

SET Sound_SoundBufferSize “150″

That was it!!! I spent the next 45 minutes playing the game using my trial account and had to be dragged by my wife and kids to the kitchen to eat diner with them!

Well, I still have a few more days until my trial period expires. Will I then update to a full blown account and waste spend my free time investing on my character? To be determined!

Three more days until my birthday! Want to take a look at my wish list?

Here’s what happened this week:

Not Going to GUADEC 2010

After several weeks agonizing over how to afford a trip to attend GUADEC 2010, I have finally arrived at the conclusion that I won’t be able to make it. Due to my current financial situation[...]

Emma’s Very Busy Week

I’m the proud father of two voracious young readers! From very early on I was able to instill into my daughters the pleasure of reading books. They also happen to be girly girls, so while most kids ask for toys and video games for their birthdays[...]

I’m the proud father of two voracious young readers! From very early on I was able to instill into my daughters the pleasure of reading books. They also happen to be girly girls, so while most kids ask for toys and video games for their birthdays, mine ask for books and clothes/shoes!

During third grade my oldest daughter happened to pick up “Emma’s very busy week” by Heather Dakota from her school’s library and just couldn’t put it down! I believe that throughout the entire third grade she must have borrowed this book at least 6 times! As a young kid, I remember I could read some books that I really enjoyed over and over, enjoying it every single time as if I were reading it for the first time. She must have gotten this from me.

So now with the Summer break fast approaching she has asked me to buy
her own copy of the book. Again, I usually get all of my books from the public library but those I fall in love with, I just got to have them, so she must have gotten it from me too! I sat down in front of the computer and searched on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books on Press, etc, but just could not find a single reference or a way to buy “Emma’s very busy week”.

So I did what everyone does when in doubt and spent some time ‘Googling’ around until I came across Heather Dakota‘s web site. Feeling that I had already exhausted my options, I figured I’d drop her an email and see if she could help us find a place where we could buy the book.

That same day I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Heather with a generous offer: she happened to have an extra copy of the book at her house and asked me if I’d mind if she sent it autographed to my daughter! Better yet, she was meeting the illustrator the very next day and said she would also get it autographed!

I profusely thanked her for the offer and decided I would not break the news to my daughter and see how  she would react when she received the package in the mail.

"Emma's very busy week" book

Needless to say, she was in heaven when she received the package yesterday!!! The book was promptly devoured while I took my dog to training class and she’s planning to read it again today!

Thank you Heather for making my daughter’s day! I thank you from the bottom of my heart and we are all looking forward to your next book!

Sad Trombone

After several weeks agonizing over how to afford a trip to attend GUADEC 2010, I have finally arrived at the conclusion that I won’t be able to make it. Due to my current financial situation and obligations as a father of two, it would be unrealistic to hop on a plane and go to this event right now for me. Unfortunately none of the organizations I approached were able to offer me any type of financial support, understandable due to today’s economy issues.

I want to thank the amazing crew behind the GNOME Travel Committee for a very generous offer and for being so patient and allowing me to take a bit of time to make my decision.

I also want to thank the organizers for choosing my presentation and keeping me updated with the tentative schedule for the event. I’m really sorry I won’t be able to present it and I can only hope that someone else can fill in the vacancy.

Finally, I wish you all a wonderful event and I will be watching from the sidelines for the many amazing things that are sure to come out of GUADEC.