is money that important?

Today I had a brief chat with my friend Pedro Villavicencio, and I spoke about how I feel now that I’m much more involved in the open source community, and how freaking great it feels to give it back. I mean, if I am using linux (and no longer windowns on my notebook, kind of dictator here because my girlfriend has no choice =P, and I feel fine) and all these really well designed tools for free, so I question what can I do for the guys that have worked so hard to make it happen?

There are some roads I can take, and so far I have chosen just two of them: translation and marketing. I am damn good at the first one, as for the second one let’s say I’m not really bright but still it’s a good thing to share points of view with the rest of the team.

Most of us contribute for the joy of it. In most cases no money behind. What’s really behind our work is a lot of feedback, our time, and the will to make our resources better day after day. Each one of us in the open source community is good (to say the least) because we are here with specific interests and do the best we can. We are not to make money, we are to make the best piece of software in the world and for today I have not heard anyone to prove me wrong on that.

I am a proud linux user and I am in this for the love of it. There is nothing compared to sharing my knowledge, which will ever be there so I ain’t affaid of someone taking it away. Like Pedro said, if one day I have the chance to work for an open source compay, that would great! but the road might be long, you never know.

“The Linux philosophy is ‘Laugh in the face of danger’. Oops. Wrong One. ‘Do it yourself’. Yes, that’s it.”
- Linus Torvalds.

Why do they keep using MS messenger?

It’s like ridiculous. I have seen alot of people still using that m$ messenger, full of anoying advertisement, viruses, stupid emoticons and sounds, and an email inbox that saves all kind of spam (ain’t the live emails spam?), it seems in ten year things have ot changed at all, but at least the question “do you have msn” is fading away, or I just care less.

Nowadays we have fabulous Google Talk (some great phones like Blackberry can run it), great Pidgin, and the clone aMSN that is so much like the m$ messenger, and even Kopete has been running natively under Windowns…but no, they have to have it.

So I hope next time you need an IM, think it twice and take a look around, you do have choice!.

Kbabel is good!

It’s been a great time since I joined the openSUSE translation (es) team. The guys have been so nice teaching me how it all works out and I can say I’m absolutely proud of being a member of this team. By the way, we are using the Verbum V2G.

To begin, days ago I chose to try the new KDE 4.1, just because of its advanced features, and today I can tell the difference. Although it takes a short time to get used to the system’s management procedures, no big problems I have found on my way. Even after screwing up the main panel! =)

Since I needed a good KDE tool for translations (and kate didn’t do), I installed Kbabel, a tool for editing and managing .po files.

So if you are thinking about joining a translation team, install Kbabel without thinking it twice.

k3b for burning music CDs from mp3 files

It’s my first time using k3b to burn music Cds from mp3 files. They are for my sweet daughter Antonia so it’s worth at all.

The task started out with the downloading of a few mp3 files from a website I can’t remember (I’d ask my gfriend but she’s not here right now) and it was no damn surprise they were compressed in a .zip file, so I found out Ark didn’t do with the GUI, or I didn’t take the time to set it up and didn’t care to read documentation on it. Then I downloaded unzip so from the command line I can have all of the required files uncompressed. That was cool since I never had done that before =) and as soon as I was done typing they were out waiting to be added to my music CD project. Almost there when another thing happened…no codecs for mp3 files support! No big deal, just did an install of k3b-codecs via YaST2. It asked me for some depedencies, I chose just to ignore them this time.

Now we have k3b working for all of our musical needs =)

Metallica’s Death Magnetic Kicks Ass!

I can tell that right now, after a couple weeks listening to it on my IAudio 7. I have read some post moaning about its quality and shit, but I kinda like the “live” sound of the album, sounds a lot like the garage days one, which is absolutely my style, and for a mature band like Metallica, they have done a great job this time, and still are my top 5 bands of all times.

Songs I like better: the day that never comes, the unforgiven III, and broken beat ans scarred.

Here is the Broken Beat & Scarred lyrics, just enjoy (it’s fucking better when you are listening to it):

You rise, you fall, your down, then you rise again
What don’t kill you make you more strong
You rise, you fall, your down, then you rise again
What don’t kill you make you more strong

Rise, fall, down, rise again
What don’t kill you make you more strong
Rise, fall, down, rise again
What don’t kill you make you more strong

Through black days
Through black nights
Through pitch black insights

Breaking your teeth on the hard life coming
Show your scars
Cutting your feet on the hard earth running
Show your scars
Breaking your life
Broken, beat and scarred
But we die hard

The dawn, the death, the fight to the final breath
What don’t kill you make you more strong
The dawn, the death, the fight to the final breath
What don’t kill you make you more strong

Dawn, death, fight, final breath
What don’t kill you make you more strong
Dawn, death, fight, final breath
What don’t kill you make you more strong

They scratched me
They scraped me
They couldn’t break me

Breaking your teeth on the hard life coming
Show your scars
Cutting your feet on the hard earth running
Show your scars
Breaking your life
Broken, beat and scarred
But we die hard

Breaking your teeth on the hard life coming
Show your scars
Cutting your feet on the hard earth running
Show your scars
Braiding your soul in a hard luck story
Show your scars
Spilling your blood in a hot suns foray
Show your scars
Breaking your life
Broken, beat and scarred
We die hard

We die hard
We die hard
——————-

openSuse 11 GNOME/KDE 4 thoughts

Well, it’s been a long since my last post. At that time, I was a happy Ubuntu user, but since the new one is soon to be released, I gave it a break and installed openSuse on my notebook. So far it’s been a pleasant experience, installed both the GNOME and the KDE desktop and to tell the truth, I didn’t like the first one at all. The KDE 4 rocks and it impressed me a lot. Still it’s hard to get used to the way it handles the system settings (of course way different from GNOME) but once you are there, you know what’s all about. On the other hand, I like GNOME’s simplicity and if I needed all those new tools it offers I’d be completely happy. Once again, as a regular user (not a developer) I don’t seem to need the new features it has, such as new IM, tracking my time better, Ekiga, and the desk bar, to mention some. One cool thing is multiple tabs for file browsing is a high point. I have to point out that openSuse’s GNOME used about 20% of memory while KDE 4 just about 10%. I’m note saying I like one desktop more than the other, but I can’t belong to only one.

As a developer, I believe Kdevelop rules and works pretty well right out of the box. Qt designer has extremely well writtend documentation and samples.

So today I’m still using openSuse KDE 4, and I think it’ll be on mi notebook until the new Ubuntu is out, or forever, it just depends on how things work out.

Talk at INACAP La Serena

It went down very good, I spoke a whole different speech from what I had prepared because I didn’t know the folk of SUN would also speak about Netbeans a few and the mobile plataform, but anyways I felt pretty damn well. First time and willing to be out there just for the love of open source software, which has already changed my life in a way.

Thanks INACAP for the chance, and more news from me soon. Goodbye.