Howdy Rancho fans!

Like some (many?) of you noticed, we had been having problems in Rancho server since quite a long time.
The machine that was serving Rancho had some kind of trouble and was switching of all the time.

Finally this week my friend (and Rancho’s co-lead developer) Luís Rodrigues changed Rancho host and we’re set!

Hopefully, Rancho will be available 24/7 from now on.
Also, note that we changed some of the subdomains, so, you should check Rancho’s web site for the new URLs, mainly SVN’s and Trac’s.

Please let us know of eventual problems with the new page in our Google Group.

Big thanks to Luís Rodrigues for having fixed this problem!

Well, this blog’s title’s not quite fair.
Igalia’s got more than an office, we got a playground, we got a “spot”, a place where we do what we do best, what we love to do, while calling it our job and sharing it with friends. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s call it just our office.

Yesterday was the Igalia’s New Office Inauguration Party.
We stopped working at 5 as previously agreed and started messing around with, well, anything we could.
First, we abused the Wii, then, we started throwing our Free Software mascot plushes to each other, we later upgrade it to a plush rugby ball so it’d give us a more sportish feeling! It’s interest to see how engineers have fun when they turn off their laptops…

Around 8pm, curiously I was finishing reading an interview with Guido van Rossum in Linux Journal when the party guests started arriving and it was nice.
I met new people and fell good about seeing everyone with they’re family and closest friends having fun and saying that the office is “de puta madre” (something like “f*%kin amazing”). Oh, right, the food and drinks we were served were also great!

I’m not really a photo boy, luckily there are always some people who are so check these photos by Mario and Enrique:

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariosp/sets/72157618769128971

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariosp/sets/72157618742618759

http://picasaweb.google.com/eocanha/IgaliaNewOfficeOpeningParty#

Thanks to everyone in the company who worked hard so we can now arrive everyday to this colorful, pleasant place!

Great news for the Python community in Portugal.

Last week I took knowledge that Nuno Mariz, a Portuguese Pythonista, created the Portuguese Python User Group!
I quickly joined it and send my regards to Nuno for the idea and action.

So far we, proud Portuguese Pythonistas, have a Django powered web page with only a blog, contacts and a planet (and a Google group as well) but it seems there’s gonna be more.
About the planet, give it a look and add it to your RSS feeds. All posts I’ve seen so far are in English, so, you don’t need to know Portuguese to follow us.

Good job Nuno! Let’s spread the Way Of The Python!

So,

Like I said on my last post, I gave an Introduction to Django in the Master en Software Libre Caixanova in Vigo last Friday.

I really enjoyed giving the class. Although the students had different technical levels, many of them could keep up with the example project I was doing with them and I believe they enjoyed it. This project was done as a second part of the class, the first part was the presentation you find embedded here were I give an quick overview of Django.

At the end, we couldn’t finish the whole project in time (there was another class after that) but I think it served at least to give them a feeling of how easy it is to do stuff in Django.

I had the impression they were most surprised by “how can one NOT need to touch SQL”. This is just one of the adjvantages of Django, I said.

After the class and as I got to the hotel I was dead (didn’t get much sleep during the week) but satisfied.
At dinner time I went with my girlfriend to a place I could only read as “Tapas & Cañas” on the door. The food was GREAT! The prices were cheap (as most places here in Galicia ), the beer could be better (San Miguel) but didn’t ruin anything. I had a great night which finished watching the lights reflacting at the sea from the hotel room’s balcony.

On Saturday, on the way back to A Coruña, I passed by Pontevedra and liked it much more than Vigo! The city old part is really pleasant!

I’d like to say thanks to Igalia and Caixanova for having invited me to give this class.

I was invited to give a class in the Master en Software Libre covering an introduction to Django.

So, tomorrow I’m heading south to Vigo and present our favorite web framework (”THE” web framework, for many of us) .

I’ll start by giving an overview of Django, what it’s all about and why people should use it. Then I’ll do a tiny project with the audience so they get a real feel of it.

Although this degree covers several stuff, it is indeed a good thing that they chose to have an introduction to Django as well.
It can only mean Django is getting more and more important like it deserves to be.

Hope the audience enjoys, I’ll try not to be boring!

(I’ll upload the slide afterwards)