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)

So, it’s the middle of the week and I’m posting about last weekend (yeah, it’s sad…).

Last weekend I could do some work on Rancho and I committed a patch to make its width fluid, that is, to be relative to your screen resolution instead of having a fixed size. (let me know if it’s working right in your machine)
The rest of the day was dedicated to watching some movies with my girlfriend

On Sunday I had the pleasure to show the beautiful city of A Coruña to my parents who came to visit me.
We had a great lunch at La Penela, a restaurant in the main city’s square.
They really liked the city and the people and specially enjoyed the landscape where the sea meets land and the mix of buildings with traditional tapas cafes and small grocery stores.

You should also take a break and visit this kind city where, as the people here say, “No one is an outsider”.

Its being almost a month since my last post… so, lets catch up a little.

On the last February 19th I drove down from Galicia to Portugal, it was quite a boring trip of more than 7 hours. Luckily I had my girlfriend right on my side and the iPod’s battery honored its fame and soundtracked the whole trip.

I went to Portugal because on the next day, February 20th, I finally presented my Master Thesis in Computer Science Engineering!
Yeah! A little more than a year after I went to Seville and about 8 months since returned to Portugal, I finally presented it and culminated my Master of Science degree.

The thesis was about the developing of an OCR suite for GNU/Linux, based on some ideas I had before. I started developing it the when I returned from Seville and finished it on October (had the luck that the deadlines got extended and wouldn’t need to deliver it before September), then it took me until the mid of December to finish writing the thesis and (final tests of the program included) — I delivered it the 15th of December. Thanks to the bureaucratic services at my University, the sooner the thesis presentation could be arranged was the mentioned February 20th… But hey! Now it is done!

About the OCR program, it is written in Python featuring a GUI powered by PyGTK and can use several Open Source OCR engines to perform OCR. It allows user correction/edition of the results, etc. and generates ODT or HTML file. You can also use it from the CLI in case you want to automate some tasks or link it with other apps.

I am releasing the program soon as GPL, so stay tuned.

I’d really like to thank a lot to all the people that supported me all the time and keep supporting:
Mom, Dead,  Bro, Girlfriend, Professor Luís Arriaga, and friends such as Luís Rodrigues and Pedro Salgueiro.

PS: My absence in the www world outside of work due to the fact that I’m internetless since I came to A Coruña, *hopefully* next week the ISP I chose will turn the switch of information in my flat and I’ll be connected once again to the world. Then I’ll post what’s happened in my world of GTK, Igalia and Django.

Señoritas y Caballeros, Rancho is now in the romantic and expressive Spanish language!

Rancho was first launched with the English and Portuguese (translated by me) languages and Spanish was a language we definitely wanted it translated to.

My dear friends Javier Sánchez and Antonio Santos from Seville, Spain (and ex-colleagues of mine from BitRock) were kind enough to collaborate with the Rancho Team and translate it to their mother tongue.
Javier and Antonio are also highly skilled in what comes to programming — it is what they do for living as well — and good people with whom I shared great moments.

Thank you guys for all the patience when I sent you another email with another untranslatable lost string! I miss hanging with you, BTW!

So go ahead and upgrade your SVN to get Rancho fully translated into one of the most spoken languages in the world.

We’re looking forward to have Rancho translated into more languages, if you want to participate in this project and translate it to your language, drop me an email or contact the Rancho Team at our official site.