I have been working for the past months in Hildon Input Methods (HIM) and many things have changed in it (and many will) with only a target in mind: make the experience of typing in N900, physically or virtually, a great experience.
Still, one thing I dislike in HIM is the fact that it is semi-closed source. Now what’s this semi-closed source thingy? It means that some modules are open, others are closed (HIM is a complex project).

(this is not the project logo)

For the open ones, and have you failed noticing it, the sad truth was that they were updated from time to time. No open development was done… but this has changed!
Since last week, HIM’s open source modules are now developed “in the open”, using Gitorious (thanks to Kimmo)!
The modules are hildon-input-method and hildon-input-method-framework.

This constitutes another step of freedom inside Fremantle and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I mean Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, an event joining GUADEC and aKademy!

Tomorrow I’ll fly to Gran Canaria to attend this great event and I got lots of good expectations since it’s gonna be my first GUADEC.
I hope to attend many conferences and hang out with fellow Igalians and friends.

A lot of important names in our world of Open Source and particularly, Open Desktop will be there so it can only be great!

I’ll give two talks in there. A lightning talk about my OCR project — OCRFeeder — and another one that gives a practical view on the new Hildon (or “The Fremantle Way”).
By the way, I used ReStructured Text to do my presentation (using the rst2odp script) and save time from using Open Office. You should try it too.

So, thanks to my dear girlfriend everything is packed already (I always think my socks time-traveled to Narnia), the camera battery is charged, presentations are finished and I’m ready to go — I don’t mention my laptop because we’re “symbiotically” connected and where I go “he” goes.

Hope to see you there!

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!

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)