I always loved sports. I didn’t played a lot because I was too bad and I had no teacher who drived me right. Like most of Spanish boys, I loved football, and I soon began to suffer with the curse on the Spanish national team (and enjoyed with the evolution of Deportivo de La Coruña). So, when this summer Spain reached the top of Europe playing football lovely and wining, I blowed up with happiness.

Now I’m enjoying with Spanish sportmen in Beijing. But I can’t forget the Olympic Games where time for peace. And  there is not peace without justice. I hope Olympic Games help a bit to China to open to democracy, even when the goverment became more oppressorto show a nice face to the world, even when the people that decided Beijin seven years ago had another intere$$$t$$$.

Ther is no peace too when one player in the Games invades the territory of another player, causing hundreds of injured and killed. Russia justified with a possible Georgian attack against civilians, but it’s difficult to prove this when some journalist died trying to show the reality to the rest of the world.

Some books of XIX Century poetry (Espronceda, Baudelaire, Whitman, Poe). Some poems written by us. A 15 years old Johnny Walker bottle.

Do dead poets need something else in a rainy night at the mountain?

I’m always grateful to God for every year we can work at Portiño trying to help to our children to go steps forward in their life. In the previous years this work was difficult because the lack of volunteers, so we maintanied the project in precarious conditions.

But luckily this year we gathered a great group again. Almudena returned from Barcelona and new youngs volunteers came into the group too. So we could work harder and we did more parties and extra activities carrying the children to meet the world outside Portiño

Almudena, Laura, Inés, Lucía, Ariana and Ismael, thanks to you for this maravellous year

I’m getting old. I’m very happy with a gadget that joins cell phone (GSM and UTMS), GPS, digital camera, mp3 player, wireless conectivity. Its name is N95 by Nokia.

It goes against Unix philosophy, but I was tired because my full pockets with gadgets, batteries and their chargers. And, even when it runs with Symbian OS, I can launch a ssh client.

I opened a blog at Vox.com with photos taken with the camera and uploaded with a program to do it directly from the N95. Just for fun

Visperas and Benji got married in June. They celebrated the marriage in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. Alcalá was the first planned university in the world by Cardinal Cisneros in the XV Century. Everywhere in the  city you can find cared buildings of stone and brick that evoke the Golden Age of Spanish literature. You can see some photos I took in that gallery.

About the marriage, I’ll preserve the intimacy, but I must write it was  one of the most emotive ceremonies I have attended ever The baquet  had some romantic and geek details too. You can see in the photo an amount of sparse all-around-the-world geeks joined because our past in  GPUL. We were sitted at the Linus Torvalds table. Visperas’ telecom  engineering friends were at the Graham Bell table, and Visperas and Benji were at Alan Turing table

Good luck for the young family

I have not too much time to update this blog. Really, I never had time to do it, but now I’m aware of this fact but I’m not going to give up now. Last months were very hard but results where positive: I passed more exams than ever, and, in two months I’ll begin to work in my final degree project as I’ll try to pass the last subjects.

There was another reason to be busy: I began to work in the Territorial Studies Lab. I’m updating the databases of the provincial GIS. We use GISEiel, a derivate of gvSIG (so it’s free software), against postresql databases. It’s not a very complex work but it’s very interesting to familiarize and reflect about how the territory was built.

Some of the following posts are about the lost events and thoughts in this ending summer.

Two interesting libraries that will help you in FEM analysis: libmesh, a FEM framework,  and PETSc, the linear/non linear equation parallelized solver.

Via DM, materials engineering consultant Adam C. Powel’s Opennovation.

“A very serious bug in the Linux OS exposes millions of servers all around the world to the intruders. The Linux people reacted quickly and they warned about what keys were vulnerable”
In CNN+ News (Spanish franchise of CNN), about the OpenSSL bug in Debian.

“Google was founded by two students in a garage 20 years ago”
In TVG’s Telexornal (news at the public Galician television), about the Prince of Asturias Award to Google.

I have already written about my affection for the OpenVMS-VAX/Alpha platform. Via Hacksize I discovered a howto about running OpenVMS on a virtual system running in a PC. I didn’t know about The Computer History Simulation Project before. It seems a very necessary project nowadays.

Of course it’s better to have an VAX or Alpha machine to work with it. And it’s highly desireable HP will release any day that wonderful OS forgotten in a DEC office drawer :-P.

About history of computing, I found another interesting web page: An Illustrated History of Computers.

Around 410 Spanish credits (not ECTS) and many, many years, today I received my last class in the School. Civil engineer Álvaro Vázquez Herrero from Exconsa Ltd. talk us about foundations, project management and the life.

Of course, today I remembered my first lesson and the professor who taught it.

A day like this 125 years ago, the Brooklyn Bridge at NY was opened to the traffic.

photo: Brooklyn Bridge, 1896. By Geo. P. Hall & son

The history of this suspension bridge is the history of the family Roebling: John A. Roebling, that projected and died in the beginning of the works; his son Washington who took up again the project and got descompression illness because he worked into the pneumatic caissons; and Whasington’s wife, Emily Warren, who became one of the first female construction manager of the history supervising the works and passing on her husband’s orders.

Science, aesthetics, poetry and heroism. Those were essence of Brooklyn bridge, essence of real Civil Engineering.

I open a new tag with a video.

Most important things in the life are so easy…

Thanks to… errr… Pensamiento I discovered a very interesting tool based in OpenCascade. This program is called Salome, and it provides a framework to build a pre- and post-processor for numerical analysis. The screenshots are very impressive:

The list of partners of the project it’s very impressive too

Today I pre-registered in the Spanish Civil Engineers College. It is a step that usually we take when we are in the latest year of the degree. It has some advantages for students, but, it’s more important, it is an interesting window to see what is happening with the profession.

Of course, I don’t forget the more ancient Civil Engineers Association. I become a member some years ago. It was the original defender of civil engineers in Spain, but it turned its operations because the foundation of the College. Today is a reference in activities that promote good technical, social, human practices.

(And yes, I saw the banner “optimized for IE6 and 1024×768″: next generations will have to do an effort to change some things )

Via JamSession, Randy Brecker Electric Band in Ourense, next May 26th in “XII Festival de Jazz de Primavera 2008″. I would like to listen both brothers in concert, but it won’t be possible

And via Toma Jazz, Wayne Shorter in “Imaxinasons” next June, 29th at Vigo. It’s a very bad date for me, but I’ll try to go.

The day before of Dudesconf my friend Javi Calvo and me went to the Jofre Theater in Ferrol. That was the late evening/night of Marlango.

Some years ago I saw their first public performance in a TV. In that moment they were still working in their first album “Marlango” (2004), but that scoop promised a good future for the band: a nice jazz/rock/pop fusion performed by good musicians and a not great but very passionate, female voice. “Marlango” and “Automatic Imperfection” (2005) were the main part of my soundtrack for last summer (along with “Alone” (1968) by Bill Evans, “Full Circle” (2002) by Jon Mayer and, of course “A love Supreme”).

“The Electrical Morning” (2007) is the last album of Marlango. I like it much, but I miss part of jazz style of the former albums. Oscar Ybarra’s trumpet sounds under cover, and the music is a bit psycodelic. So, I had one doubt because it.

I had another doubt too. Well, Leonor Watling is a very pretty woman and a good actress. And she sounded well in the studio. But how would she be on the stage?

Last concert cleared up me the two doubts. The band is even better on stage than in the studio. Not only playing music, they created a good air joking with the audience. Leonor performs every song with voice, body and soul. She’s funny. She’s shy. She’s lovely. She has an impressive presence on the stage.

So, the guiness and cigarrettes after the concert pleased us very much

This week was a time for recover after Dudesconf. Last year I passed four phases:

1. Two months before: To organize a Debian meeting rules
2. Chaos, death and destruction of the previous and the first day: I *never* will be involved again
3. Congratulations in the last day, and the days after: Ok, we survived… but next year I can’t involve again
4. Two months after: Has anybody some ideas to improve the meeting next year?

Now I’m in the phase number 3

Really we spent a good time in the Dudesconf. Some Debian people that didn’t came last year to Coruña joined to the people that repeated, and it was a very nice combination. We were like a family. I hope too the meeting will help a bit releasing Lenny.

It was a good time for GPUL too. These hackmeetings involve new people, and they force us to tune and improve our infrastructure and to make some new experiments. The congratulations after prove that even when we were bearing bad times with very few new activists, we have a great right staff. I’m very proud of my mates in GPUL.

And now… I return to the civil (engineering) life again

OpenSolaris 2008.05 is out. You can ask for free CD’s too

Thanks to Carlos, via Glynn Foster

…and I suppose the time will certify that the last saturday has dead the last decent president of Spanish democracy until today.

In memorian, civil engineer Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo (1926-2008).

It’s 2:50 at the gym/hotel at the Dudesconf. Lights off. Some dudes dream sweetly, some dudes try to dream sweetly, some people try to win an audible competition But most of dudes… err… see the photo