Today I realized I passed the OTU (Territory Ordering and Town Planning) test. I suffered a lot of stress because even when it’s one of my favorite subjects, and I have a lot of fun working on it, the pressure sank me in those three fatal hours.

Now I’ll begin to fully enjoy reading and drafting. Town planning is a subject that makes me to hack the city.

Last Monday the new year began in my Civil Engineers School. There were some speeches for the beginners by professors to explain them how hard fun is this degree.

And it was a chance to try to get new volunteers to work in the Cooperation and Volunteering Office in the University. So we insert an speech about it. Miriam Barreiro, who works in the Office and is volunteer in a hospital too, explained them our structure and projects. By my side I talked about the social liability of the Civil Engineering, and how important is to know and work in the ‘human scale’ besides lines and numbers.

I hope this information campaign all around the University had the effect of stop dropping the number of volunteers. I want to believe the new generations are less selfish as they seem.

In these last days I have been ‘unplugged’ two very interesting news jumped me from worry to happiness.

One is the ISO stopping Microsoft with the OOXML defective by design standard (via OSNews). If ISO had aproved OOXML maybe it would keep the slavery we bear in communications with administrations.

The other news come from the graphics world. It’s, of course, the new policy by ATI releasing GPU specs without restrictions. It will be an important leap for the manufactures and, of course, for the free software world. Now we are waiting for NVidia

It was with me since I was sixteen. Because I passed the Railways september test, I can give a rest to this old scientific, non-programmable Casio Fx-250c. It was a faithful mate all this years, but I will not need it anymore.

In the last months I read a pair of stories that made me think about how we play with words to refer the same action.

In one side, the use of the term ‘feticidio’ (killing a fetus, in Spanish) in news[elmundo.es] about the important number of abortions in India, when they are in order to sex selection. It seems like if they don’t want to associate the sexist meaning to abortion, that it’s defended as progress, in our society.

Time after I read a post in Lugo Liberal’s blog [es] about the called partial-birth abortion [Corazones.org,es]. What’s this? It’s a technique in advanced pregnancy. A birth is induced, leaving only the head inside, then the (supposed) doctor make a hole in the skull, and finally they suck the brain. This method has been discussed legally in United States[NRLC,en], and, after some attempts for forbid it, abortists inject high amount of medicines in the fetus for… stop kicking out…

It proves the stupid frontier drawn about this subject. If the ‘procedure’ happens into the uterus, it is abort, legal and arguable; but if it happens outside, then it is called a killing. If it happens with half body inside and half body outside… the most confortable solution[abort73, en, VERY explicit video].

Estos últimos meses he leído un par de historias que me han hecho pensar en como se juega con las palabras para llamar a una misma acción.

Por una parte, me llamó la atención el uso del término «feticidio» en las noticias[elmundo.es] referentes al importante número de abortos que se producen en la India, cuando éstos son por selección de sexo. Parece como si no se le quisiera asociar el matiz sexista al aborto, que es algo que se defiende como progreso, en nuestra sociedad.

Un tiempo más tarde leí un post en el blog de Lugo Liberal [es] sobe el llamado aborto por nacimiento parcial[Corazones.org,es]. ¿Qué es esto? Una técnica, para estados de gestación avanzados, se provoca un parto de tal manera que sólo queda la cabeza dentro, entonces el (presunto) médico le agujerea el cráneo, para después succionarle el cerebro. Este procedimiento ha sido discutido legalmente en Estados Unidos[NRLC,en], y, desde varios intentos de prohibición, los abortistas inyectan grandes dosis de medicamentos en el feto para que… deje de patalear fuera…

Esto demuestra la estúpida frontera que se ha trazado en este tema. Si el «procedimiento» se realiza dentro del útero, es un aborto, legal y defendible; pero si se produce fuera, entonces es un asesinato. Si se produce con medio cuerpo dentro y medio cuerpo fuera… la solución más cómoda[abort73, en,video MUY explícito].

Near two years ago I wrote a post about CAD file formats. I defended the DGN format against DWG or DXF. Then I thought the Open Design Alliance was a good idea.
But since that post to now I began to investigate in order to write a translator from DGN V8 for Blender. My first step was towards the Open Design Alliance, but there I couldn’t find free libs nor DGN V8 specs. ODA has an interesting point of beginning (if your file formats are not free you can’t own your works). But they are not interested en free (as in freedom) software.

So I aimed to Bentley’s OpenDGN Initiative. All my attempts finished in a ‘forbidden’ web page. Then I exchanged a pair of mails with the person at the charge, finally I couldn’t got the DGN V8 specs. He stopped to answer my emails. I found similar experiencies of people looking for this document.

As it seems it is impossible to find the DGN V8 specifications as I can find the DGN V7/ISFF, I conclude OpenDGN is not so open as Bentley pretends. So it is a bad idea to found any project in DGN V8 (closed specs), DWG (closed specs, heavy drm-zed format) and DXF (poor format, not standard at all).

Via Martín who writes in gpul’s blog I discovered a recent project which target is to design a really open CAD file format. It seems there are interesting discussions about it.

Maybe you think a CAD format is a too specific field to work. But you must think in the roads you drive on, the buildings you live and work, the engines that move you, the networks you connect to. Think about it, and you will see a world to free.

I have been busy the last weeks with September tests. But I had to run the migration to a new hosting service because I finished the contract with the former, and I was looking for better service. My friend Tomás Amado recommended me Routhost, the specs of the smaller plan were better than the ones I had until now, it is cheaper, and I still can use ssh. I had some problems with the migration, but they were fastly solved with a little help of my friends and the efficient Routhost support team.

Well, I began this blog two years ago when I had important changes in my live, as it is happening now. So I decided to make little, aesthetic changes in it too.

I swapped the Kubrick theme (Wordpress default theme) for the back in black theme by Fredreric de Villamil. I have been looking for themes in the WP directory. I liked it because it is sober (I think it has a bit of jazz style); the links, categories… blocks had their own web page and are accesed through a menu bar (it’s more confortable and accessible); and it’s GPL, so I can modify to adapt it without restrictions. But, in fact, I only added an ‘about’ link in the menu bar, and I changed the head photo. I wouldn’t like break the elegance of the theme.

It’s a coincidence, de Villamil is French like Baudelaire. And the most influential book I read this year is Les Fleurs du Mal. I feel absolutely identified in the second poem in the book, so I decided to rename the blog with the title “The flight of an albatross”. It expresses my feeling of to be a stranger in the society…