Tomorrow I’ld must be attending to the IV Civil Engineering, Territory and Environment Congress at Málaga (South Spain). Finally I couldn’t travel because domestic problems, so I’m a bit sad.

I’m a bit sad because tomorrow morning my first boss J.R. Acinas will present the paper “POPE. Assisting to the port operations system. Experiences in Ferrol Outward Port”. It shows the first professional work in wich I’ve got involved. We developed in the Ports and Coast Lab of my Civil Engineering School a system that helped to take decissions about operations in the port based in 48/72 hours weather forecast. The program takes wave and wind forecast in great scales and it calculates wave, tide and currents in a thinner grid. And, of course, it was developed with very interesting pieces of free software like Delft University of Technology’ SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore), on top of a (Debian) GNU/Linux system.

We finished the works some years ago, but I’m still very fond of it And I’ll be always grateful with Dr. Engineer Javier Eiras because the great work he did and the assistance he made me when he left the team.

Last Thursday I’ve been elected as president of GPUL. Since October 2008 I held that position but it happened because Emilio J. Padrón must be replaced. He went to the INRIA at Grenoble, and he needed to take a rest too: his work as president was impressive.

2009 was not a good year for GPUL. We tried to go on with our usual program of workshops and hackmeetings, making honor to our 10th anniversary, but we were forced to stop. Part of the problem were some personal (family) problems I bore this year.

So we (the new board of directors) face now the challenge of guideing GPUL to a new golden age in free software developing and promoting. In the next months we must work updating the infraestructure, then we’ll really try to keep up with the times.

As you can see, I update this blog slowly. It happens because I have no much time to write long posts about really interesting things in this period. But I usually need to share little thoughts  and moments, and fast news with my friends. So I opened a microblog (in Spanish) at identi.ca, the microblogging service that uses the laconi.ca free software as engine.

I seldom use the web interface to post. To do it, I use the identi.ca emacs mode, and Gwibber (that allows me automating links compression via TinyURL). And I use the identi.ca app for Facebook to inject these microposts as current status.

I don’t know how much time I’ll keep playing with it

Today I published in GPUL’s weblog [ES] a (bit long) reflection on the past and the present, looking to the future of my loved free software group.

These moments to stop & think happen each 3-4 years, because it usually is the life cycle of one generation of activists in the group. I think we have the challenge to overcome the lack of young members. We must keep up with the times too and look for new ways adapted to the current situation: I propose to work in boosting our best programmers in the great free software projects and collaborate with another kind of volunteer associations (NGO’s, tipically).

And it is my personal challenge to overcome my personal circumstances to push GPUL in the way the members decide.

It’s the leit motiv of my life these days…

• I’m a member of GPUL, so I’m a free software activist -> I collaborated with ESF-Galicia (Engineers Without Borders) in their migration to free software and open standards.

• I’m a social volunteer of OCV in Portiño->OCV funds some cooperation projects of ESF in Honduras.

• GPUL promotes free software -> GPUL has a project of a computer classroom in Portiño

• Lucía, is another volunteer of OCV in  Portiño-> She got a scholarship to travel and work in a cooperation project of ESF in Honduras.

• I’m a worker of CartoLab-> CartoLab, ESF and OCV signed an agreement to develop a custom gvSIG to ESF projects in Honduras->I’ll a developer in that project-> Lucía will process the data she’ll take with the free software tool in which I work.

So, I everyday dive in a dense mesh of same names and organizations…

The last days at the Conference were intense, so I’ll write about them at home again.

The second day began with RMS’s speech about patents. We arrived a bit late, but I can certify it was a very good speech again. After it, Richard sold by (benefic) auction his book “Free Software, Free Society” and a cuddly GNU. Gonzalo had a moment of foolness, and now that GNU is now called “the CartoÑu”. Tomorrow will be introduced in society

After a coffee, I began to jump from a session to another again, looking for the most interesting papers to my work. Barranco and Alvarez from CEDEX showed the power of GRASS in hydrology investigation. Gomariz, Moreno, Cánovas and Alonso from University of Mucia explained the architecture they built to create a GIS to investigate hydric resources. They where the free software radicals in the conference, I think the only (LaTeX) beamer I saw in the three days. I was happy to have concurred in technologic decisions for several solutions in CartoLab with them.

The last speeches for me in the morning where about the wonderful world of  OGC services: David Jonglez from Camptocamp France SAS talked about MapFish; Fonts and Vidal related the evolution of Vissir2, the web visor of the Institut Cartográfic de Catalunya.

After having lunch Gonzalo gave a great speech standing out the importance of developing general free GIS clients to specific pourposes in order to reduce the time of cartographic works. Victor Olaya made the CartoLab in protagonist again with the announce of Nacho going to be part of the
Sextante developing team.

The rest hours to the night were my approach to OSGeo foundation and its Spanish-American chapter. I’ll write about it later. I only can say by now it was really exciting

Great part of attendants went home that night. Gonzalo, Nacho and me ended the night soon at the Camelot Irish pub with Victor Olaya and more people of the conference.

We changed the stage on Friday. The workshops where developed in the Facultat de Lletres of Universitat de Girona. It’s a restored Gothic monastery. I think they could be done a better integrated work, but it’s still a pretty environment.

Carlos Dávila developed a good workshop on Quantum GIS, a GIS client based on GRASS. I never had worked with a GIS program in such depth. Gonzalo runned out to the train station because he must flight to Asturias the same day. In the other side, the rest of CartoLab team had lunch in the central court of the building, under cypresses shadow.

The culmination for me arrived afternoon with Lorenzo Becchi driving a workshop on OpenLayers. I was tired, of course. But I would resist four hours more learning about that wonderful libraries.

That night Nacho and me had dinner at König and we returned to La Lola pub to celebrate those days (I think Catalonians go to bed too soon, but that night we were too tired to worry about it )

Maybe the III Jornadas SIG Libre had the geek level I would like. But it was in fact the cause of it sucess: everybody felt confortable and everybody could find interesting things for their business. I remembered sometimes GPUL’s CTSL’05

Today I’m analysing some documentation I received into the official bag of the conference. I found a very interesting book: “Complete migration to open source software in the Valencian Regional Ministry of Infraestructure and Transport”. It’s a example to follow, as far I could read by now.

It seems next year there won’t be the 4th edition. Why? Because FOSS4G 2010 will celebrate in Barcelona. It is the greatest event about geospatial free software in the world, and Irene Compte,  Lluis Vicens and Lorenzo Becci will work in it. So, I’m sure it’ll be a new sucess, and I
wish to be there

It’s 4 a.m. I’m trying to write slowly in the darkness because Gonzalo it’s trying to sleep. He will read his paper tomorrow.

Today started the Conference. It seems the usual professional Conference in a four-star hotel, but there is a bit of unformality air. It’s not a geek conference at all (otherwise somebody would burn with gas because the wireless net continuous problems), there are people from different disciplines and organistations (government, university, enterprise, non-profit foundations, even lone developers).

In the opening we could hear some philosophical conferences (web 3.0 gaaaaaa!!!!)  and the launching of some projects related to the GIS world (Simon Jirka on 52º North about  Sensor Web Enablement, and Chris Holmes on OpenGeo about geospatial web services).

After lunch the most technical speeches began. Nacho opened the fire in his session with the releasing of SDIAnalyzer. He beared the network problems too, so he sadly couldn’t improve his speech with a fair demo. Then a pair of speeches followed about Catalonian and Andalusian governments apps around web geospatial services to their citizens.

There was an interesting discussion after the coffe about free (as in freedom) (spatial) data. Once again, governments and non-profit initiatives like OSM exposed their different points of view.

After sunset we went out for a walk with a tourist guide. We could admire how a city was built since the Roman Empire (Via Augusta crosses the city drawing the cardus) to nowadays. It was a pity the cathedral was closed. It’s the Gothic cathedral with the longest span in width nave in the world. We could read in those old stones some history about intolerance of Catholics against Jewish (modern era) and Communist and Anarchists against Catholics (Spanish II Republic and Civil War).

Finally we went to have dinner to a nice restaurant where we eat some typical  dishes. After it, around 100 GISers crossed in the night the city to find an opened pub. We found a pretty pub where two guitarists played a gypsy concert. I got a bit sad during a moment because I lost my session at the Portiño, but we really got fun dancing

(Of course I’m uploading some photos in my gallery.)

And… in four hours… we’ll sing “Join us now and share the software…”

Two hours ago my buddies at work Gonzalo, Nacho and me arrived in Girona, Cataluña, North Spain. We will attend to the  III Jornadas de SIG Libre (3rd Free GIS Conference). CartoLab will read two papers, release one application, and show a work-in-progress about information management of water projects by  ESF (Engineers Without Borders-Galicia) in Honduras.

I haven’t been in Girona before. It seems a pretty, calm city.We arrived very late, and we were lucky finding the only nice pub where we could eat some pizza and beer I’ll write more tomorrow… (I hope)

“Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood“

Yukio Mishima. Runaway horses, 1969

The week before Akademy I attended to a course about a Civil Engineering tool called Istram Ispol. It tries to be a killer-app for road and railway projects. It really has a very interesting lot of features, but I really was dissapointed in the second hour of the course, and I was progressively getting angry to the end.

It’s not (only)  a problem it’s not free software, I knew it before registration. The GUI is absolutely horrific. Istram was developed originally in the princpilpe of 90’s for Unix platform, then they jumped to Windows (and they are proud of this action ¿?). So it has now a GUI built mainly in VisualBasic with important wreckage of something similar to X/Motif. Different menus behave in different way with the same actions on them, even there are buttons that behave in different way depending on the point where you press on with the mouse. And the documentation is so poor it’s near imposible to the mean user doing something useful without a training course.

AkademyEs recovered me from the trauma and brought me back the faith in the existence of people capable of build good GUI’s for daily human tasks. That week I didn’t get tired of repeating the same  phrase: “this UI seems programmed by drunken with cheap vodka monkeys”.

GPUL was candidate to organize next summer the international Akademy and Guadec. We lost in the competition in favor of Canarias Islands candidate. But we won at least the competition to organize the Akademy-ES last November.

It was a chance to meet again with part of people that came to Coruña to Guademy I. We had three days of high level technical speechs and discussions about KDE in general (with some pleasing exceptions like Ismael Pernas from Dygra Films showing us the work of rendering process with free software).

For me, Akademy-ES was a chance to break my own record of how many hours I can survive without sleep, of course (that Saturday night I went to the Solidarity Party). But Akademy made the desire of taste KDE grow in me. Last months I worked hard with Gnome at the ESF (Engineers Without Borders-Galicia) office in Coruña, and now I began to install KDE in some desktops at the Cartolab.

And no. I have not forgotten the faith in the command line. But I need a soft, beauty approach to free OS’s for the people surrounding me.

Since October, 30th I’m the new president of GPUL. It has been necessary because Emilio went some months to investigate at INRIA in Grenoble. He needed holidays too because the great,, amazing work he made leading GPUL the last three years. I only wish I’ll be able to maintain the modernization he began in the Association. It’ll be a challenge for José Millán to replace to our panzer against administration, Chema, as secretary.

With the new configuration we’ll face next months the celebration of the 10 years of GPUL along this academic year. We’ll try to reduce the mean age in the Association in order to reach the 15th anniversary

Some weeks ago I wrote about my work at the Territorial Studies Lab. After two months of a interesting, funny stage I left the Lab. Two doors from there, the CartoLab needed a geek person with some knowledge about GNU/Linux systems and Civil Engineering. I hope to be up to my new bosses’ expectations.

As it’s name points to, CartoLab develops cartography works, especially GIS related works. I think I’ll enjoy the next months

I’m tired of spent a week each six months straightening up my documents spreaded in several disks and machines. So I recently began to use a tool to help me to manage every document that flows in my systems: tracker.

I read about it and Beagle, but I chose Tracker because it’s light and simpler and it’s written in C.

Atheros Communications, Luis Rodríguez,  Madwifi and especially Reyk Floeter of OpenBSD who made the first steps, thank you for working on a free driver of Atheros devices

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.