A colleague of mine at Facultad de Ingeniería pointed me to a note published in the Faculty’s gazette about a short cycle of talks we had on April 4th, trying to get life and interest back in the once-active LIDSOL (Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Software Libre, Free Software Research and Development Laboratory), which nowadays lies mostly dormant. Good thing the official communication channels got notice of this! Only I am not sure if they can properly produce Spanish (as this feels more like an English redaction). Quoting only the first lines of the paragraph that referes to me:...
Gunnar Wolf - Nice grey life - page 46
Showing posts 451 – 460
Hey, Mexican hackers! If anybody is interested in holding a small Free Software-related meeting (say, with up to 10-15 people) in the South of Mexico City, please tell me — We have adapted a nice room at our house where we want to invite people to come and do activities — Courses, meetings, whatever. It is not very big (~5×5 meters), but it has all of the needed amenities (some chairs, a projector, coffee-related amenities, and is very conveniently located). We are not charging for hosting your activities (but will of course want to schedule it beforehand with you). So,...
En el número de agosto del 2012 de Software Gurú, Ignacio Cabral Perdomo presentó un interesante artículo titulado «Enseñando a niños a programar: ¿Imposible o una oportunidad?». La respuesta me parece clarísima: Claro que se puede. Esto viene siendo demostrado, con gran éxito, desde los 1960s, empleando el lenguaje BASIC diseñado por Kemeny y Kurtz, y muy particularmente con el lenguaje Logo, conocido principalmente gracias al trabajo de uno de sus autores, Seymour Papert. El origen del planteamiento de estas tempranas experiencias, sin embargo, me parece radicalmente diferente del planteamiento de Ignacio — Y los argumentos, tanto hace 40 o...
Aaron Swartz, el acceso abierto y los estándares Estoy seguro que la mayor parte de nuestros lectores estarán ya familiarizados con Aaron Swartz, así como del triste desenlace que tuvo su historia. En todo caso, hagamos un corto recuento antes de entrar en materia. 1 Aaron Swartz, breve reseña Aaron Swartz fue un jóven entusiasta de la programación, firme creyente de la necesidad de la libre circulación de la información. Su vida tiene muchos momentos dignos de nota; los puntos más relevantes incluyen: Participó en la creación de la especificación RSS 1.0 (W3C RFC 3870) a los 14 años de...
So we are at the beginning of this year’s Debian Project Leader elections. And yes, after Stefano’s long and (IMO) very successful DPL term, I feel as my voting machinery is somewhat stuck; it will not be so easy to get it back up to speed. Anyway, I have glanced over the three platforms, but only actually read 1.5 from the three DPL platforms. I know that whoever succeeds, I will be quite happy with the results. This year there are three runners for the post. I have worked in several teams with two of them, and would love to...
Daniel tells his story building a wooly mammoth, and throws some ideas on how this could be implemented easily with free software. But if I read his post correctly, Daniel still misses the precise ways to do it. Our friends Octavio and Claudia (twitted hereby) have given some Blender courses here at our classroom at home (Guys! Come again! We miss you!), and host the Spanish-speaking g-blender community. At one of their courses, they showed how to model an object/character, and in order to color/texture its parts, you can unwrap it — This process yields a flattened image with the...
I just got this message through my University, and the least I can do (given I’m still, although barely, in time) is to repost it here, hoping it helps to spread the activity we have on this regard in Latin America: Saturday, February 23 is the International Day of Open Data. Following its policy of promoting free, open and unrestricted access to the results of research funded with public money, CLACSO calls research centers and individual researchers to free their public data so they are available for other researchers and, most importantly, for the community as a whole. That's the...
Some weeks ago I posted about the long-expected demise of my old phone. And even given I don’t usually don’t pay much attention to phones (and could care less about the smartphone fad), I asked for a recommendation here on what to change to. The only thing that made me look for something other than a ~US$15 phone is that I enjoy having a GPS-enabled device. So, with that in mind, I went to my carrier’s offices, with a top budget of MX$2,000 (~US$150), and asked for help. After being a Telcel subscriber for ~10 years (and ~6 with the...
[ post made mainly for those poor souls who don’t yet follow Planet Debian, but do follow me ] Earlier today, Roland Mas threw an idea towards whoever had too much free time: Implement a valid QR code construction that would become an interesting pattern when interpreted in Conway’s Game of Life. But, as Jurij Smakov promptly showed, there is only one flaw in Roland’s request: The need for too much free time. Jurij replied within ~4hr with a arbitrary string to QR code converter that allows said code to be seeded into a Game of Life interpreter. Jurij: You...
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