Snakes everywhere

I've been hacking a bunch of Python code recently: SCons, Buildbot, Twisted, SWIG bindings, etc. It has been a long time since I touched a line of Python (I worked with Zope and did some wxPython), but I still remember how to code Python.

There are still some issues I cannot understand:

global functions

why len(list) instead of list.length?

regular expressions

why are not regular expressions built into the language?

object orientation looks like a hack

def foo(self, bar), str(4), etc. and so on

Nevertheless, I prefer writing Python rather than Java, my wrists don't hurt so much :)

Brand new life

New year, new girlfriend, new house, new job, same old myself

New year... well, a bit too late

New girlfriend... Mónica... she's awesome... beautiful, smart, funny and she loves me! What else could I ask for? She's a PhD student and a researcher at the Linguistics department of the Spanish Philology Faculty of the University of Barcelona. She works really hard at the "General and Etymological Dictionary for the XV Century Aragon Crown Spanish" workgroup under the guidance of Dr. Coloma Lleal. Mónica is a geek too, she even beats my geek-o-meter score when she begins to talk about Starwars (she found one of the few nerds who don't like lightsabers et al), loves Monty Python and tends to cite many punchlines from Top Secret and Airplane!

New house... well, Mónica and I have decided to live together. We have been together for less than a year, and according to Elvis "only fools rush in". Well, call us fools... fools in love, but I'm pretty sure we'll be even happier living under the same roof.

/me disguises as Roger Ebert

Clint Eastwood meets Han Solo

I saw Serenity last week and man, it is a-w-e-s-o-m-e. Plenty of laughs, good action and a compelling story. I've never watched Firefly (it hasn't arrived to Spain yet and I fear it will never do...), so I knew little about the story.

I was very surprised, since you won't need to know every minor piece of Firefly to understand Serenity. The ending is quite well thought:

<spoiler>

the idea that aggressiveness is a fundamental part of human nature is a very disturbing point, because it is true (at least, in part). What defines us as humans is that we can channelize it to good purposes (such as trying to defy our own limits)

</spoiler>

I'm quite reluctant to watch what most people call sci-fi (Matrix, Starwars, etc.) so I wasn't really convinced if I would enjoy Serenity, but I was wrong. I love slow paced sci-fi movies. I don't believe that sci-fi is all about laser shooting starships, but about the social impact of believable technology (I'm one of those who prefer Gattaca over Matrix).

Good idea, bad implementation

Corpse bride by Tim Burton gave me mixed feelings. The story behind it is quite funny, but the screenplay is irregular. Sometimes it was boring and sometimes funny.

/me takes off Roger Ebert disguise

Talks

I finally gave my presentation on Rails & AJAX in Hackmeeting 05. The speech that served as a basis for my (bad) jokes can be downloaded from here It is a Theora/Vorbis encoded video.

There's something funny about this, I wrote the application for the presentation in a couple of hours and, by the way, learnt about some minor aspects of Rails that I wasn't aware. "Every work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch" by ESR is completely true :) You can mail me if you want the source code (it has some AJAX tidbits, such as a live search).

fxn asked me if I was willing to give that speech at his class at UB, and I have accepted. It's somewhat frightening, since the public will be composed of ex-classmates :P

Plus, there's some guy at UC3M LUG (Felipe Talavera) who will give a talk based on my work about the same topic. It's nice when people find your work useful and want to reuse it :)

Ouch, I wrote my last entry in 19th april, it has been a long time since then.

Slavery was not abolished, it simply was reduced to 8 hours a day

Ok, ok, this title is simply a joke by "Les Luthiers". I finally got a new job at Scytl one week after my last post (so it means 6 months, hmmm) and I'm pretty happy with this place. My position: Software Engineer (notice the Camel Case :P), my duties: Java, C and maths.

I'm doing very funny things. Shared secret schemes and One Way Accumulators are two of the most impressive (at least to me) things I have done here. Maths seem to be somewhat useful after all ;)

Oh! and thanks to you all advogaters who mailed me job offers. It's nice to receive mail from unknown people (unless they offer penis enlargements or Nigerian scams)

Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka

Hai, iego ga sukoshi wakarimasu. I'm attending Japanese classes at the Official School of Languages of Barcelona

And, before anyone asks, I'm not doing this to understand Ruby documentation :)

Synergy paradigms of pro-active catalysts

Yeah, I don't know what does it exactly mean either. I will be giving a speech on the next Hackmeeting in Minorca about two of the most recent buzzwords: Web 2.0 and AJAX.

Of course, I had to mix Ruby in it: it's the third rule of the Ruby Club, after the first two: "you don't talk about Ruby Club". So the speech will be about how to build AJAX-enabled Ruby on Rails applications.

Next level

I have been upgraded: from Observer to Journeyer. Does it mean I can bully Observers and Apprentices?

The waiting...

I hate to be tricked. One month after being accepted to work for Auna, I'm still waiting to sign.

I would really like to listen "Hey guy, seems like this project was cancelled, sorry". I would get angry (of course! I rejected other offers) but I could keep looking for a new job.

Well, my impression is that they are completely unprofessional, so I won't wait for them any longer and begin to look for a job (again).

So, if any of you know of someone who is hiring, please let me know :)