Bruno Unna

Juan recommends this movie, and I thank him for that, since quantum mechanics is a theme for which I feel some interest.

I'll try to go to the cinema later today. I only hope Mabel doesn't get mad at my choice of movie... :o)

Well, the MediaWiki installation for truth.fruxant.com is up and running. It's been a pleasant experience: easy, straightfoward, with no surprises. I wish all software installations were that way! :-D

Now I've got to work on the concept, to provide structure to the site, to begin using the system (setting thus an example, since that's how I believe things work in the web).

I hope Pablo's good nose delivers a good fruit, soon.

Well, the first day of Kinder 1 for Sofía is through. She was extremely excited, expecting I don't know what but expecting it very anxiously.

I really enjoy seeing her developing her own life, a loving little girl and at the same time without ever compromising her growth, in any sense.

I feel very proud of her. I only hope the best for her in this new stage. The guys at Instituto Vertin are doing a nice job, I believe.

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I'm delighted with this tool I decided to use for the home page of fruxant: drupal.

Whereas it has not the content management power of Apache Lenya, nor the organizational enforcements of Mambo, nor even the expensive flexibility (in terms of human effort) of Typo3, not to mention the powerful features of Jahia, I prefered it above the alternatives because it is simple, and does the job with no glitches at all. And I haven't even started using the available modules!

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I've just had to use the services of a locksmith, because I (stupid as I am since the very moment I was born) left the keys of my house inside.

While he was working, I couldn't help but finding similarities between his job and mine.

• He must have a good command of the tools he brings with him.
• He must be able to choose the right tool for the job, even if it isn't evident by itself which one it is.
• Even if he is not sure whether a certain technique will work, he must be self-confident and not throw the towel too early (nor too late!). This is, perhaps, the point that impressed me the most.
• He transmitted to me the confidence of success. Right now I'm not sure whether he had that confidence himself (it wasn't an easy task), but he made me believe the problem was going to be solved.

So I was thankful and paid to him with no regret. Perhaps I should start thinking about changing my profession! Bruno the locksmith, from now on. :)

Aaron Krill has developed a very good opinion of OpenSUSE 10.0. Perhaps it's time for me to give it a try too!

I would suggest the rest of fruxants to take a look at that distro, given the possible use of it in the course of Linux that has been planned.

Kathy Sierra pointed me out, through her web log, to an article about the supposed fact that attractive things work better.

The article begins with a dissertation about a collection of three teapots. Extremely interesting, since it illustrates the vague, elusive point of usability applied to everyday appliances, from an aesthetical point of view.

Reading the article brought to my mind a reflection, perhaps the reason why I don't feel quite comfortable with the world of graphic designers: the snobish, aesthetically pleasant world of graphic designers. And the point is simple: Norman enjoys his teapots, he puts them together and enjoys them. He writes:

Why do I own several teapots? Because I like them. I proudly exhibit them on the ledge above the kitchen sink. In addition to their function for brewing tea, they are sculptural artwork, giving satisfaction in their appearance. I enjoy standing in front of the window, idly comparing the contrasting shapes, watching the play of light upon the varied surfaces. When I do make tea, I choose the pot that matches my mood, and when I do, the tea tastes superb.

The point is that whereas I can understand him, and share the joy of forms, I feel the urge to enjoy the non-planned things, first and foremost. The aesthetical serendipity, if it has to be named in some way. Where there is intention, a different philosophical beast emerges, that calls for a different treatment.

I'm a KDE fan. I've been a KDE fan for a long while now. And the reason of that is not a lack of curiosity to experiment with other windows managers: on the contrary.

I found recently a misbehaviour in my KDE: my desktop contextual menu dissapears. Just like that: suddenly it is gone. Such a misbehaviour gave a pretext to flirt with a couple of alternatives.

So I installed Gnome 2.10. I must recognize it is beautiful. I'm afraid, though, beautiness is its main advantage. It is large, it is not very stable, it is not fast.

So I installed fluxbox. It is fast! Extremely fast! But it doesn't do what it is supposed to do. It doesn't even show me the bottom panel. Perhaps because of my dual display, but I wasn't in the mood to fight against the configuration files for hours.

So I installed openbox. It is fast, as well, but used as I am to the configurability of kde, I felt kind of naked.

So I'm back in kde. I found a way to recover my desktop contextual menu, by means of activating the desktop icons (which I don't like, but I can live with).

For me it's clear: THE desktop system for me is KDE. I'm eager to see what will the versions 3.5 and 4 bring in terms of usability, speed and eyecandy.

It seems that Novell is finally catching up with the linux distributions around: it is opening "its" distribution (SUSE) to the free world.

MonoRail (former Castle on Rails) is an attempt to provide a port of Action Pack for .Net. The Action Pack way of development is extremelly productive, very intuitive and easily testable.

I've just found a very interesting optical illusion. The typical optical illusion has to do with lines, or black and white effects.

This one shows what brain can do to grasp a concept. What amazes me the most is how difficult, if possible at all, it is for me to accept what objectively can be proved: that the gray shade of the square marked as A is the same of the square marked as B.

How easily our brain can deceive us! How separate our world is from *the* world! When I think about it, I can't help but start feeling paranoid about the conceptions I've built about the world along the years. I know it is nothing new from a philosophical point of view the need of doubting about perceptions (Descartes thought me to do so), but this little toy I found makes so evident that need that I feel overwhelmed.

Sebastián sent me a link to Alfresco, a new (actually it doesn't even formally exist yet) Open Source Enterprise Content Management System.

It looks very, very nice. I'm eager to download its Technology Preview. It arrives in an excellent moment, since I was about to evaluate Jahia, which looks very nice too (except for the fact that it is extremely expensive...)

From their website:

This experienced team has applied the lessons of the last decade in content management to create the Alfresco system, an open-source, open-standards content repository and portal framework. The Alfresco system has a modern architecture that uses Aspect-Oriented Programming for modularity and adaptability and the latest open source tools for performance and scalability. Alfresco packages components designed to integrate into standard portals and user tools integrations that are easy for end-users to understand and are quickly productive. Alfresco makes content management much easier for users by making the content management look like a shared file system and making tasks such as versioning and classification automatic through business rules. Alfresco is available as open source through the LGPL license which puts no restrictions on the use as part of applications, even commercial systems.

The Alfresco content management system is targeted at professional developers of portals, content and compliance applications and on-line services struggling to meet the needs of end-users creating and sharing content. For J2EE-based professional portal projects, the Alfresco system has enterprise content management capabilities at a much lower cost than commercial systems. For organizations that wish to replace shared drives for storage of information to improve sharing and increase compliance through content control, Alfresco provides file share interfaces to simplify content capture and portal interfaces to facilitate searching and sharing. For ISVs and developers who wish to enhance their applications, such as CRM or ERP, with content management, Alfresco provides a low-cost, royalty-free, super-fast content management system. Alfresco is also a low-cost, open source alternative to Microsoft® SharePoint™.

It is clear the reason why I'm so excited about this new technology, isn't it?

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I finally managed to finish my thesis work. I finally delivered it to Ceneval.

It is about the application of eXtreme Programming techniques to the development of a system for the request and delivery of flower bouquets, for a virtual flower store called Buena Vista Flowers Online.

The system didn't grow very large, because I didn't have the time to perform but just one -single week long- iteration. That's a pity, because the second iteration would have brought a fully functional system. Hopefully we will be able to interest the potential -real- customer in the system, given what has been advanced on it.

Update (29/Aug/2005): I've uploaded my thesis, in the hope that someone will find it interesting.

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Well, it's time to change my blog site once again. It used to be located at Ok!, but it's a more proper choice to have it located here, at the "official" blogs site of the company I work for.

So welcome, and enjoy!