Homeland: crazy finale

I gotata say that I went to bed watching Homeland, a series about US espionage related to the war on terror. After that I listen to my episode of No Agenda while falling asleep. I gotta say that this is one of my craziest dream so far.

So pardon the spoilers but this is a mesh of Homeland, with a bit of Transformer and District 9 and a bit of Prometheus.

In the series, the main character is a marine that is rescue by accident during an operation to finally be reincorporated into the US political life, but the CIA find out he is a traitor and turn him into a double agent for the famous terrorist Abu Nazir.

The movies goes back between Langley Virginia, Washington and varios spots in the Middle east including Iran, Lebanon and such.

So in my dream, the rescued solider turned double agent gets flight to Iran, to a secure base. Only to find out an alien invasion starts. He turnes out to be a third agent really or rather the lost son of the Alien in Sector 8 which was transformed to a human by some alien machine (similar to the one found on the Fly movie).

District9robot

He was expecting them to arrive to that spot so that is why he volunteer for the mision in Iraq to capture and kill Abu Nazir. During the invasion he goes into one of the ships and get turned into one of the aliens. However he found out thos machines are different and he can switch at will now between alien and human.

Transformers

The invasion looks like the scenes of transformers I when the descepticons attack the US military base.

The first attack was swift, however the alien society was a war race that goes conquering planets from one to the next. They were used to war and they have really advanced technology, at the same time, they have come to idolize human culture. The recording fo human speech and human civilization had been turn into fashion items for the alien race. So it was weird how they were prasing the humans and killing them at the same time.

Brody (and a partner) who was the only ones that could speak back to the aliens in their lenguage got to trick them. It also help that Brody’s father was the commander of te alien fleet in charge of the planet invasion. So the day after the attack as he was being carried to give his report he manage to make a scene steal an alien soldier weapon and a ship, which he uses to excape the base.

He goes out to find and kill Abu Nazir, who was his capturer and torturer for many years (acording to Homeland). Abu Nazir was hiding on his secret chamber inside a dune in the desert. However the solidier (Captian Brody acording to Homeland) finds the hidden spot and gets there really fast with the help of an alien ship.

He enters the cave to find him praying, and finds that his son (a key character of Homeland) was alife after all, and that his killing was just a lie. Nazir explained that he was happy that Brody was alive and that he welcomes back into his life (in homeland Nazir was also Brody’s Islam mentor). Brody goes into shock and start crying on Nazirs sholder, Nazir hold him and say he forgives him.

Desertcave

Brody then just stand up, turn into the alien and blow Nazir into Pieces.

That was another cool part of “mafia style” scene of, I love you but I still have to kill you. Brody thens go to what it seems like Dubai or Abu Dhabi. And turn into a weapon dealer, where is a funny scene as he as his partner are negotiating with a Muslim war lord, he sell some automatic weapons and uzis. Broadi says “I want to keep my weapons afloat” as he point out a huge semi-automatic to the other side of the table,  but also hand the war lord a smaller AK 47 rife so he is also “level up”.

The he brings out more weapons, granades, his partner starts speaking spanish, turns out he wasn’t really arab but Argentinean, he justify himself by saying that catolic priests are a bunch of rats and crooks so he switch to islam that was one of the most funny moments of my dream. The war lord also was a counterfeiter so even if the deal was closed all that money turned to be fake anyway.

Eventually Broady goes back to the US which is also under heavy attack by the alien forces, taking over the cities and blowing the air force planes and drones into pieces. Broady however did love humans and decide to help them out not get completely analyated so he takes over NBC and starts talking as he switched from human to alien and explains how the alien forces can be beated. A new series of weaponery is created to fight the alien forces which looks a bit like a smaller version of Star Wars aircraft. 

Aircraft

Unfotrtunately I woke up for the final battle, but I guess the logical finale was that the humans win a battle enough to gain respect from the alien forces and avoid complete analyation.

 

 

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Tical vs Mr. Mef

Methvsmeth

I was talking today about the evolution of Meth. Pretty interesting how the vintage meth image was that of a more dark synester psychopathic emcee. While later became more as a junkie emcee (with Redman). I wonder who you think it was a better meth? Or if you have a theory of your own.

His flow has also change, from the more flowing type that you heard in tracks like The What, to a more faster rhymer like Gravel Pit or Da Rockwilder.

Meth more slow, melodic flow from the 90’s.

Meth fast spittin style that came in the 2000’s.

Of course from day one Meth was known as the man with different styles. However the original Tical never really came back. Tracks like Vibin’ just never really sound again.

Educating to contribute in FLOSS

A follow up conversation on the topics of communities with a friend from the central america free software community enter into an issue that I have talk about latetly. Changing the approach of free software is being presented to the people.

Community should be a great assets to the way free software package, and some of the talks should be developed within the related events.

What kid of community can we talk about?

  • Community tools is key for people to understand what do they do.
  • Is important to be related to the most common processes happening in free software.
  • It also need to be an understanding of the impact they can have in FLOSS.

Culture is really what FLOSS should be about and understanding the culture is as key as acknowledge the existance of Free software. Independent of the project the culture of sharing goes above the lookout for free download. It also matters the milestoes of the project the activity of the community. The speed of bugs closed and the ammount of support and documentation behind the project.

All these factors could be appreciated with the proper background in communities and developments from them.

Some critics about of the romantic conception of Free software by the communities in Latin America. Including the relative shortvision into communities as itself and nurturing the participatory spirit by giving recognition.

I embed the chat log ahead, although is in spanish is important to see how its similar to other communities.

<JZA>    saludos gente
<fdelapena>    saludos JZA
<fdelapena>    sí 😀
<JZA>    fdelapena: eso veo el cuarto se ve lleno pero nunca habla nadie
<fdelapena>    la mitad ausentes, un tercio bots
<fdelapena>    pero lo normal es listas de correo
<fdelapena>    y si descubres un bug pobre de ti que lo comentes sin estar en bugzilla 😀
<fdelapena>    las comunidades podrían usar un tracker también para no olvidar tareas de todo tipo
<fdelapena>    pero año tras año el tracker se llama “wiki” y “etherpad” y web nueva cada año de evento
<fdelapena>    critica constructiva
<fdelapena>    para no acabar en la parte contratante de la primera parte, como decia Groucho Marx
<JZA>    fdelapena: si los usuarios les explota sus cabezas ver un bugzilla
<JZA>    asi sea uno sencillo como google code
<fdelapena>    bugzilla es un poco mindfuck
<JZA>    quieren ver botones con fondos gradiales
<JZA>    y autocompletados
<fdelapena>    mantis también es un poco complejo
<JZA>    igual
<fdelapena>    redmine o traq no son la panacea pero son más sencillos
<fdelapena>    o flyspray o su fork
<JZA>    tambien siento que se subutiliza, por que creo que bugzilla soporta plantillas
<JZA>    para que los usuarios no tengan que llenar tanto, pero por el otro lado le metene dos o 3 preguntas mas en el text area para que lo documente bien.
<fdelapena>    Project de drupal también destroza usuarios
<JZA>    pero en vez de hacer tantos eventitos de usa el software libre deberian hablar mas de cosas como como reportar un bug
<JZA>    como participar en las listas de correo
<JZA>    y dejar de tratar a ingenieros como usuarios
<JZA>    es como hacer una campania de vacunacion para la escuela de doctores
<fdelapena>    +1
<fdelapena>    en 2 años en un país de la zona he visto sobre todo 2 extremos
<fdelapena>    1: eventos generalistas
<fdelapena>    2: eventos no generalistas de proyectos “por las nubes”
<fdelapena>    (de cazainversores)
<fdelapena>    pero en cambio de iniciativa de hacklabs no hay mucha cosa encima de la mesa
<fdelapena>    y hay mucha gente que sabe escribir código pero dispersa
<JZA>    aparte el saber escribir codigo no es igual a saber trabajar en proyectos colaborativos.
<JZA>    o que sepa como funciona una comunidad las tareas estandarizadas como QA, l10n, Testing, Commits, etc.
<JZA>    yo en algunas platicas empiezo preguntando, cuantos han usado una lista de correo, cuantos un bugzilla, cuantos un repositorio tipo GIT o SVN
<fdelapena>    otro viejo poco conocido tracker http://issues.thebuggenie.com/thebuggenie/issues/open
<JZA>    pues de hecho el getsupport es la parte ‘bonita’ de un sistema de tickets.
<JZA>    con gradiales y badges
<fdelapena>    y la verdad muy poca gente conoce esos pilares básicos de comunidad de desarrollo de software
<JZA>    los ‘desarrolladores’ estan mas preocupados de que IDE escojer
<JZA>    que realmente la construccion de software
<JZA>    como diria un amigo, ‘Wizard Driven Development’
<fdelapena>    y basado en meritocracia?
<JZA>    eso es otro, es basado en titulos que se inventan
<JZA>    pero bueno, haber que pasa, es parte de la distorcion que se tiene en el software libre.
<JZA>    que he visto en latam
<fdelapena>    http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m44r0g8UZY1rvfebjo1_400.jpg
<fdelapena>    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m44qqy8WxG1rvfebjo1_500.jpg
<fdelapena>    se resume en eso
<JZA>    por ejemplo creo que nunca he visto bughunts o sesiones fisicas para ir aplastando bugs
<JZA>    seee…
<JZA>    me ha pasado
<JZA>    de hecho en vez de crearse tantos sitios de proyectos se debe de trabajar en algoritmos de deciison que puedan ‘medir’ las propuestas en la comunidad.
<JZA>    y lo mas importatne, CONCLUIR
<fdelapena>    para eso hay milestones, si no se desanima cualquiera
<fdelapena>    y no estar en master o trunk eternamente
<fdelapena>    sn metas, dificil
<fdelapena>    sin*
<JZA>    claro
<fdelapena>    no se tiene sensacion de avance y eso es sintoma de quemarse
<fdelapena>    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3tt0sPnD01rvfebjo1_400.jpg
<JZA>    pues en teoria para eso es el QA
<JZA>    no puedes tener todos desarrollando cosas nuevas
<JZA>    por eso hay ciclos y mini-releases enfocadas a estabilizacion
<JZA>    y otras a innovacion
<fdelapena>    eso se ve mucho en la calidad y usabilidad de los programas de voz por IP libres
<fdelapena>    llega skype, feo, pocas características pero tiene 2 cosas: UX mínima y NAT traversal
<fdelapena>    y lo demás puede esperar
<fdelapena>    bueno, tiene calidad de sonidoo y baja latencia, pero eso ya existe hecho
<fdelapena>    al final encuentras 20 programas que hacen lo mismo y ninguno que de la talla
<JZA>    lo que pasa es que cuando estas adentro del una comunidad, ves que hay muchas cosas que se pueden ahcer.
<JZA>    y no es criticamente tan super hax0r
<JZA>    pero vas con la comunidad, y todos te ven como alien
<fdelapena>    eso es típico en los grupos
<JZA>    y te dicen, es que no tengo tiempo, me estoy lavando las unias … o si son muy honestos.
<JZA>    yo solo estoy aqui, por que hacen fiestas despues de los eventos
<fdelapena>    pero forma parte ed la naturaleza de la sociedad
<fdelapena>    y h
<JZA>    es cierto pero creo que no hay mucho empuje por evangelizar realmente
<JZA>    la mayoria de los posts de blogs de SL son anuncios del ultimo android
<JZA>    y como instalarte x o y programa
<fdelapena>    si un grupo es muy especializado hay cierta tendencia al elitismo
<JZA>    en vez de reportar sobre las necesidades de los proyectos libres y como ayudar.
<fdelapena>    pero pasa en cualquier ámbito
<fdelapena>    de todos modos es la falta de tiempo para convertir las intenciones en hechos el principal problema
<JZA>    por ejemplo la mayoria de los desarrolladores de SL no son por que desarrollen para el software sino son usuarios de lenguajes libres para sus proyectos propios.
<fdelapena>    si es un grupo que quiere claborar desinteresadamente debería haber más eventos locales, cercanos y en fines de semana
<fdelapena>    sí, es cierto
<JZA>    fdelapena: de hecho pienso que es lo opuesto.
<fdelapena>    aunque dicho proyecto sea libre
<fdelapena>    JZA, llevo meses intentando cazar un evento y me resulta imposible porque coinciden con horario laboral
<JZA>    si es un grupo que quiere contribuir, spamearian las listas investigando que hace falta en X o Y software.
6:0<fdelapena>    es cierto
<fdelapena>    de hecho lo que podría funcionar sería lo que comentabas
<fdelapena>    elegir un proyecto que sea del interés del grupo
<fdelapena>    estudiar su funcionamiento y carencias
<fdelapena>    y montar una hackaton para un punto específico
<fdelapena>    completar características, bug hunt, etc.
<JZA>    exacto
<JZA>    y es cultural, realmente nunca has estado en uno, es dificil que lo quieras.
<JZA>    en la universidad estan acostumbrados a conferencias y talleres, asi que hacen conferencias y talleres
<JZA>    y cuando les dices, hagan un hackaton, te ven como si fueras un marciano
<JZA>    aunque hay un punto valido, no todos pueden programar (en comunidad) es decir escribir codigo mientras otra gente estan hablando.
<fdelapena>    y en cuanto a infraestructura también tal vez hay carencias
<JZA>    por eso los hackatons se ven como 10 personas pegadas a sus pantallas con sus audifonos y cada uno en los uyo
<JZA>    *suyo
<fdelapena>    entonces para eso mejor estar en casa
<fdelapena>    y hacerlo virtual
<JZA>    asi es
<JZA>    pero en una empresa normal tienes de todo
<JZA>    tienes desde los programadores de cubiculo, como las early meetings para hablar de los bugs y de los issues mas fuertes de la semana.
<JZA>    y el COB (Close of Business) para preparar los stages para la siguiente semana.
<fdelapena>    y cada persona es un mundo, los hay que funcionan mejoro en parejas
<fdelapena>    no hay una metodología que funcione para todos
<JZA>    y dan cupcakes a los que se rifaron cerrando un nasty bug
<JZA>    bueno pero ‘pareja’ igual puede ser presencial o virtual.
<fdelapena>    ta claroo
<fdelapena>    de hecho se llega a perder mucho tiempo en reuniones presenciales
<JZA>    asi es, aunque tambien en la lista de correo 😀
<fdelapena>    se puede hablar igual de rapido con un headset
<fdelapena>    incluso hay menos distraccion, se presta mas atencion a la conversacion
<JZA>    muchas veces mis proyectos se han ido al carajo por distraerme en la discusion del bug en la lista
<JZA>    en vez de terminar el fucking commit
<fdelapena>    al final los proactivos parches hacen el 90% del ahorro de discusión
<JZA>    de hecho muchos hackatons es precisamente para terminar o pulir los parches mas que crear nuevos parches
<fdelapena>    y por pereza la gente dice “lo que diga la ruvia”
<fdelapena>    rubia*
<fdelapena>    en qué proyectos te has solido meter?
<JZA>    pues he contribuido muchos anios a Openoffice, y el anio pasado entre en OLPC-Sugarlabs
<JZA>    tengo mis propias ideas sobre la universidad, y es mas enseniar a la gente a leer codigo mas que escribirlo
<fdelapena>    +1
<JZA>    es como las materias literarias, te meten a leerte 200 libros antes de escritura ceativa o algo asi.
<fdelapena>    además la mayoría del trabajo del mundo real es eso
<fdelapena>    ya me imagino un “comentario de texto” pero de código
<JZA>    yo siempre cuando voy a una proyecto por lo menos intento ver el websvn parra ver mas o emnos como esta armado
<fdelapena>    y no solo decir “qué hae este código de 10 líneas?” sino algo más profundo
<JZA>    minimo para saber en que fregado lenguaje esta escrito
<JZA>    o que toolkit usan
<JZA>    pues en teoria para eso estan los comentarios del commit
<fdelapena>    y ganar habilidad para seguir los estilos y acostumbrarse rápidamente a ellos
<JZA>    que hace cuando fue pusheado
<JZA>    empujado?
<JZA>    :p
<fdelapena>    jeje
<JZA>    si, en el wiki tenemos varias paginas de convenciones de codigo
<JZA>    para que sea mas facil leerlo
<JZA>    la otra tecnica que he ideado es…
<JZA>    crear bugs
<fdelapena>    que muchas veces no harían falta, solo en caso de duda puntual, o de desastre existente, para ello
<fdelapena>    porque leyendo dicho codigo ya se ve rápidamente el estilo
<JZA>    osea irse en reversa… desde el bug resuelto hasta generar el bug
<fdelapena>    y cómo funciona?
<fdelapena>    hay gente que tiene esa capacidad innata 😀
<JZA>    vas a bugzilla ves el parche he intentas generar lo que el bug hacia
<JZA>    pues es que muchos errores por ejemplo son de dedo, que hizo que la barra ya no empujara el contenido
<JZA>    ves el parche que lo resolvio y te vas recursivamente hacia como era el error
<JZA>    y ahi puedes ver si fue que llamo mal el componente o le falto algun parametro
<JZA>    al objeto
<JZA>    damn… este juego ya se vacio y aun faltan 5 min
<JZA>    que en basquetbol es una eternidad
<fdelapena>    cada pausa por falta personal
<fdelapena>    como cuando te atascas en un código que no funciona
<fdelapena>    y te revienta las estimaciones de tiempo
<JZA>    asi es, usualmente asi como vez cuanto porblema hay con sintaxis, o los nombres demasiado similares
<JZA>    no recuerdo en donde en gnome o gtk, habian dos objetos nombrados casi igual
<JZA>    y generaban un buen de bugs
<JZA>    de sintaxis
<fdelapena>    Gtk y Gdk
<fdelapena>    😀
<JZA>    creo que uno era plural y otro singular
<JZA>    hahahah
<JZA>    pues si para empezar
<fdelapena>    la pesadilla usando pixbuf
<fdelapena>    con gtk3 la cosa mejoró
<fdelapena>    y con Cairo en las últimas de la 2.x
<JZA>    en fin creo que eso deberia estar enfocado las comunidades mas amduras
<JZA>    o que quieran madurar rapidamente
<JZA>    🙂
<fdelapena>    en las básicas lo que comentabas
<fdelapena>    cḿo usar una lista de correo (citas y respuesta top-down y otros básicos para no reventar el scroll)
<JZA>    realmente no tienes que ser programador para comitear, siempre hay areas como l10n que necesitan commits, pero por el otro lado, los programadores no son hechos a mano, es solo de dedicarse a hcer la tarea.
<fdelapena>    porque a veces pienso que es como una torre de hanoi vertical
<fdelapena>    este tipo de charlas son las que son utiles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRk97h1FLow&t=2m30s

 

Workshop on Enterprise solutions at local University

Today I finished a workshop about Enterprise middleware including a whole letter soup like ERP, CRM, BPM, and MRP. The event was lenghty, it took place in the middle of a series of conferences and workshops including others like videogame development etc.

The Enterpise solution workshop was part of the full course that I have built for private offerings. The course take into account the implementation and overview of an array of enterprise solutions that are under an open source license. The solutions include software like OpenERP, OpenBravo, WebERP, and other solutions like SugarCRM and ProcessMaker.

The workshop was originally planned to have the simulation of a full company interacting between departments where the participant will be part of a department of this virtual company and will execute process such as Sales Orders, Manufacturing orders and finally supply chain.

Process_flow_in_openerp

 Unfortunately several issues like lack of prepareness due to an last minute turnout made me believe just canceling the Workshop. This made me not do the homework needed for the excercises. Then a high level of tiny tasks acumulated to be a bit pressured, setting the virtual machine to make it able for the local PCs to access the data through the network. There also needed to improvise while some of the tasks like adding the users to the system needed to take place.

Dscf0090

Eventually we decided to slowly give some tasks while the workshop really became a conference. As I went on explaining what is the concept of ERP, how to look at it and compare it with many of the real examples. The sad story of internal developed processes where programmers virtually developed a monster of an application that is both new and obsolete and is not well documented, and not compatible with what the next developer might think of it. Eventually becoming a frankenstein applications or on more coloquial terms, a kludge.

Fortunately I was able to put enough theory that even if the assistants didn’t get to play with the application as originally intended. They manage to do the following tasks:

  1. Login the system
  2. Access all the ERP modules
  3. Raise a purchase order
  4. Check the visualization graph
  5. Identify anomalities in the orders

 One of the common hickups some users experience was they werent able to finalize the purchase. This because they needed aditional requisites to go to the final stage of the sales flow. Another hickup was correctly selecting the costumer with the category of the request. This mean that as they fill out the sales order, the product belonged to the wrong category. 

Purchase_form_tab2

However they were able to print the order into a PDF making it good enough for the nature of the excercise. One second hickup wasn’t able to find how to mark the order as Recieved. Hopefully I will get more assistance as I investigate the nature of the process.

After the excercise was done we saw the graph change dramatically not only in the ammount of orders but also on the graph and the impact on the MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning), obviously demanding more supplies to procurement which needed to approved.  The sudden increase lead to display an impressive graph based on the different category of products making it interesting to find why other products was so high than the rest.

Here it led us to view a ridiculous number that has skyrocket the ammount of money needed for such purchase. Eventually we found an order for many thousands of Ice cream which was funny and insightful since it allow us to look for the responsible of such purchase and get to recognized the power of having processes that can be easily audited.

The next day I was able to move on from OpenERP to other ERP systems like WebERP which was a much simpler ERP to understand as well as OpenBravo which was on the opposite side of the spectrum a way more complete software.

During the session we got to spend time between the diverse applications and be able to compare them. Unfortunately for us WebERP wasn’t as easy to view thanks for the college proxy or the demo was broken at the moment.

I also showed a youtube video about the story of OpenBravo as a case study to see how companies get builted and how it can be done in open source.

In the end the assistants of the conference got what they came for and more. I most say is not bad for a first version of the project and also give me a better view how to conduct these activities. I also got to recieve my activity and people seemed to have enjoyed the conference.

Dscf0074

More pictures from the workshop and the event in general include the following:

Ucaribe001Ucaribe002Ucaribe003Ucaribe004Ucaribe005Ucaribe006Ucaribe008Ucaribe009Ucaribe010Ucaribe007Ucaribe011Ucaribe012Ucaribe013Ucaribe014

 

Conference in Colombia

So here are my slides that I did for the conference in Colombia about Free Software communities. I blog about this in the past, but I think this should evolve into a whole new conference, and this is what I did. I had a conference specifically targeted at motivating students to get on their buts and start typing code, release it, and type some more.

In escense is simple:

  • You are prepared
  • Get coding
  • Put it on a forge
  • Approach developers

Then it get more interesting:

  • Learn how to coo-mpete
  • Fork as a way of life
  • How to govern your community
  • Setting the project free

Some questions however were more on the lines of doing code for money, but in reality you build code cuz you are that good. And code could make money if you are smart enough. Code will at least get you a job, or push you form a company.

Getting more universities and talent

So this week could become a big one for my objectives, signing a framework contract that will allow me to access more than 60 universities around the country to funnel their students to our community. If this goes as planned, greeat things could come to fruition.

Imagine around 40 to 50 students each semester joining the Apache OpenOffice forces to localize, develop and raise the overal status of Apache OpenOffice.

Right now the project does need that help as it ramp its QA, l10n and Marketing effort to put this community back on a normal developing cycle.

Miami Heat finding their identity

Jamesdunk_103112

LeBron and Co. send a statement to the league saying they are ready for the season. With some powerful backcourt and depth, Miami showed a bit of what this team can do by taking apart the Phoenix Suns last night.

With another great game from Bosh that came out of a career high game scoring 40 points. This time around the outcome was emphatic winning by 25 points.

This team is back on to become the number one in the league.

The funny side however has been the rather odd night in New York and a deep feeling of friendly fire was left after that win by the Knicks. It wasn’t only me but the great NBA Memes start exposing similar thoughts. A thought of, can you donate a ‘W’?

Heat20

And of course the great one…

Heat21

 

Ray Ray start marking his place in the Heat

Yesterday game was great as the Miami Heat came out of a very poor and clumsy game with a great W. Against my prediction of bouncing back from a harsh loss against the New York Knick shooting the lights out of Denver Nuggets.

The reality was very different, with a game that I already forget. Usually Heat likes to turn it on or off, this means that they don’t mind staying behind as long as they are close and then turn it on later in the 4th quarter with a series of steals.

However one of this year changes was Ray Allen adition, and this is why:

This is why Ray Allen was brought to the Heat. And this will close last year talk about who the closer will be on those close games.