En el meetup de wordpress en Cancun

En el evento de wordpress en Cancun organizado por Iaax pages, el evento se ve bueno.

 

Writting some more django

Django framework

So lately I have been training into django some more, have beenr eading some books, with django best practices, and techniques to understand better the handling of projects. Some of the things I’ve found out is that there is more than what the documentation says. There are many adjustments to be done to a project that you are preparing for a team of people, and a lot of these conventions are known but not too easy to get the pieces together.

One of the things that got my mind a bit thinking was the manage of secret keys. Having the secret keys on a different location is both brilliant but also a great example of what is necesary to think about when it comes to using a django project across the board.

Then there is the different things like use of environmnents and requeriments. Beyond the use of virtualenv and fabric. The actual use and map of modules and even the naming of them. Beyond pep8 and other already known conventions.

Other things I have been studying is the use of certain modules specially the use of permission models into the view, the format of url() patterns and atributes as well as the use of alternative templates.

So far I have used some external modules of django like django wiki and django rest framework. I want to check out django channels and django oscar.

Getting back with the Django Logic

These past weeks I have gone back to my Django resources to try to learn the last stages of the Django modules, business logic, etc.

I most say that I have actually skip most of the documentation and gone into more trusty tutorials that do one task, and learn from it.

One of the tutorials I found was for the CRUD system, something basic enough to grasp it easily. However, even then it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

The writer develop an internal debate between a Class based view, and a Function based views. As you know, Views is where the business logic of the applications are. So even if this learning was good and simple, I might need to multiply it by 2. Not that is necesarily bad, but still, wish it was simple.

I went to a DjangoCon videoset on youtube. One of those was about teaching Django at University, and there was a very interesting explanation on how Django sometimes is unecesarily complicated. Also some recomendations like the Django Girls group, and a book called Two Scoops of Django, something that I already had on my resources.

This gave me some idea into their philosophy. Hearing someone recognizing that the documentation is not always the best way for learners to understand whats going on. Building on top of an understandment is something that is helpful for learners build their best interpretations.

Telling a n00b to study this documentation with everything you will ever needed inside doesnt mean he would actually go through it all. On other words, most people will rather create a fix for their inmediate need.

At the moment some of these needs are:
– Creating a cookbook
– Creating mentoring mechanisms
– Generating 50 shot view of whats going on

FLISOL 2016 at PMC

Yesterday was our fith go at doing a local installfest, where we got the chance to educate the community about free and open source software. Showing aplications such as Blender, Krita, Inkscape, Apache OpenOffice, OpenShot, Audacity and more.

The way such software is developed and how can people participate in the community and why is good to do this. Not just getting the chance to help people, also recieving a lot of help.

Using social web you can also get formal courses in Youtube and social help on Facebook. The event was full of people from different backgrounds, entrepreneurs, high school students, jr high school etc.

GULTab Logo

GULTab logo

Several years ago I was part of this group, I am doing a renovation to the logo in SVG.

Why Bitcoin?

Earlier today I gave a talk about Why Bitcoin? on a local university. I have been giving a talk about bitcoin as part of this new community called Bitcuners. The community is doing some talks on local colleges with the intention of generating a buzz on the local community and interest to get people to use the Cryptocurrency and be able to exchange goods and services.

This is a snippet of my talk:

Crypto-tipping platforms

So I have been playing with the crypto tipping platforms. I decided that bitcoin even with its satoshis is too damn expensive to play with it. So I jump on the Doge rocket. I found that fees for Doge are way more affordable, and sign up to a bunch of Doge. Now, I dont really use Reddit, so I focus more on platforms I knew about. First one was #Twitter then #Facebook I am sure there won’t be much instagram or pinterest but who knows.
Meanwhile I decided to sign up for two bots that came fast into the suggested contacts. One is @DogetipBot and the other is @Tipdoge. The first one seemed a bit too corporate, I mean, I was presented with a dashboard and a high level search engine, however it was confusing since there was no documentation.
Actually none of the bots had great documentation, but at least with the 2nd one it was easier to handle. Specially when the commands are only 3.

• Balance
• Widthraw
• Tip
• Deposit

Since I didn’t had an account Balance was the first one with an expected message, 0 Balance. But when I put widthraw I was faced with a new DOGE wallet. Which allowed me to send some Doge’s from my Cryptsy account. Cryptsy is an altcoin trading platform which also give you wallets for all the altcoins you have purchased.

So once I tip off my new wallet I was ready to spread the Doges. First one didn’t work, I tried to put the ‘D’ on the number, and it seems that it kept ignoring the message. Once I took it off I was favorite by the bot which meant it was a good thing. In the end I was able to do have this:

The Dodge bot has give me many replies and now I am able to tip people on twitter for the Lolz. Is a great way to say thanks.

The next bot would be on Facebook, and I already found one. Is only a matter of learing how to use it.  Will keep posted.

FLISOL 2015, review of the event

This year we accomplished another milestone, by we I mean the Tequila Valley Cancun group. We finalize a new FLISOL event. This one with way more support than the previous one. Although there are still a laundry list of things to improve, this definitely was a great effort, and an opportunity to evaluate how well we can play together.

The Free software installfest in Latin America got a great amount of attendance, mainly because this time we implement a press release which helped us gain an exposure we haven’t got before.

This time we had a platform to coordinate the tasks that were needed for the event. A type of canvas digital board called Trello. This gave us the chance to be able to delegate responsibility and improve our continuation.

Another big lift was the sponsorship from a major company that allowed us to not worry about space, and infrastructure (Desk, chairs, tables, etc). Which by the way, were top notch, although it’s a bit odd that in the end we couldn’t really used it as intended and end up handling the same projection presentation.

On the other hand we had a lot of things we really missed specially on promotion:

• Visit universities and high schools, we missed many of them.
• Academic ambassadors, people that help us from these schools.
• Visit companies and provide a good outline of what the event is about for them to get there.
• Promote it on more radio stations, TV shows and newspapers.

We also could have work out better on scientific software as well as games. The demos were something that we could have organize better not to say we missed showing off the VoIP, Media Center (to a degree) and the overall Linux Desktops.

Swag was something that we rushed in the end, but with better support this could have been much better. It was great we got T-shirts but with better swag we would have got USB with free software in it, as well as other things.

In the end what we need to do is also reflected on how this can benefit TQVCancun and I think that invitations were not offered as open as I would have wished for. To invite people to the group and make them members is something that could have helped the survival of the group and that is something we would need to pay more attention to in the future.

Installing Phoenix tv through the Fusion app on Kodi

So during the @FLISOL event which by the way we had a great attendance. We were able to give a small talk about Kodi.  Kodi is well known on the open source community but maybe people from other communities or none communities might not know about it.

So the big promise is to convert your TV, any TV into a smart TV.

With the power of GNU/Linux, Kodi is a great embeded device capable of having the world of communication and information to any TV, digital or analog. Yes, the use of some addons you might be able to get channels from Japan to Jamaica or from Brazil to Botswana.

All these for the price tag of 50 dls (Raspberry + Hdmi cable). But in reality, the software is really where is at, since you might want to have a cheap hardware but without the software, it wont really work as good as it deserve to work.

Here is where the real power of open source software shines. Get all your channels in an open source fashion. No need of hacking pirate streams, or subject yourself to heavy advertising and viruses. Not only that but you can also bring digital content which has a higher quality of content to your TV. This is a true device for Internet TV. The biggest podcasts and shows from youtube are on your TV with one click. All your Youtube history subscriptions to favorite channels can be watch from your couch.

Kids can get their favorite cartoons, and their favorite shows pre-recorded and 24/7 available. Same as even the maids can watch their novelas. 

So enough sales pitch, what is Kodi?

Kodi is an open source software, that can be installed on any OS and has been ported to all architectures like Intel, Power and Arm.  OpenElec is a distribution that is specially tailored for Kodi. You can install it on your apple tv, your roku box, or your android device.

Installing openelec you will need an SD card, is as easy as using dd openelec.iso /dev/sdX (where /dev/sdX is the location of your SD card).

After installing you only need to boot from it to see the xbmc default interface. Go to System -> OpenElec and Connections will show you the hotspots around the location, choose your home wifi and insert the password and you are on.

You could load your media to the SD card, or over the network and that would be enough, however Kodi have a huge list of plugins and addons. With those addons you are able to find streams and pre-recorded shows from popular internet shows, such as TWiT.TV and Jupiter Broadcasting. Other big content websites like Youtube, Ustream, DailyMotion will also be available and easy to reach.

There is also a bunch of independent media that you can have access to including classic creative common material like from Archive.org, Wikimedia, Jamendo, Magnatune etc. Finally yes, Live TV is possible and PVR addons are also available. The IP-tv features the addon regarding addons including Addon Installer -> Phoenix.

Preparing for 2015 FLISOL

So this year we will be doing the FLISOL again in Cancun being is our 5th FLISOL (Latin American Free Software Installfest). The event is now heavily backed up by PriceTravel and other companies that have jumped on the boat. Hopefully their support will raise the notoriety of the event in Cancun. Hopefully Dolphin Discovery and others will be enthusiastic about getting free and open source software the focal point of that it deserves.

The wheels have started turning and having aids from the people of TQV as well as other ideas on how to get other software packages like OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE and more.

So what is FLISOL about?

FLISOL is about installing applications on people’s laptop, from Office suites, to Browsers, Operating systems and even some more specialized applications like Learning Management systems, Games, and others.

How long has FLISOL been running?

FLISOL has been running since 2004 which makes this the 11th edition, which has been a very impressive run for this event.

How did the other FLISOL events turned out?

Just going to Youtube and typing FLISOL, you can see a whole lot of videos of the event all over the media.  Even in this blog you should check out our posts from 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.

The event would be again handled by the Tequila Valley Cancun people and we hope to have a great turnout since we are giving the publicity from an early stage.