Been kind of stormy down here in North Carolina since last night, with some pretty serious thunder storms causing havok around the area. Woke up today to see some trees snapped in half and a car buried under some big branches. With the electricity flickering all the time I thought it would be safe to turn off the PC and wait it out. After yet another stormy period today, I think it is safe to surf the web now.

Read several posts of people who are either going or have already arrived in Istambul for this year’s GUADEC. I could not help but feel disappointed that my participation in these types of community events has dramatically decreased in the last 2 years. I remember when I used to pack and go wherever there was something interesting happening, often paying from my own pocket, just so that I could be more involved and obviously have a chance to meet the people I interact with every day online. GUADEC is one of those events that I never got a chance to attend, even though I was approved last year for a lightining talk.

Guess I’ll just tell myself that there is always next year and try not to feel so bad… after all, I should be used by now with this type of disappointment.

Today I created a blueprint I intend to promote for Launchpad’s Rosetta workflow. Titled “The process by which translation teams can better handle collaboration” (and its matching full specification), it is my intent to describe a mechanism by which translation teams can better administrate the contributions sent by Rosetta users, provide useful feedback and take a first step toward a better relationship with upstream projects.

I kindly invite those interested in the same topic to subscribe to the blueprint and add their feedback to the specification page, specially those who like me have their feet in both upstream and Rosetta worlds.

My good friend Mario Đanić (pygi) wrote a very interesting article on what he calls a “broken on birth” attitude towards DVCS adoption in many open source groups. I was very intrigued as to how one would allow different developers use their own (i.e. favorite) DVCS to work on their project, and yet be able to pool everything together in order to release a given set? If you want to learn about his ideas, about GitoriousKDE or have some relevant feedback for him, drop him a line.

My latests posts have attracted a fair number of comments (thank every and each one of you for taking the time… really!), most of them in response to the issue at hand. Every now and then someone questions the validity of one of my chosen topics, claiming that it should be published on Planet X (my blog is syndicated on quite a few planets) because it doesn’t talk about technology. I understand that someone people may not enjoy reading every single topic that may be published (not only by me), for I am one of them… honest!

Anyhow, my friend Jonathan Jesse’s comment on my latest post got me thinking… maybe I should write something about this same topic: what do I think about people writing about anything on Planet Ubuntu for instance.

Now, Jonathan… I’m not picking on you bud.

I wonder if political posts such as these really should be syndicated on something like planet.ubuntu.com. I know I have different political leanings then you based on the posts that I’ve read and I try to limit my posts to planets to only the topic on hand. Feel free to disagree with me. That’s the beauty of freedom of speech…. I just hope that you aren’t assuming that everyone who posts on planet.ubuntu.com or reads p.u.c agrees with your political ideas.

From the main page at Planet Ubuntu:

Planet Ubuntu is a window into the world, work and lives of Ubuntu developers and contributors.

I most definitely do not assume that everyone who reads Planet X agrees or shares my ideals and/or principals… it would be naive to think that way, and just flat out against Ubuntu (the ideology, not the distro)! Some people like to write howtos… some write about their favorite recipes or music… I reserve my right to talk about the things that are part of my life, sometimes about politics. I don’t expect that every single subscriber will want to read every single word I write… as I mentioned before, I don’t read everything I’m subscribed to. For those posts that don’t tickle my fancy, all I have to do is press the “j” key on Google Reader (or “n” on Liferea) and presto! A brand new post automagically appears!

I would like to hear your view on political posts appearing on something like planet.ubuntu.com

Fair enough. The short answer is: I’d be very interested to know this facet of many of the contributors to open source that are syndicated on these planets. You see, there’s much more about me than translations, BillReminder or my interest in the political future of my nation. I also love fishing, ice hockey, Clint Eastwood’s westerns, Reuben sandwiches, and… and… so much more. Off course I don’t expect that everyone will care about any of these. But there are a few people out there who find this a reasonable way to know the real me, specially when one lives so far away and with no means to meet in person.

The bottom line is that when my blog was added to Planet X, I was never asked to only write about X, or to create a feed that only talks about X. I’m not trying to wash my hands here, but this was the deal offered to me… and I accepted it. Maybe people who control/administer these aggregators will one day change their regulations in order to provide a more specific and filtered content? Until then, I ask all of you guys/gals who may be annoyed by some (all?) of my articles to simply press the “x” key on your news reader of choice… and exercise your freedom of choice.

For some reason I can’t seem to be able to check the last 2 boxes.

PS: For those who don’t care or don’t want to read about this, exercise your mouse/keyboard and skip this post.

it is amazing just how little real information gets its way to the American public these days. What we Americans call news must be the equivalent of a soap opera or comic stand up everywhere else in the world! The problem is so serious that for those who were born here and never left the country that you end up becoming utterly unaware of what else is going on around the world or, even worse in my oppinion, not knowing what kind of terrorism (our government calls it Foreign Policy) we are perpetrating outside of our borders.

So, while we are spoon fed news about celebraties sexscapades, wild fires and floods (here in American only off course) and useless bits of information, the real news end up filtered out and tossed in the censorship bin. How do you govern/control over a huge population who believe they are free to do whatever they want? The answer is easy: get them out of the equation! As long as we go about our lives thinking that nothing is wrong around us, there is not reason to revolt.

How many people know that Kucinich presented several articles asking for the impeachment of Bush? That our stupid oil-war in Iraq has killed over 1.2 million civilians in Iraq? When was the last time you saw a video/picture of our young soldiers coming back in a coffin? It is as if there was nothing going on and we go on with our lives. How much coverage did our networks give to these issues? Not enough! In any other part of the world, if a president was being considered for impeachment, guess what would be on all news television and newspapers?

Think that the new presidential hopefulls are any better? Wrong! I could never trust someone whose loyalty is far stronger to his organization/group/posse than to his own countrymen. McCain will be yet another dictator with world domination fever. Obama? So much for a change we can believe in. I could never vote for someone who’s main concern is the well being of the State of Israel or who asks his supporters to pay for Hillary Clinton’s $22 million debt from her failed presidential bid! I want a president who puts us, American people first in their agenda. Cut funds for our imperialistic armed forces, and our obssession with finding water in Mars and use that money to pay off our own debts!

People who try to speak up end becoming motives for jokes… How many times was Ron Paul ridiculed during the presidential debates? Apparently it was funny to them that we have been printing money like it was for a game of Monopoly!

I could go on, believe me.