Nethazard.net

I’ve been fighting a battle (one of many) about the use of free format files on private/public organizations. And I think I finally won this one.

The Casino Tampiqueño is a social club in my hometown Tampico. So they organize balls and carnivals and multiple events. Recently, they “discovered” email. So they started sending “spam” to all their members about their notices and future events.

The bad thing was not the “spam”. It was that they decided to attach all event or notice details on a file. And guess what file was that? OOXML .docx format. Not only I couldn’t open the file, but also every other Microsoft Office user that hasn’t updated (legally or not) to the most recent version. And for what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of people that haven’t.

So with every email I got, I sent two emails explaining that the file they sent couldn’t be opened by everyone and suggested the use of PDF or JPEG files (yes, I know jpegs of documents are not nice, but its a file extension everyone knows….and mp3s are not suitable).

Then I finally saw the problem affect a non free software or Linux user: my mom. She got one of those emails and tried to open it. Since she couldn’t see it she called me up to fix the problem. Then I explained what the issue was about using proprietary formats on files (without detailing the OOXML vs ODF politics) just the essential stuff, and then told her to write back to the club explaining what I just told her. So she did.

And I haven’t confirmed if our emails did any change. But this past two weeks I’ve been getting new “spam” from the club with PDF and JPEG file attachments. Yay!

Well…its still spam, but now its spam I can view or throw away, without swearing and shouting about proprietary file formats.

Popularity: 8% [?]

today, after a long period of hassling with my semi broken laptop I finally sent it to warranty service. I struggled for almost a year with my 5mins lasting battery and as if that was not annoying enough, the ac adaptor had a false contact. So basically charging the thing was a pain.

Today, after much thought and a trip to Texas, I finally left it for repairs. I just hope that the bestbuy geeksquad do a better job than last time, where I left it for a broken hard drive and ended up with an almost dead battery.

There’s been huge things going on lately, but I can’t type as fast as I’d like on the nokia n800 yet. Maybe this will be my computer for the next month or so until I get my laptop back.

Popularity: 6% [?]

This is one of those “must have in written format” things, so it MUST be on my blog for future reference.

My resolutions for 2008 are:

1. Learn Lisp (Emacs lisp and/or CLisp)

I’ve been reading a lot of things about Lisp, and my editor of choice has been Emacs for almost all the past year. I’ve wanted to make some tweaks to some Emacs modes I have, but I can’t understand Lisp yet. Also, I want to know why a lot of Lispers feel like they know it all.

2. Get my University diploma

I finished my classed, but I still need to present my thesis, which by the way is on Rails, and pass my examination to finally get my diploma.

3. Get involved in an open source project

I’ve been wanting to contribute but most importantly, learn from others and collaborate for a long time. I still don’t know exactly which project I want to get involved with.

4. Use Emacs for more tasks
5. I want to use Org mode to organize my tasks and agenda. Use more weblogger mode to publish here. Use Gnus as my mail reader, and even give EMMS a try to replace AmaroK.
6. Use Git with ALL my projects

Its better and easier for me. Branching and mergin is fast and easy, and I can have my own history of commits before commiting to everyone else. I want to use it even at work, where we use Subversion. Not because it was already there (I implemented version control there because there was none) but because some in the team use Windows machines, and getting Git on Windows is not a point and click task. TortoiseSVN was more adequate for those non commandline users. Hey, at least there’s version control now in that software shop.

7. Exercise on a constant daily basis
8. I have some health issues that I need to work out. And by working out I mean it literally. There’s no medicine for this but to exercise and have a better condition.
9. Publish quality posts on my blog more often

This one is self explanatory. Specially I want to improve my writing skills.

I hope to accomplish them all.

Image by Sergei Yahchybekov. Thanks for licensing it under Creative Commons.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Its been a while since I made changes to the blog, and its been also a while since I’ve been wanting to do such changes.

I was tired of the old theme and it didn’t had the sidebar on single posts to easily jump to another post from there. I think that good navigation is key to any website, commercial or personal.

Although some might disagree, I find dark backgrounds with light text easier on my eyes to read. Besides, there’s rumors that its also energy efficient. It was hard to find a nice dark background theme for Wordpress, but after reviewing several, I found Insomniac by Benedikt Rieke-Benninghaus very pleasing after some tweaks here and there.

A must have for a Wordpress theme for me is:

• Dark background and light text
• Big font size
• Nice contrast colors
• Modern look

Another substatial change is that I’ll be normally posting in English, instead of my mother tounge Spanish. I just want to share my blog to more of my friends, and they happen to speak English. I think it will be more universal to do so. Also, for some weird reason, my mind works in English most of the time (you know…when you speak to your inner self in your mind), so expressing my mind will be faster and easier in English (yes I’m weird). Of course, when necessary, spanish written posts will appear. Maybe it’ll all depend on my mood and my need to express myself in one way or another.

And the latest change is the blog name change. Since the postings will be in English, the title didn’t help much. Besides, its been mentioned to me that my blog title “Pensando en voz alta” is kind of a ripoff of DHH’s blog, the Ruby on Rails creator. And since I’m out of ideas right now, I’ll simply use my domain name as the blog title. I’d also like to change my domain name, but I’ve had it for so long, and as I already said, I’m out of ideas, so I can’t get rid of it.

So I want to start this year with this changes. New year, new blog theme, new blog title, new blog langague in posts.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Durante las pasadas dos semanas he estado muy ocupado con muchos
cambios muy importantes en mi vida.

Primero, termine la universidad. Si, ya las clases del ultimo semestre
terminaron, y ahora solo faltan los tramites de titulacion, y eso
involucra terminar la tesis. Lo cual es mi siguiente punto.

Mi tesis, un sistema de contabilidad via web, esta basado en Ruby on
Rails, y estoy intensamente desarrollandolo todas las tardes. Y
solamente las tardes por mi punto tres.

Fui contratado por Grupo
PcXplosion una pequeña empresa web, una startup como les dicen, y
esta muy interesante. Es mi primer trabajo como empleado, ya que
siempre he sido freelancer. Asi que adaptarme a la vida laboral no
sera una tarea facil. Llegue e inmediatamente tuve mucho trabajo que
hacer ahi. No estoy seguro si puedo comentar mucho al respecto. Lo
interesante es que esta empresa esta en Monterrey.

Asi que con todo esto, llevo una semana viviendo ahora en la “gran”
ciudad de Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.

Ahh…con todo esto no he tenido tiempo ni cabeza para sentarme a
escribir en este blog, ni ver a mi amigos que estan por aca, ni a mis familiares. Pero si tengo varias cosas que platicar. Como
por ejemplo, que nos llego a la oficina un Nokia N800 para
expermientar con el. Y que comence a usar un framework de PHP llamado
CodeIgniter, del cual por ahora me reservo mis comentarios para un
post mas detallado.

Por lo pronto, para los que leen este blog por un motivo mas personal
(o sea, mis amigos) que no sabian/saben de mi desde hace unas
semanas:

Estoy bien…con muchos cambios y muchos nuevos retos.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Finally I decided to become an FSF Member.

I’m officially member #5878 and I just placed the button on this blog’s sidebar.

Thanks to Mako Hill for encouraging and inspiring me on a very indirect but very effective way.

Popularity: 8% [?]