Avui ha passat un fet que, que jo recordi, mai, m’havia passat a Catalunya…

A casa tenim la connexió a Internet a través de Kabel Deutschland, doncs bé, com que ja fa un any que tenim la connexió, avui s’han presentat un parell de persones a la casa, han comprovat la qualitat de la connexió i, no només això, sinó que directament m’han dit que hauria de trucar a Kabel Deutschland perquè em canviïn tan el router de fibra òptica com el wi-fi, que ja els posen ells mateixos!

Increïble! Encara és hora que espero que vingui algú a Molins de Rei a arreglar els problemes que ens donava la connexió ara sí ara també…

And even better!

TL;DR; Praise Nicolas Delvaux every time you see him, then go check Deckard. An online tool to test translations in Gtk+ (and Glade) based applications. As a translator you can imagine how cool is that!!

You know the scenario: you are at GUADEC talking discussing about how to conquer the world make GNOME even better and then you realize a great idea: what if gtranslator was able to allow you to open glade with the current UI that you are translating with the translations that you are making¹?

Half a year later, you don’t get that, but something really cool, a web based version of that!

Wherever you are Nicolas, if we ever meet, be sure to ask for your beverage of choice, you are more than invited!

Translators out there, be sure to spread this amazing news into your teams!

1. Just like the synctex gedit plugin updates evince to show you formatted LaTeX [↩]

En català però eh!¹ :)

Com ja sabeu, i sinó ara ja sí, el GNOME s’allibera cada 6 mesos. Com un rellotge, a les acaballes de març i de setembre s’allibera una nova versió d’aquest magnífic escriptori lliure.

Així que mirant el calendari, ja s’acosta la versió 3.8 del GNOME!

I de nou, des d’aquest humil bloc s’us demana que col·laboreu amb la traducció del GNOME al català. Només us calen dues coses realment:

• coneixements d’anglès
• motivació

I sobretot la segona, com tot treball voluntari² el que fa falta és ganes de fer-ho i de comunicar quan es troben coses que no s’entenen o no se sap què fer.

Per sort,  tenim una llista de correu on us podeu apuntar, manifestar el vostre interès en ajudar i preguntar tots els dubtes que tingueu sobre tot el procés que implica traduir el GNOME al català.

1. De fet no està de més dir que sí, que el GNOME agraeix totes les contribucions que es facin [↩]
2. Mai li direm que no a algú que li paguin per traduir el GNOME al català [↩]

Warning that’s a rant about Spanish voting system, skip it if not interested.

First of all the facts:

• in Catalonia there were elections this past November 25th (2012)
• as we are currently living abroad (Germany¹) we need to register in a special census to be able to vote
• the last day available to register on that register for those elections was October 15th (I could make it, Sílvia couldn’t)
• I got within a weeks time a confirmation letter (you know that dead tree thing that postmans deliver every day) that I was successfully register and that I should because starting from October 30th to November 3th I was supposed to get the actual envelope and all the papers and forms to be able to cast my vote from Berlin itself
• …
• …
• … (yes, that’s a fact I was just waiting, waiting some more, and then even some more)
• elections where held, people living in Catalonia could vote as usual, but not me
• lots of Catalans living abroad complained that they didn’t get the envelope and forms to be able to vote, some got their envelope and papers one or two weeks after the actual elections date² )
• fast forward to January 9th of 2013³ I got a new letter (another dead tree thingie) saying something random about the elections, but was still not the envelope and forms to vote!

So looking at the facts… should I still have some hope left that one of my new years resolutions (be able to vote) will come true?

As a hacker and computer literate I know that it could be feasible to do electronic voting, or even going to the embassy⁴ or even keeping the good old post system, if there was any interest in using it.

The most amazing thing about it is that nowadays, and we have done that already quite a few times, we wake up on the morning in Berlin, take breakfast, pack some stuff in our backpacks and within 4-5 hours (just 2:30 hours of plane) we are in Barcelona chatting happily with our family and friends.

How come the voting envelope hasn’t still arrived at my home in Berlin?!

</rant>

1. Google Maps says ~1900km by car, and a flight takes 2 and a half hours from Barcelona to Berlin [↩]
2. You are supposed to cast your vote, when living abroad, at maximum nearly two weeks before the elections are held, so that your vote can be counted as well [↩]
3. nearly two months after I should got the actual envelope and forms to vote [↩]
4. <sarcasm>Nice and friendly btw. the ones on the Spanish embassy in Berlin, </sarcasm> [↩]

We went back to Catalonia for Christmas to visit our family and friends (and who doesn’t do it :) and while on Vic¹ I found the bus for blood donation on my way to buy the best chocolate croissants ever².

Whenever I’m around Catalonia³ I try to give blood (4 times a year allowed for men over 18 years and more than 50kg), but this time some ideas came to my mind:

• People was making huge queues on the public lottery office in front of the stationed bus⁴. In contrast, there was no queue at all on the bus. In fact it took me less than 20 minutes to enter and leave the bus. Still without blood on the hospitals, no matter how much money you get on the lottery…
• Just after giving blood and about to leave, one of those security money vans that take money from banks, lottery offices or so arrived and a couple of strong guys came out of it to take the money from the lottery office. Again, money needs gorilla-like people to take care of it, while the blood bags already filled where lying inside the bus on my arm reach.

Anyway, just as the Catalan blood bank system says: “one time (giving blood) is not enough!”

1. SPAM: a really small and nice city, if you ever happen to go to Barcelona take a train there, it’s well worth it [↩]
2. I go there from Berlin itself just to buy them!! [↩]
3. I still haven’t checked the German blood donation system [↩]
4. There’s a huge lottery on both 22th of December and 6th of January [↩]

Last year around this days I was still living near Barcelona (Molins de Rei actually), some days later, on the November 4th I took a flight from Barcelona to Berlin my new home as of now, and since then, things have happened in a quite fast peace…

We (with Sílvia obviously!) went there as I got a job offer from der Freitag, a newspaper, where I help building their website. With such a big move, packing, unpacking, moving, legal stuff and so on kept ourselves busy for quite some time. Thankfully I stayed ~one month with Kat and Dave (million thanks again!!) which helped a lot in getting papers sorted out and finding a flat where to stay :)

German classes started on January (12h per week plus 40h work) and a wedding in Catalonia on June  30th was the new thing to keep ourselves busy.

Right now German classes are still undergoing, we are going to make a late honeymoon to Japan¹ and we are starting to get ready for the next small thing: we are expecting a baby!

We are really excited about it! All these ultrasounds and 3D images that nowadays doctors do and everything really get you the (obviously not like the future-to-be-mom) feeling that something is being cooked in your wife’s belly :D

Surely times will keep changing from now on! :D The baby is expected to be around early Spring so (s)he² will not get frozen by the Berlin’s winter which their parents are still not used to :)

Looking back before coming to Berlin looks really far far away and it’s been only one year!

1. advices to what to see/do are welcome :) [↩]
2. We still don’t know the gender [↩]

Next month (November) is around the corner, and so it is the next GNOME Translation Project meeting!

Feel free to add yourself and suggest discussion points on the above link!

Many thanks to Gabor for organizing it!

I had a draft of this post since two days, as a way to make a call for action to fix the offending bug once and for all¹.

Fast forward, and thanks to my personal new hero of the day, Martin Robinson, we, the GNOME Translation Project community can finally start translating in a reliable way WebKitGTK+!

I don’t have the honor to know him, but, please, if you happen to see him, buy him his beverage of taste and let me pay the bill, I will gladly do that!

A lot of credit also goes for Chris Leonard who has been tirelessly chasing this bug.

Since yesterday the translation world is a bit more shiny :)

Thanks a lot Martin and Chris!

1. A bug about not being able to update the POT file needed to be able to update and generate translations from a module [↩]

An hour ago the meeting was over, here is a small resumé:

The GNOME Translation Project met for  around 3 hours long¹ to discuss on how to improve the translation story on GNOME, make it better just like GNOME is getting better :)

Topics discussed

GNOME 3.6 looked good (translation wise) some concerns were:

• hard to test due to distributions not being updated enough
• we hope that GNOME testing initiative (aka GNOME OS) improves by next release :)
• some QA guidelines were thought as needed to do translation testing

New design of l10n.gnome.org

• the RTL situation is not really good but Arab translators will provide screenshots on how to fix it (help needed thought)

Switching D-L to only show words

• strong arguments on both sides, more discussion, mockups or subteams working on proposals would help changing things (if there’s a need for it at all)

Next IRC meeting

• Gabor volunteers to run it one for next month, we will get news from him soon hopefully :)

Accelerators on app menus (the thing on the GNOME Shell bar)

• translators feel uncomfortable with the situation, lots of modules with accelerators, lots of other modules without
• will try to get attention from designers and developers to have clear guidelines (if possible)

Doing another survey for coordinators

• still not clear what we want to ask to ourselves (a bit philosophical this one :D)
• some mail will be sent to this list asking about ideas

Dropping docbook (documentation) translations

• Gabor volunteered to ask documentation team about their plans

Splitting the big GNOME module set

• everyone agrees that we have to move it forward, lots of technical details and design decisions to be made though
• where to put the line on splitting modules
• what to use as the mighty 80%

Dead modules

• that’s a big concern we all have, how to make sure translators don’t waste time translating modules that are not maintained