Super Angola!!!

Incredible. Amazing. We actually did it. We managed to beat Senegal. Our stars Flavio and specially the new Manchester United player Manucho did the job and the end result was an amazing 3-1. Now we're only one draw away from going past the group stages for the first time ever. So all fingers crossed for Thursday 17:00 UK time, when we face the very difficult obstacle of Tunisia.

(C) 2008 Associated Press

Ghana 2008 - Forca Palancas!!

The emotion is running high on the African Cup! Angola started well against our regional rivals South Africa, but yielded at the end. To be fair, South Africa was dominant for periods of the game, and did deserve the draw. Today we have a rather difficult game against Senegal (UK 17:00). The coverage in the UK has been superb, with all the games available on BBC interactive (on BBC1 just press the Red Button).

A positive note for Ghana too: the stadiums are superb, and things have been rather well organised, if we ignore minor glitches (like the electricity going, or playing two games on the sames stadium without allowing the grass to recover or the disorganisation with regards to granting press credentials). The camera work has been top notch, at European level. The sound could perhaps be a bit better. All and all, the best CAN ever, methinks. One lesson Angola should learn for 2010 is to ensure all tickets get sold. Its much more important to have all stadiums full that to profit from the event.

The main site for the event is http://www.ghanacan2008.com/. Not the best (can't find any pictures or live results, and the content is rather limited), but not the worst either, showing how far things have come and how much the quality bar has been raised.

(C) MTNFootball.com

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One man's constant is another man's variable. -- Alan Perlis

Alan Perlis was one of the finest specimens of the Real Programmer breed. Back in the days where Computer Scientists didn't exist, he and his kind were responsible for making many of the decisions that shape our view of computers today. I'm particularly fond of Perlis because of his views on Compuer Science:

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.

The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman

Unfortunately, things haven't quite turned out like Perlis would have wanted.

Besides of his many contributions to Computer Science, such as his work on ALGOL, Perlis is very well known for his Epigrams on Programming, of which our quote is the first one. I like this quote because it reminds me that there can never be an ultimate truth in programming due to our human condition.

Nerd Food: Interview with Federico Mena-Quintero

Pretty much anyone who is involved with Free Software - even just as a lowly user like myself - has heard of Federico. His blog is a source of insightful ideas on Gnome, and lately, on performance - combined with a healthy dose of interest in politics and, more importantly, good food. I decided to send a few questions to Federico, mainly on the topics I was most curious about, and he kindly replied to my questions - and did so in record time! Many thanks to Federico for taking time off his busy hacking schedule for this interview.

(C) Gnome Foundation

1. You are one of the founders of the Gnome project, which is currently celebrating ten years of existence. On a recent interview you gave to Fosdem, you considered the platform to be maturing. However, as we all know, the last 10% normally take 90% of the time, and it's considered to be boring work. What do you think the Gnome project needs to do to get people to focus on those remaining 10%?

Basically, to provide an incentive to get that last 10% of the work done :) Instead of smacking people with a stick for not writing documentation, you could have a web page with a bar chart of "percentage of documentation coverage". Then it becomes a competition: use a carrot instead of a stick.

I'd also like companies to get more involved in this. If they want to ship GNOME as a development platform they support, then they could very well employ people to do those missing bits.

2. You have been one of the champions of performance in Gnome for a while now. As functionality increased, Gnome started suffering more and more from performance problems, particularly when looked at from a low end perspective. You have been trying to explain to the masses that performance work is interesting. What do you think can be done to increase developer focus on this neglected area?

The thing about fixing performance problems is that nobody teaches you how to do it. There is very little documentation out there on how to generically approach an optimization problem (I intend to do something about this, but oh, time, time, time!) :)

Also, sometimes you fix a performance problem, but it reappears in the future. This happens when you don't leave an infrastructure in place to let you run a benchmark periodically. You need to be able to see if there are performance regressions.

Our tools are slowly getting better, but there are really very few people working on optimization and profiling tools. It takes a *ton* of time and skill to write a good tool; maybe that's why there are so few of them.

Finally, profiling and optimizing is really about following the scientific method ("make a hypothesis, change one thing at a time, measure, confirm your hypothesis, etc."). This requires discipline and a lot of patience.

Basically, it's a problem of education :)

3. Earlier on this year, Gnome users and developers met for GUADEC. Did you find the conference as productive as in previous years? How important is GUADEC for the Gnome user and developer community?

Yes, this GUADEC was tremendously productive! I think the venue helped a lot; the Birmingham Conservatoire is rather compact and has nice practice rooms that anyone can use. So, you could grab a couple of hackers and go to a room to hack peacefully.

GUADEC has always been important, even more so now that our community is large and widespread. It is about the only time in the year when most of the GNOME contributors get together in a single place and are able to talk in person. Do not underestimate the productivity of talking over a beer :)

4. From the outside world, it appears Novell is a company who has regained it's soul and direction with Linux. How was the transition from Ximian into Novell?

Like all acquisitions, it was a bit rought at first. It's what you get when you switch from being in a small company where you know all of the employees, to one with several thousands of people. You have to adjust to bigger processes, more layers of management, new locations, new paperwork...

It has been very interesting to see the mindset of the old-time Novell people change over time. At first they seemed reluctant to touch Linux and free software, since they were of course Windows users. Then we had a period with lots of questions, lots of bugs that needed to be fixed, lots of re-training... and now we are in a very nice period, when people have accepted that we must all use our own free software. People seem to be productive with it and happy.

I miss the monkeys, though.

5. You are currently telecommuting from Mexico, a position envied by a most developers out there. Do you find that telecommuting helps improving your productivity? Are there any downsides to it?

It has good things and bad things. Good things: working in your pajamas if you feel like it, not having to commute, taking a pause when you are stuck in a hard problem to do a bit of gardening. Bad things: you can't talk to people in person. You must fix all your networking problems yourself. Sometimes, when you are uninspired, it's nice to be able to look over someone else's shoulder or talk to them.

6. Can you describe your typical day at work?

Well, since I work from home... :)

I wake up. If my wife and I are hungry, we make breakfast while my email gets downloaded. If we are not hungry, I'll just check for super-urgent email and then start programming (fixing bugs, doing new development, reviewing patches, etc.).

I usually try to get some programming done in the morning, while my brain is fresh. Processing your email in the morning is a really bad idea; it will take you up to the afternoon and by then you'll be tired to really write code.

We have lunch at really irregular hours. Sometimes it's more like an early dinner. I have the bad habit of not stopping working until I'm exhausted or my wife is angry that we haven't gone out to the supermarket yet, but I'm trying to fix that :)

In the afternoon I tend to do "light" work... maintaining wikis, answering email, coordinating people. I don't really have a fixed work schedule.

7. Many developing countries are increasingly looking at Free Software as a way to bring down the digital divide. Do you find that Mexico is taking advantage of Free Software - particularly since it has two lead Free Software developers? Are there any lessons to be learned from Mexico's experience?

Mexico is blessed and cursed to be so close to the USA. There is plenty of basic usage of free software by individuals (often enthusiastic students), but relatively little usage in the public and private sectors.

People in Mexico get very impressed by rich people; most Mexicans want to be like the rich people from the USA they see on TV. It's very easy to woo us into accepting their ways.

So, every time there has been some noise about using free software in the public sector, Bill Gates has flown down, organized a big business lunch with government officials, and made sure that they keep using Microsoft products. If you are an ignorant politician, you will love to gloat that you had lunch (imagine, lunch!) with Bill Gates, the richest man in the world --- and whatever he says must be correct, of course. The problem we have is that most of our politicians don't have the faintest idea of the economic and cultural implications of free software, unlike those in the European Union (see the recent report on the economic impact of free software there!).

Thanks for the interview!

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"We must know, we shall know." -- David Hilbert

David Hilbert was a great German mathematician. What I appreciate the most about him is his quixotic personality and single-mindedness, going along with Bertrand Russel on their impossible quest to clean mathematics of all doubt and uncertainty, always searching for strict solutions through pure thought. In 1900, Hilbert came up with a list of 23 fundamental problems, many of which are still being investigated to this day. In 1930, Hilbert finished a famous speech in Königsberg with the words "We must know, we shall know", a phrase that fits perfectly the life-long devotion he had for mathematics.

Mighty Monty is Down

We knew it had to happen one day, but never this soon. The day had started badly, a drizzly sort of day, greyness and cold everywhere. To make matters worse, London transport was yet again against me, trains were cancelled, trains were overflowing with people, the human drones bent on one thing only: to get to their destination at any cost. I was one of them. In the madness of rush hour, a distress called reach me: Shahin and Monty were in big trouble.

Monty, our faithful Rover Metro, has been with us for just under six months, and in this period, it has been the definition of reliability itself. Its name comes from the licence plate - who needs vanity plates when sheer randomness is trying to tell you something? - and it's character is as English as the brand: not particularly pretty but very functional and reliable. Never once did it broke down, never once did it chug - a real trooper, always ready for the next long haul trip. When we came back from Africa, Monty took us from London to Southampton and back several times a week. It took us from Hertfordshire to London almost weekly. And he took Shahin to work and back everyday. Ah, but not Friday.

Shahin was driving Monty along on the motorway as usual, seventy, more, miles per hour, when Monty started to loose speed and make noises of all sorts; suddenly from the fast lane she had to move to the middle lane; soon after, from the middle lane down to the slow lane; and from the slow lane, having nowhere else to go, she had to get out of the motorway. She remembered the wise words of Jay to our friend Stacey, also involved in an unfortunate breakdown: "Whatever you do, get the hell out of the motorway!!!". The lights were flashing, smoke was coming out of the engine, Stacey was scared, but she managed to impose her will on the unruly metal. And so did Shahin, Inspired by Stacey's brave behaviour in combat, and by the heavy cost of towing cars off the motorway.

Since, unwisely, we didn't have any coverage of any kind - we were going to do it, I swear! just never had the time! - we had no option but tow the car ourselves. Shahin first tried it with her sister and the brother-in-law, but their car didn't have the required apparatus. Then she rung Stacey for help, and her boyfriend Jay agreed to come to the rescue later on at night.

Night came and we all met down at Stacey's house for the operation. In our innocence, we were entirely unconcerned - how difficult can it be right? Then Shahin had a warning call from her brother, telling her how hard towing would be, had we done it before and so on. Even then I still remained unconcerned. It was only when we got to Monty and Jay started giving us instructions, in that mellow but grave voice of his: "whatever you do, make sure you keep the rope taut or you'll end up running into the back of the van. And remember, I won't break so you have to break for me. If I break you won't have enough time to react and crash into me.". OK then, I thought, other than the fact that were going to die, it's a dead easy job.

Taut was a word I learned then, but which will undoubtedly stay with me forever. The cars got hooked up just outside of Welwyn, our target being Arlesey - twenty minutes of straight driving at a good speed. Miles away. And that's when it dawned on me how hard this was going to be. Shahin was driving - I was nowhere near brave enough.

We drove in the dark, cold English countryside lanes, barely able to see anything but the white van one meter in front of us and it's flashing lights. I thought ten miles or so per-hour was going to be our top speed, but the speedometer just wouldn't obey and kept on going higher and higher until it settled at thirty or so. It felt like the fastest ride we've had ever had. Trees were rushing by us, darkness was rushing fast. Like good soldiers, we focused on the rope and kept it tight as possible, as tight as it had ever been before. But to keep it tight, we had to break often; and knowing the precise amount of breakage required is nigh impossible. Every time Shahin pressed the breaks, time froze for a split of a second; then the van would yank us, making us bounce like a ball. We would then do the same to the van, pulling it backwards, until the whole process would settle and we'd be on a straight line again. Perfectly within the laws of physics, but extremely scary nonetheless.

We stared intensely at the rope, to the exclusion of everything else. Not much we could see anyway. But then, breaking took its toll and a break pad died with an awful grinding noise - hell itself and its horsemen coming after us. We panicked with the noise, but kept on going straight on. The worse was still to come. As we past one strangely named locality after another, we suddenly noticed we weren't going the right way. It could be that Jay new a shortcut, or even a long cut, anything but just get us there. But no, we were really, truly lost. All cars stopped, maps were taken out. We had crossed the county border, and were now in the strange land of Bedfordshire - effectively, off the map. On the good side, it appeared we were not that far away.

Eventually we settled on a plan of attack; but then, as we started the cars and went past a hump, the rope snapped. Jay kept on going, but we got left behind. I thought it was the end of our adventure, somewhere in the barren lands of Bedfordshire, all was lost and we'd have to call some towing company. But resourceful Jay got rid of the metal bits, tied a simple knot and we were on our way again. All the excitement was a bit too much for Shahin, she was getting really scared by this point, but kept on going. There was nothing we could do but keep on going till the end.

It's a strange feeling, being behind a car, two meters or less, at thirty miles per hour; your brain is fully aware that any breaking, any breaking at all and you will crash. It's a simple equation really.

Sometime later we found ourselves driving in town center Arlesey, past all the pubs, past all the shops, excitedly looking for the garage. Shahin spotted it, screamig. We had made it alive. But we learned our lesson. Next time, we'll pay the hundred pounds for towing gladly - and probably even add a tenner to the chap.

Blogosphere

OK, it appears one of my favourite blogs has really ended: Sem Destino. This blog had a great atmosphere and was always the place to go to when one needed to get closer to Angola. All the best to miguel, and a speedy return to activity! In particular, we all want is photobook, as he has some incredible pictures on that blog.

The good news is the crowd around the blog decided to create another blog, with the creative title of Life Goes On - Aguardando o Regresso do Chefe (Waiting the Boss's Return) :-) it's a great read too. In particular, the posts about Blue and Agostinho Neto made me homesick :-)

Another blog that is always interesting to read is Dave Richards. Totally techie. It's great to see how a large scale linux desktop deployment looks like, the problems it faces, the solutions they come up with.

I haven't had much time to read other people's blogs of late - other than the usual nerdy ones - but I will make it up this weekend...