Pablo Fernandez

Category: Personal

Personal stuff and others that are not technical, doesn’t have source code, etc.

  • The need for a common language

    This is just one small example of why we need a international common language.

    In 1975, the World Health Organization refused:

    • U$S 148,200 for a better public health service in Bangladesh
    • U$S 83,000 to fight leprosy in Burma
    • U$S 26,000 for basic hygiene in Dominican Republic
    • U$S 0.50 per patient to cure trachoma, which has millions of victims and can cause blindness
    • and many other requests

    Meanwhile, it accepted Chinese and Arabic as working languages increasing the expenses in in translations by U$S 5,000,000, every year. (more…)

  • My first Esperanto experience

    I decided, some years ago, to start learning Esperanto.

    I went to Lernu and spent three days learning. On the third day I’ve decided to open the instant messaging system on that web site to see what was going on. I ended up chatting with someone from Russia, in Esperanto.

    We talked about the usual things you talk when you only learned the language for three days. How are you? where are you from? where do you live? do you have brothers or sisters? blah blah. I was amazed I could communicate so soon. Eventually I’ve got tired and I said something like “OK, that was fun, let’s continue in English please.”

    – “Mi ne parolas la anglan.” was the reply. “I don’t speak English.”

    What about la hispana (Spanish)?

    – “Ne”

    I was talking with someone with whom I didn’t have any other common language than Esperanto. Three days before that we couldn’t have even say hi to each other.

  • The first time I heard about Esperanto

    The first time I heard about Esperanto, I attacked it. Because that was what everybody around me did and I’ve learned from them.

    The second time, it annoyed me and I attacked again.

    The third time, I was indifferent.

    The fourth time, I was curious.

    The fifth time, I started to learn it.

    That’s why I keep repeating to anybody who’d listen: Esperanto, Esperanto, Esperanto, Esperanto, Esperanto. And I encourage others to do the same.

  • Typing Esperanto II

    I’ve created deb packages with my patches to Esperanto layouts. To use them, in Ubuntu, for they are packages for Ubuntu, just follow the instructions for my PPA and upgrade.Then pick them in the configuration as usual.

  • Typing Esperanto in Ubuntu (or any other X)

    I’ve got tired of not being able to easily type in Esperanto in Linux. There are some articles out there explaining it how and the are always convoluted and I’ve never seen one that gets to the point of typing “ŭ”, the always try very hard to get “ĝ”.

    There’s an Esperanto layout in Ubuntu and I suppose other X Window Systems as well, but there are two things I don’t like about it. One is having to find out where the keys are, I could re-label them, but then I would only be able to type in Esperanto (which might be educational but not what I want, at least for now). I also don’t like the fact that it is Qwerty, not Dvorak. And even if it was Dvorak, one should make the statistics about Esperanto to make a proper Esperanto Dvorak-style keyboard. (more…)

  • The future of OpenID

    The future of OpenID, I believe, is more likely to be in hundreds… thousands of little web applications consuming OpenID because it comes built in with the framework used to build the application than the big guys consuming it:

  • Sound in space

    I wonder when we will start to see DVDs of space tv-shows, like Babylon 5 and Star Trek, where you can pick to watch them with no sounds on space. I’m really pissed off at the sounds of the Voyager on the presentation, they don’t even add to the scene, it only makes a beautiful presentation feel childish (stupid and ugly).

  • Being a prolific blogger

    Recently my friend Juanjo pointed out how much activity my blog has been having recently. Thinking about it, he is right and there are two reasons why this may be the case:

    • I’m more inspired than usual. I’m not sure if this is the case, and even if it is, it’s not helpful for me to communicate it unless I’ve found a way to find inspiration easily.
    • I’m writing in parallel. Now this is something to talk about, because it is a technique that can be applied by everyone and I recommend to any blogger.

    (more…)

  • Score Reading Trainer 0.1.4 released

    I have just made a new release of Score Reading Trainer, 0.1.4. This release has a very important bug fix, thanks to Julian Kniephoff. The fix allows to use notes below the first line of the staff without getting the extra lines mixed and eventually crashing. It was also upgraded to compile correctly and easily to a current KDE, version 3.

  • A programmer’s favourite language

    I’ve discovered something recently. Most programmers have a favourite programming language. No, that’s not it, there’s more to my discovery. Whenever those programmers have an idea they open a text editor and start coding and/or they start playing with a REPL, if they are lucky to like a programming language that provides one.

    You watch them code and they do it fast, with little errors. They don’t program fast because it’s a good language, they program fast because they know it, and they know it because they use it often, and they do that because they like it. That was the first part of my discovery. (more…)