Elzo Valugi » Barcelona

PHP Barcelona 2009 impressions

elzo valugi — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:48:04 +0000

Last Friday and Saturday I was attending PHP Barcelona Conference. Barcelona is a TOP10 tourist destination but when it comes to PHP we are a small province town, and as you may suspect Gaudi and beaches are somehow more famous here than programmers. But we exist and most of us try to do their best and this happens thanks to Barcelona PHP Programmers Group.

The program had enough presentation to choose from.

These are the presentations that I’ve attended:
Working with Web Services – by Lorna Mitchell, not bad but very basic. Probably good for PHP programmers who never worked with an API or webservice before. Alex Puig presentation about actually implementing an API was far more interesting.

Trees in Database – by Lorenzo Alberton. This one was better even though it wasn’t a PHP subject. I already knew and implemented some of this advanced data models, but not all. Interesting.

Simple is Hard – by Rasmus Lerdorf. Good. I love people that tell me I am stupid.
http://talks.php.net/show/phpbcn

Ajax for scalability by Erik Schultink from Tuenti. Good advices but nothing different from Facebook presentations seen on InfoQ and good only if you have the site with most traffic in your country .

Agile Development with PHP in Practice by Lars Jankowfsky. Basic.

I’ve also been to an Oracle on PHP workshop. Database Resident Connection Pool on 11g seems interesting.

PHP Security Audits – by Seguy Damien. Very clear and nice. Give me and Andrea something to discuss. I think I should do PHP and Javascript audits. Not only security but also code improvements.

The overall organization was good. Food and drinks, books with discounts.

The State of QA Tools for PHP by Sebastian Bergmann. Probably one of the most interesting presentations of the conference.

I did attend to a Phing seminar I think it is a pretty useful tool that I cant wait to test.

twitter surprise by Rasmus himself

elzo valugi — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:55:16 +0000

I was asking in Twitter if anybody knows about what Rasmus Lerdorf will talk on his talk at Barcelona PHP Conference, which was without a topic. I was also interested about the other subject that runs in parallel PHP Industrialization. I want to see the GURU inventor of PHP itself, but nevertheless I don’t want to see him to take a picture with him. This is not an amusement park. I want to hear something enlightening. I know that I can expect too much, it happen before at a PHP event with Zeev Suraski, from where I did go dissapointed. I hope people come in Barcelona and treat the conference seriously, and don’t take this a a vacation. I am absolutely fed up with tourists.

Anyway, this post is about the power of Twitter, which so far I was underestimating. How cool is to have Rasmus responding to you directly and in a non official manner?

Priceless.

PS. in January 2009 I was creating Rasmus Lerdorf page in ro.wikipedia. So probably exists a Law of Compensation. :)

money money money

elzo valugi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:26:35 +0000

I’ve been to Crosstalent 8 yesterday. Usually at the previous sessions we talk about media/creativity/advertising stuff, but on this one Vicens Castellano tried to convince the eager audience that they should focus on making money by converting all passive aspects of their life in actives. I told them and I still think is wrong.

Yes we have to have money to live. The system works like this.
Yes even I use and ask for money for my services.

But there are people out there who know to make money better than me.
And those people cannot do what I do.

I am not for extreme especialization, but we divided the work into social casts. See Ernest Gellner social anthropology. Be better at what you like and leave the money making business to those who know to make money.

This is the short version of my view.

Spain, Third World Country in Health Care

elzo valugi — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:23:23 +0000

This is an update to my post about Spain, a third world country in internet services or Renfe – the antiCustomer . This is getting more pathetic everyday. Today I had the proof of something that I already suspected: Spanish Health System really sucks. I almost never get sick and I always pay my taxes. I should get a fast response for the money that I pay … like 1000 euros a month for social services. I get exactly shit. I wanted to make an appointment to check my myopia with an ophthalmologist. Today I get a date for 14 of December 2009. Two months for a routine 20 minutes check? This is bullshit. Even in communist Romania I didn’t get a date more that 1 week.

I want to ask my money back or something. Or at least to cry out loud for this situation that everybody is considering normal. The doctors told me this is a happy case. They are accustomed and they don’t really care anymore. What if you have more important health issues? You can fuck yourself as this Catalan government cares for. They are more preoccupied in political issues or in getting the fucking tourists buying trinkets in Rambla. Everybody should sue CatSalut for not providing for the money we pay for. And at least not to vote the same stupid political manager over and over again.

I’ve send this to CatSalud, Lavanguardia and Periodico de Catalunya. Probably a useless action, because CatSalud managers probably get some villas and nice cars from not doing anything and keeping the situation like it is now, as every public manager in Spain, and the newspapers that are interested only in making money or scandal sex stories when they appear.

going to Port Aventura, an adventure in itself

elzo valugi — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:02:46 +0000

Thanks to the poor service of Renfe and it’s super faulty/unupdated website, going and coming back from Port Aventura can become a pain in the ass. As always the client attention lacks in the Spanish front. A third world country in several aspects. Gotta leave soon. Thanks to my friends and family we had finally the fun and relax that we wanted. Thanks for nothing Renfe!

To understand exactly how stupid Renfe site is, just let me tell you that http://renfe.es is not working without the use of www subdomain, which is an eternal shame for any sysadmin.

Lempika Graffiti

elzo valugi — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:57:59 +0000

It was my first graffiti. I’ve done it for my friend Alex on the gate of his Bar Lempika in Raval, Barcelona. Maybe you are familiar with Tamara de Lempicka, in a way is a tribute to her.

Jupiter + 4 moons

elzo valugi — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:14:09 +0000

Last week I succeeded in seeing Jupiter and 4 of it’s moons with my small telescope from my terrace in Barcelona. It is not a big thing but is pretty emotional to see the Universe scale by yourself. And no Hubble picture compares with what you see by yourself and with the effort to keep tracking the moving star ( this is a little of overstatement). What I saw was more or less like this photo, as I cannot take pics with my telescope.

Kees van Dongen Exhibition in Barcelona

elzo valugi — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:53:07 +0000

Hosted in Picasso Museum en Borne. Most of the images I liked are not to be found on internet so I recommend everyone to go and see it. Some of the paintings are exceptional.

3 years in Barcelona

elzo valugi — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:14:22 +0000

I don’t get lost anymore and the discovery days are over.
I’m glad I came here. I learned Spanish, I made a lot of new friends from everywhere. I learned to drink and make mojitos.
I made my first graffiti. I work now with incomparable less stress than before.
There are things that I don’t like, but no place is perfect and sometimes you carry with you some bad things wherever you go, so it is probably my thing as well.

Thanks myself for choosing Barcelona.

show me the money treenation.com

elzo valugi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:49:00 +0000

There are already 9 months since I bought my first tree on treenation.com. This is a Barcelona project that aims to plant a heart shape green island in subsaharian Africa.

Sounds a little like something that Romanians did in the 50′s when, in my native town Brasov, then named Stalin City – in the honour of the “great” leader, when they plant trees on Tampa leaving only the Stalin name from firs.
The purpose I think is better this time.

For the moment this is the first and last tree that I bought although I really liked the idea and my intention was to buy more. I wanted to buy one for each member of my family, the first one being dedicated to my mother.

But what I see is a lack of attitude in the website organization. I don’t notice too much project activity. I see email with general environmentalist news, content generated on other places and a lot of partners. Instead of all this I wanna see a picture of my tree, small or big, ugly or not, at least too know that is alive and my money did go into a right place. I want to see how the things grow, live cameras, satellite images or other stuff to that will make me still believe in you.

This discussion continues in their forum.

###################

UPDATE

###################
Sometimes is worth bitching. Here is my tree :)
GPS: N 12º59´46.0´´ E 003º20´26.7´´