[caption id=“attachment_950” align=“alignleft” width=“243” caption=“Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging”][/caption] During this last weekend I finally managed to reserve a couple of hours of “me time” to finish reading my complimentary copy of the book “Django 1.1 Testing and Debuggingâ€? from Packt Publishing! Once again I felt completely absorbed by the style chosen for this Packt Publishing book, as it makes use of a complete application to reinforce all of the topics covered.

[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Should you go to college straight out of high school?"][/caption] Over the weekend I came across an interesting article in the New York Times called “Plan B: Skip College”. According to the Department of Education, “no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years.” Even more shocking, “for college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree!

Here’s what happened this week: Mother Thank you Mom: For being my very first true love! For being strong enough, though only 24, when the doctors handed you on your birthday a tiny little boy with with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a rare congenital disorder that is characterized by multiple joint contracturesand can include muscle weakness and fibrosis (Wikipedia article).[…] New version of the Transifex Appliance A newer version of the Transifex Appliance has been released with all the latest, juicy bits!

Had a great surprise when I arrived home from work last night! My good friends from MeeGo sent me a little something to help me with the translation work I have done for them. [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“432” caption=“A gift from Meego”][/caption] Since my in-laws were also at my house I decided to wait until they had left to properly enjoy opening it. A couple of agonizing hours later I finally shredded the box to pieces to reveal: a HP Mini N470!

A newer version of the Transifex Appliance has been released with all the latest, juicy bits! There are several new translations, features and fixes in place. There’s also a couple of new image types for your download pleasure: x86 Installable CD/DVD x86_64 Installable CD/DVD x86 VMware (R) Virtual Appliance x86_64 VMware (R) Virtual Appliance x86 VMware (R) ESX Server Virtual Appliance x86_64 VMware (R) ESX Server Virtual Appliance x86 Amazon Machine Image (EC2) (DomU) x86_64 Amazon Machine Image (EC2) (DomU) Once you have it running, login to your appliance with the following credentials:

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“432” caption=“My Mom and I”][/caption] Thank you Mom: For being my very first true love! For being strong enough, though only 24, when the doctors handed you on your birthday a tiny little boy with with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a rare congenital disorder that is characterized by multiple joint contracturesand can include muscle weakness and fibrosis (Wikipedia article). For seeing hope where others saw despair! For going against everyone and everything that told you to conform and give up on me!

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“413” caption=“After the Deadline”][/caption] My good friend Vinny introduced me to After the Deadline, a nifty WordPress and Firefox plugin that promises to “help you write better by adding spell, style, and grammar checking to web applications.” As some of you know I have been on a writing rampage these last few weeks, and as in everything that I ever do, I try my best to write concise, clear and well written articles.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“350” caption=“GUADEC 2010”][/caption] This past April 16th I had the pleasure of receiving the following email: Congratulations, your submission Making easier for companies to give back to GNOME has been accepted for presentation at GUADEC which is being held from 2010-07-26 to 2010-07-30 at Den Haag. I was ecstatic!!! Having had the opportunity to attend GUADEC 2009 at Las Palmas, Gran Canary last year, I was thrilled with the possibility of attending my second one and presenting my ideas on how to facilitate the collaboration between downstream and GNOME.

[caption id=“attachment_1022” align=“alignleft” width=“264” caption=“Band of Brothers”][/caption] Over this past weekend I found just enough time to finish reading Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose, a book about the story of the men of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, U.S. Army infantry. Back in 2006 HBO had turned this book into a 10-episodes mini series which I avidly watched in one shot one day while visiting my friend Vinny in Massachusetts.

http://radiotray.sourceforge.net/ [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“128” caption=“RadioTray”][/caption] Radio Tray, your favorite light weight online radio streaming application, has gone under some more development churn since its last release. Namely, there is now a dbus interface to allow other applications to interact with it! So you write a “remote control” for Radio Tray and change the volume, change stations, extract metadata from the stream being played, etc. Here’s what’s currently supported: listRadios() getCurrentRadio() playRadio(name) turnOff() volumeUp() volumeDown() getCurrentMetaData() Fancy learning a bit about adding a dbus interface to your own application?