Collogue

ivazquez has a very good post about packaging activities. He is not on the planet yet, so I’m forwarding it. Go read it!

I like to think that I will never stop to learn. Being silly most of the time, defending the bits of irrationality in my decisions, explicitly refusing responsibilities, unwilling to plan beyhond the next few hours, are all ways I use to express the same concept. I don’t want to grow up because I want to preserve the same openness to the world of a child, the same desire to be surprised and shaken around by things and people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about getting back into school lately and… a question that I don’t really have an answer for is if I want to be a teacher or a student. I’m uncomfortable with the notion that you spend a certain part of your life learning and then move into a separate role where you are allowed to spread your knowledge. It sounds nice and clean, but people brains are complex than that. Eh, I guess that applies to most social roles. When I see Walter hacking on Turtleart, it always makes me smile. His desire to learn is moving and a great example for everyone. Then I also feel compelled to make fun of him, but that’s just my being silly all the time.

Mel has a very interesting post about learning. Sugar emphasizes reflection, collaboration, and exploration. I would also add creation. We already discussed how it would be important to describe how these abstract categories are concretely embodied in the software. But now I’m doing a step back and thinking that it’s even more fundamental to communicate why education, the specific kind of learning we are advocating, it’s something that is relevant to every child and every adult life.

Making things is my drug. It’s easy and rewarding. Everyone knows how I can get pretty nervous if you argue a lot or even just show me some wonderful new idea, while I’m trying to get something done. Reflection and exploration (more precisely the part of it that doesn’t require social interaction, for example reading books) are also very natural to me. Creation tends to overrule them though, and if I look back to the last two years, I see myself hacking madly to make Sugar, without ever looking back. And then a sudden stop, tiredness, the need to reflect for a while on what and why I was doing, the desire to explore ways to do it more efficiently.

Sharing is hard, I have the constant fear to look stupid, which is why I’m rereading this post a couple of hundred of times before publishing. Creation is also sharing in some ways. The sole reason that kept me involved with free software after my first immature hacks has been the “keep up the good work” mails I was getting from people. That’s something I badly missed with Sugar and that often affected my motivation. Our users are (or used to be) distant and the social part of making things goes somewhat lost.

I think these elements turns into a wonderful learning experience only when they are all combined. Focusing too much on any of them makes me feel stuck, limited, incomplete. It’s necessary sometimes to push things further, but it cannot be the normal situation. They are also the essential components of my happinnes. And I guess that means that learning is what makes me happy!

I’m thrilled by the amount of progress my teammates are doing on Sugar these days, I’ll just mention the upstreaming of the evince changes that Tomeu almost completed. It feels good to see the team running so well, without needing any help or pushing from me. I’m enjoying my invisibilness. Also seeing all the fun they are having, makes me want to get back more actively into the game. Yeah, I’ve been slacking lately.

My sorellina Daiva might be stopping a few days in Italy on his way to Malta in February. I can’t believe it, I’m soooo looking forward for it now, I really hope it will happen. I must be dreaming, two of my Christmas hugs unexpectedly getting real in a couple of days. Only one to go!

I had conversations with a couple of people today about the fact that I cannot stand working from remote any more. It turned out that the night would prove the point.

Spent the whole day at XOcamp, being tired I decided to head back home. Stopped at Legal to take some food. Gah! I left my power cord at the office! Grab my shrimps, run back, get in with some difficulties. Run into Mel, which also lost her power cord.

Well, a few hours later my stomach was complaining and my shrimps was cold, but I had spent a beautiful night with beautiful people. Mel trying to find the cheapest flight to Australia and later drawing us the plan for her travel around the world. Martin entertaining us with awesome New Zealand pictures and stories, while helping her out with the tickets. Adam noticing our excitement and pointing out that Martin has already found a new job… at the Wellington tourism office. Yifan looking very skeptical at the travel map, “But Mel, normal people usually spend six months to do *one* of the travels you drawed there”. “Sure, but they don’t sleep just three hours per night like me!”. Bernie and Michael friendly fighting about OLPC and Sugar Labs closeness, while migrating the build system.

Too tired and happy to say anything meaningful, I headed back home.

Finally back from vacation. It has been really wonderful travel, I got some rest and I re-energized, but now it’s time to get back to work. First up is email backlog. Already handled a good amount of it, longest and most difficult answers are left though. Tonight and tomorrow is going to be really busy.

And then I need to prepare for FUDCon and XOCamp. I would like to give one talk for each, but I haven’t prepared any slides yet, I will see if I can sprint them tomorrow. Leaving on Thursday and looking forward to meet everyone there and to make as much progress as we did at Sugarcamp.

Spending the whole day to write email made me realize once again how frustrating is for me to write in english. I’m always unsatisfied about the way I say things, because I miss the words to say exactly what I want to say. I usually have to reread and tweak an email several times before I’m ready to hit the send button. My mind is sort of screwed up between two languages. I can talk and think about computer stuff only in english (at the point that I force Bernie to talk in english even if it’s just the two of us), but I’m unsatisfied about my writings quality. And I can talk decently about personal stuff only in italian, which is frustrating when posting a blog. I need to find the time to read a bunch of books in english, I think that will help a lot.

Back to work, lots of email to answer!

I have been travelling during the last week, with sporadic internet access and anyway with very little time to read and answer email. Even less to write code, duh! I will be back home only on 5 January, but I’ll try to deal with my email queue earlier, hopefully in the next couple of nights. Apologizes to everyone for the delays!