The Gnash GC (garbage collector) is enabled by default in CVS HEAD since yesterday’s night, and its performance nearly reaches the RC (reference count) speed, which is really good news

I’ve made newer experimental packages for Debian (source here), in case someone is interested. As always, feedback is really welcome

I hope the current versions of Gnash get out of the NEW queue soon.

Yesterday, two small cute games, both coded in python and pygame, finally entered the repositories. Both were submitted to the PyWeek Python Game Programming Challenge.

Bouncy the Hungry Rabbit is a game targeted to small children, in which you play a hungry rabbit in a garden with yummy veggies and a farmer who’s not keen on you eating them

Whichwayisup is a kinda traditional 2D platform game with a slight rotational twist, which means that up and down, left and right are constantly changing as you go ahead in the game. One of the interesting things about this game is that it is, AFAIK, the first package in Debian licensed under the CC-by 3.0 (Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license).

Sometimes wandering through the netsphere you suddenly find small pearls you inmediately fall in love with. This is the case of Hex-a-hop, a small little cute puzzle game in which you move a girl through an hexagonal map, trying to break all the green tiles. The game has no time limit of any kind, and it does not involve any kind of real-time issues either.

The visual appearance of the game is really great, a lot of care has been taken in the details, the graphics are really sweet, the water moves slowly reflecting the world, it really feels nice to play.

For the moment, I’ve put a package available for Debian SID, until it goes into Debian’s repositories, in case someone wants to try it. Tom Beaumont, the author of the game, has really done a nice work

Para la mayoría de la gente, el problema del amor consiste fundamentalmente en ser amado, y no en amar, no en la propia capacidad de amar. De ahí que para ellos el problema sea cómo lograr que se los ame, cómo ser dignos de amor. Lo que para la mayoría de la gente de nuestra cultura equivale a digno de ser amado es, en esencia, una mezcla de popularidad y sex-appeal.

La segunda premisa que sustenta la actitud de que no hay nada que aprender sobre el amor, es la suposición de que el problema del amor es el de un objeto y no de una facultad. La gente cree que amar es sencillo y lo difícil encontrar un objeto apropiado para amar -o para ser amado por él-.

Hay en la cultura contemporánea otro rasgo característico, estrechamente vinculado con ese factor. Toda nuestra cultura está basada en el deseo de comprar, en la idea de un intercambio mutuamente favorable. De ese modo, dos personas se enamoran cuando sienten que han encontrado el mejor objeto disponible en el mercado, dentro de los límites impuestos por sus propios valores de intercambio.

El tercer error que lleva a suponer que no hay nada que aprender sobre el amor, radica en la confusión entre la experiencia inicial del “enamorarse” y la situación permanente de estar enamorado o, mejor dicho, de “permanecer” enamorado.

Las dos personas llegan a conocerse bien, su intimidad pierde cada vez más su carácter milagroso. En realidad, consideran la intensidad del apasionamiento, ese estar “locos” el uno por el otro, como una prueba de la intensidad de su amor, cuando sólo muestra el grado de su soledad anterior.

What about a reat time strategy game, kinda Command and Conquer, with penguins as the main characters, surrounded by the polar freeze, and throwing mercilessly snowballs against each other? That’s what SnowballZ is about: march through snow laden forests to conquer new frontiers and grow your small army. Ambush enemy lines with blasts of freezing snowballs. Of course, don’t forget to feed your troops with fresh fish, or warm them up in a nice igloo, if you expect them to grant you a good victory. And don’t neglect your home, invaders are just over the next snow drift!

The packages are already in Debian SID, so there’s no excuse for not trying it, just get ready for the next snowfall!

The /etc is a gathering of women interested in technology. The event is held once a year, each time in a venue where there has been an interest in hosting it. The first was in Pula, Croatia in 2002, followed by Athens (2003), Belgrade (2004), Graz (2005) and Timisoara (2006). The event grew out of the Gender Changer’s hardware and FLOSS courses. Women from all over the world organise the /etc through mailing lists, IRC, collaborative websites and real, live meetings.

The week-long carnival includes workshops on installing free and open source software, the hardware crash course, soldering, building websites plus art exhibitions, performances, cultural discussions and related presentations.

The sixth /ETC will held from Wednesday 11th to Sunday 15th July 2007 in Linz, Austria

Es una tontería de script, pero puede ser útil para alguien, así que allí va:

b=""
fdupes tmp/ --recurse | \
while read f
do
if [ "$f" = "" ]
then
b=""
else
if [ "$b" = "" ]
then
b="$f"
else
rm "$f" && echo "Remove \"$f\""
ln -v "$b" "$f"
fi
fi
done

fdupes (web oficial, paquete en Debian) es un programa que comprueba todos los archivos de un directorio para ver si éstos están duplicados. Para ello, utiliza el hash MD5 de los contenidos del archivo, con lo que da igual el nombre que tengan.

Or so it seems (that page leads to this one)
You can also turn off the Internet here, in case you’re tired of it

via this article.

Poco a poco parece que van despuntando más grupos musicales que se unen a la cultura libre, y cada vez con mayor calidad. Para gustos colores, y está claro que la música que me guste a mí no tiene por qué gustar a otras personas, y viceversa. En todo caso, hace unas semanas encontré la música de una chica francesa que me encanta.

Al escuchar el recopilatorio “Con voz libre de mujer“, de Radio87Mhz, encontré una canción llamada “Hey Girl“, que me cautivó nada más oirla. Buscando más sobre la artista, encontré el album “Hey Girl“, de la francesa Mel’s (Mélissa, de 15 años), distribuido bajo licencia CC-by-nc-sa 2.5, y que contiene 5 canciones (en realidad 4, ya que Hey Girl está incluída por partida doble, en su versión en francés y en inglés). Por si a alguien más le gusta, ahí queda esta entrada en mi bitácora.

There are lots of packages I’ve been doing since I firstly started developing stuff for Debian, that I just didn’t do anything with (apart from using them myself, that’s it). Some are lacking man pages, icons, or things like that. At the time I just didn’t feel like it was too urgent to finish them, because usually finding a sponsor for them would take more effort than making the package itself, but I plan to finish them some time and putting them into the repositories. In any case, I thought that it might be nice to clean them up a bit, compile them against SID, and putting them available somewhere, if someone was interested.

Right now I’ve put there:

• construo: Construo is a program for constructing 2D wire-frame objects and let them react on physical forces, its neither a real simulation nor a real game, its just a little toy app which can be a nice way to waste time.
• xspringies: XSpringies is quite similar to construo in its purpose. It’s a 2D mass and spring simulation system. It’s intended use is more like that of a game, than some design package.
• wok: It is an old game made by Kenta Cho. The game objective is very simple. Catch the falling balls by the wok (a flying pan) and throw them to the right. You can control the wok by mouse. To earn more score, you should throw many balls continuously. Collect many balls on the wok, and throw them at the same time. If a ball falls to the lower end of the screen, the game is over.

I plan to keep uploading some of my old packages that are worth it, are in good state, can be compiled against SID right now, and might be of interest to someone, at least until I find some time to finish them properly and upload them to the archive. If anyone is interested in them, they’re welcome!