Happy 2015!

I hope everyone have a good 2015!

And for the IT colleagues, and as I said when I started my holidays: I wish a bug free and feature rich year! 🙂

Recent change in the blog theme

A few weeks ago I changed this blog’s theme. Since 2006 it had had the same theme, which was getting a bit old, it had fixed width, and it wasn’t using the latest WordPress improvements like it didn’t have support for widgets.

I had a few requirements for the new theme: I wanted a 2 […]

Bye bye Thinkpad T60

A message for my old IBM Thinkpad T60 laptop: thank you for all your good service! I probably can say that it’s the best laptop that I have ever had and the one that lasted longest (8 years is quite a lot for a laptop!)

In August 2006 I got my previous laptop: an IBM […]

Llibre: Hackstory

Fa poc he llegit el llibre Hackstory de Mercè Molist. Quan el vaig començar no pensava que m’agradĂ©s tant com ha estat. Em va sorprendre molt.

És molt amè, informatiu, entretingut. Si recordo bĂ© comença cap a l’any 1980 amb temes de radioaficionats (que vaig fer els meus “pinitus”), desprĂ©s parla de BBS (en vaig […]

Mapnik, osmosis, MongoDB bbox queries

Recently I’ve done a few tests querying data (POIs, Points of Interest) from Open Street Map. I imported the data from OSM into different databases and formats and I wanted to query it.

I’ll show 3 queries: from MongoDB, from PostgreSQL (tables using Osmosis format), from PostgreSQL (tables using osm2psql format).

POIs from MongoDB

I […]

Foreign travel advice: Spain

A few months ago I was researching how safe it is to travel to a few countries. I used the Foreign Travel Advice webpage from the British government.

I thought to do a bit of “quality control” of their information. What do they say about countries that I know well?

So I went to read […]

Llibre: Los Ăšltimos Libres

Fa poc que he acabat el llibre “Los Ăšltimos Libres” de Victor M. Valenzuela. Es pot comprar en format epub o en format paper.

M’ha agradat molt! L’autor Ă©s enginyer informĂ tic, el llibre Ă©s fĂ cil de llegir i m’ha enganxat molt. Es pot llegir en pocs dies ja que Ă©s curt i fĂ cil de llegir.

[…]

London LOOP finished

Last June I mentioned in another blog post: on the last weekend of April I started the London LOOP (London Outer Orbital Circle).

In the first weekend of October I finished it! 240 Km, 15 stages (officially 23 stages but I followed a book that divided it into 15 stages).

The London LOOP has been […]

Python UK Conference 2014: very personal point of view

Like in 2013 I attended the Pycon-UK conference in Coventry. Amazing conference, I went to many talks with different topics: Python itself, high performance Python, testing software, some more social talks, the always interesting lightning talks, etc.

I could write about many of the talks but some people are already doing it in the PostConf […]

London-Barcelona metro unexpected differences

There are many webpages talking about the London Underground. The oldest in the world, very iconical, unused stations, etc.

Here I just want to compare a few things between the London Underground and Barcelona metro.

One of the subtle differences is the escalator speed. Yes, the escalators in the London Underground are noticeably faster than […]