Grant’s Tobacco shop

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña

Montecristo hope operation package

While walking in the financial district of San Francisco, I stopped by Grant’s Tobacco shop. It’s a traditional tobacco shop that’s been around since 1849. I usually don’t stop by any tobacco shops in the US because cuban cigars are illegal, and most of the cigars I smoke are cubans. But I got curious about some humidors and decided to step inside and take a look.

Turns out they were having a small event, thanks to Montecristo (my favorite cigar brand) and they were selling the Operation Hope package, a box with 5 cigars, two of them limited edition, a lighter and a cap for $50 USD and the profits would contribute to the Montecristo Relief Organization, helping victims of hurricanes and other natural and economic disasters in the Caribbean.

They also offered free drinks and snacks, and since it was a great deal and also a good cause, I bought the package. As if not all of that was pretty good already, there was also a raffle for a beautiful Montecristo cigar ash tray and a cutter.

That night I hanged at the shop for a while to smoke one of the cigars (the one missing in the picture) at the smoking corner they have, have some snacks, and met a few cool people. Later on I was hanging around at some clubs with some of them. It’s fun and interesting to meet new people when travelling, and Grant’s shop made it very easy for a shy foreigner like me to socialize and have a good time among strangers.

Later, while I was travelling back to Mexico, I checked my emails and to my surprise, I won the raffle! The guys at Grant’s Tobacco were so cool that they are even sending me my prize all the way to Monterrey, Mexico! I’ll post pictures of the prize as soon as I get it.

I really had a great time at the shop smoking a cigar and talking to people. Everyone is very friendly and the staff give you good tips and advice on cigar care and smoking. If you’re in San Francisco and enjoy tobacco, don’t forget to stop by Grant’s.


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Some days at San Francisco

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña

San Francisco cable cart

I went to San Francisco last week and after the few things I had the compromise to do, I decided to walk around the city and practice my photography skills.

I stayed at a very cheap hotel, not knowing well the surroundings, let’s just say that 9th and Mission street is not a very touristic neighborhood to be. Luckily the hotel room was nice, clean and functional, so I decided not to cancel my reservation and stayed there.

Walking down Market street I stumbled upon a farmer’s market at Civic Center. It’s nice to see all the natural products by local farmers being sold there. I used to go to something similar in Mexico with my grandmother when I was little, so it kind of brings back some memories.

Farmer's market at Civic Center

Cello player and seagull

Horse statue

There was a kind of “food corner” in the market, lots of different options, mixed food scents in the air, it all made me hungry. I was in a very touristic mode, so I wondered if I could get a classic american street hotdog. I know, this is not New York, its California, so I couldn’t find any hotdogs (at least not right there). I found crepes, lots of mexican food (which I refuse to take, since for me it’s…well, just food, but with a crappy taste), and vegetarian options. Then I saw a Greek food stand, and I’ve never before had greek so I tried that. I enjoyed it a lot, very tasteful, loved the lamb and pita. Still, why aren’t there a traditional hotdog cart?

Greek Food stand

Then I bought some tickets for the musical Hair at the Golden Gate theater. The actors on stage interact with the audience a lot and the music is great (oh and there was this brief moment of full nudity on stage). I’ve only seen the movie before, and expected the play to have the same storyline, but it doesn’t. It’s the same topic and all but very different storyline.

Hair musical at Golden Gate Theater

Cable cart

Later that day, I saw the Occupy San Francisco movement by the Federal Reserve Bank building.

Port of San Francisco

Men statue

The next day I took another long walk (about 28 kms) all day along the bay and returned just in time to do some shopping around Union Square. I intended to take a tour to Alcatraz, but I couldn’t make it. I didn’t had the schedule at hand, so if you’re planning to take the tour, don’t be like me and visit the Alcatraz cruises website to have the information ready beforehand. It was a great sunny (but not hot) day and I hope the photos came out great as well.

Pier

Embarcadero street

49ers Flag

Seagull by the bay

Golden Gate at distance

San Francisco city sunshine

Street silver demon

Dog man

Street jazz players

Ended the day with some shopping around Union Square, where there was ice skating going on.

All in one band musician

Union Square's skating

View from Union Square's Cheesecake Factory

Macy's

Although it is always nice to have some self time and walk around a big city observing and taking pictures of all the interesting things (and some not as interesting) around you. If I didn’t have my camera, I don’t know what I would’ve been doing by myself around the city. Unfortunately, I’m not in any of my pictures, since I had no one to photograph me.

Cart by night

Travelling alone can get boring sometimes. The good part of it is that I got to do exactly what I wanted, go wherever I wanted and walked kilometers with no one else but myself to complain about it. I really enjoy those silent reflexion moments for one self.

Night street view

Have you gone travelling alone? What activities you like to do on those trips to not get bored or homesick?

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Occupy San Francisco images

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña

The 99% is waking up

Last week I went to San Francisco to do some business, and having some extra days I decided to get outside and take a few shots around the city.

Little did I know that there was an Occupy San Francisco movement over at the Federal Reserve bank building. It was an interesting and shocking thing to see all those signs and tents and people camping there. Everyone was in peace and calm. People got close to them to talk and exchange ideas, there were books and publications scattered everywhere and they had some kind of lectures and classes at certain times.

The funny thing was the coincidence that earlier on that same day I went to see the musical Hair, at the Golden Gate theater. It’s sad so see how similar the movement for peace in the 70′s is to the movement for freedom (and many other things) today, because it’s a sign that not much has changed, or a confirmation that history has repeating cycles. One way or the other, it’s not good progress for humanity.

Here are some of the pictures I took of the campings and the signs and some Hair music to accompany them:

01 Let the Sunshine In by Ritter Hanz

journalism

three strikes

occupy

end the fed

enuf

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Occupy Love

SFPD Police line, do not cross

give something, borrow something, take something

Occupy tents

99 occupy

occupy daylight

no life is illegal

Freedom is a hoax

What do you think about the movement? Have you participated in one? Tell me what you think in the comments, as a foreigner, I’d like to learn more about it.

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Identica-mode 1.2 with OAuth support released

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña

The time has come to set up a new stable release for Emacs Identica-mode microblogging client.

It’s been almost a year since last release, but many people have been following the project’s progress through the git repository updates.

identica-mode 1.2

Download

Download the identica-mode 1.2

The two most relevant features of this release is first, support for OAuth (requires using oauth.el). This enables users who log in via OpenID accounts to be able to use Identica-mode as their client. The other big feature is the support for conversation timelines. Now you can press C-c C-c while cursor is on a notice to display that notice’s conversation timeline. Conversation timelines are not available on statusnet servers prior to 1.0 version, since the API didn’t include conversation ids until then. I’d like to give special thanks Kevin Granade for his time and effort on these two very requested features.

To use OAuth authentication instead of the default plain auth, add this to your .emacs file: 

(setq identica-auth-mode "oauth")

Another very requested feature for those who won’t switch to OAuth, is to store the login credentials in a safer way than storing it in plain text in your elisp configuration files. Emacs can read authinfo and netrc files for authentication information. You can even encrypt the authinfo using EasyPG.

All you need to do is create a file ~/.authinfo (~/.authinfo.gpg if using encryption) and add the following: 

machine servername login yourusername password yourpassword

Replace servername with your server (if connecting to Identica service, use identi.ca as server name), yourusername and yourpassword with your information. If you setup your authinfo file, you don’t need to set identica-password variable anywhere.

What’s new

  • OAuth support
  • Added support for authentication credentials stored in ~./authinfo (plain or encrypted) and ~/.netrc files instead of plain text elisp
  • Expand short urls by pressing ‘e’ while cursor is on a short url
  • Added is.gd to url shortening services
  • Added countdown minibuffer-prompt style
  • Retrieve server config page to set text limit of notices
  • Added conversation timeline support (only for APIs in Status.net 1.0+), when pressing C-c C-c over a notice it will display its conversation timeline
  • Added zebra stripes styling to timeline

Bug fixes

  • Fix highlighting of notices that are a reply to you but don’t have your nick in the text (as status.net 1.0 change)
  • Always crop avatars to 48×48 pixels
  • Improved vertical spacing between notices
  • Fixed icon placement when displaying dents in reverse order
  • Identica-mode buffer will no longer get killed on network error
  • Fixed support for gravatar images
  • Lots of code cleanup
  • Many other minor bugfixes

There is also a mailing list for the project to discuss any new features, ideas or bugs.

Hope you like the new release and thanks to everyone who during this cycle has spent time reporting bugs or sending patches. Your contributions are very valuable and keep improving this project.

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Will be speaking at FSLVallarta 2011

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña

http://www.fslvallarta.org/sites/all/themes/regalhogar/images/fslogo.png

This year I’ll be giving two talks at the Festival del Software Libre in Puerto Vallarta. This time I got invited on two topics, I’ll give my talk about DRM and for the first time I’ll be talking about Free Network Services (FNS), a topic I’ve been interested since my problems with google services and the increasing move of personal (and server) computing to the cloud. Although I definately cannot say that I do not depend on any cloud service (I do enjoy them), I am very aware of the risks. It’s not a technical talk at all, but a more philosophical one (FSF style).

I’m very happy to be invited to the event. I miss hanging around with all the friends from across the country, interesting and smart people that are always at software libre events. The exchange of ideas and debates are motivation boosters for new projects and great learning experience-sharing moments. Also the partying gets to be very hard as well… if you hang out with the right people.

It’s been a while since I went to my last free software/open source event and it’s been also quite some time since I’ve given my last talk. So I’m exited and nervous. I’m sure there’s going to be lots of interesting things going on and good stories to tell afterwards.

If you’re interested in the event’s schedule and the topics of all talks, you can consult FSLVallarta’s program.

Don’t foget to say hi if you see me over there, it’s fun meeting new people.

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From my reading links: HTML5 forms and Django, Google API playground and Python development tips

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Gabriel Saldaña
  • Making Forms fabulous with html5 Great introduction to the new HTML5 form input types and what you can do with them.
  • HTML5 – Example Form validation and styling Form elements With the new HTML5 form input types and CSS3 properties, form validation is very quick and easy, as well as nice form element presentation.
  • Head JS A very interesting utility that will load all your js scripts (jquery, google analytics, etc) in parallel so page load times get shorter, plus a lot of other nice features like new HTML5 elements styling in browsers that don’t yet support them like some versions of Internet Explorer.
  • Google APIs code playgroud I didn’t know you could play with all the Google APIs in a single webpage, testing your code as your write it.
  • GeoDjango and google maps An interesting read if you’re trying to integrate Google Maps with Django
  • HTML5 and Django form inputs How to render the new HTML5 input types with Django form classes. It doesn’t require much, really easy and fast.
  • Emacs as Python IDE A bunch of tips to have a good Emacs Python development environment. I personally don’t prefer IDEs, so I don’t use ECB but the rest is very useful.
  • Setting up a Python Environment Good advice for those coming from a PHP world and are getting started on Python development. I didn’t know about virtualenv until I had to deploy my first Django app on a shared host web server. Then it all made sense.
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