What do most people that came to Debconf via Paris have in common? We all lost our luggage.

After very quickly packing my stuff up, including a number of glass bottles for some people who will get them if they are nice to me (hi helix!), I managed to arrive well ahead in time to València's airport. I checked in, arrived to Paris-CDG with a very short time frame to change planes. I quickly got off the plane from València and followed quite blindly the indications to "flight connections", and suddenly I nearly was in the street. I started to get a bit nervious, not knowing too well were to go. I finally found the Finnair desk, and was the last one to check in for the plane and board.

This had a positive effect: I quickly stumbled upon jacobo, and we both had last minute seats in business class. During the flight I had time to have fun with a pen that spilled ink all over the place, I managed to spill my tea all over the place, and accidentally fell asleep for half an hour or so.

At the airport, we waited at the baggage claim area for our bags, in vain. Denis Barbier, Jacobo and I didn't get ours, but at least they managed to get them back later during the evening. Mine will have to wait until tomorrow evening, who knows why, so I have no clothes, toothbrush or anything until then, and what's worse, I fear so much the oil bottle will end up breaking and fuck up all my clothes.

After leaving my stuff at Guillem's place, we went to Otaniemi, and I met a big number of people, including helix, Alfie, gwolf, stargirl, marga... Incidentally, a big number of them had lost their luggage some days before, too. It's nice to see people I have never seen in person before. I'm really going to enjoy this.

By the way, it's 3:30 in the morning as I finish this entry and I'd swear the sky was never completely back tonight. It's probably getting lighter already outside!

My flight hopefully will take off in 12:10h, and I haven't packed up anything for my week at Debconf. I'm actually waiting for the laundry to be dry tomrorow morning so I have *something* to pack up, but in the end it seems like the preparation of this trip is going to be so Jordi-style again, totally unplanned in advance. Hopefully I won't forget anything while I rush to get stuff in place tomorrow morning. I know that some people would hate me forgetting the oil bottles... I really hope I can fit them in my bag without to many troubles! I keep having this vision of my bag appearing in the luggage pickup area in Helsinki's airport, pouring out a dense, golden liquid. If that happens, I hope you have plenty of clothes at home, Guillem. :)

See you in HEL, or for a few unlucky guys, at Paris CDG!

I was lucky to be in London again last week, just before the lunatics probably disrupted the city pulse for a few months. Last weekend, from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd, Canonical held the first Edubuntu summit, in preparation for their first release next October. Mark invited quite a few people involved in the development and deployment of Free Software in educational environments, including, among others, known faces like pere and Knut from Skolelinux, Juan Conde from Guadalinex, Quim Gil from Interactors and others from the K12LTSP or Schooltool projects. There were also a few teachers from the UK, and mdz, ogra, JaneW and Mark from Ubuntu. My boss Silvia Caballer also attended and presented the background and future direction of LliureX, our own regional project.

Belén and I arrived at Stansted around 40 minutes late, which proved to be critical to not catch the last underground train and be forced to try the nightly bus service. At Oxford Street, we tried to get into a few of the possible routes, but the drivers kept telling us that one wouldn't take us to Earl's Court, and we waited for the next one, and the driver would tell us it was the other one we should take. After one and a half hours of bus ping pong, and when I was totally freezing in the street, we decided to pick a taxi and go to the hotel as soon as possible. After some wait, a car that didn't look like a taxi at all stopped nearby and offered to take us. I tried to negotiate the fare before getting in, but the driver said there was nothing to talk about: £25. I prefered that to the cold I was incubating.

After the sessions, we'd go out for a walk around the city. On Friday, Juan, Juanjo, Quim, Belén and I went to a Malasian restaurant Quim recommended and we had difficulties finishing our plates and for dessert, we had some cider in an old tavern near the restaurant. The next day, Belén and I met one of her friends in Notting Hill and had dinner in an Iraqi restaurant which had a dude with an organ playing such a loud music that it was difficult to talk across the table. On Sunday, as the summit ended early, Petter, Knut, Jane, Matt, Ogra and us went for a walk around the Thames and a nearby park, but the group kept losing members as their flight hour approached.

In the end, it was Belén, Matt and me, so we headed to the Soho to look for a cheap and good Chinese restaurant, where we had dinner quite early, as the plan was to go to bed early because we had to wake up very soon to catch a plane at 7AM. After fighting with the chopsticks, we went for a walk around the area, and tried to phone some of the Debian guys around London. We were unlucky, elmo and thom were away, and we didn't have Ross's number, so the three of us ended up in another tavern driving beers and cider. When I was starting to feel drunk, Matt had enough common sense to suggest we went back to our hotel. Too late: after packing up, we had two fantastic hours of sleep before the alarms went off. We picked a taxi at 5AM which dropped us at Stansted for only £65. WTF!

Exhausted, and again frozen by the plane's air conditioning, we were back in Valencia at 11 on Monday. Just a few days later we learned about the horror in some of the stations we were around just the weekend before. What a weird feeling.

The news is running like a lightning on IRC and the net. A few minutes ago, the European Parliament voted against the Software Patents directive that so many months we've fought against. Incredibly, the final result on the vote has been 648 in favor, 18 against, 14 abstentions, which offers no doubts. There's some coverage in Spanish media in El PAIS.es. Usual Free Software sites will probably catch up within minutes.

Many thanks to all the people who have been on the first line for years, travelling to Brussels every now and then, patiently posting status updates, patiently asking the rest of us to take action, like the many website demonstrations they have coordinated, and most importantly, informing the MEPs so they know what they were voting. We owe you so much!

Now, we just hope the Comission will not try to sneak it in again in some random farming summit.

I could write about many things today, but I just saw the last 20 minutes of Independence Day. I had classified it as a "not worth the time" film when I first saw it a few years ago, but today I got reminded of a few details that made me laugh again at the stupidity of the whole thing.

It seems every spaceship out there lacks basic firewalling: we saw it in SW: A New Hope and SW: Revenge of the Sith. Independence Day goes way further when the good guys use a virus to destroy the powerful enemy.

There are other good moments, like when a young couple in the military base, under attack, say "we'll die being virgins, but we'll die together", or when a few jewish people are praying and ask someone else to join them... He objects: "but I'm not jewish", and the priest (or whatever) says "nobody's perfect". Excellent!

A few hours ago my mother told me my grandfather wouldn't last much more, and it seems a few minutes later, his heart finally ceased beating. The news hasn't had a big impact on me as he had been in coma for 14 days already, and even resisted more than we expected.

During the many visits to hospital since he had this fatal stroke, I've had time to think what are the strongest memories from him that I retain. There are two main memories from childhood.

One is when he would place us on his lap, with our backs facing him, and would sing "Digudín, digudán", while he pressed his sharp fingers all over our back, and finally would ask "¿Cuantos dedos hay encima?". That game is probably one of the things that has made me and my cousins laugh more in our lives. Besides, we rarely managed to answer correctly, so he would start again until we did.

The second wasn't so funny. Once, Marta, Borja and I were travelling with our grandparents from our small town Vall de Almonacid to Castelló. Bored and innocent as we were (I don't think we'd be more than 7 or 8 years old at the time), we started to sing "Franco, Franco, que tiene el culo blanco, la pilila azul, qué tío más gandul!", and we only needed two repetitions to get our grandfather yelling at us to shut up. We were totally frozen, and didn't understand what was going on. I have a very clear memory of what my grandmother told us to explain his anger, to the point I even remember her tone as she said this. "No canteis eso porque el abuelo quería mucho a Franco". We tried to argue that we learned the song from him, and for some reason the three of us firmly believed this, but it was totally impossible. The rest of the trip went on in total silence. How could we know the abuelo loved Franco, after all. Actually, who the heck was Franco?

So this was my biggest barrier when interacting with him: our big political differences. He was very conservative and had very strong catholic beliefs. When he had the first stroke, more than a year ago, I went to take care of him and decided it was my opportunity to get some first hand stories of how the Spanish Civil War went in Vall.

He was in the wrong side of the war, as many others who happened to fight for the contender that totally was against their beliefs. Most of the East coast was controlled by the Republic, and Vall was near one of the battle fronts. He never fought in front, by pure luck: he was too young, 14, when the war started, but the Aragonese front was still active in 1939, so he kept getting closer and closer to get enlisted. Just when he was next on the list, the Republic gave up and Franco declared his victory, even if that front never got defeated.

During the war, he was in charge of giving the military their ration of food and tobacco, while he helped digging under houses and streets to build refuges for the population. Every now and then, the sirens would go off, and people would get into the nearest shelter. If they were too far to get there in time, they would go under the stairs of their house or a similar place.

One day, my grandfather was carrying some sand from a refuge to the road, when the sirens went off, and very soon after, the frightening sound of the National airplanes could be heard approaching the town. He hid with others under the bridge that crossed over "El Caño", and waited for the bombers to go away. The sound of one of them got very close, and suddenly he felt how the bridge shaked above him. They went out and saw what happened: there was a huge bomb in a big crater in the middle of the road, just above the bridge. It didn't explode, and thanks to that I'm writing this today.

This was the last day, and maybe the only one, I had a good time speaking to him. He told me about lots of other stories about the war, and when I asked him about what happened to the church, etc., he mostly said the Republicans did what they had to do. But of course, things weren't so dramatic in my village, and even if his family kept in secret many of the valuable items of the church hiding in their house, when it was discovered, there was no repression against them, and actually most of the goods were kept until after the war.

Before his stroke I hadn't visited him for over 5 weeks, and had planned going to Castelló the following Sunday. I can't avoid feeling a bit guilty that I let so much time without visiting, more when I planned sitting again with him after lunch to see if I could learn a bit more about the War. I also wanted to tell him that every now and then, my grandmother comes to mind, which was something that he sometimes asked us about. I was four days late, unfortunately.

Researchers from the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula have just informed that after many, many years of populating Galicia, dinosaurs are finally extinct in the area.

"It's a very special moment", said one of the scientists, "as we had expected this to happen many, many years ago, but the last specimen, a small 'Fragasaurio', never gave up".

Local journalists try to analyze the new situation, as it's the first time without dinosaurs running around since the Galician autonomy started.

"We... we feel like a void. This land has been ruled by dinosaurs since the late 30's and suddenly, they are no more!"

Even if it's expected that some members of the "Friends of the Dinosaurs" tribe will whine loudly about this for a few days or weeks, nothing can stop the Galicians from having new leaders who might bring some changes to the area. Congratulations!

Forget this. My mobile phone just rang, and I see a weird, unknown and long number in the display, starting with +3585... so I pick it up at first thinking it's one of those strange numbers coming from the Generalitat. At the other end, a voice, surrounded by enough noise to make me not recognise it, speaks. "Eeeeeei, Jordiiiiiiiii!!". "Óscar?", I ask. "Nooo, sóc el Guillem!". Guillem? WTH is Guillem? One and a half seconds later, my brain connects this name to the more usual handle braindmg (I really need a nap), and everything makes sense.

So, Jesús and Guillem managed to get funding from their boss at Nokia for me to attend Debconf 5 in Helsinki. I'm grateful for their big effort, and can't wait for Debconf to start in just a few weeks. It's clearly going to be great!

Now, the question is how helix will react when we meet again. Don't abandon me like you did in Mataró!

Less than three days after my grandmother died, my mother called in and told me my grandfather Jose María was in hospital, after suffering a stroke during the night.

I've spent the last three days at the hospital, trying to find out if he'll come back from unconciousness. It seems, after 72 hours that he's not going to. All we can do is wait for the end. :(

I feel quite empty after the longest week of my life.