Revision b5995aa7f841689fae32e31d2e8a4c15b7edbd51 authored by LuisGC on 21 November 2017, 23:30:56 UTC, committed by LuisGC on 21 November 2017, 23:30:56 UTC
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<title>Luiyología</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog</link>
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<description>Luiyología - The Science that studies my interests and concerns</description>
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<pubDate>Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:41:18 +0000</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:41:18 +0000</lastBuildDate>
<item>
<title>On being a Senior Software Engineer</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/09/On_being_a_senior_software_engineer.html</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<p>For many different reasons I have had to discuss quite a lot recently about the professionalism of some people, technical and non-technical. Sometimes, because a person feels that she (I will use the feminine as neutral gender) is not being treated fairly with respect of her category, or because her performance is disappointing for others, sometimes after unfair comparisons between colleagues, ... As a common element, a diabolical concept was almost always being misused in these situations: <strong>Seniority</strong>.</p>
<p>Having several years of experience does not make you a better engineer <em>per se</em>. A very common case is that someone has experience with something but knows nothing (or knows little) about everything else. Worse than that, in some organizations the <em>senior</em> label is even used almost automatically to justify a promotion or a salary raise after a certain amount of years in the same job.</p>
<p>About 5 years ago <a href="https://www.kitchensoap.com/about-me/"><strong>John Allspaw</strong></a> (former CTO at <a href="http://etsy.com/">Etsy</a>) wrote an article called <a href="http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/"><em>On Being a Senior Engineer</em></a> that has aged very well. I would sign that article today, as it details perfectly what could be the differences between a <em>senior</em> engineer and a <strong>mature engineer</strong>. As the author says, you can expect a senior engineer to be a mature engineer, but sadly it's not always like this.</p>
<p>In his article (I recommend its complete reading) Allspaw describes a list of traits or characteristics of mature engineers:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mature engineers seek out constructive criticism of their designs</li>
<li>Mature engineers understand the non-technical areas of how they are perceived</li>
<li>Mature engineers do not shy away from making estimates, and are always trying to get better at it</li>
<li>Mature engineers have an innate sense of anticipation, even if they don’t know they do</li>
<li>Mature engineers understand that not all of their projects are filled with rockstar-on-stage work</li>
<li>Mature engineers lift the skills and expertise of those around them</li>
<li>Mature engineers make their trade-offs explicit when making judgements and decisions</li>
<li>Mature engineers don’t practice CYAE (“Cover Your Ass Engineering”)</li>
<li>Mature engineers are empathetic</li>
<li>Mature engineers are aware of cognitive biases</li>
</ul>
<p>The first thing that you need to realize is that almost all the characteristics described are non-technical. Allspaw article can be can be summarized in this quote:</p>
<p><blockquote>Being able to write a Bloom Filter in Erlang, or write multi-threaded C in your sleep is insufficient. None of that matters if no one wants to work with you. Mature engineers know that no matter how complete, elegant, or superior their designs are, it won’t matter if no one wants to work alongside them because they are <b>assholes</b></blockquote></p>
<p>If I had to choose, I'll always pick a <strong>mature</strong> engineer over any so-called senior (or even <em>ninja</em>!) in a particular technology or programming language. In fact, I would not change a good <em>junior</em> for a ninja, but that is another story that will have to be told in another moment.</p>
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<item>
<title>Susan Gerbic in Skeptics in the Pub Madrid</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/09/Susan_Gerbic_in_Skeptics_in_the_Pub_Madrid.html</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 24 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<description>
<p><center><i>This entry is also published in Spanish in <a href="http://www.escepticos.es/node/5374">the website of ARP-SAPC</a></i></center><br /></p>
<p>As you probably know, we are celebrating the <strong>XXX Anniversary</strong> of <a href="http://escepticos.es"><strong>ARP-SAPC</strong></a> with a <a href="http://www.escepticos.es/escepticos-en-el-pub">special event this next Saturday (Sep 30th)</a> with <strong>Alfonso López Borgoñoz</strong> (<a href="https://www.twitter.com/lopezborgonoz">@lopezborgonoz</a>). As an addition to this celebration, a week later we'll be honoured to host a <strong>Skeptics in the Pub Madrid</strong> special event with <strong>Susan Gerbic</strong>.</p>
<p>Affectionately called the Wikipediatrician, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Gerbic"><strong>Susan Gerbic</strong></a> is the cofounder of <strong>Monterey County Skeptics</strong> and a self-proclaimed <em>skeptical junkie</em>. Susan is also founder of the <a href="http://guerrillaskepticismonwikipedia.blogspot.com.es/"><strong>Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW)</strong> project</a>. She is a frequent contributor to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_Inquirer"><strong>Skeptical Inquirer</strong></a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticality"><strong>Skepticality Podcast</strong></a>. She is the winner of the <em>CSI In the Trenches Award</em> from 2012, <em>James Randi Award for Skepticism in the Public Interest</em> from 2013 and a Scientific and Technical Consultant for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Skeptical_Inquiry"><strong>Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI)</strong></a>.</p>
<p>Our SitP event will be the last stage for Susan in a <a href="https://fundly.com/about-time-tour-skeptical-networking-across-europe#home">huge tour all through Europe</a>. She's been (or plans to be, as the tour is currently ongoing) in Oslo (Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark), Malmö (Sweden), Prague (Czech Republic), Wrocław (Poland, for the <a href="http://euroscepticscon.org/en/">17th European Skeptics Congress</a>), Göttingen (Germany), Frankfurt (Germany), Zurich (Switzerland), Cesena (Italy, for the <a href="http://www.cicap.org/convegno/2017/">CICAPFest 2017</a>), Budapest (Hungary), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Sofia (Bulgaria) and finally Madrid. For more details about her tour, you can start with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Gerbic/videos/10155586328243771/">this video</a> of Susan explaining the details.</p>
<p>One important thing. <strong>The talk that Susan has prepared for us will be in English</strong>, although in the Q&amp;A it will be possible to make questions in Spanish and we will translate whatever is necessary. The content of the talk, as described by herself:</p>
<p><blockquote>You supported the March for Science. Now what? Susan Gerbic will be explaining why the answer is to join her project, Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW). She will explain why improving the pages for Science and Scientific Skepticism on the 10th most popular website improves education world-wide. GSoW works to support the people and organizations that do the research, write the books, organize the conferences and take the heat from the anti-science and paranormal world. GSoW gives them the best possible Wikipedia pages possible, while following all the rules of Wikipedia. The GSoW has had a large impact on education around the world since 2010. The GSoW has written and rewritten over 400 Wikipedia pages in many languages. All training is done online, self-paced and with a personal trainer. All GSoW members join the Secret Cabal hidden away on Facebook where new recruits learn the secret handshake. Previous pages include; Spontaneous Human Combustion, Facilitated Communication, Catherine de Jong, Cornelis de Jager, Massimo Polidoro, Massimo Pigliucci, Leo Igwe, Gábor Hraskó, VoF, ARP-SAPC, Klub Sceptyków Polskich, Chupacabras, CICAP, CSICOP, Association française pour l'information scientifique, GWUP, and many many more.</blockquote></p>
<p>The poster, masterfully designed by Emilio Molina (<a href="https://twitter.com/ej_molina_c">@ej_molina_c</a>):</p>
<center>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/09/EeeP_Madrid_8_Octubre_2017.jpg" alt="Susan Gerbic in Skeptics in the Pub Madrid">
<div class="caption">Susan Gerbic in Skeptics in the Pub Madrid</div>
</div>
</center>
<p>As usual, the entrance is free. During the realization of this cultural activity is allowed the presence of minors under 18, provided they do not consume alcoholic beverages, and children under 16 if accompanied by a parent or guardian.</p>
<p>We'll be waiting for you at the <a href="http://moeclub.com/">Moe Club</a>, at Alberto Alcocer 32 on Sunday, October 8th at 19:00.</p>
</description>
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<item>
<title>Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (5 of 5)</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html</guid>
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<p>This is the fifth and last part of my chronicle about our trip through the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, you can read the rest here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (1 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (2 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (3 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (4 of 5)</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Day 5</h1>
<p>Our last stage started in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obertraun"><strong>Obertraun</strong></a> and ended in <strong>Madrid</strong>. After a fabulous trip around Austria, we decided to spent our last morning in a quite different environment, visiting the <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/"><strong>Mauthausen memorial</strong></a>.</p>
<h2>Mauthausen</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp"><strong>Mauthausen concentration camp</strong></a> (1938-1945) was one of the first massive concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. The construction started just two weeks after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss"><strong>Anschluss</strong></a>, when Austria was annexed into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Reich">Third Reich</a>. Since the beginning it was labeled as <em>Stufe III</em> (Grade III), which meant that it was intended to be one of the toughest camps, and never lost this horrible classification. Mauthausen was mainly used for incarceration and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_through_labour">extermination through labour</a> of political prisoners, forced to work both in the expansion of the camp itself and in granite quarries nearby. Their daily lives were shaped by hunger, arbitrary violence and death.</p>
<p>The main complex in Mauthausen was declared national memorial site in 1949 and it's also a museum since 1975, 30 years after the camp's liberation. As they <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/The-Mauthausen-Memorial">state in the web</a>:</p>
<p><blockquote>The Mauthausen Memorial is a former crime scene, a place of memory, a cemetery for the mortal remains of thousands of those murdered here and, increasingly, a site of political and historical education. Its task is to ensure public awareness of the history of the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps, the memory of its victims, and the responsibility borne by the perpetrators and onlookers. At the same time it seeks to promote public critical engagement with this history in the context of its significance for the present and future.</blockquote></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Visitor-Information/Opening-times-and-prices">visit is completely free</a> and you only need to pay for the <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Visitor-Information/Educational-services">guided tours and workshops</a>, although there is a <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.whi.mauthausenaudioguide&hl=es">free audioguide app</a> for the complete memorial and museum. We chose the latter option and it was very useful and interesting.</p>
<p>Several weeks have passed since our visit and I still remember perfectly the sensations that I experienced there. In addition, we had the bad luck that it started raining when we arrived and halfway through the visit it started to rain very very hard. I have seldom seen so much rain. Maybe it was good luck, because it forced us to stay inside the barracks and prevented us to hear anything else but rain and thunders despite being surrounded by groups of visitors in other buildings. The climate was aligned with the sad and withered spirit of the place.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Mauthausen_wreaths.jpg" alt="Mauthausen wreaths">
<div class="caption">Mauthausen wreaths<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Before entering the remains of the concentration camp, the visitor has to cross a couple of dozen memorials, erected by various countries and colectives that lost their citizens in Mauthausen. Curiously, some of these countries no longer exist (like <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||62">Yugoslavia</a>), others did not exist at that time (like <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||72">Ukraine</a>) and most striking of all, one of the memorials is dedicated directly to the <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||71">Spanish Republicans</a> (as you can see in the featured image), since several thousand political prisoners from the Republican side were taken there. Some memorials were <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||53">large and epic</a>, others <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||65">small and humble</a>, but all were breathtaking.</p>
<p>Even now in 2017, there was not a single flag of Spain in the whole camp other than the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic"><strong>Second Spanish Republic</strong> (1931-1939)</a> one, even inside the <a href="https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual-Tour#map||78">secular chapel</a> where the flags from all the victims waved. I think it is a lovely and wise gesture.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Mauthausen_flags_pavillion.jpg" alt="Spanish Second Republic flag in Mauthausen">
<div class="caption">Spanish Second Republic flag in Mauthausen<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Thanks to the deluge, during the last part of the visit we had the camp practically empty for us.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Mauthausen_panoramic.jpg" alt="Mauthausen panoramic">
<div class="caption">Mauthausen panoramic<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>After having visited <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp"><strong>Auschwitz</strong></a> last year, the visit to the rest of the concentration camp inflicted less impression on me. Some anecdotes and brutal events of Mauthausen are unique, but both the figures and how to show what happened at Auschwitz are much more overwhelming.</p>
<p>I won't go into more details about the camp itself to avoid any spoiler. Mauthausen is an essential visit whether you have visited other concentration camps or not. <strong>Please go</strong>.</p>
</description>
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<title>ING Security Summer Camp 2017</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/07/ING_Security_Summer_Camp_2017.html</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/07/ING_Security_Summer_Camp_2017.html</guid>
<description>
<p>Last week I had the huge pleasure to participate in a week-long <strong>Security Summer Camp</strong> organized by the Information Security department of <a href="https://www.ing.es/"><strong>ING Spain</strong></a>. The agenda was very promising and implied some theory and lots of practice, ending with an <strong>Escape the Room</strong> game and a 2,5 days long <strong>Capture The Flag</strong> hacking competition. Several speakers from the Infosec Squad prepared talks and workshops about different topics, focusing on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic">Ethical Hacking</a>, secure development, <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/server-hardening">server hardening</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence">OSINT</a>.</p>
<p>Everything was perfectly prepared and organized. I'll remark (as her colleagues also did) the invaluable effort of <strong>Martina Matarí</strong> (<a href="https://twitter.com/da3n3rys">@da3n3rys</a>) coordinating everything. She also prepared a talk, the Escape the Room and the CTF competition by herself. Thanks Martina and company, it was impressive!!</p>
<p>Let me also say that it's worthy of praise for a company like ING to allow and promote this kind of events, held mostly in working hours for more than 70-80 participants.</p>
<h1>Talks and Workshops</h1>
<h3>Sleeping with the Enemy: Ethical Hacking workshop</h3>
<p><strong>Beatriz Portela</strong> (<a href="https://twitter.com/usr0000">@usr0000</a>) gave a series of workshops focusing on the most common and basic vectors of attack, learning what a vulnerability is and how to take advantage of it.</p>
<h3>Server hardening</h3>
<p><strong>Sergi Llorente</strong> explained how to protect a server from malicious attackers: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack">DDoS</a> prevention, firewall policies, optimal configurations, password and banning policies and even physical attacks prevention policies. Very complete, and ended with a contest asking all the audience to infiltrate a prepared virtual machine with a weak spot, retrieving the admin password and getting access to a console with admin rights on it.</p>
<h3>Secure development</h3>
<p><strong>Daniel Medianero</strong> (<a href="https://twitter.com/dmedianero">@dmedianero</a>) prepared a good combination of theory and practice regarding bad smells and vulnerabilities in code, both in backend and frontend. He even prepared an online survey for the audience to vote if a given code snippet presented a vulnerability and of what kind. It was very educational and entertaining.</p>
<p><strong>Vicente Carreras</strong> (<a href="https://twitter.com/vicentecarreras">@vicentecarreras</a>) checked if the attendees listened carefuly enough in Daniel's talks with a contest by teams.</p>
<h3>OSINT, don't be part of it</h3>
<p><strong>Martina Matarí</strong> (<a href="https://twitter.com/da3n3rys">@da3n3rys</a>) talked about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence">Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)</a>, the danger it entails and what proactive methods exist to monitor it and specially to stop being a part of it.</p>
<h1>Escape the Room</h1>
<p>Sadly I couldn't participate, but everyone said it was awesome. I'll just leave you with a glimpse:</p>
<center>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Con esto, un bot de <a href="https://twitter.com/telegram">@telegram</a> y mucho ingenio se ha currado <a href="https://twitter.com/da3n3rys">@da3n3rys</a> un pedazo de <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScapeRoom?src=hash">#ScapeRoom</a> 🔦🔒🔑 <a href="https://t.co/HrM1ydDAmt">pic.twitter.com/HrM1ydDAmt</a></p>&mdash; Beatriz (@usr0000) <a href="https://twitter.com/usr0000/status/888418392318898176">21 de julio de 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</center>
<h1>Capture The Flag</h1>
<p>I was enrolled in the CTF since I signed up for the Summer Camp, but after a hard week with a lot of issues (work related and not) I wasn't sure if I was going to contribute properly to my team. All it took was for Martina to subtly insist and I forgot about the weariness and recovered my eagerness to participate. Anyway, I had plans to stay at home during the weekend.</p>
<p>For those who don't know what a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag#Computer_security">Capture The Flag</a> is (in this context), I'll copy the description from the <a href="https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/">cfttime.org</a> site:</p>
<p><blockquote>Capture the Flag (CTF) is a special kind of information security competitions. There are three common types of CTFs: Jeopardy, Attack-Defence and mixed.</p>
<p><strong>Jeopardy-style CTFs</strong> has a couple of questions (tasks) in range of categories. For example, Web, Forensic, Crypto, Binary or something else. Team can gain some points for every solved task. More points for more complicated tasks usually. The next task in chain can be opened only after some team solve previous task. Then the game time is over sum of points shows you a CTF winer. Famous example of such CTF is <a href="http://ctftime.org/ctf/1/">DEF CON CTF quals</a>.</p>
<p>Well, <strong>attack-defence</strong> is another interesting kind of competitions. Here every team has own network (or only one host) with vulnarable services. Your team has time for patching your services and developing exploits usually. So, then organizers connects participants of competition and the wargame starts! You should protect own services for defence points and hack opponents for attack points. Historically this is a first type of CTFs, everybody knows about <a href="http://ctftime.org/ctf/2/">DEF CON CTF</a> - something like a World Cup of all other competitions.</p>
<p>Mixed competitions may vary possible formats. It may be something like wargame with special time for task-based elements (like <a href="http://ctftime.org/ctf/5/">UCSB iCTF</a>).</p>
<p>CTF games often touch on many other aspects of information security: <strong>cryptography</strong>, <strong>stego</strong>, <strong>binary analysis</strong>, <strong>reverse engeneering</strong>, <strong>mobile security</strong> and others. Good teams generally have strong skills and experience in all these issues.<br/></blockquote></p>
<p>The participation on this competition was lower than for the rest of the Summer Camp, as expected taking place in the weekend. From my team (randomly selected from all participants) we were only two of us left. I didn't know my partner, but that didn't stop us from organizing ourselves quickly to start solving problems from the same Friday evening. From the beginning I discovered that my partner was a bright and hard working guy, and soon we understood each other very well (<a href="https://twitter.com/Jaume_Salas"><em><strong>Jaume</strong></em></a> <em>eres un crack</em>).</p>
<p>The challenge was a Jeopardy-style CTF and consisted on solving tasks with difficulties from 1 to 5 distributed in several categories. Each solved task represented a <em>conquered</em> country (as you can see in the map). Optionally, the first team to conquer a country gets more points than the rest. The categories where:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography"><strong>Criptography</strong></a> - cryptography tests, from basic to advanced ones</li>
<li><strong>Forensics</strong> - Forensic analysis from network logs, mobile images and other operating systems</li>
<li><strong>Quiz</strong> - Questions about hacker culture</li>
<li><strong>Reconnaissance</strong> - Searching for people, machines, websites or data starting only with small hints</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering"><strong>Reverse engineering</strong></a> - Cracking several kinds of files</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis"><strong>Steganography</strong></a> - Finding hidden messages in known file formats</li>
<li><strong>Web Hacking</strong> - Putting into practice what was learned during the ethical hacking talks</li>
</ul>
<p>I won't spoil here any of the tasks, I'll only say that for a level 2 cryptography task I spent around 3-4 hours on Sunday. It took me several steps with different types of encryption (which you had to guess) to get the final result (with great relief and joy). There are a lot of examples in the Internet and for some of them you can even find the solution published by a participant.</p>
<p>It was thrilling, very very funny and I learned a lot. The other participants had very good level and competition was fierce. We struggled to lead the scoreboard almost all the tournament, we managed to solve almost all the tasks to avoid a comeback from our pursuers <strong>and finally WE WON! Go StarHack Team!!!</strong></p>
<p>Here you have the Final Scoreboard. It can be observed that there was scoring activity during almost all the weekend, nights included. <strong>Kudos</strong> for all the participants :-)</p>
<center>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/ING_CTF_2017_final_scoreboard.png" alt="ING CTF 2017 - Final Scoreboard">
<div class="caption">ING CTF 2017 - Final Scoreboard</div>
</div>
</center>
<p>The prize for the winners (I discovered it on Monday, I did not care during the contest) was a fabulous <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/"><strong>Raspberry Pi 3 Model B</strong></a> Pack. Now I have three different Raspi devices so <strong>I need ideas</strong>, I'm taking advantage of one of them only :-)</p>
</description>
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<title>Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (4 of 5)</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 1 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html</guid>
<description>
<p>This is the fourth part of my chronicle about our trip through the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, you can read the rest here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (1 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (2 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (3 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (5 of 5)</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Day 4</h1>
<p>Our fourth stage started in <a href="http://www.lauterbacher.at/"><em>Gästehaus Lauterbacher</em></a>, a splendid guesthouse in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumarkt_am_Wallersee"><strong>Neumarkt am Wallersee</strong></a>. Quite off our route because we couldn't find anything affordable in Mondsee. We wanted a good place to rest after a hard day 3, and Lauterbacher was more than good. The place itself was nice and the owners were marvellous with us. I'll seriously consider returning to this place if I ever come back to the region.</p>
<p>And thus it began the most awaited stage of the trip.</p>
<h2>Postalm</h2>
<p>On our way to Hallstatt we drived through <a href="https://www.postalm.at/"><strong>Postalm</strong></a>, a mountain pass which is part of a very well preserved and protected Natural Park. Just to cross the area you need to pay a tax (5€ per adult, 2 per children and so on). Normally you'll pay to spend the morning, the day or the weekend inside: it's full of hiking routes, mountain bike tracks and even several ski slopes for the winter.</p>
<p>As it was early in the morning, it was almost empty. We only came across a couple of cars and several herds of cows. The scenery was beautiful: everything was green, mist here and there, and almost no sign of mankind except a few piles of stacked wood and the road itself.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Postalm.jpg" alt="Postalm">
<div class="caption">Postalm, paradise of Solitude and Nature<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>I loved the place, although we only stopped a couple of times to make pictures. Another place that I hope to return in the future with my hiking equipment.</p>
<h2>Gosau</h2>
<p>Our next stop was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosau"><strong>Gosau</strong></a>. We also spent less time than expected here, we were eager to arrive Hallstatt as soon as possible. We crossed the town a couple of times, made some pictures, visited a lake,... great if it was not what we had been doing the past three days.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Gosau.jpg" alt="Gosau">
<div class="caption">The catholic and evangelist churches, disputing the valley<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<h2>Hallstatt</h2>
<p>And finally, we arrived <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt"><strong>Hallstatt</strong></a>, the main destination of the entire trip. I generally liked it and of course it's very beautiful, but I must say that it might be overrated (imho).</p>
<p>The first thing that we did was to go up to the <a href="https://www.salzwelten.at/en/home/"><em>Salz Welten</em> (Salt World) complex</a> using a funicular. The views were as amazing as this during the climb:</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Hallstatt_Salzbergbahn.jpg" alt="Southern part of Hallstatt">
<div class="caption">Southern part of Hallstatt, with the Salzbergbahn station<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Right after ascending you'll find what they call the <i>World Heritage View</i> (with the corresponding restaurant and souvenir shop): an impressive viewpoint from which you can see much of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallst%C3%A4tter_See">Hallstätter See</a> lake and just below, small (because it is small) the old town of Hallstatt on the lake shore.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Hallstatt_World_Heritage_View.jpg" alt="Hallstatt World Heritage View">
<div class="caption">Hallstatt World Heritage View, with a group selfie using a drone<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Hallstatt_Salz_Welten.jpg" alt="Hallstatt Salz Welten">
<div class="caption"><i>Miners</i> sheltering from the rain in the Hallstatt Salt Mine <br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>They claim that the Hallstatt Salt Mine is the oldest salt mine in Europe, but what they have there is more a tourist trap (as we guessed beforehand) than an historical or practical recreation. Yes, during the visit you go underground and they even give you a miner outfit, but the visit consists almost exclusively of videos and light effects.</p>
<p>What makes the visit <em>unique</em> are wooden slides by which you descend from some galleries to others. It's curious, but after the second one it's not that thrilling and with a big group visiting the mines it's bottleneck after bottleneck. These slides are the reason behind the miner outfit, because apart of them the risk of staining or tearing your clothes is null. A curious thing, being a mine.</p>
<p>But maybe I'm biased, after visiting in 2016 the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine"><strong>Wieliczka Salt Mine</strong></a> in Poland, near Krakow. Wieliczka is a really huge mine, the areas that are visitable are much more impressive and the information is infinite times more interesting.</p>
<p>Luckily for you as future visitors, the funicular ticket to visit at least the World Heritage View can be purchased separately from the entrance to the mines.</p>
<p>With that bittersweet flavor, we went down again to visit the old town, full of restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops. The best approach to visit Hallstatt is to lose yourself in its streets, alleys and stairs. I liked some hidden corners more than the typical streets or squares. In fact, what could be a very cool area for visitors (next to the church) is used as parking and therefore is full of cars. Cars and vans can be seen on any <i>postcard picture</i>, as this one:</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Hallstatt_tourist_picture.jpg" alt="Hallstatt typical tourist picture">
<div class="caption">Hallstatt from the <i>postcard picture</i> spot<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>And I say <i>postcard picture</i> because since you enter the town there are signs for you to go to the spot from which the <i>postcard picture</i> can be made. Looks like the spot it's important for them, so I added <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4844412062">the viewpoint to OpenStreetMap</a> :-)</p>
<p>We took dozens of postcard pictures and postcard selfies, struggling to avoid that other tourists could appear. It was packed full of people.</p>
<p>A very cool thing about Hallstatt is that the cemetery is located between the houses that surround the catholic church. There is so little place to bury people there that every ten years bones used to be exhumed and removed into an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary">ossuary</a>, to make room for new burials. A collection of elaborately decorated skulls with the deceased's name, profession and date of death inscribed on them is on display in a small chapel.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Hallstatt_Beinhaus.jpg" alt="Hallstatt Beinhaus">
<div class="caption">Hallstatt Beinhaus, where you can show off your skull forever<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Apparently it's possible to leave written in your will that you want your skull to end there. Think about it.</p>
<h2>Obertraun</h2>
<p>We ended the day (and we could also say our Romantikstraße trip) in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obertraun"><strong>Obertraun</strong></a>, another touristic place just in front of Hallstatt in the lakeshore. Obertraun also has it's own funicular with caves, mines and breath-taking views, the <a href="http://www.dachstein-salzkammergut.com/en/dachstein/dachstein/">Dachstein Salzkammergut</a>, but as it was raining and very foggy we prefered to stay in the lakeshore.</p>
<p>Despite the heavy rain and the mist, we took a couple of glasses of the wine we had bought in Kremsmünster and went for a walk. In the lakeshore there were several floating platforms, ready to receive bathers in the summer. We toured the entire village and we even entered a small forest in the mouth of the Koppentraun river to search for a caché (and it was worth it!).</p>
<p>After starting to worry about not find any open restaurant, we discovered the perfect place (and it was beside our hotel): Kegelbahn, a restaurant with typical local food, and a small bowling alley! After a delicious onion soup, a superb goulash and an exquisite cheesecake, we occupied the bowling alley until they closed the place. It was such a fun and unexpected moment.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/07/Obertraun_bowling_alley.jpg" alt="Obertraun bowling alley">
<div class="caption">In Obertraun, throwing bowls like there's no tomorrow<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Our visit on the fifth and last day is not strictly part of the Romantikstraße route, but it'll be part of my review anyway.</p>
<p><strong>Stay tuned for the last episode!</strong></p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (3 of 5)</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html</guid>
<description>
<p>This is the third part of my chronicle about our trip through the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, you can read the rest here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (1 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (2 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (4 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (5 of 5)</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Day 3</h1>
<p>After two days visiting splendid places with invaluable surprises, we finally decided to discard a short visit to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzburg"><strong>Salzburg</strong></a> in order to spend more time on each stage of our trip. We wanted to take advantage of our rental car and Salzbug deserves to be visited more calmly (and you don't need a car to go there). For similar reasons, we also ruled out going to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenwerfen_Castle"><strong>Hohenwerfen Castle</strong></a>.</p>
<p>I think it was the right decision, because it allowed us to make the most of the remaining of our road trip.</p>
<h2>Sankt Wolfgang im Salzkammergut</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Wolfgang_im_Salzkammergut"><strong>Sankt Wolfgang im Salzkammergut</strong></a> is one of the most touristic places of Austria. I suspect that I'd have prefered to visit this town 15-20 years ago, now it's excessively exploited touristically. In the narrow streets of the center I had the feeling of being inside a theme park, and unfortunately one with many more shops than attractions. It is possible that the shops and restaurants themselves are nowadays the attractions. Not for me.</p>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Schafbergbahn.jpg" alt="Schafbergbahn trains crossing">
<div class="caption">Schafbergbahn trains crossing<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>But still we had a great time there.</p>
<p>We started the day by climbing on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schafberg_Railway"><strong>Schafbergbahn</strong></a>, a rack railway leading in the warmer half of the year from almost the lakeshore of the <em>Wolfgangsee</em> lake to the summit of the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yc6umwwp"><strong>Schafberg</strong> mountain</a> (1,783 m). From the viewpoints of Schafberg it is possible to see 9 of the main lakes of Austria, countless mountains and an infinite 360º landscape.</p>
<p>Initially it reminded me to a small version of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfrau_Railway"><strong>Jungfraubahn</strong></a>, which I visited in 2013. Saving the differences because the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfraujoch"><em>Jungfraujoch</em></a> station is the highest station in Europe (3,454 m), the line is more than twice as long and the amount of visitors is probably exponentially greater in the Jungfrau.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, due to some construction works in the railway, the train only reached the <strong>Schafbergalpe</strong> (1,363 m), an intermediate railway halt with a big guest house, a couple of private houses and traces of many hiking trails.</p>
<p>Despite not being on the mountaintop, the views were overwhelming. We wandered around the area, taking lots of pictures but as you can imagine they don't capture the feeling of being up there surrounded by such a wonderful environment. For my next visit I promise to bring adequate equipment to do some hiking route.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Schafbergalpe.jpg" alt="Staring into the endless mountains at Schafbergalpe">
<div class="caption">Staring into the endless mountains at Schafbergalpe<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>After the descent came one of the funniest moments of the trip. As we saw in many other places, on the lakeshore of Sankt Wolfgang there were some boat-rental locations. Instead of renting a paddle boat, we chose an small boat with electric engine to try to make a longer trip through the Wolfgangsee lake. In the end, our boat wasn't much faster than a paddle boat but at least could entertain ourselves doing the clown on board instead of pedaling.</p>
<p>Note to my wise readers: What translation to English do you suggest for <em>"hacer el pertur"</em>?</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Wolfgangsee_sailing.jpg" alt="Sailing on the Wolfgangsee">
<div class="caption"><i>Sailing</i> on the Wolfgangsee<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Apart from amusing ourselves stupidly, from the boat we could contemplate the town from its best perspective. In the next picture you can perfectly see what I mean, a <em>postcard</em> view with the main landmarks: the catholic Church of Sainkt Wolfgang and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Horse_Inn"><strong>Im Weißen Rößl</strong> (The White Horse Inn)</a>. The inn (now an expensive hotel with a couple of fine restaurants) is very popular for a successful operetta of the same name in which the protagonist is a bartender of the inn desperately in love with the owner of The White Horse. The show has been performed several times mainly across Germany and Austria, but in the 1930s it was even featured on Broadway and the West End of London. There are also several movie and TV series adaptations.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Sainkt_Wolfgang_postcard_picture.jpg" alt="Postcard picture of Sainkt Wolfgang im Salzkammergut">
<div class="caption"><i>Postcard</i> picture of Sainkt Wolfgang im Salzkammergut, with the Church of Sainkt Wolfgang and the <b>Im Weißen Rößl</b> (the yellow building)<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>We tried to escape from the tourist traps as much as we could, but in Sainkt Wolfgang it was a really difficult task to achieve. Finally we had lunch in <a href="http://hubertuskeller.com/"><em>Hubertuskeller</em></a>. It was very good and not absurdly expensive.</p>
<h2>Bad Ischl</h2>
<p>For the afternoon we improvised a visit to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ischl"><strong>Bad Ischl</strong></a> and it was our main mistake of the trip, but it was our fault and not because the city is not interesting.</p>
<p>The center of Bad Ischl is very beautyful and it's very well maintained, but the main attraction is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiservilla"><strong>Kaiservilla</strong></a>, summer residence of the Austrian Imperial family, and we couldn't see it because it was closed. The town is also famous for it's salt mines and offers several health spas, but we didn't have time to enjoy them. We walked throught the center, we searched for a couple of cachés and we left to reach Mondsee before sunset.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Bad_Ischl.jpg" alt="Post Office and the Trinkhalle in Bad Ischl">
<div class="caption">The Post Office and the <b>Trinkhalle</b> in Bad Ischl<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<h2>Mondsee</h2>
<p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/y93dqhp2"><strong>Mondsee</strong></a> is famous for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondsee_Abbey"><em>Mondsee Abbey</em></a> and the <em>Basilica of Saint Michael</em>, inside which it was filmed the wedding scene of the film <a href="http://tinyurl.com/y9dphtp9"><em>The Sound of Music</em></a>. We did not arrive in time to visit the church but at least we managed to quietly stroll around the village.</p>
<p>Following a recommendation we tasted a local variety of wine and an assortment of local cheeses, and they were good but nothing special. We enjoyed particularly the Strandpromenade, from which we could see the sunset falling on the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yd5c2h4a"><em>Mondsee</em> lake</a>. I've just discovered in Wikipedia that Mondsee is one of Austria's last privately owned lakes. In August 2008, the owner announced it was up for sale. WTF! <strong>Fucking Private Property!!</strong></p>
<p>Except for some detail, Mondsee is similar to other towns we had already visited in our trip, but surely it is worth spending more time here.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Mondsee_sunset.jpg" alt="Waiting for the sunset at the Mondsee lakeshore">
<div class="caption">Waiting for the sunset at the Mondsee lakeshore<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>We were not able to find a reasonably priced accommodation here so we booked something about 20 km away and off our route, and surprisingly there we met the most incredible host in the world. But this story belongs to our next day...</p>
<p><strong>Stay tuned for next episodes!</strong></p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (2 of 5)</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 5 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html</guid>
<description>
<p>This is the second part of my chronicle about our trip through the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, you can read the rest here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (1 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (3 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (4 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (5 of 5)</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Day 2</h1>
<h2>Kremsmünster</h2>
<p>For me, <a href="https://stift-kremsmuenster.net/tourismus/information-in-english/english/"><strong>Kremsmünster Abbey</strong></a> was the most positive surprise of the entire trip. A priori it looked like <em>yet another</em> abbey, and our first hour there not only was confirming that suspicion but also made us feel somewhat deceived. We paid a considerable amount of money to find out that the ticket didn't include the visit of what we particularly wanted to see in there: The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassilo_Chalice"><strong>Tassilo Chalice</strong></a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremsm%C3%BCnster_Abbey#Library"><strong>Library</strong></a> and the <a href="http://www.specula.at/"><strong>Mathematical Tower</strong></a>. We could only access the public areas and the inner gardens where they temporaly hosted a floral exhibition. The information was confusing, mostly in german only, and the variety of ticket options was the most complex that I've ever seen in a place like this.</p>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Kremsmunster_Mathematical_Tower.jpg" alt="Kremsmünster Mathematical Tower">
<div class="caption">Kremsmünster Mathematical Tower<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>After visiting the gardens and the Abbey Church we followed some unclear signs to the Tassilo, and when we were almost there a couple of exhibition guides insisted us that our tickets didn't include this area, so they charged us again (without any kind of ticket) to enter the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremsm%C3%BCnster_Abbey#Treasures">Treasure Chamber</a> and a couple more rooms with minor interest. The Tassilo is an interesting piece of art and history, but the extra price to see it seemed disproportionate.</p>
<p>We were about to leave, almost angry, but in the end we bought another additional ticket to visit the <em>panorama terrace</em> on top of the Mathematical Tower even though it only included climbing up the stairs and going out on the terrace to see the views from there. The rest of the building was not included in our handful of tickets but at least we'd see some of what we initially wanted.</p>
<p>And there, waiting at the entrance of the tower, our luck changed with the stellar appearance of <strong>Anna</strong>. I'll call her Anna as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_given_names#Female_names_4">most popular female name in Austria</a> to preserve her identity, not because I don't remember her real name.</p>
<p>The incredible kindness of Anna, her desire to practice spoken English and the fact that there were no more tourists in the visit, made our day radically better. Waiting to see if anyone else was joining the visit we told her about our bad luck and poor understanding of the information for tourists, and she emphatized and wanted to compensate us in some way. She couldn't realize that we'd bought like three different tickets to leave without seeing what we expected to see (the main attractions, by the way).</p>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Xylothek-Sternwarte_Kremsmunster.jpg" alt="Xylotheque - Sternwarte Kremsmünster">
<div class="caption">Xylotheque - Sternwarte Kremsmünster<br />Source: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xylothek-Sternwarte_Kremsm%C3%BCnster.JPG">Reinhard Stiksel in Wikimedia</a> - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>We climbed the Tower, but instead of going directly to the top we stopped at each floor and briefly visited the exhibition rooms. One room was a small Natural History collection with several stuffed animals, minerals, all kind of insects, other contained an interesting collection of vintage astronomical devices and globes, another presented diverse regional folklore, ethnology and popular costumes,... We didn't make any picture acknowledging that the visit was unofficial, but I can still remember an amazing cabinet with a curious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylotheque"><strong>Xylotheque</strong></a>, pieces of different types of wood carved as books that contained their characteristic leaf, fruit or flower. I'd found a picture in Wikimedia, take a look right here.</p>
<p>Anna's infinite friendliness did not end there. On our way down she offered to negotiate for us a private visit to the Library, guided by herself. She managed to convince her boss, and paying an additional ticket at a reduced price we got to see the rest of the art collections and the impressive Library. We visited the Imperial Hall, several rooms with a nice art collection (mainly paintings) and finally the Library. We could've spent hours there...</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Kremsmunster_Library.jpg" alt="Kremsmünster Library">
<div class="caption">Kremsmünster Library<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>We'd planned to be in Kremsmünster just a couple of hours , but finally we were there all morning so we had to lunch just there, in a traditional restaurant inside the Abbey grounds: <a href="http://www.stiftsschank-kremsmuenster.or.at/">Stiftsschank</a>. It was great so we recommend it as well.</p>
<h2>Scharnstein</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scharnstein"><strong>Scharnstein</strong></a> stands out for its variety of hiking trails, since it's surrounded by forests and mountains. It's also near <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totes_Gebirge">Totes Gebirge</a>, a picturesque mountain range part of the Limestone Alps.</p>
<p>Our extended visit to the Kremsmünster Abbey forced us to expend less time here, but at least we could do some light hiking. We made one of the typical routes: climbing from the town to the <strong>ruins of the Scharnstein Castle</strong>. Both the ascent and the exploration of the ruins were fantastic. We were lucky enough to be completely alone, so it was a relaxing experience and a total immersion in the Nature that surrounded us. The views were excellent, with the remains of the castle with the huge Almtal valley behind.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Scharnstein_Castle.jpg" alt="Relaxing at Scharnstein Castle">
<div class="caption">Relaxing at Scharnstein Castle<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>In Scharnstein you can also find an interesting <a href="http://kriminalmuseum.at/krimscharn.html">Criminological Museum</a>. We went there but it was closed, so we settled for a beer in a tavern located in the same Scharnstein Castle that hosts the Museum about Crime and another about the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ybusmk79">Austrian Federal Gendarmerie</a>. The tavern was promising but they'll have to admit that it has seen better days.</p>
<h2>Traunkirchen</h2>
<p>Our next stop was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traunkirchen"><strong>Traunkirchen</strong></a>, a small village known for its idyllic location on a small peninsula overlooking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traunsee">Traunsee Lake</a>. It's probably the place where we took more pictures per minute, and that's considering that the best pictures of the village are made from the lake itself. It was a short walk, but it was totally worth it.</p>
<p>On our way there we booked with our mobile a guest house in other village. If we had seen the <a href="http://www.dastraunsee.at/en/">Das Traunsee Seehotel</a> before... we'd have spent the night there regardless of how much we were charged, and it didn't seem cheap. The views and the back terrace of the hotel were incredible.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Traunkirchen.jpg" alt="A pier in Traunkirchen with the Traunstein mountain behind">
<div class="caption">A pier in Traunkirchen with the Traunstein mountain behind<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<h2>Gmunden</h2>
<p>We planned to end our second stage in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmunden"><strong>Gmunden</strong></a>, the most important town of the region and where the <em>Traun River</em> empties into the <em>Traunsee Lake</em>, at the foot of the <em>Traunstein mountain</em> and near the beautiful village of <em>Traunkirchen</em>. Yes, I agree with you, this village should've been called <em>Traun Town</em>.</p>
<p>Gmunden is a very lively town with a lot of summer resorts, shops, art galleries and restaurants. Curiosly, most of the fashion boutiques exclusively had austrian regional constumes on display on the storefronts. I left there with a real desire to buy one, they were splendid. During our visit it was very peaceful, but it was clear that it's a popular tourist destination. The old town is surrounded by countless houses of all sizes from modest chalets to small palaces.</p>
<p>In the western lakeside, in front of the mouth of the Traun River and connected with the downtown through the Esplananade (a nice long promenade) is located the biggest attraction of the town: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Ort"><strong>Schloss Ort Castle</strong></a>. This singular Austrian Castle is set on a small island offshore, so it can only be reached by a long timber bridge. This 120m bridge starts from a beautiful green peninsula called the <strong>Toscana Park</strong>. We took a delightful walk through the park by the water's edge where each stop seemed a special viewpoint and provided a unique perspective.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/06/Gmunden_Schloss_Ort.jpg" alt="Gmunden's Schloss Ort Castle">
<div class="caption">Gmunden's Schloss Ort Castle<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>We had dinner at the <em>Weinhaus Spiesberger</em>, conceivably the best tavern in town where Agatha dined, guess what, <em>Traun Fische</em>! We did not quite understand what kind of fish it was, as in the UK when you order <em>Fish &amp; chips</em> and almost nobody is capable of telling you the specific type of fish. Anyway, it was a seasonal fish from the Lake (or so the said) and it was good so I also recommend this place at least for a beer.</p>
<p><strong>Stay tuned for next episodes!</strong></p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (1 of 5)</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 28 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/05/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_1.html</guid>
<description>
<p>A couple of weeks ago I had the immense pleasure of making a road trip through Austria following what they call the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, <em>Romantic Road</em> or <em>Romantic Trail</em> in English. Interestingly, ours was a <strong>singles</strong> trip initially planned for three friends but sadly in the end we were only two because at the last minute Roberto had to cancel. I shared this great adventure only with <strong>Agatha</strong> and it was great (as expected). I suppose that in the eyes of any innkeeper or bartender we were a happy couple celebrating something.</p>
<p>Having said that, I didn't notice any special <em>romantic atmosphere</em> beyond the surrounding beautiful landscapes, fantastic lakes and awesome mountains. Some might say that my sense of romanticism is broken, and it may be possible, but for me Nature is not romantic by itself. Luckily the shops, restaurants and villages in general didn't focus on selling this concept to the visitors. In fact it was very unlikely to find a sign about the Romantikstraße off the main roads of the route. But enough talking about the commercial name of the route.</p>
<p>Let me summarize our experience, mainly anecdotes and tips. Prices, timetables and other General tourist information are easy to find and that info sometimes expires soon. I'll love to read it in the future and it could be useful for anyone planning a similar trip. You can also read <a href="https://detintasuelta.blogspot.com.es/2017/05/romantikstrasse-por-austria.html">Agatha's review in her blog</a> (in Spanish). She <a href="https://detintasuelta.blogspot.com.es/2017/02/preparando-la-romantikstrasse-por.html">prepared the route perfectly in advance</a> and we mainly followed her plan, we only needed a couple of improvised detours.</p>
<h1>TL;DR</h1>
<ul>
<li>The area covered by the Romantikstraße is totally amazing. <strong>Everything is beautiful</strong>, looks shiny, deserves a zillion pictures or to sit for a while to admire the landscape. Especially the latter</li>
<li>It's <strong>not a cheap trip</strong>, but it's not as expensive as Switzerland</li>
<li>We spent 4,5 days there and it was enough but the trip <strong>deserves at least a couple days more</strong></li>
<li>Hallstatt is very beautiful, but it's not (as they claim) the <strong>most beautiful village in the world</strong>. Covarrubias is (of course)</li>
</ul>
<h1>Preparing the Romantikstraße</h1>
<p>If you are not as lucky as I was and you need to prepare the trip in advance, my first recommendation is to visit the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/en/">official website of the Romantikstraße</a>. There you'll find a lot of info about the route and the main attractions. You can also request a brochure of the route in several languages for free, we did it and it was useful during the trip.</p>
<p>About the accommodation, depending on the dates of the trip it may be essential to book everything in advance. Some villages are very small and have few options to choose from. We booked in advance only the first night and a couple of nights we needed a considerable detour from the route, and it was low season.</p>
<h1>Day 1</h1>
<h2>Schallaburg</h2>
<p>After wasting more than 1 hour in the airport waiting the queue of the car rental company our first destination was the <a href="http://www.schallaburg.at/en?set_language=en"><strong>Schallaburg Castle</strong></a>, a &gt;900 years old castle very well preserved located on top of a hill surrounded by forest. In addition to the privileged situation, the castle offers a very well arranged garden. This first stop reminded me of my bicycle trip through <a href="http://www.cycling-loire.com/">La Loire à Vélo</a>.</p>
<p>The castle also hosts temporal exibitions and a very nice restaurant in the courtyard called <em>Schloss</em>. Apart from the regional specialities, the restaurant changes it's menu and decoration to match the running exibitions. During our visit the main exhibition was about Islam and we could acclimitize to the country with a regional craft beer and some falafel.</p>
<p>The first funny anecdote of the trip arrived soon. From the parking to the castle we saw two different roads, both very steep. Ignoring a medium-sized sign in german we followed the nearest of them, because in <a href="http://osmand.net/"><strong>OSMAnd</strong></a> I could see that it was more direct to the gardens and the castle. After visiting the garden, the courtyard of the castle, the restaurant and most of the open rooms (and some closed ones), we noticed that we had paid nothing to be there. We went back to the parking lot using the other way and confirmed that we'd skipped the ticket office. I leave to your imagination if we warned them of our mistake and paid the entrance.</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/05/Schallaburg_castle_courtyard.jpg" alt="Schallaburg castle's courtyard">
<div class="caption">Schallaburg castle's courtyard<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Before leaving, we found <a href="https://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=dc7d5446-009c-4332-8fde-2881d06a4882">our first cache of the trip</a>, less than 5 meters from our car :-)</p>
<h2>Melk</h2>
<p>Our next visit was to Melk and his famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melk_Abbey">Melk Abbey</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco">Umberto Eco</a> named <em>Adso de Melk</em> as a tribute to this abbey, and we were curious about it and the fact that the Austrians talk about this place as one of the most important monasteries in Europe. The place did not dissapoint us at all.</p>
<p>We did a quick tour through the main elements of this baroque Abbey. The exhibition, the Marble Hall and the church are quite beautiful but what really impressed us was the Library, with about 100.000 volumes (1.888 manuscripts, 750 incunabula, a unique 13th century copy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied">The Song of the Nibelungs</a>, ...). In one room of the Library the fresco portrays an allegory of Scientia (Science), just like churches in Spain, right?</p>
<div class="image">
<img src="/img/2017/05/Melk_Abbey_Library.jpg" alt="Melk Abbey Library">
<div class="caption">
Melk Abbey Library<br />Source: <a href="http://www.royan.com.ar/">Jorge Royan</a> @ <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Austria_-_Melk_Abbey_Library_-_1884.jpg">Wikimedia</a> - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-SA</i></a>
</div>
</div>
<p>The Abbey was also wisely located, on top of a hill and clearly standing out from the town of Melk. The visit is worth it just for the views from the balcony connecting the Marble Hall and the Library with Melk, the Danube river and forests everywhere.</p>
<p>The visit to the Abbey includes a nice English landscape garden with an interesting baroque pavilion and a small park full of works of art and fabulous hidden corners.</p>
<p>Don't forget to find <a href="https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5X2KR_tb-hotel-der-kescherinnen?guid=7e33fa4c-f4a2-4ac9-b11a-ee13d2db9a03">this awesome cache</a> in the surrounding area. One of my all time favorites.</p>
<h2>Steyr</h2>
<p>Our last stop for the first day was Steyr, where (as they say) <em>Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo meet each other in harmony</em>. Steyr is in the confluence of the rivers Enns and Steyr, and therefore features more than 100 bridges. I confess that I expected to hear the comment <em>The Venice of Austria</em> but it didn't happen. The old town is nice, all around the huge Stadtplatz (market square) that was, saldy, partially ocuppied with parked cars and even some tents for private events. Disgusting for the visitors and I'd bet that also for the locals.</p>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/05/Steyr_Nachtwachtern.jpg" alt="Steyr's Nachtwachtern">
<div class="caption">Steyr's Nachtwachtern<br />Source: My own pictures - <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><i>CC BY-NC-SA</i></a></div>
</div>
<p>Our main goal in this city was to follow the <strong>Nachtwächtern Tour</strong>, a walking tour through the old town guided by a historian disguised as medieval watchman. Unluckily the tour was only in german, and we struggled to get the guide to understand that we wanted to follow him without understanding anything at all. The guide took pity on us, letting us follow him paying <em>only</em> half the price. As expected we didn't understand anything, but we crossed the same streets and alleys, we looked where they looked, we analyzed in detail whatever they commented in detail, and we laughed when they laughed (maybe even some joke about Spanish tourists, who knows).</p>
<p>The Night Watchman Tour is also the only way for a tourist to climb the 228 steps of the <strong>Stadtpfarrkirche Steyr</strong> tower, a roman catholic Church dedicated to Saint Aegidius (I toast him!) and Saint Koloman. Even at night, the views are wonderful.</p>
<p>We had a delicious dinner with local specialities at <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/270488531"><strong>Mader</strong></a> and returned to our guest house (<a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3119352500"><strong>Gasthof Bauer</strong></a>). I recommend both places but especially the second one, the guest house ocuppied several low buildings and houses in a small island near the old town, the rooms were almost small apartments and the attention we received was exquisite.</p>
<p>This is the first part of my chronicle about our trip through the <a href="http://www.romantikstrasse.at/es/"><strong>Romantikstraße</strong></a>, you can read the rest here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_2.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (2 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/06/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_3.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (3 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_4.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (4 of 5)</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2017/07/Romantikstrasse-the-Romantic-Road_5.html">Romantikstraße, the Romantic Road (5 of 5)</a></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Stay tuned for next episodes!</strong></p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Baking my Blog with JBake and GitHub</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/05/baking-my-blog-with-JBake-and-Github.html</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/05/baking-my-blog-with-JBake-and-Github.html</guid>
<description>
<p>Almost since <a href="/blog/2003/10/arranca-luiyologa.html">I created my personal blog</a> in 2003 I thought about moving it from blogger to my own domain, private hosting and so on. My lazyness prevented me from doing so. Not because the migration itself, but for the maintenance it entailed.</p>
<p>Anyhow, I was determined to migrate my blog outside of any blogging platform. I wanted to have complete control over my content, but without wasting lots of time in maintenance. All I needed was a way to do it seamlessly, quickly, and as automated as possible.</p>
<p>The static site/blog generators appeared a long time ago but now they are multiplying and flourishing. I watched them and the surrounding tools for a long time... and recently my atheist prayers were heard!</p>
<p>I will describe briefly what I did <strong>to move my blog from blogger to Github Pages in a few hours</strong>. The most time consuming task was to decide among a large number of excellent static site generators.</p>
<h2>Step 1 - Choose your weapon</h2>
<p>The reference here is <a href="https://www.staticgen.com/">StaticGen</a>, a ranking with all the open source static site generators. The site itself is open source, and static generated (of course) using <a href="http://middlemanapp.com/">Middleman</a>.</p>
<p>In <em>StaticGen</em> you will need some time, filtering by programming language, sorting the options by stars, forks, ... Eventually you'll chose one that covers your needs mainly in terms of language, templating technology or license.</p>
<p>I was tempted to use <a href="http://gohugo.io/">Hugo</a> but I selected <a href="http://jbake.org/"><strong>JBake</strong></a> (created in 2013 by <a href="http://jonathanbullock.com/">Jonathan Bullock</a>) instead of other much more popular options. The main reasons for me were:</p>
<ul>
<li>It's <strong>Open Source</strong> (<a href="https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT">MIT License</a>). This is always the first element in my checklist</li>
<li>It's <strong>cross platform</strong>, one of the main benefits to choose a product running in the JVM, right?</li>
<li>Supports a good amount of <strong>content formats</strong>: plain HTML, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>, <a href="http://asciidoctor.org/">AsciiDoc</a>, ... this is great now that I write even my personal notes in markdown format</li>
<li>Interesting <strong>template support</strong>: <a href="http://freemarker.org/">Freemarker</a>, <a href="http://www.thymeleaf.org/">Thymeleaf</a>, <a href="https://github.com/neuland/jade4j">Jade</a> or <a href="http://www.groovy-lang.org/">Groovy template framework</a></li>
<li><strong>Blog-ready</strong> out of the box: RSS feed, tag support, archive, index pagination, ...</li>
<li>Easy to integrate with <strong>CSS frameworks</strong> as <a href="http://getbootstrap.com/">Bootstrap</a></li>
<li><strong>Custom metadata</strong> in the contents, even exposed to the templates. This is winner by itself</li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="http://jbake.org/docs/">documentation of JBake</a> could be improved, but it's good enough.</p>
<p>To install JBake, you can execute <a href="http://jbake.org/download.html">the last binary distribution</a> but I recommend that you simply use <a href="http://sdkman.io/"><strong>SDKMAN</strong></a>. If you don't know what SDKMAN is, you are missing something special. After you have SDKMAN installed, enter the following command:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">&gt;&gt; sdk install jbake
</code></pre>
<p><strong>Thanks Jonathan !!</strong></p>
<h2>Step 2 - Choose your theme/style</h2>
<p>Some static generators support themes better than others, that's for sure. This was important to me, and I checked that in <em>JBake</em> the code responsible of the presentation is isolated enough from the content, so it's more or less simple to change entirely the theme or style of your site.</p>
<p>In fact, I didn't start the personalization of my blog from the default theme and style. I cloned the <a href="https://github.com/manikmagar/jbake-future-imperfect-template"><strong>JBake Future Imperfect Template</strong></a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/manikmagar">Manik Magar</a> and for the moment I've only needed minor touches to make it better suited for me.</p>
<p>As simple as this:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">&gt;&gt; mkdir awesome-jbake
&gt;&gt; git clone https://github.com/manikmagar/jbake-future-imperfect-template.git awesome-jbake
&gt;&gt; cd awesome-jbake &amp;&amp; ls -ltr
</code></pre>
<p>Most of the changes were related to custom css styles that I was already using in Blogger, the <em>JBake Future Imperfect Template</em> is fantastic.</p>
<p><strong>Thanks Manik !!</strong></p>
<h2>Step 3 - Migrate your content from your old blog/site (if needed)</h2>
<p>You'll only need this if you are migrating something, skip this point if you are creating something from scratch.</p>
<p>For this magic trick, my first intent was to implement it myself, only to code for a while. Finally I discovered a repo in github with a promising name: <a href="https://github.com/cloudtu/blogger-to-jbake"><strong>blogger-to-jbake</strong></a>. I checked the code and the author (<a href="http://cloudtu.github.io/">Cloud Tu</a>) had developed more or less what I meant to do.</p>
<p>With a little help from an <em>difficult-even-for-google-translate</em> <code>README</code> file in Chinese, I could run the program and export all my blog only with minor problems regarding the download of certain images that were not hosted in blogger.</p>
<p>The steps are very simple:</p>
<ol>
<li>Modify the <code>src/main/resources/application.properties</code> to set the Blogger atom file path, the output path and your current URL in Blogger</li>
<li>Execute <code>gradlew run</code> in the console</li>
<li><strong>Profit!</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>I made some improvements (from my humble point of view) in the code, and I'll send the corresponding pull request. They could be valuable for anyone else.</p>
<p><strong>Thanks Cloud Tu !!</strong></p>
<h2>Step 4 - Deploy your blog</h2>
<p>Well, thanks to Github and specifically to <a href="https://pages.github.com/">Github Pages</a>, the only thing that I needed was to change the configuration of JBake so the output directory for the <em>baked</em> content is called <code>docs</code> instead of the name by default (<code>output</code>).</p>
<p>After <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-github-pages/">enabling it for the first time</a>, Github automatically deploys in Github Pages whatever you put in the <code>docs</code> directory of your repo.</p>
<p>I'm suffering the misbehaviour of Github Pages with relative paths, but for the moment I'm solving it with a sed command before pushing the baked content.</p>
<p><strong>Thanks Github Pages !!</strong></p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I'm happier than ever with my blog, and I'll try to write more often now that I can make it with my editor in Markdown or AsciiDoc.</p>
<p>It's also possible that I'll write a more technical post about how JBake works, but in the meantime ask me in the comments anything that you want to know.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Greach 2017, the Groovy Spanish Conference</title>
<link>https://luisgc.github.io/blog/2017/04/greach-2017-groovy-spanish-conference.html</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 3 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">2017/04/greach-2017-groovy-spanish-conference.html</guid>
<description>
<center>
<i>I'll keep my intent to summarize all the important events that I'm attending, and I'll do it again in English as the audience is international. <b>Please, point me any mistake you may find</b></i>
</center>
<p></p>
<div class="image lateral">
<img src="/img/2017/04/Greach_2017.png" alt="Greach 2017">
<div class="caption">
<a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/">Greach 2017</a>
</div>
</div>
<p>This week I attended, as usual since I don't remember when, to <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/">Greach 2017</a>, an international conference about the <a href="http://www.groovy-lang.org/">Apache Groovy language</a> and <a href="http://www.groovy-lang.org/ecosystem.html">ecosystem</a>. Greach is held each year in Madrid but everything is in English, and nowadays it's probably one of the Top3 worldwide events about this technology.</p>
<p>The event is organized mainly by <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&amp;jsonp=vglnk_149113158632914&amp;key=fc09da8d2ec4b1af80281370066f19b1&amp;libId=j10kgw3v01012xfw000DLef6729tbp6er&amp;loc=http%3A%2F%2Fluiyo.blogspot.com.es%2F2016%2F04%2Fgreach-2016-groovy-spanish-conference.html&amp;v=1&amp;out=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Filopmar&amp;title=Luiyolog%C3%ADa%3A%20Greach%202016%2C%20the%20Groovy%20Spanish%20conference&amp;txt=%3Cb%3EIv%C3%A1n%20L%C3%B3pez%3C%2Fb%3E%20(%40ilopar)"><b>Iván López</b> (@ilopar)</a> and <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&amp;jsonp=vglnk_149113160190015&amp;key=fc09da8d2ec4b1af80281370066f19b1&amp;libId=j10kgw3v01012xfw000DLef6729tbp6er&amp;loc=http%3A%2F%2Fluiyo.blogspot.com.es%2F2016%2F04%2Fgreach-2016-groovy-spanish-conference.html&amp;v=1&amp;out=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Falbertovilches&amp;title=Luiyolog%C3%ADa%3A%20Greach%202016%2C%20the%20Groovy%20Spanish%20conference&amp;txt=%3Cb%3EAlberto%20Vilches%3C%2Fb%3E%20(%40albertovilches)"><b>Alberto Vilches</b> (@albertovilches)</a>, with some help from other colleagues and <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/#tile_sponsors">a lot of Sponsors</a>. Everything was perfect: the location is great, the spaces were confortable, the wifi more or less worked fine, cafeteria in-place, free wardrobe,... the lunch boxes were far from perfect, but that's another story more related to the venue.</p>
<p><b>TLDR;</b> The conference content and speakers were great, in addition to the logistics. I missed the workshop day, but everyone told me it was also fantastic (both venue and contents). I learned a lot, not only about Groovy or Grails, but also about GraphQL, Ratpack and concurrence in general.</p>
<p>Let me summarize some of the talks I attended:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/make-concurrency-groovy-again/">Make concurrency groovy again</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/alonso-torres/"><b>Alonso Torres</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/alotor">@alotor</a>). Alonso gave an excellent overview of the main available resources regarding concurrence in the Groovy ecosystem, comparing some of them in terms of design, code readability and even performance. Threads, functional style resources, parallel collections, Atomic variables, fork/join, GPars, actors... and even how to steal a bit from others (Clojure, Akka or Spark) thanks to the Java bindings. Take a look at the <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/alotor/greach-17-make-concurrency-groovy-again">slides</a></li>
<br>
<center>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="es" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Greach2017?src=hash">#Greach2017</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/alotor">@alotor</a> a punto de comenzar su charla sobre Concurrencia en <a href="https://twitter.com/ApacheGroovy">@ApacheGroovy</a> <a href="https://t.co/u0dnTx5aIp">pic.twitter.com/u0dnTx5aIp</a></p>— Luis GC (@luiyo)
<a href="https://twitter.com/luiyo/status/847720451442790402">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
</blockquote>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/javaslang-groovy-the-best-of-both-worlds/">Javaslang &amp; Groovy: The best of both worlds</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/ivan-lopez/"><b>Iván López</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/ilopmar">@ilopmar</a>). Another hands-on master class by Iván, combining and comparing some of the benefits of <a href="http://www.javaslang.io/">Javaslang</a> with what's available out-of-the-box in Groovy. The demo part (90% of the talk) covered a lot of interesting examples: Optional vs Option, Try, Functional Interfaces, Tuples, Javaslang collections, Pattern matching, validations, ...</li>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ivan talking about javaslang and groovy! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/greach?src=hash">#greach</a> <a href="https://t.co/zkxySl6SQu">pic.twitter.com/zkxySl6SQu</a></p>— Ryan Vanderwerf (@RyanVanderwerf)
<a href="https://twitter.com/RyanVanderwerf/status/847740674719887361">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/back-from-the-dead-http-builder-ng/">Back From The Dead: HTTP Builder NG</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/noam-tenne/"><b>Noam Tenne</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/NoamTenne">@NoamTenne</a>). Noam gave a complete review of the features included in <a href="https://github.com/http-builder-ng/http-builder-ng">HTTP Builder NG</a>, the current available implementations and some advanced features and use cases like header parsers, content parsers, request interceptors or request encoders</li>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">HTTPBuilder NG: Back From The Dead as presented at <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a> 2017 <a href="https://t.co/KnYbstLU0Z">https://t.co/KnYbstLU0Z</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/greach?src=hash">#greach</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/groovylang?src=hash">#groovylang</a></p>— Noam Tenne (@NoamTenne)
<a href="https://twitter.com/NoamTenne/status/847782732935553024">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/hasmany-considered-harmful/">hasMany Considered Harmful</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/burt-beckwith/"><b>Burt Beckwith</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/burtbeckwith">@BurtBeckwith</a>). Burt gave this talk for the first time in 2010 at the Spring One, pointing out some performance problems when mapping collections with any ORM tool (like GORM or Hibernate). After seven years, he revisited the topic repeating (sadly) the same warnings about more or less the same problems, some of them critical with huge data collections</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/burtbeckwith">@burtbeckwith</a> talking about "hasMany considered harmful" at <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a> <a href="https://t.co/gJA7f3HW5X">pic.twitter.com/gJA7f3HW5X</a></p>— jmiguel rodriguez (@jmiguel)
<a href="https://twitter.com/jmiguel/status/847792794542518273">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/graphql-development-with-groovy/">GraphQL development with Groovy</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/mario-garcia/">Mario García</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/marioggar">@marioggar</a>). Thanks to Mario now I have a clear view of what <a href="http://graphql.org/">GraphQL</a> provides, and specially what it does not provide. He reviewed the main features, the logic behind schemas, types querying, hierarchy, operations, the introspective nature of GraphQL... Mario also demoed some useful combination of GraphQL with tools like <a href="https://github.com/graphql/graphiql">GraphiQL</a> or <a href="https://facebook.github.io/relay/">Relay</a>. He even teased <a href="https://github.com/grooviter/gql">GQL</a>, his own DSL library to use GraphQL directly from Groovy. Awesome :-)</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Greach?src=hash">#Greach</a> and now in <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@GreachConf</a> we'll learn about GraphQL and Groovy from the great <a href="https://twitter.com/marioggar">@marioggar</a> <a href="https://t.co/8PoSK7DoOv">pic.twitter.com/8PoSK7DoOv</a></p>— Luis GC (@luiyo)
<a href="https://twitter.com/luiyo/status/847795673521061888">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/groovy-puzzlers-4-the-bytecode-bites-back/">Groovy Puzzlers 4: The Bytecode Bites Back</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/el-groovyssimo/"><b>El Groovyssimo</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/el_groovyssimo">@el_groovyssimo</a>) and <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/noam-tenne/"><b>Noam Tenne</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/NoamTenne">@NoamTenne</a>). Again, this was fantastic. Entertaining and somehow even educational. It's based on the <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&amp;jsonp=vglnk_149114460319816&amp;key=fc09da8d2ec4b1af80281370066f19b1&amp;libId=j10kgw3v01012xfw000DLef6729tbp6er&amp;loc=http%3A%2F%2Fluiyo.blogspot.com.es%2F2016%2F04%2Fgreach-2016-groovy-spanish-conference.html&amp;v=1&amp;out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.javapuzzlers.com%2F&amp;title=Luiyolog%C3%ADa%3A%20Greach%202016%2C%20the%20Groovy%20Spanish%20conference&amp;txt=%3Cb%3EJava%20Puzzlers%3C%2Fb%3E">Java Puzzlers</a> created by <a href="http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&amp;jsonp=vglnk_149114464703618&amp;key=fc09da8d2ec4b1af80281370066f19b1&amp;libId=j10kgw3v01012xfw000DLef6729tbp6er&amp;loc=http%3A%2F%2Fluiyo.blogspot.com.es%2F2016%2F04%2Fgreach-2016-groovy-spanish-conference.html&amp;v=1&amp;out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.javapuzzlers.com%2Fbios.html&amp;title=Luiyolog%C3%ADa%3A%20Greach%202016%2C%20the%20Groovy%20Spanish%20conference&amp;txt=%3Cb%3EJoshua%20Bloch%3C%2Fb%3E%20and%20%3Cb%3ENeal%20Gafter%3C%2Fb%3E"><b>Joshua Bloch</b> and <b>Neal Gafter</b></a>, but focused on Groovy. Big fan of the format</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It's time for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/groovypuzzlers?src=hash">#groovypuzzlers</a>! <a href="https://twitter.com/el_groovyssimo">@el_groovyssimo</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/NoamTenne">@NoamTenne</a> rocking on stage at <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a>! <a href="https://t.co/mVjhLJ6fhr">pic.twitter.com/mVjhLJ6fhr</a></p>— Autentia (@autentia)
<a href="https://twitter.com/autentia/status/847834413673181186">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/alexa-tell-me-im-groovy/">Alexa, Tell Me I’m Groovy</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/ryan-vanderwerf/"><b>Ryan Vanderwerf</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/RyanVanderwerf">@RyanVanderwerf</a>). Ryan explained how the Alexa platform works and some basic info about the main SDKs: <a href="https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit">Alexa Skills Kit</a> and <a href="https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service">Alexa Voice Service</a>. Ryan also showed how he uses Grails apps to create Alexa services and cards, and how to test them online with <a href="https://echosim.io/">Echosim.io</a>. Very interesting, and one of those talks in which the audience leaves with some good ideas for the future</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Alexa can do GREAT stuff! <a href="https://twitter.com/RyanVanderwerf">@RyanVanderwerf</a> has her tell <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@Greachconf</a> we're all <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Groovy?src=hash">#Groovy</a> 😎 <a href="https://twitter.com/amazon">@amazon</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/grailsfw?src=hash">#grailsfw</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/groovypodcast">@groovypodcast</a> <a href="https://t.co/c2KfK0A7u2">pic.twitter.com/c2KfK0A7u2</a></p>— Ted Vinke (@tvinke)
<a href="https://twitter.com/tvinke/status/848082157734068224">1 de abril de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/grails-keynote/">Grails keynote</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/graeme-rocher/"><b>Graeme Rocher</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/graemerocher">@GraemeRocher</a>). The anual <a href="https://grails.org/">Grails</a> keynote in Greach, in which Graeme showed what came with Grails 3.2 (improvements in the awesome JSON views, in profiles, GORM 6, ...) and what will come with Grails 3.3: GORM 6.1 (already available independently), Spring Boot 1.5.x and Hibernate 5.2. Regarding <a href="http://gorm.grails.org/">GORM</a>, the main things for the 6.1 version are: Improvements in common AST transforms, common services, and Data Services, package scanning and a better mapping DSL. Graeme showed some of the new features and they looked amazing, very good work :-)</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">What's new with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/grailsfw?src=hash">#grailsfw</a>?<a href="https://twitter.com/graemerocher">@graemerocher</a> delivers keynote <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a> and fills us in! <a href="https://t.co/RJ029GnXGN">pic.twitter.com/RJ029GnXGN</a></p>— OCI (@ObjectComputing)
<a href="https://twitter.com/ObjectComputing/status/848103571509956610">1 de abril de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/geb-best-practices/">Geb best practices</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/marcin-erdmann/"><b>Marcin Erdmann</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/marcinerdmann">@MarcinErdmann</a>). Marcin gave us some tips to make a better use of <a href="http://www.gebish.org/">Geb</a>, starting with the reminder that a Module is a Navigator, that Navigators are iterable, and the advantages of overloading some methods, having dynamic base urls or page parametrizations. He also explained how to inject Javascript into pages (if needed). Other best practices: using strongly typed Geb code, tracking the current page type, always keep the <i>at</i> checks simple and quick and that modules are not meant only for reuse but also to isolate complex blocks.</li>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="es">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Greach?src=hash">#Greach</a> my <a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a> continues with <a href="https://twitter.com/marcinerdmann">@MarcinErdmann</a> (Geb project lead since 2014) about Geb best practices <a href="https://t.co/YCQ3Whor9W">pic.twitter.com/YCQ3Whor9W</a></p>— Luis GC (@luiyo)
<a href="https://twitter.com/luiyo/status/848109990938386432">1 de abril de 2017</a>
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<li><a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/sessions/mastering-async-in-ratpack/">Mastering Async In Ratpack</a>, by <a href="http://2017.greachconf.com/speakers/danny-hyun/"><b>Danny Hyun</b></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/Lspacewalker">@Lspacewalker</a>). Danny went beyond the basic concepts of concurrency in a fantastic code-driven talk, showing a lot of good examples about the complexity of this kind of problems. He explained how <a href="https://ratpack.io/">Ratpack</a> comes to the rescue, how the Ratpack concept of Promise works, how to manage them and how to test complex concurrent execution flows. Very complete for 45 minutes and very well presented. Homework: read about <a href="http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html">the C10K problem</a> and <a href="https://lmax-exchange.github.io/disruptor/">the Disruptor pattern</a></li>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Notes for Rapid Ratpack Web app development <a href="https://t.co/XPKWNA3dg1">https://t.co/XPKWNA3dg1</a><a href="https://twitter.com/greachconf">@greachconf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/greach?src=hash">#greach</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/groovylang?src=hash">#groovylang</a></p>— Danny Bo Banny (@Lspacewalker)
<a href="https://twitter.com/Lspacewalker/status/847814994548936704">31 de marzo de 2017</a>
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<p>See you in <b>Greach 2018</b>!!</p>
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