Ubuntu Wiki

About me

My name is Denis Fuenzalida and I'm a software developer currently based in Santiago, Chile. I build applications using different technologies, but mostly web applications using different languages and frameworks including Java, Grails, Ruby on Rails and Python.

Currently I'm also a guest editor of the blog www.ManzanaMecanica.org (in spanish), whose mission is to promote the free flow of culture, knowledge and collaboration as fundamental aspects of mankind development; helping the public and stakeholders to understand this socio-technological evolution in a benefical way to us all. The site frequently publishes articles about news on free culture and free software.

You can contact me on denis.fuenzalida@gmail.com and I also keep a personal blog.

Involvement in Ubuntu

I registered as Ubuntero on late 2005, registered in Launchpad (Launchpad profile here) and involved in different activities, including translation of packages, working on a PPA for my own software releases and other tasks.

On 2007 I wrote my first desktop application in Python, called GtkFileSplitter which I wrote to copy large files (ie. ISO image files) between 2 computers without a network connection and using a small USB key. The program allows the user to split the files and generate a MD5 hashsum; the pieces can be joined together to form the original file (and verify it) on the target computer using the same program.

Later that year, I got interested on sharing what I learned in the process and created a new project called Desarrollo Ubuntu, which contains a free document (written using DocBook) in Spanish language, and code examples in C, Python, Java and C# so it can be used to bootstrap new projects.

In early 2011, I wrote a small plugin for gEdit Git branch on Statusbar (using Python and Git-Python) which shows the git branch of the file currently being edited. The plugin is available on my PPA for Ubuntu Natty and Oneiric. For the Oneiric version I updated the code to use the new PyGObject API, so it works under Gnome 3. I build this plugin because I use gEdit to develop Rails projects on a daily basis, where there are a number of development branches, so having that info at sight helps me to avoid confusion between branches.

On the Free Software Day 2011 event on Santiago (photos here), I gave a short talk titled "Introduction to software development with Launchpad", in which I tried to explain the virtues of using Launchpad, including getting involved easily in bug reporting and translations, even if you are not a programmer. The slides (in Spanish) are available here: Open Document format, PDF format.

Other free software

On 2005 I wrote a free software project called “PrivateWiki”, which is hosted on Sourceforge, but I no longer maintain. It’s a multi-platform, desktop application that allows taking personal notes which become hypertext, and it has encryption support. See http://privatewiki.sourceforge.net/ for downloads and screenshots.