Xavier Noria's Home Page

ASPgems

On June 2006 I cofounded ASPgems.

From the technical side, ASPgems is a software company specialized in agile methodologies and dynamic languages, mainly Ruby and some Perl. Our platform of choice for web projects is Ruby on Rails.

I have been around dynamic languages for several years and know from first-hand the amazing productivity they provide, and their positive side effects in developers and projects. My company tries to take advantage of these technologies and transform their strengths into competitive and more adaptative solutions.

Live Streaming

These are my accounts at Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn. I have an account at Facebook but I've never used it except for accepting invitations.

I maintain a tech-oriented blog at Advogato. That's a website originally written by Raph Levien to test his ideas about group trust metrics with real data.

Open Source

I am more or less involved in open source related activities in my spare time. Writing stuff, submitting patches now and then, helping in the IRC, etc. Since contributions to free software are used in Advogato to certify people, there's a record of recent work in my page there.

Reading

Reading is one of my passions. Since I set up this home page I keep a list of books I read.

Computers

A lot of time in front of the keyboard. Probably too much time. Computers have been always around, though I am not a computer scientist. I studied math, something I miss.

During these years I've used several operating systems as desktops, but switched back to the Mac a few years ago and right now my main computer is a black MacBook. Mac OS X is a powerful system, and it's wonderful interface is an experience in itself, way ahead of any competitor. Apple has touched the heart of Unix lovers.

Riding

Riding motorbikes since I legally could (OK, a bit earlier). I like speed, but what I really enjoy is traveling. Spain has a climate very suitable for riding motorbikes, and from Barcelona I have had the opportunity to visit Europe a bit. Currently the northest place I've been in is Amsterdam (Honda CBR 600), and the eastest is Venise (Honda Varadero 1000).

In March 2003 I could finally make my dream since I was a teenager come true: to own a Honda Goldwing. The current incarnation of this model has a 1800cc engine with 6 cylinders. It features ABS, reverse gear, cruise control, audio system with radio RDS, CD support, intercom integration, and an aux jack where I plug the iPod, four speakers, an amazingly comfortable seat for both the rider and the passenger, .... If you like the road and having miles ahead, there’s nothing like this bike. With the Goldwing I went to Paris for the YAPC::Europe 2003.