Photo: FOSDEM 2005, pre-event evening.
I took the 10:43 Eurostar service from London Waterloo to Brussels Gare Du Midi, and arrived in time to have a late lunch with Dom, Dan, et al. We ate Pizza slices and horribly fatty, greasy bread. While they figured out how to get to the youth hostel, I caught a train to Lueven and caught up with the Mind guys. Later, we drove in to town and went to Le Roi D’Espagne to briefly socialise. I’m staying over in Lueven with a whole bunch of other folks.
Jon.
Still awake. I think jetlag compensation has gone the other way now. Bah. Need to get up in time for the train so will try getting a little sleep now and packing in the morning.
Been writing about porting Linux to new boards, need to get the Embedded column done while at FOSDEM and finalise the community stuff too – looks like I might get chance to shove in a quick writeup of the weekend activities before our hard publication deadline [ sorry I'm running late again Richard, I think Boston was a good excuse 
]. Got asked to do more writing and got introduced to some more interesting people.
There’s a valid routing to LAX via YOW and it’s not a lot more expensive…
Jon.
# It’s a ho-hey, hi-hey farmers bar yer doors
# When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina’s mighty shores
— The Last Saskatchewan Pirate, The Arrogant Worms.
Managed to wake up at 03:00ish this morning, so jetlag compensation isn’t quite working yet. Slept again until lunchtime, so a bit better. Fedex package turned up this morning. Need to read through the proposal guidelines and figure out how to tackle this properly. Playing around with pygtk for one of my columns, sorting out email and getting ready for the FOSDEM over the weekend. I’m on the 10:43 train in the morning, and staying with the folks over at Mind.
I’m hoping I get to play around with some of the Microblaze ucLinux stuff, and I’ve been asked to look at some ecos porting to v2p too, so that’s pretty cool. One of the guys I work with goes climbing on Thursdays, so I’ll give it a go next week.
Jon.
Photos (from left to right): Quebec City in Quebec, Day 2 of Festiglace 2005, Day 1 of Festiglace 2005, on the road in New Hampshire.
I met some more people at the show, including Richard Cohen. We chatted in a local bar, then later he joined me as I talked to a bunch of guys from the OSDL in the evening, before we headed off to the BLU meeting. Wondered around the MIT campus afterwards, with the help of a BLU member (I need to thank him for giving us an impromptu tour). I had a go on a Gameboy DS, did a little more reading of rml’s book, and went to sleep in time to just about get up for the last day of the show. Met some publishing friends and had some coffee.
At around lunchtime on the final day of LinuxWorld 2005, we headed back towards Canada. We crossed the border in to Quebec without the fanfare that US immigration had treated us to going in to the US (the giant neon sign that says “don’t visit this country” in the form of annoying procedures) – nice place to visit, probably wouldn’t want to live there. Canada on the other hand…well, readers know I love the place. Anyway, we tried dropping Dan off to get a bus to Montreal but the last bus had gone, so we ended up making some alternative arrangements and dropped him off elsewhere instead. He got back ok, and that is the main thing. Andrew and I stayed in Quebec City in the evening.
On Friday, Andrew and I went to Pont-Rouge for the 2005 Festiglace Ice Climbing festival. We attended the evening presentations (very good slides, especially from an USian who used the event to take a jibe at how the Bush Administration is doing its best to destroy the environment and the amazing natural beauty that climbers rely upon). We camped in a tent while outside it was around -22 degrees C. That was an experience – yes I’d do it again, but I’d want to be better prepared. I had visited the MEC store in Quebec City and bought a sleeping bag rated to around -7, but was reasonably warm once inside nonetheless.
Saturday’s activities included my first attempt at Ice Climbing. After queuing for almost two hours in the cold, I was able to don some Vasque boots (I think I prefer the look of the Sportiva boots but am maybe biased by the fact that my other new boots are Sportiva, from MEC), cramp-ons, and a harness, and give it a go. I sucked. Badly. Threw a cramp-on before even being on the face, and had to come down before I could finish. But still, I enjoyed the experience and will definately give a climbing wall a go now – there are some near to where I live, I think.
We stayed in Quebec City, in the old City. We ate at an extremely nice French Canadian restaurant for around 40-50 pounds per head, but this was really really good, and had the full courses one would expect from a top class establishment. In the morning, I went to the railway station as I had a prebooked 08:20 train to Ottawa. Since Andrew had offered to drive, I cancelled the ticket and returned to the hotel. There was some time to wonder around the city and take a few photographs as I went. I popped in to a local coffee shop and had a latte from a bowl with a croissant that formed a hybrid of the regular chocolate or almond types. Yum.
Ultimately, we did drive back to Ottawa, and I unfortunately did have to go back home. Which is where I am now, back in the UK. I managed to sleep for most of the flight – for the first time – although I still did my usual panicy sequence during takeoff procedures. I am sitting and listening to some Runrig, which I was introduced to by ajh (although apparently Alan introduced them to him originally – in any case though, they’re great). I have some music from Canadian bands, including Captain Tractor and The Arrogant Worms. It’s all good stuff. I’ve been inspired to try new kinds of music that I wouldn’t necessarily have tried, and that really rules.
Anyway, to bed. Work and stuff await. FOSDEM 2005 is happening this weekend.
Jon.
Photos (from left to right, and top to bottom on most browsers): Boston skyline by night, blu LUG February 2005 meeting, Jon Corbet of LWN talking about “The State of the Linux Kernel” (while announcing the new third edition of Linux Device Drivers too), Boston Harbour area near to the Quincy Market, A cup of Penguin Computing vanilla cafe latte, watching the stands setting up for the first day of Boston LinuxWorld Expo 2005.
We are about to enter the final day of the first year of LinuxWorld Expo in Boston. After arriving on Monday morning, we visited the stands as they were setting up. We and I have been doing the networking thing – I got to meet loads of folks I wouldn’t have seen on my usual side of the pond, and I’ve had a few lunch meetings with the likes of Bill Weinberg (OSDL’s Open Source Architect Specialist, formerly one of the original folks behind Montavista), another guy that I had not met personally, and a number of other encounters besides. I finally got to meet Don Becker of Linux networking fame after his talk on Linux clustering and picked up copies of Linux Kernel Development, Second Edition, and Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition. So far I have found two potential grammar issues in the former and a typo in the latter, after reading just a few pages. Good stuff, but maybe I can push a bunch of corrections as a way of persuading people to let me skim the next editions sooner.
Yesterday, I got up and had a look around before meeting someone for lunch. Had coffee. Had food. Visited blu, the Boston LUG, over at the MIT campus. Got a brief tour. Went to a famous Cambridge pub and ultimately ended up drinking coffee and eating donuts at a certain famous chain.
I went to the Oracle Installfest last night, the Intel party, and went for a late night walk around the parks after getting a T train downtown with Dan. I went to the OSDL party this evening, and various other things.
Jon.
Photo: Niagra Falls, Canada.
I went to Niagra Falls with ajh, having left Dan in Toronto to catch a train. We met up later in the afternoon and drove all night down through Upstate New York and in to Massachusetts. The border crossing in to the US was somewhat interesting. I have never before visited the Continental United States so I had the experience of being photographed and fingerprinted by the immigration people as I filled in two forms (I managed to ruin the first one by filling in a box one line out of phase).
We’re staying at a reasonable Hotel, just around the corner from the conference centre in downtown Boston. New England so far reminds me just a little of the Old England accross the pond. New York State has an Indian reservation on the border, and is filled with elevation changes that make your ears pop. Our faithful driver has thus far driven over 2000km.
I got some sleep after we arrived and later had more greasy food and coffee before visiting the first day of LinuxWorld.
Jon.
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