Naxxfish

After checking out of the hotel and getting things sorted, we got the FOSDEM express (heh) tram and arrived. I’ve managed to sit down for a moment and type up my thoughts, as well as catch up with email before going to sign some GPG keys.

I thought, for a laugh, I’d try importing the FOSDEM iCal schedule into Google Calendar. That was a mistake ….

And that’s just half width.

I’m going to go to the CakePHP talk (project which looks interesting, if perhaps a little unnecessary) and a few others, not sure what just yet.

I’ll finish this once I’m back in the UK, I think

—

Decided not to go to the CakePHP talk and instead go to the Microcontrollers talk, where they demonstrated Tux Droid. The lecture theatre was *packed*. There wasn’t even room to stand. The technical content wasn’t particularly anything new, however still interesting.

I also went to see a talk about Klik, a sort of software management system for Linux not dissimilar to Apple’s Disk Image format. The idea is to put all of an applications files into one single archive. Which seems awfully sensible – mostly. The issue with it that I see is that they say the dependancies get included with the application, so if you have two versions of the software that require GTK 2.0, they will both include the GTK 2.0 libraries. However, you can use the system overlay image to import common libraries into all applications – but then what if an application needs a *different* version of GTK?  It’s a nice idea but still needs some work I think…

And, that was pretty much that!  We went off to have steak in a nearby restaurant (where we confused the staff by turning their TVs off with a TV-B-Gone), then got the train back to London.  Unfortunately as it turns out, the last train to Canterbury on Sunday is at 10PM – which is the same time we arrived at St Pancreas.  So we ended up having to blag our way onto a coach, which left 20 minutes late and arrived 5 minutes early, at roughly 2AM.

I got a very, very good nights sleep last night.

Again, I wrote this yesterday and just posting it now as I have a spare minute and internet access.

Today has been interesting. We managed to turn up in time for the update on software patents.

There was a talk about Perl 6 – it appears that they’ve cottoned on to the fact that people were starting to understand Perl 5 and decided to move the goalposts yet again. There are some weird – and awesome – features like quantum scalars (a scalar that can be several different values simultaneously!).

I then also followed that up with a talk about PHP6, which is, apparently, PHP5 + Unicode (which follows that PHP5 – PHP6 = Unicode … err maybe not). There were some funky localisation features that were demonstrated (which will make international websites a hell of a lot simpler to implement).

After that I wandered around a bit, collected some stickers to decorate my laptop with, some badges and other assorted goodies. I also attended a lecture about powersaving on embedded linux systems, however my own powersaving features were kicking in and I may have drifted off a few
times. It wasn’t boring (actually it was very informative) but after getting about 3 hours sleep the night before, I was – and still am – knackered.

On leaving the lecture I discover that the rest of my group have pissed off to go geocaching, without mentioning this to me in the slightest. Which made for a troubling couple of hours.

After rejoining and getting some food, we went back to the hostel and played mau. Well, I say we played mau – THEY played mau and I attempted to DoS the game by picking up a card at every opportunity.

Now, I need to sleep as we’ve got another days worth to polish off!

This was written on the correct day – but I’m only posting it now as I haven’t had a spare minute with reasonably internet access.

—

I’m pretty drunk to be honest.  Someone is going on about synapses and seretonin – god knows why.

Someone told me, in French, I was in the wrong toilet.  This appears to be a common theme.  Their reason was because I had long hair, evidently I’m contintenatly gender confused, entirely due to my long hair.

—

After a walk – under the purpose of cigarettes (which I don’t particularly need, but it seemed a good idea to go for a walk)

Mike discovered my passport, and rubbed his nipples three times.  Apparently I don’t seem like my age, which is good I guess.  So far, FOSDEM is pretty intimidating but hopefully I’ll warm up a bit tomorow.  Maybe.

I’m half way through the week I wrote backwards, and it’s going mainly to plan so far. I followed Katie to a mass solo-protest in Parliament Square, the turnout of which was somewhat lacklustre (most likely due to the cold weather). After a pleasant walk down the river to Embankment and some sushi, I surprised some parents by turning up and sleeping at their house.

I’m at Mike’s place now (at least, I think it is, it may be his gf’s) stealing some WiFi. Upon arriving, a large Pink Panther suit was demonstrated, just to make things slightly weirder.

My iPod headphones are breaking I guess that serves me right for actually using them – I have much better ones (Sennheiser HD-25’s and some other Phillips in ear ones) but they’re in the wrong places.

On the tube here, Mike mentioned something interesting: upon searching the tfl website for XML documents, one can find a XML document containing the location and names of a bunch of CCTV cameras. I’m not sure this being available to the public if this is a bug or a feature, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The other is KML file containing the banned coach parking areas. Slightly less exciting but still. I think this calls for a Google Maps mashup

Both files were apparently last edited by “Simon Davies (Transport For London)” … so hey Simon

Sreenshot from www.tfl.gov.uk.

It wants me to give the answer to a question it’s not asked me yet. Given that I have apparently forgotten my password, what’s the liklihood of remembering my secret question, let alone what the answer is?

It appears that someone in Kent has organised a Kent2600. It looks like a good alternative to trekking into London for a meeting, I may well be there at the next on in March.

The Kent2600 meeting is a place to meet up and talk to fellow geeks about computer security, physical security, retro computing platforms, virtualisation, CPU architectures, parallel processing, electronics, networking, high performance computing, high availability services, public transport, exploits … in fact anything related to technology!

Sounds like fun!

It’s 4AM and I’m awake, eating what could be best described as “insta-pasta” from a dubious vending machine, and I have a busy week ahead of me.

So I thought I’d tell you vaguely what I’m going to be doing for the next week. Perhaps I should start at the end and work backwards.

On Sunday evening, I’m going to arrive back in Canterbury from Brussels – probably very tired and cranky. On the Sunday and Saturday, I will be at FOSDEM, being geeky and listening to people talk about Open Source Software, and learning some new things (like how to make a Debian package, I still don’t get it!). On the Friday Night, I’m going to be in Brussels, hopefully drinking a lot with various FOSDEM attendees in the evening after getting the Eurostar at about 11:30AM in the morning.

The Thursday is going to be relatively sedate, arriving at a FOSDEM attendees house in the evening, and for the day recording from the day previous. On the Wednesday I’m going to be having Sushi on the Southbank, after watching Katie take photos of solo-protesters, and arriving in London on the train from Canterbury at about 4PM. Before getting the train, I will be working on my new silly Web 2.0 idea, shortly before that I will be taking a test involving CPU architectures.

Tuesday and Monday, I’m going to be making robots and having lectures. Monday is particularly horrible, in that I’ve got almost solid lectures from 6PM till 10AM. I will probably sleep through the first one.

Before sleeping, I will find myself in my chair writing a post about the week to come, except in reverse chronological order because I’m strange. Then, I will sit and stare confused into the infinity of the Universe, and wonder how that if I described the order of this very post in reverse chronological order, it would actually be the right way around! Equally, if I described this bit I’m writing right now I would in fact cause a literary feedback loop by describing the description of a post.

There is only one way to solve this.

JAM

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/430094/

Free Mini Eggs!  Woolworths, 1PM, Saturday the 16th 2008.  GO!