Paul's Journal

It is the second GUADEC day meant for GUADEC developers. Fortunately this day started an hour later than the day before, so… that allowed for catching up some sleep.

We visited the following talks:

• Keynote talk by Mark Shuttleworth—Great inspirational talk about his experiences and views on the GNOME desktop and FOSS concerning the now and the future.
• Panel Applets by David Madeley—Some new ideas posed by David and discussion around the panel applet’s future, great stuff.
• Lightning talks governed by Nat Friedman—Some fast & short talks about gDesklets, Glom, GScore, Evince, Xgl, Caster, Epiphany, and more.
• Project Topaz, planning for 3.0 by Jeff Waugh—GNOME’s future, what to do and what not to do… 10x10!

  

  (really good presentation and slides there, Jeff!)

Then it was time for lunch. Actually it is a bit rainy this day, but I tried to hide that on the photos. :) We bumped into a small Italian lunchroom near the Haus der Wirtschaft and had some tasty sandwiches.

After the talks and lunch most of us engaged in a small hacking/fixing session. I (finally) met up with Martyn Russell and resolved some problems in Gossip and thought/discussed about/pondered some new UI things.

I accidently missed the conclusion talk(s) of Freeform sessions, but I hope I can find it to be recorded in the GUADEC 2005 (kudos to Fluendo for streaming most of GUADEC) archive soon.

We ate at the Hacienda (Tübinger Straße 8, Stuttgart), a Mexican restaurant. The food was very good, great atmosphere inside and even almost non-stop small shows and entertainment. Then it was time for the GUADEC party. I didn’t bring my camera with me, so I have no photos of the C64 style bar where it was held in.

See also the GUADEC 2005 Photo Gallery of Monday.

The third day of our trip started really early, getting up at 7:00 is not really something I am used to. We had a nice breakfast on the balcony of the Youth Hostel with a beautiful sight over the Stuttgart center laying in the valley.

This day was the first really conference day. With a really full schedule, it is sometimes hard to choose which talk to visit. The GUADEC guys did a really great job at creating such a full and solid schedule, so thanks for that.

Talks that I have visited:

• Welcome talk by Timothy Ney, Dr. Walter Rogg, Owen Taylor and Seth Nickell—A nice kickoff.

  

• Cairo by Owen Taylor—Cool library, nice to see how easy it is to use, produces results and integrates in GTK+.
• Keynote talk by Miguel de Icaza.
• GStreamer 0.10 by Wim Taymans—Great stuff, can’t wait for 0.10 and see the improvements reflect in Rhythmbox’s behaviour.
• Annodex by Conrad Parker—Cool system, freedom for all, fuck TV!
• 

  Optimal GNOME Programming by Robert Love—Disc IO sucks, makes you rethink putting all that time into algorithm optimizations.

Afterwards we walked around the city center, my feet hurt (blisters! pain!) but we had a nice meal, especially the dessert. Then back to the university park for some gaming and playing cards until our last Spacelabs group member arrived.

We closed the day with some hacking and playing cards, and went sleeping far too late due to the warmth of the night and rooms.

See also the GUADEC 2005 Photo Gallery of Sunday.

Today we had some free time to stroll through Stuttgart until the second part of our Spacelabs group arrived. After a short night of sleep we went down to the city center to see what we had wandered through in the night before.

It’s amazing to see how much park there is in the city center; games, fountains, people sleeping, etc. We tried to find a fast way from the hostel to the GUADEC building (Haus der Wirtschaft). Afterwards we went back into the parks to explore the rest (mainly of the university campus).

At 18:00 we met up with the rest of group that has just arrived in Stuttgart and also completely missed the Youth Hostel because it is not housed at its own address.

Then it was time for some German food in the cafe and restaurant part of the city center. The food was good, and we ended the day with a “digestive” walk through the parks. If this day doesn’t stimulate the holiday feeling, then I don’t know what will!

See also the GUADEC 2005 Photo Gallery of Saturday.

And quite a trip it was! Everything went fine until we arrived in Duisburg. There SIXT informed us that our reserved car was not available and they only had a SMART ForFour for us within the hour.

We waited and had some curry Bratwurst (hmmm) and at 16:00 we were informed that our car was in Essen, not Duisburg and that we had to be transported there with one of the company’s student employees.

The driver had some trouble locating company building but we finally got there by 5 o’clock. In the Essen office of SIXT we were unable to pay, the lady behind the counter would only accept EC cards and credit cards (of which we had none with us) and would not accept Cash and the more modern Maestro system. Next to that, she was very unwilling to help us in any way, so we were kinda thrown out and stuck in the outskirts of Essen where we had never planned to be. We called back to the helpful lady in the Duisburg office, but she was unable to help us as well (but at least tried to!).

We took the bus to Essen Central Station after figuring out the ticket system and left with no options, we booked the (expensive and luxurious) ICE train to Stuttgart. Begin 19:00, we originally already should have been Stuttgart but still had to travel 3 hours by train. We arrived at Stuttgart Central Station at 22:12 with only one task left… get to the Youth Hostel and sleep. We used the GPS receiver, iPAQ and detailed maps to find our way to the Youth Hostel. This meant taking many many stairs and steep slopes up and down with heavy bags. We finally got there at 23:30, almost 5 hours overdue.

We dropped our bags, refreshed ourselves and went for a walk in Stuttgart@night. We had some nice Yufka’s in the City Center, returned and let our tired weary feet rest…

See also the GUADEC 2005 Photo Gallery of Friday.

I am almost ready to leave for GUADEC. Everything is packed and ready to go. I and others will take the train at 13:01 in Eindhoven and travel via Venlo to Duisburg. There we will take a rental car to Stuttgart and stay in the Youth Hostel Stuttgart. The second part of our group will join us on Saturday and we will stay there until Tuesday evening and then return to the Netherlands. See you there, if you’re there!

Wide screen

My Dell 24050FPW 24” widescreen arrived a weekend ago! I got it at a considerable discount, and am already very happy with it: bright, beautiful colors, fast and high contrast. I extended my PowerBook desktop with it using the MergedFB feature of my Radeon (so pseudo-Xinerama with XVideo support on both heads).

I still use it via D-SUB/VGA but when X(org) is fixed soon, I hope to switch to DVI. We’ll see about that after GUADEC. I hope to post entries with pictures from there as well, if I manage.