Sun, 02 Mar 2008
Chemnitz Linux Days 2008
Seems as if the Chemnitz Linux Days somehow turned out to be the only Linux event I still attend regularly. These days I miss out on most of them, simply because of a total lack of spare time, however, I somehow always make the CLT ... no matter how big the hassle may be! They're just worth it :)
My talk went well, even though I actually got a bit pressed on time this year and had to cut the Q&A part. The (German) slides for my talk are as usually on my talks page.
Posted at: 11:14 in /english/debian/events
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Fri, 22 Jun 2007
Hi from DC7
The journey to Edinburgh on Wednesday went pretty well. The only problem I ran into was that after landing at Edinburgh airport we had to wait in the plane for a few more minutes because the airport's doors wouldn't open.
I felt pretty beaten when I finally arrived at the venue and just exchanged a few greetings and took a look around before going to the hostel and finishing my night's sleep. When I got up again it was almost time to go for dinner and then pick up Tolimar who got here on a later plane, since his appclication for travel sponsorship got accepted much earlier. (He's giving a talk and a BoF, so he had a higher priority.)
On Thursday I saw a few talks and attended the debian-women BoF, which I think was very productive and - most importantly - gave us back some of the momentum we'd lost over the last years. We've got a whole lot of plans for new things to do now and I am looking forward to getting to work on them when I get back. The day ended with the DebConf Ceilidh which was pretty fun altough it was quite obvious that geeks may not actually be the best dancers around. Lack of rhythm was easily made up with enthusiasm though and the slight lack of women was also easily compensated. I think that Ceilidh band will remember us. We even contributed a few musicians of our own! Once the Ceilidh was over I pretty much fell right into bed.
Although it's good to be here and meet all the people, only being at DebConf for the last few days generally tends to be rather frustrating. Firstly it's always weird to join a group that has already been together for a while and also DebConf really just isn't something that can be condensed to a few days. I've just about started to get into the flow today (Friday) and tomorrow I'll already be leaving again. Shame.
Anyway, only being here for a bit is still better than not being here at all and I very much hope to have more time next year when we meet in Argentina. For now I'll just enjoy my remaining last day at DebConf and hope for a better time next year.
Posted at: 14:47 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Wed, 20 Jun 2007
Off to EDI
It's now shortly before 5am (Argh!) and I'll be leaving home now. If
everything goes as planned this will be my journey:
5:20 - Bus to station
5:43 - Train to Hanover
6:21 - Train to Cologne
9:21 - Train to the Airport (CGN)
10:50 - Plane to EDI
Around noon - Arrival at Teviot.
If I don't show up, something went wrong.
Bye bye for now ... *yawn*
Posted at: 04:59 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Sun, 17 Jun 2007
Just when you are about to give up ...
It actually seemed as though I wouldn't be going to DebConf this year. I didn't get to work much the last two months, since I wanted to spend all my time on the near completion of my thesis so I didn't have the money to pay for a flight (or train) to EDI and back myself. Due to that same thesis I also didn't have the time to prepare a talk this year so I was also not a speaker. Since I am also neither a DD nor in NM I was pretty sure I wouldn't be eligible for travel sponsorship this year. And, as expected, I was indeed very far down the queue, so when I still hadn't heard anything about being sponsored until about a week before DebConf was starting I had pretty much given up on the whole thing and resigned to the fact that this year's DebConf would happen without me.
However, on 10 June I had a mail in my Inbox. Subject: "Your travel cost sponsorship request for DebConf7". It seems the DebConf team was able to dig up some more money and do another run on the sponsorship queue. This was three days before I had to get my thesis to the print shop and I wasn't really doing anything else except for frantically going over my proof readers' annotations, doing last minute additions, changes etc. and occasionally lie down for a few hours of rather uneasy sleep. So my first reaction was something along the lines of "What?! Now?! I don't have time for this now! Go away!" and I was pretty close to answering the mail saying "Thank's but that's too short notice. I won't be coming, have fun, see you all next year." Luckily Tolimar prevented this though and actually managed to find a flight for me that not only goes on the actual days that I had originally planned to arrive and leave but that is also not far over my travel sponsorship!
So, long story short, I'll be flying to EDI on Wednesday. It'll only be for the very last few days and I am probably already missing out on lots and lots of stuff, but at least I'll be able to attend for a few days. And in time for debian-women's third birthday! :)
I just hope everything will go well, it seems there's a lot of trouble with flying to DebConf this year, at least judging from what I read on planet and heard on irc.
See you all soon!
Posted at: 11:19 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Sun, 11 Mar 2007
Back from CLT 2007
Here's, finally, the conclusion of my report from this year's CLT. It's a bit belated since when I got home from Chemnitz I only had a few hours to sleep and repack until I had to leave for Barcelona. ("Business trip", no blog material. It went well, though.) Anyway, I am back now and finally have the time to finish this and upload my slides and pictures.
The social event was great fun, there was again a really nice buffet and we sat together with some people from team(ix). There was a quiz again, this time the task was to find as many linux commands in a text as possible. We even found a few more than the organisers had expected! :) Everyone got a little chocolate Marx bust as a prize and the first three places got an Uli Stein chocolate keyboard. (Pictures in the gallery)
I spent the biggest part of Sunday at the Debian booth or wandering through the exhibition area. It was a bit more quiet than on Saturday, probably also because of the social event and the Linux-Night that took place at the same time.
The slides for my two talks are now on my talks page, the pictures I took are in the gallery and more pictures can be found at the event's pictures collection.
PS: Dear fli4l guys, your picture is here!
PPS: Thank you, Noel!
Posted at: 23:32 in /english/debian/events
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Sat, 03 Mar 2007
Saturday at CLT almost over
Hi from Chemnitz! As expected it's great here. As usual. :) My two talks went really well. They were mostly freely improvised since I was kind of slack regarding their preperation, but I got very positive feedback on both and plan to expand them for future events.
There's still a lot of visitors walking around. The debian booth is well visited with questions in all ranges, babelbox is running merily on the demo machine in rotation with bb, which never ceases to fascinate people. ;)
My saturday was really busy. I walked over here around 8:30, had breakfast and gave my first talk. After a two hour break I gave the other one and ever since then I've been switching from one conversation to the next without pauses. Most of these conversations were with "strangers" who visited my talks and wanted to tell me about projects and ideas of their own, their personal experiences with Linux and Free Software or give further suggestions for my talks. I've really enjoyed these conversations, though they got a bit tiring after a while since for some reason people always catch me when walking somewhere, and so most of these long conversations were held standing and my legs are pudding now.
In a few minutes (hopefully) the social will start and I hope it will be as good as last year. I plan to take things a bit easier tomorrow, visit other peoples booths, take some pictures and maybe even visit a talk or two. The rest of this day will hopefully be spend having some more inspiring conversations, enjoying good food and drink and continuing to try to coax Noel into relinquishing to me his old Debian shirt, that he grew out of. (Small Debian shirts are such a rare and precious good!)
Posted at: 19:29 in /english/debian/events
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Fri, 02 Mar 2007
Off to Chemnitz
In about half an hour I'll leave for Chemnitz in order to attend the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2007. I am very much looking forward to going there. Ever since the LinuxTag left Karlsruhe, the CLT are my favourite Linux event within Germany. Because of this I registered even two talks this year, one in the beginners section and of course the inevitable social talk. ;-)
They're both new, so this CLT will feature two premieres. Giving new talks basically means that anything is possible. Very high rock and roll factor! New talks always have the highest risc for "accidents" but also they're usually most fun, because there's still some room (or need) for improvisation left. This is probably also why I tend to lose interest in a talk once I've given it a few times. Though, the BOFH one is of course a golden oldie!
PS: Tolimar is a copycat!
Posted at: 16:17 in /english/debian/events
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Sun, 28 May 2006
Still jet lagged
Although I've back from DebConf6 for almost a week now, I somehow still suffer from the jet lag. I am rather surprised by this since I usually don't have too many problems with changing my sleeping times and also the jet lag when going from Germany to Mexico was practically neglectable.
However, this one is a real sucker! By now my sleep times are pretty much erratic, I have an almost constant headache and my stomach gives me trouble after each meal. Surprisingly I didn't have any problems with such stuff when I was in Mexico! I was neither sick nor heat struck or dehydrated. In fact I didn't even have so much as a sunburn. But ever since I got back, life has been pretty yargh.
Why am I posting this?- I feel like whining
- I've been almost constantly offline since I got back - let this be an excuse
- I've been pretty grumpy since I got back - let this be an excuse
- My backlog is still lieing idle for the most part - let this be an excuse
- I feel like whining
Posted at: 23:05 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Wed, 24 May 2006
Back home from DC6
So, I am back home. After a 24 hour journey we arrived at Tolimar's
place Sunday night, after a journey that sadly was not as nice as the one
to .mx. First we departed about 1/2hr late from Oaxtepec since the
backpack of a fellow traveler was ridden over by a car. Than our taxi
driver charged us 900MXN for the trip to the airport, although we had
agreed on 800 before we left.
Once in the airplane our machine had an
engine problem and could not take off. We waited for about 2.5hrs while the
inside of the plane steadily got hotter and hotter. Due to this we also
missed our connecting flight at Heathrow and were rebooked on a later
flight. Probably due to this Tolimar's luggage didn't make it on the same
flight and had to be delivered to his house on the next day. Once we had
finally reached Frankfurt we went to bed and slept for 16hrs straight. Got
back up at about 5pm today, took the train to Hildesheim and am now finally
home!
No DebConf6 conclusions yet. I am in full EndOfEvent/jet lag mode and feel deader than the frozen chicken (Chicken! Of all things!) I just dug out the icebox of my otherwise totally cleared out fridge. At the moment the predominant feeling is a mixture of "Wow, that was a trip!", profound tiredness and regret about all the things I had planned to do but found no time then.
PS: Bubulle, flattery won't help you. I'll get you for this!
PPS: Time to write postcards. ;)
PPPS: I'm freezing!!
Posted at: 00:55 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Sat, 20 May 2006
Materials concerning my talk ...
will be put up on my website sortly. (I.e. as soon as I fixed the typo and replaced the transparent png that f***s up OpenOffice's PDF export IN EVERY SINGLE SLIDE :( I should really start using beamer or magicPoint or something ...)
Posted at: 20:59 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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