Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

Despite the excitement, I somehow managed to read three books in the last two weeks. Since so many bloggers I read seem intent on talking about books of late, I thought I'd join in.

Just before EuroBSDCon, I started reading Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky, finishing it on the plane to Copenhagen. I recommend this one only if you're able to switch your mind down to its level. It is nothing like the real Discworld series. Good laughs though!

In Denmark, I read most of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy. I bought this book, and indeed the whole trilogy in one go, on an impulse because I liked the author's name (cough) and I found the blurbs interesting. It was a good impulse. The book is fairly fast-paced and doesn't include boredom. The "science" is a bit dubious and there is a bit too much Church-with-a-capital-C in it to my liking, but it doesn't spoil the fun. Go read this one.

Yesterday and today, then, I read Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (I don't know what's on this site, it's not HTML), which I traded for A Hat Full of Sky with Jennifer in Denmark. This one is 'something different' and you should just read it for yourself. It is very British in places. Not so much a book as a collection of different reading materials. The story gets very far-fetched here and there, but it never gets totally whacky. Just go read it and find out. :-)

Tomorrow, I plan to make a large dent in The Subtle Knife. No, I don't think I'm reading too much. I just go literature-omnivore when I'm hyper. Keeps the mind active. And we all know an idle mind is a very dangerous thing!

Woke up this morning with a splitting headache, stuffed nose and a throat feeling like it's just been FOSDEM. Boeing airco has won again! The post-conference tiredness must have torn down some of my defences. :-/

Back to bed after typing this entry and sending mail to $boss to say I'm staying home so as not to infect any other team members.

At Kulminator last night (no, it is definitely not a hangover I'm suffering from, yes I know the difference), we were attacked by a Japanese camera crew. They wanted footage of people enjoying real Belgian beer for some programme airing on TV and "the internet" sometime in January.

So if you're watching Japanese TV and suddenly spot a bearded geek weating a BSDCan t-shirt and a long-haired geek wearing a Debconf one: that's me and p2!

And now back to bed before I collapse. Ugh!

Before:

Exhausted, sweaty, smelly, disgusting, sticky ... sore-footed geek.

After:

Still exhausted. Feet are feeling a bit better.

And all it took were a hundred or so litres of water, and copious volumes of soap. bliss

What is it about "travelling" that causes filth to pile up on the human body? Is it the country you're leaving trying to put as much of itself on you so you don't forget it? Or are airports and airplanes really that dirty? Regardless of how long the flight or how thorough the shower before getting on the airplane, I always arrive at my destination so filthy that I would pretty much want to run away from myself. Think "homeless".

In addition to the ablutionary rituals, I finally got new contact lenses! It only took about eight weeks for them to arrive too. Usually I am very happy about my dealer. In fact, this is the first time it's taken them more than a week to get me my supply. I hope this is not going to become their standard practice.

I can see!

With all the goings-on in Copenhagen, I just realize that I've only posted about half of the postcards I wrote. Whoops. I'll put the ones I forgot into envelopes and post them from Belgium later this week. After I wake up.

I am writing this on the train from Brussels to Antwerp. This morning, I woke up around 04:00, took a very brief shower and walked to Hovedbanegården where I took the 05:03 train to Kastrup to catch my 06:40 flight.

Just in time, I remembered that marmelade (yes mum) is a liquid according to airport security physicists and moved my shopping from my carry-on to my checked bag. Too late I remembered that my hat contains a copper decal on it, which earned me slightly more attention from the security droids. Ugh.

Got off the plane at 08:00ish for a brisk twenty minute walk through the drab, boring corridors that make up Brussels airport. Surprisingly, my checked bags were waiting for me when I got through to them and I managed to jump on the 08:26 train to Brussels to catch the 08:44 train to Antwerp. Which is where I am now.

The next stages of my commute will be to drop my bags in a locker in Berchem and to hop on a bus to Edegem, hopefully getting there around 10:00ish. You can say what you like about me, but not many people will suffer a five hour long commute to go to work. I hate taking idle days after conferences though. I find it easier to just jump straight into work and to deal with the sleep deprivation over the weekend.

Speaking of sleep deprivation: from the looks of my neighbour on the plane as we got off, I think my snoring probably managed to drown out the roar of the engines. It's a talent. Really. :-)

And now for catching up with email...

The "hackathon"-style devsummit seems to be working out very well. Last night, particularly Brooks and I got in touch with our neanderthal side. After the wood-fire inside started to burn a bit too efficiently, practically turning the place into a sauna, we went out to make a bonfire outside. This went very well too, and I'm happy to report that the village did not burn down.

Good discussion about jails and virtual network stacks after an excellent Italian meal. I think we should make it a requirement for Italians to attend devsummits! During the discussions, I downloaded Marko's VMWare image with network stack virtualization for playing with.

We also discussed a "capability framework" that could be used inside and outside jails to give different users root-ish rights, such as binding sockets to low ports or using raw sockets. This will come in handy for the super tunnel daemon which was written as part of the Summer of Code this year.

One particularly good idea that came up is the removal of jail IDs. They serve no real purpose other than to annoy the user with unpredictability and making it difficult to script jails. It makes much more sense to have jails identified by name. While doing this, it also makes sense to pull apart the jail name and the jail hostname.

It is hard to imagine that at this time tomorrow, I will be walking out of the airport and heading for the train to Antwerp and ultimately to work. Taking criminally early flights is nuts, but on the other hand, I find it easier to just jump straight in to work rather than spending part of a day at home pining for holidays. It makes settling back into reality a bit more bearable I think.

People around me are slowly starting to wake up. I think it's time to contemplate breakfast.

Leaving Copenhagen fairly early this morning, we arrived at Græsrodsgården a while ago. I wonder how Poul-Henning finds places like this. :-)

There are twelve of us, and I think we'll have a blast. I have a feeling there will be quite some Lego-work going on.

Three-phase electricity, wireless, ... what more do geeks need? :-)

Slept in a bit this morning. It is surprising how much energy conferences manage to drain, even if you're just "attending" and not "organizing". I woke up for a while when my roommates were leaving for Legoland, and then fell asleep again for an hour.

Lunch at a "real" Chinese restaurant (the kind where you actually see Chinese people, not the buffet kind of place which Chinese people tend to avoid) with Peter Losher. Because restaurants in Denmark only open at 12:00 and not at 11:15, we were forced to have a beer first. Then off to Louisiana rather later than I had originally intended to see some lovely things I'd not seen before.

Dinner with Mr.E in Frederiksberg. I intended to take the yellow S-train, but it turns out they replaced the S-train station with a metro-station. This struck me as slightly unusual, but I imagine it made sense to someone! Of course I got out at the wrong side of the station -- despite being warned of this -- and synchronizing took a bit of time.

Before dinner, we took a walk through Frederiksberg Have and met a number of dræbersnegler which seem to be a bit of a nuisance around Denmark this year. For some reason, I was reminded of the Chinese food. :-)

Over dinner -- which was excellent! -- we shared some new mathematics jokes (yeah yeah, I know) and some computer archeology. Great fun!

Now I am waiting for my laundry. I hate domestic machines. But one of the things I like about youth hostels is the fact that you can save significantly on luggage because there are laundromats. Unlike hotels, they also don't charge a fortune for the privilege of using them. Now if only they could make them fun...

After seeing an advert in this month's Copenhagen This Week (and then reading dad's comment on a recent blog entry), I'm planning to go to Louisiana on Sunday.

Is there anyone else at EuroBSDCon not taking the trip to Legoland on Sunday who wants to join me? Plan is to take the 09:21 regionaltog at København H arriving in Humlebæk at 09:54 (Louisiana opens at 10:00). And to come back sometime in the evening to synchronize with the Legoland crowd.

Let me know if you're interested!

This evening, I went to see Les Contes d'Hoffmann with Jennifer at the new opera house on Holmen. I don't think the Danes in the audience really "Got It". Admittedly, the plot is a bit ridiculous (to quote Jennifer: "just a reason to get people shouting on stage!"), but if you get the fact that the ridicule is the whole point, you can be giggling all through the production. As were we, to the dismay of some of the more typical specimens of Cultured Danes in the audience!

To our surprise, we met Helle, who has now retired and has loads of time for opera, in the foyer waiting for beer. How small the world can be...

Getting to the opera was rather interesting. We got to Taastrup station a bit early, and to our surprise saw a B train waiting. When we hopped on that, the driver announced that we were standing still because of a 'personpåkørsel' (person-over-driving), which is another one of those Danish words that shouldn't make me smile but does, and that there was absolutely no hope of the train going anywhere for quite a while. He urged us to take the train going in the opposite (wrong) direction to try our luck at Høje Taastrup station instead.

No trains to Copenhagen there either. Of course. A friendly little message on the television screens let us know that we should take into account significant delays. Great fun when the opera doesn't wait for you! So we hopped into a taxi and he got us to Copenhagen in time.

The Holmen opera house is wonderful. Well worth the trip to it and the price for the tickets! It's almost a reason on its own to come back to Denmark a bit more often. If I have time, I'll try to visit it during daylight and take some pictures of it. busy busy

Tomorrow, I'm going for lunch with some of the FreeBSD crowd. I must not forget that I'm here for EuroBSDCon, after all! For dinner, I have a date with Annette, however, so BSD will again have to wait a bit. :-)

It is amazing how fast my Danish is coming back to me. My pronunciation needs some work (give it a couple of days) but I'm over the "background translation" phase. On Friday, I need to briefly pop in at CIS again for a chat with Ina to see how much my Danish pronunciation has suffered over the years.

And now I'm off to bed. Early day tomorrow.

In a fit of nostalgia, I went to Hellerup yesterday to say hi to some of the old dinosaurs still remaining at CIS. I was reminded, again, why I liked that place so much (and why I hated AIS too).

Despite some kind of mad building frenzy having taken place, many of the usual suspects were still exactly where I left them: in the chemistry lab on the C floor, in the library -- which did move, but that doesn't matter, it's still a library -- and in the English office which hasn't moved. Surprisingly, the dinosaurs all remembered me. I must have been a real horror (still am!). :-)

The weather in Denmark hasn't changed either: it was pouring down by the bucketload yesterday and today it's nice an sunny. The weatherman on Danish TV last night wouldn't give any government-backed guarantees, of course, but he was fairly certain that it would not rain today. We'll see...

I'm off to Copenhagen in a bit to buy some postcards and to look for a book on modern Danish architecture for Ann. Finding a book should not be too difficult, finding one in English might prove slightly more tricky, but I'm sure it can be done!

Funny how Copenhagen hasn't changed much. They dug a metro under the city, but they did it in a way that you hardly notice. Nyhavn is still Nyhavn and most of the shops on Strøget are still the same.

having fun

Blogging on airport wireless is starting to become a hobby... I'm waiting at the airport in Brussels for my flight to Copenhagen. If anyone else coming to EuroBSDCon is in Copenhagen a bit early, please drop me an email if you're interested in dinner in geek-company (or call me: +32 486 114 720).

I wonder if I will recognize Copenhagen. It's been four years since my last trip to Denmark and eight years since I moved away. Scary.

off to catch plane

Yesterday, we had our second meeting (already) to start the circus around organizing FOSDEM 2008. One of the organizational issues which has been getting more and more painful over the past few years, surprisingly, is the beer event on Friday evening before FOSDEM.

It is quite clear to everyone that Le Roy d'Espagne has become impractical over the past few years. While a very nice location, it is simply too small for the kind of crowd we attract. It is also relatively expensive, even taking into account its central location.

I would certainly still recommend Le Roy d'Espagne for smaller events, but it simply does not scale up to the requirements of the FOSDEM beer event. I also plan to send them a little email to this effect, since I'm sure they'll be very sad to see us go. :-)

A number of other locations have been suggested, none of them particularly interesting. Yesterday however, someone mentioned the Delirium Cafe to me, which looks quite promising. Beer Advocate gives it very good reviews and it seems to be quite a large bar. Certainly larger than Le Roy d'Espagne.

I have contacted them today and I hope we can make a good deal about space, service and rates.

Watch this space. :-)