Dave Coombs

March 07, 2004

Chemnitz

Well, here I am. Internet access has been both really scarce and really expensive all week. Now that I'm at the conference, access is abundant and free, but of course I've been much busier here. Ah well.

Borken: Lost in Translation

It has been fun, though. This conference is really neat: compared to others I've attended I'd say it's less technical, less coding-oriented, and more general-purpose, which ends up attracting a bigger audience. There are lots, and I mean lots, of booths representing different projects, which is something missing from OLS and less pronounced at Linux-Kongress. What's good is that it's an easy way to meet people working on these projects, and so there are constantly tons of people milling about.

KDE and Gnome: Together at last!

My talk on WvStreams attracted a smallish, but very sharp audience. I got some great questions, some new things to look at, and a few promises to try WvStreams and let me know what happens. Stirring up interest and enthusiasm is fun.

Thanks again to Sven Guckes for showing me and apenwarr around Berlin. Sven is a compulsive tour guide. He claims he doesn't actually know everything, but I think he does.

Chocolate Reichstag

A good, worthwhile trip, overall. Most people here speak at least some English, and I speak at least some German, so it's not hard at all to have real conversations with people. (Avery has been doing surprisingly well with his hand-waving and facial-expressions method of communication.) The point of conferences, as pphaneuf says, is not to attend the talks, although if you get something out of them that's great, but to meet people, learn what they're working on, and see where life takes you. Hard to argue with that.

Meanwhile, I will try to get all my pictures from this conference (and from CodeCon too) up without any too-horrible delays. We'll see. Flying home tomorrow.

(Posted on March 7, 2004 17:03)

March 19, 2004

Off to Ottawa for a couple days of poking the house, visiting siblings, and assorted randomness. I had meant to post a longer update before leaving, but it'll have to wait until I'm back.

Berlin

(Posted on March 19, 2004 13:01)

March 23, 2004

Snowy Goodness

I love all the butterflies and bright colours in store windows this time of year, particularly when snow is dumping down right in front of the glass.

Happy spring!

WvSync and iFolder

I was rather surprised to hear about Novell's decision to release iFolder to the open-source community, as it has striking similarities with my own plans for WvSync. There are certainly several key differences, so I don't think I need to give up and go home -- iFolder claims to integrate nicely with the desktop and is limited to synchronizing files, where WvSync aims to be a lower-level general-purpose library for synchronizing anything. We'll see how it goes, but it certainly gives me more to think about.

pphaneuf wearing not just pants, but dress pants!

wlach takes a nap

Work

We've been hiring people as quickly as we can. A few new programmers, a couple new testers, and still looking for more. We're also interviewing a couple people from other countries, which sort of goes slower by necessity (silly government and their silly rules) but for these guys I expect it will be worth the effort.

Construction is well under way now. The walls next door have been rearranged according to plan, and now they've begun running ethernet cable and bashing holes in our current wall to connect the spaces together. It's noisy, but it's fun.

The hole begins

More NITI webloggers

Hey there, JoeNotCharles! Nice to see you on advogato.

(Posted on March 23, 2004 18:34)

March 29, 2004

Saintly Forefathers

I have purchased 50 g of St. Coombs of Dimbula Ceylon estate black tea. I have no idea who this St. Coombs character was, but really, does that matter? What was I going to do, not buy it?

Anyway, it tastes like tea.

Workplace Arrangement

The last week or two has been pretty busy with construction of our new office space and then the inevitable moving into it. It all went quite well, but it was a bit of a time-suck.

We've now got most of our developers split into two- and three-person offices, which is (I think) better than the previous arrangement of mostly everyone in the same room. It's quieter now, hence more conducive to work, but there are still others nearby for collaboration and/or socializing. I think this arrangement should work out nicely.

Sugar

As I've said before, you only die once, so you might as well enjoy it. A bunch of us NITI folk went to a sugar shack last night, which is a rustic place in the middle of nowhere where they make their own maple syrup. You go, and they feed you bread, salad, beer, soup, ham, eggs, Jesus Ears, and various desserts, all of which you are free to douse in as much maple syrup as you see fit.

Afterwards, they dump maple syrup on snow, you wait for it to solidify, and then you pick it up and eat it.

I don't need to tell you that this is a delicious and healthful experience!

There is also a dance floor.

Andrew is a closet disco maniac

(Posted on March 29, 2004 19:03)