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Paris - night 1

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 12:51:55 +0200

Sorry for the delay in blogging about UDS, but a week of "doing nothing" was wellcome and necessary :-) Unfortunately real life also came back far too early and an unusual work load in pharmacy prevented my blogging so far.

Monday night we (Belinda, Anthon and Scott) were out for dinner in the village where we ate some french food: "Gigot d'agneau" (lamb with mixed salad and fries) was in my plate and, well, quite good. Unfortunately wine was not very good: too young and very acid. We decide to go back to the Radisson for a drink and had the quite unpleasant surprise to learn that one beer was €9 ! Excuse me, this is not the Ritz AFAIK ! After some discussions we decided to buy some drinks in a shop. Loaded the dinner folks plus 2 KDE people (Aaron and Sebastian) into my car and tried to find an open shop... it was already way past 9 o'clock so we headed towards Paris. After a first try in a shop where nothing alcoholic was available we managed to find an open liquor store and my passengers went to buy some beer and wine, but came back without wine (/me not very lucky obviously) but french and dutch beer and even a bottle of some harder stuff, e.g. vodka. The drive was very, very funny, especially having Aaron on board who is not only a brilliant writer but also a witty entertainer :-) But then, me (after dinner with wine) behind the wheel and another 5 funny bones in the car could have been reason enough to be stopped by some patrol car. The drive was hilarious as we either had to follow an overloaded truck at 10 km/h for ages or found the motorway entry blocked on the way back from St-Denis, already fearing to get lost in french countryside in the middle of the night.

Back at our hotel we sat together in the lobby chatting and drinking ... still loaded with adrenaline from the day, sleep was not something we were thinking of very much. I remember going to bed around 4 in the morning !

And of course, "9 sharp" was mandatory, but I managed to get up in time and was at the Radisson at 8:45.

UDS - Paris - Day 1

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:23:01 +0200

We rise early enough to be at the Radisson for 9 o'clock. Some 10 or 11 round tables wait for developpers to gather around and UDS specs are presented from top to bottom by those who filed them. This takes about 2 hours after what all the others present themselves to the audience. During specs presentation I try to find some interresting ones, so I end up with a quite impressive list of some 15 specifications I might try to help out. Remember: I am _not_ a developper !

(What am I doing here anyway ?)

There really is an impressive list of great names some might have heard of. Check the specifications list to get some ideas what we are working on. Well, ideally this list should turn from Braindump to Review or even Approved by the end of the week.

I subscribed today for "What do NonGeeks want ?" and had a very nice braindump session with some very interresting folks. Before that I stayed at my initial table and tried to find my way to work with "Quieten Grub" specification.

Actually, all sessions are on Gobby server where one can join the party from the outside world, so check this if you want to collaborate.

And, of course, there also is some critics from the FSFE fellow I am:

Besides the fact that Launchpad actually is _not_ Free Software, there is no other way to participate, well one can read on your neighbours laptop, but this somehow keeps you out of touch with the ongoing work.

But there is worse to come:

There also is VOIP in use and TeamSpeak is an affliction. Am I consequent enough to get my hands off and follow RMS' advice ?

"To use non-free software will have the effect of excluding certain
participants from the discussion: those that on ethical grounds will
not install such software on their computers. We already press hard
against e-government practices that demand citizens use non-free
software to communicate with the government. We will do likewise if
WSIS adopts such practices. You have only seen the beginning of it
here."

Attending "Tab Consistency" BoF afterwards showed how much VOIP could be used to integrate users from the outside, unless you manage to get it to work. I decide to give it a try...

In the afternoon I attended the "Common Customisation s" session and it was quite a... strange experience: Strangely, all the attendees around the table had their heasets on but nobody spoke. Some typed on their keyboard and I had a feeling of total exclusion. So I decided to install VOIP and the collaborative editing tool !

First I struggled to get TeamSpeak: the link to it was well hidden in a then undocumented subpage of UbuntuDeveloperSummitParis wiki page (which is well documented by now). Then I got aware I had no Gobby and installed it from the Universe repository. At about 2/3 into BoF session I managed to join the party and spotted a thread about media players. As I sat 20 centimeters from the drafter I asked about VLC aloud: and I got te answer on Gobby typed! No external users were visible and still everyone got their headsets on in total silence. Strange...

Still, I'm not a developer nor a computer scientist of any sort, maybe I just missed the point. But using VOIP needs bandwith which is not available all around the globe at reasonable cost...

With all this new experience, Belinda and I got in touch with two other attendees staying at the Comfort Hotel and we decided to look for a decent restaurant at reasonable prices, eating at the Radisson not beeing sponsored definitely was a no go. Fortunately we found a french restaurant in the village and had a not too bad meal with a typical cheese ending :-)

Paris - day 0

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:06:13 +0200

Wow, what a trip! Weather was bright and very hot, so I was driving the whole 600 km to Paris with air conditioning on, so I must have used a lot of diesel during this trip. But more about this later ...

Driving an almost new car is great, but its also dangerous to drive too fast. Although my car actually has cruise control I often forget to use it. Which I really do since my trip to France: never forget that police cars do not look the same in other countries ! So passing past dark blue cars with uniformed guys inside is _not_ a good idea at 160 km/h ! It cost me 90 € and stern looks of otherwise friendly french policemen.

Approaching Paris also meant getting into heavy clouds, lightening and raindrops the size of oranges. But as all Paris was commuting home from weekend I was stuck in traffic for the last 100 km and of course arrived pretty late at the Airport to get Belinda. With my usual luck her plane was late and she only had to wait a few minutes (at least she told me so ;-) ).

Heading to the hotel from the airport I saw my tank warning flashing which means less than 50 km to go ... remember I still had air conditioning working ? We stopped at our hotel and asked the concierge where we could find some fuel. After refreshing in our room we headed for diesel and found a station, just to get aware that
a) it was not taking cards and
b) there was no other mean to get some diesel there.

So off to the next station: for all those who never have travelled in France: the countryside is lovely but also very empty, some little village here and there, nobody in the streets (France playing against South Korea) and no fuel station in the next village. Belinda spotted a Shell station when we came from the Airport so we managed to find this again: closed !. Oh but on the same street in the next village I was able to spot another station ! Saved ? no, card reader "out of order". This time I seriously began to think of whom of the Ubuntu folks I had the phone number of I was going to call, how to tell where we were (lost in lovely french countryside, somewhere north, err south? err no idea, too many clouds), that we were in desperate need of fuel and it was raining with interruptions and no, we can _not_ push our car to the next fuel station. After boldly driving uphill I suddenly spotted a Carrefour supermarket _and_ a fuel station. And oh, open 24h/24h !

So park the car next to the fuel nozzle, get out my Maestro card: "carte refusée" !!!

Oh but there is Belinda having some VISA: "carte refusée "

But, oh how lucky we are, she's got another card: "carte refusée".

I was on the edge of tears ! They were only accepting french cards !!!

But, there, other people filling their tanks: up to the first car to ask if he could help us out if we pay him cash: blunt refuse!
Luckily, the next Frenchman was very kind and we finally got the so needed diesel and drove back to Mesnil-Amelot where the hotels are.

We drove around a while to find some nice restaurant but only saw asian or closed french ones. As we also needed to know the time schedule for Monday we went to Radisson where I came across Ogra smoking outside. Belinda and I decided to get some food there and later joined the "Ubuntists" at the bar.

BTW, find Belindas blog in trackback.

Software Freedom Day in Switzerland? Call for action!

Fri, 26 May 2006 01:18:39 +0200

I hope all Swiss fellows read this message: I would like to make September 16th a very special day. Since there are quite many of us it should be possible to organise a great event. I already made a wiki entry in the SFD wiki and as some of you know we have a mailing-list for the Swiss Team. Mail me if you want to be added to the mailinglist and dont hesitate to post ideas and suggestions for the SFD.
There are less than 6 months to go, so join the team and lets make September 16th a great Software Freedom Day in Switzerland !

Fête du Libre - Geneva

Sun, 14 May 2006 15:52:18 +0200

Sitting in an internet café in Geneva where the GULL - Groupe Utilisateurs Linux Léman - organises the Freedom Day: la Fête du Libre!
I'm going to speak about the FSF Europe, the Fellowship programm and how to help and support our work. Nice happening, althought weather is beautiful outside, but lets hope I can attract the attention despite the weather :-)

Update: nice public! Some of them are seniors who attend the Internet Café for courses and they all had interesting questions and remarks, like: "How come a pharmacist is so passionate about Free Software?" and "Great to see that we also have young people who are interested in social issues". I like the later, as I'm used to face people who usually are surprised that "people of my age" are still interested in "young" issues!

I clearly fill the gap :-)

FOSDEM 2006 - first day

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 18:01:58 +0100

FOSDEM's first day is slowly ending and here is a first attempt of a report. Let's hope my wifi-connection stands to the end.

The booth is very large this year, we sell T-shirts on both sides and installed the info booth in the middle. As usual, web connection is very unpredictable, but luckily this morning we were able to access and read our mail during more than an hour. I try to sell on the "women"'s side, e.g. T-shirts in female sizes and often explain the Fellowship of FSFE. As usual at FOSDEM, I'm speeking mostly french, but alread came accross people from Italy, Spain and also Switzerland. Dutch would be very usefull but unfortuantely I dont speak it (yet). There are the usual runs at the booth showing the end of tracks, where our selling and explainig capacities are well used.

Today I gave an interview to a belgian TV team: they promised to get in touch before the broadcast. So get your satelite dishes ready, I'll post the date here.

Wilhelm Tux in Karlsruhe

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

As in previous years I joined the FSF Europe fellows and volunteers in Karlsruhe, this time in company of Florian and Didier from Linuxbourg and Mario from Wilhelm Tux/Edux.

A carload of geeks, loads of chocolate and, as a special feature this year, a Raclette cheese and its tools.

We arrived Wednesday afternoon and immediately found the Community booth of the FSFE in the Stadthalle where fellows from the newly founded FSF Latin America already hacked their keyboards. It was great to meet Fernanda and Beatriz whom I only knew from their mails and of course a big pleasure to see Federico again. Niibe and his friends from Japan were there too and gave us a warm welcome.

As expected, we had a lot of people asking questions about software patents issues, I don't know how many times I answered the same questions again and again... but it was a really great job, especially with friends doing the same during this four days (and beyond).

As usual in Karlsruhe, afterwork was great fun:

The first evening we shared some Italian food where Matze, like all of us, expressed his joy to see us all together again.

On Thursday we organised the Raclette at our booth in the exposition area where also other booths held afterwork parties. Mario was very impressive as chef and made people really happy with his skills. More and more people were attracted (maybe by the smell...) and we soon run out of pickles, potatoes and white wine, but a raclette is good on its own! This was a tremendous beginning of the evening and Georg was obviously very happy,

We then moved over to the KALUG party where we shared some drinks and of course ended up singing :-)

The great evening was of course the social event on Friday which this year was hosted at the Nancyhall restaurant. There was plenty of food (there was not really enough last year), plenty to drink (much better than last year!) but also plenty of people with not enough chairs, unless one went out to the Festplatz.,, where the FSFE band gathered together and had a really great evening.

(photos provided by Mario)

Freedom Party in Berne

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Last Saturday we had the first Freedom Party in Switzerland.

An average 25 people attended the event, some of them coming from as far as Winterthur or Lausanne. Alex Schroeder and I had short speeches. Unfortunately my cardreader (SCR335, yes I know...) crashed down after 5 minutes and I had to give theoretical explanations without practical demonstration. But we showed the FSFE website, explained the use of the CMS and of course had a good time.

See the photos shot by Didier at FSFE-Freedom-Party-Berne

Another week of dificulties

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

I'm still struggling with my medical condition: almost every appointment I had this week had to be postponed because of it. Luckily I managed to arrange my office around my bed and have the phone in reach. The seed for a Freedom Party in Switzerland is laid and went out to the mailing lists. What is important now is to find the following: location: for ca. 100 people, internet access, wheelchair access, for free or at least cheap catering (drinks and snacks) music (already contacted DJ Submerge, waiting for his answer) sponsoring for location, music, advertising (printing) and catering (Alex already has an idea about it, to be followed) someone to demonstrate the crypto-card hardware: I'll bring my laptop, crypto-card and card reader. Have to check if I'll manage to use the card with the 2.6. kernel, else have to check with Werner advertising: adapt the existing flyer, distribute it Invite the various Swiss LUG's personally

Desastrous week

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100

For once I tried to get some more sleep than the usual 3-4 hours after Linuxbourg meetings , the result was near disaster: I fell down the stairs while leaving the building last Wednesday and ended up in hospital. Thanks to Didier who took care of me and drove me to emergency at 22:00 My right arm had to be repaired by osteosynthesis and bone transplant. Besides that, some bruises which will leave some more scars, but I'm alive. Home since Monday, I had to go through more than 1600 mails: one third of it filtred out by good old Spamassasin which really is a friend :-) I face the next 6 weeks one-handed, so don't expect fast mails. Unfortunately I am not allowed to drive neither, so my lovely countryside will be some sort of a prison for the next weeks.

Wilhelm Tux in February

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The last weeks were terrific: 18.-19.2. Wilhelm Tux @ LOTS! in Berne (CH) 20.-22.2. with comunica-ch at WSIS PrepCom2 in Geneva (CH) 25.-28.2. Wilhelm Tux travelled by car to attend FOSDEM in Brussels (B) these were heavy weeks besides my work I do for living, but a lot of fun.