26 May 13:30 / On the plane to Manchester

Woke up at 05.30. Or rather my youngest daughter woke up at that time. I would never wake up at that time. I managed to keep her in bed until 06.20 when my second oldest daughter woke up. There is no way to silence two kids, at least not mine so I ended having to go up.

After breakfast and some packing I was ready for Copenhagen. Took a taxi to the airport and flew to Copenhagen. I found some spare fifteen minutes. Great. That meant I could fix a bug that was reported on swinput. The report said more or less missing Makefile. After having added the Makefile to the dist I tried compiling. Didn't work. Time for some kernel module maintainance. I have been talking with some other people about doing this as a user space thingie instead of a kernel module. Certainly feels like that now.

I am currently on the plane to Manchester. Just found out I have to recompile the kernel (2.6.16) so I better write something while doing so. I use a 2.0 G HZ processor so you should be able to calculate an estimate of how long time it took to write this simple text, assuming that I don't edit it later on. BTW, I had to restart compilation once since I used the wrong version of gcc.

While writing this I am listening to Freddie Wadling interpretations of the old Swedish song writer, Evert Taube. Freddie is certainly a great interpreter but what strikes me is how beautiful words can be, regardless of interpretation. As a man/boy I am suppose to make lists of everything so here is a short list of favourite Swedish song writers.

1. Carl Micheal Bellman
2. Evert Taube
3. Cornelis Vreeswijk
4. Allan Edwall
5. Stefan Sundström

For those of you into Swedish song writers number 4 and 5 may  come as a surprise. Contact me and I'll recommend what to buy (not download). I really wish my English was good enough to translate the Swedish lyrics into English. I will not even try with respect to the original authors.

I am starting to feel a bit sick. As when I am sailing on open sea. Will fold my laptop and continue later on, bye for now.

Took the train from the airport and met the others at the train station. It feels really good to arrive in Manchester when being picked up by Gareth Bowker, Georg Greve, Joachim Jacobs, Rainer Karsten, Werner Koch, Karin Kosina, Reinhard Müller, Jonas Öberg and Bernhard Reiter.

After a quick lunch we went to the conference centre in Manchester and continued the work already started by the others. The day before the official General Assembly is dedicated to planning the GA.

After some hours Stefano Maffulli entered. We were now complete.

More planning and more food.

And a long awaited sleep. I needed that.

27 May

We discussed our projects. The projects include the anti-trust case against Microsoft, revision of GPL, Fellowship. By looking at the projects mentioned you can easily image that it took a while to discuss them all.

The GA went fine. Gareth Bowker was welcomed as a new member.

After the GA we went to the street called "Curry Mile" to have, yes
you're right, a curry. I had one of my favourite dishes, Rogan Josh. Excellent.



28 May 20:05 / Heading for Gothenburg

Sunday morning. Even more discussions.

Three days of discussions and curry. Yes, we ate curry all the time. Apart from the breakfast which, of course, was an English breakfast. What a great town. Indian restaurants everywhere. The funny thing is that I ate a curry the evening before I left Gothenburg. So all I've really had the last 3 days is curry. I have to say the yesterday's curry was one the best dishes I've ever ate. I hereby recommend Haleem.

Since I wanted to be home to see my kids on Sunday I had planned to leave Manchester Sunday afternoon.

Gareth gave me a lift to the airport (Thanks Gareth!). It was a strike of luck that I was in time at the airport. The plane from Manchester to Copenhagen was OK, but the one from Copenhagen to Gothenburg was "double booked". Hmmmm. Managed to arrange for me to take a direct flight to Gothenburg. Great!

When the plane lifted up through the clouds I got a funny feeling. When rising slowly through the clouds I suddenly realised how lucky I am. I live in an age where man can fly. Think about what Plato or Newton would have wanted to do that. And here I am, sitting in a plane.

Anyway, the GA is over and it's time to think over what's been done and said. It'll probably take a while.

By the way, I can see the wester coast of England right under me. Cool. It makes me think of one of the great games the coming month. Sweden will play against England in the Football World cup in Germany later on in June. I am not going to say who's going to win, but I think one team is going to. And at the same time I think that an over 30 year old tradition of Sweden not loosing against England will be kept intact. Who's winning? I really do believe that we are facing the situation as in 1982. Italy was shocked by some strange bribe affairs (including Paulo Rossi who later became that World Cup's greatest striker). We definitely see that now too. So yes, I think Italy is going to win and I think that Luca Toni will end up scoring
most goals in the tournament. Just remember where you read it ;)

So, what happened with my kernel module over the weekend. Really nothing. Actually I have started a kernel recompilation...... So, now the headers are there. I had to fix minor compilation error. We are on track again. Will release swinput 0.7 the coming week. And Xnee 2.05.

I got home at 22.03. My oldest daughter was still awake.