jcm's blog

[ from the nearly-three-months-between-visits-is-slightly-scary dept. ]

Photo: Old Market Square Nottingham 13/03/2004.

Music: Alphaville – Forever Young (Special Extended Mix).

I visited Hannah and Joe in Birmingham on Friday afternoon and had some coffee in Starbucks at the Bullring in a reasonable Borders bookshop, where I also bought The Little Book Of Management Bollocks. One of the guys at work bought this recently and has some inspirational phrases which necessitates that I own this book too. This is the Borders I like to go to when in Birmingham as their Computing and Humour sections are not bad.

On Friday evening I travelled to Nottingham and had some excellent home cooked Japanese noodles with Robin and Beckie. We played a game I had never heard of and then some scrabble which was pretty fun. On Saturday morning I played the Lord of The Rings Risk game and learned that they charge extra for an addon board with Mordor and the tree people characters (see that happens to be known as profiteering on the part of games companies) – and I also happened to lose, but then I always lose in Risk against these guys.
Perhaps I should buy some board games for playing more at home.

On Saturday afternoon we went in to the city centre and had lunch at Zizzi. This Zizzi is very pleasant as it is mostly underground and has made the clay oven a focal point for visitors. We also went to Waterstones for some Costa coffee prior to a little wondering around the various books. I arranged to meet up with some people in the evening a little impromputually and then returned home via London.

Jon.

[ from the visiting-nottingham-again-today dept. ]

Photos: Hants LUG meeting Saturday on 06/03/2004 and SCLUG meeting on Wednesday 10/03/2004.

I spent most of last Saturday afternoon in Winchester, and had supper with Gran before I got a late train back to Reading. My reading at the moment is mostly focussed on various pocket guides to electronics and so I was studying schmitt triggers and positive feedback on the train. Over the weekend I completed my writeup of FOSDEM 2004 for the magazine and worked on this month’s embedded column too. I wrote a simple LCD interfacing utility for a hardware piece and played around with
LCDproc. I think I need to get some bigger displays with different chipsets so that I can do some rough and ready graphics with them. Also need to start work on nagbot soon.

On Wednesday evening I went to the SCLUG meeting in the evening and discovered that there is a Zizzi restaurant in Reading now. I often have pizza in their other branches and have grown quite fond of olives as a starter, with a Del Contadino or similar based main course (perhaps with a little customisation), and some Earl Grey tea with some biscotti. Hopefully tonight I will be going to either Zizzi or Wagamama.

I setup a stats page for #emdebian on irc.debian.org and also for other channels which I am on. This duplicates a few other stats and is mostly for me in the latter case but the Debian one should prove useful for anyone trying to see what kind of cruft we are talking about there.

Trying to get an Embedded Debian meeting sorted out in Cambridge sometime over the next few weeks and sorting out stuff like the Expo (one of the guys I met at FOSDEM is hopefully staying with us and that is pretty cool) as well as my trip to CeBIT next weekend in Hannover with jok.

Jon.

[ from the wok23-has-changed-ownership dept. ]

We met up for an OxLUG PGP Keysigning party in the Lamb and Flag last night. This was just after a driving lesson and I was still feeling the consequences of the coffee I had been drinking during the day in the office. I enjoyed the keysigning and afterwards visited Wok 23 with Dan and Dom for some nourishment before returning home on the 00:23 train. I stayed up too late and wasted most of the next day.

I am hoping to meet up with a friend in London and attend a TV show filing. Will aim to post an update at some point too.

Jon.

[ from the nice-to-see-you dept. ]

I went to visit twh in Congleton with Hussein and jok last weekend. On Friday evening I went to Birmingham and took another coffee machine which should be identical to the one I had bought previously for Hannah and Joe to make fresh coffee. Travelling by train makes this a bit more amusing, and as I had previously purchased their machine in Witney and carried it back by train, it had been well travelled shall we say. Of course the same machine turns out to be available in Birmingham at the same price but things turn out like that.

Anyway we tested the machine and had a really pleasant evening. The next morning was to feature a visit to a local gym but the Health and Safety monster has bitten Birmingham City local government and they refused to allow me to use the equipment dispite my willingness to accept a disclaimer and my explanation that I have been a member of a gym previously. Unfortunately American Suing Syndrome does this kind of thing and then everyone jumps at once, preventing me from burning off excess carbohydrate while meeting certain people Hannah wants to set me up with… .

We went in to Birmingham City and I bought some new gloves from Marks and Spencer to replace a pair that I had left on a train in Brussels. Since these replaced those bought as a present from my grandmother they needed to be similar (I did tell her I had lost them!). I visited Marks and Spencer in Reading the day before and with the code of the correct pair available, got some in a different colour but otherwise identical and just as comfortable. A good thing because I hate having to find which gloves define me as a person.

Joe, Hannah and I went to CEX and bought some game consoles. Joe got an Xbox to mod for GNU/Linux use or maybe Xbox Media Center (did you decide which?). I bought a Gamecube ostensibly to join the Gamecube Linux development efforts, although I still need to purchase the broadband adapter and Phantasy Star Online. It is then planned to add somehow an IDE interface, and I have already discussed this with certain people who can help. I am going to be working on another bi_records implementation for ppc Linux also over the next few weeks because I am fed up with the number of platform ports needed for trivial differences.

I travelled from Birmingham to Congleton on saturday morning, arriving at around 13:22 or so. I met jok on the way as he joined the train at Stoke station. During the journey I talked to a chap from Bristol who deals with defending taxpayers from various lawsuits which I would guess are often of the American Suing Syndrome kind and not ambulance chasing money grubbing suing kind.

Upon arrival in Congleton, we walked to twh’s house. After an initial direction finding issue caused by my attempt at guesswork, we eventually found where he actually lives and met up with Hussein too. We had a very pleasant afternoon and the area is very asthetically pleasing. Tom is obviously a great deal better than he was and I am glad he is up and about.

I stayed in Congleton and jok stayed also. On Sunday we had a very enjoyable Sunday lunch before jok and I began our return trips interspaced with engineering improvement works. This meant that a normal return time of a few hours was doubled and consequently we stopped off in Birmingham. Photos of the trip show that we walked up to Victoria Square. Here in addition to finding a comical Powerpoint crashscreen in the theatre lobby, we also found a quaint area near the National Sea Life Center. Here there was an area similar to London Docklands with a Zizzi where I could have my favourite Olives, Bread and Pesto Pizza covered in Aubergene, Goat’s Cheese, Peppers, and pine nuts also.

Jon.

[ from the Free-and-Open-events dept. ]

I returned from FOSDEM 2004 on Monday evening, having spent most of the weekend at various talks on Linux and Embedded Linux, talking with various people, and of course drinking beer too. Some photos are available covering both the main event and my separate trip to visit some guys in Leuven on Monday also. Notice some scenic stuff in there.

I have agreed to begin writing a regular column on Embedded Linux and have various other stuff now hopefully in the pipeline which should be useful. Gamecube Linux now boots over NFS following my workaround suggestion.

FOSDEM 2004

I travelled to Brussels on the 10:42 Eurostar service on Friday morning, along with various other geeks and the O’reilly guys. Tim and Josette were representing O’reilly along with some others I am not familiar with. We arrived at lunchtime (see NT crash screen photo for rough timeline of arrival at the Gare Du Midi) and I wondered around getting rather lost for a while before calling STA in the UK and after some more wondering around, eventually finding that my hotel (NH Central) was actually near La Grand Place and the centre of town, not far from the Central station and in fact just down the road from the Cathedral.

In the evening those of us from the UK met up with others at Le Roy d’Espagne in La Grand Place after some food in Chez Leon. I especially enjoyed meeting p1 and p2 from Mind. The evening was a big geek fest and lots of random discussion took place from Transmeta to homebrew JTAG dongles and debugging processors, of course depending upon the inclination of each person present. The food was good and beer was too although I think they did quite well from the central fund being maintained as I drank only coke but paid quite a bit more (it all goes to a good cause of course so that is fine). The Skol Linux people collected signatures as a sponsor had offered to donate in exchange.

Afterwards a few of us went to a random kebab place in La Grand Place and eventually made it back to our separate sleeping arrangements for 02:00. Tim O’reilly began the next morning at 10:30 and the late night provided the combined stimulation and motive for a taxi to ULB (the University) where the talks were taking place – I had not used a bus in Brussels before but now having done so would probably use one more often in future.

Tim O’reilly talked about how web services offer an interesting challenge – because we cannot possibly have our own Google at home and even having the code and technology would not give us the same service. The point being that there is more to modern technology than Freedom and Open Source and data control is becomming more and more a key factor concerning all of us.

RMS did an RMS talk although he was actually pretty reserved and seemed in good spirits (certainly a lot [oops I said log and not lot here originally - 26/02/2004 fixed] less tired than when I had last seen him speaking in Cambridge). He mentioned various stuff about founding the GNU project and about the nature of releasing source code as well as danger of software patents I believe – however the key moment was when St. Ignucius made an appearance.

During lunch I moved to the Embedded Developers room and listened to Tom Rini discussing the issues faced in this kind of work, based in part upon his experience at Montavista. I later talked to him about a number of issues which I had with various things and this proved very useful.

Patrick Pelgrims and Jiri Gaisler spoke after lunch about various soft core processor technologies and went in to some detail on Xilinx and Altera solutions as well as the LEON soft core processor designed for the ESA (replacing the older ERC12).

I joined the panel debating GPL issues in Embedded Linux systems before the day officially moved on the buffet and other evening events. Photos of these are in the gallery but basically I enjoyed the food – I got to talk to Robert Love and some of the other kernel guys (Jonathan Corbet for example) and sat with Tim O’reilly and his mother for some food and drink (I actually had a beer but mostly coke and coffee). After several of us went in to town and found two bars where we could drink until late, a club and various other places which shall remain nameless .

On Sunday I went to the talks a bit later. I arrived at the end of a Wookey talk on JAFFS before a lunchtime meeting on Embeded Debian involving numerous people including myself, Wookey, Nick, Justin, some Scratchbox developers and various others. I think Embedded Debian is a good idea.

The Embedded X talk was pretty interesting and brought up some points as well as allowing us to play with various PDAs which were there. I actually now think I chose one of the best devices when I got my Zaurus as I was not especially happy with Yoppy.

I went to Jonathan Corbet’s talk on kobjects in 2.6. This seems a lot reminiscent of the PowerPC IEEE1275 Open Firmware used in Apples and fed in to a later discussion that I had with some guys on Monday about bi_records being implemented [oops I originally said implement instead of implemented - fixed 26/02/2004] in linuxppc. Maddog ended the day elegantly with a great talk and I got to talk to him briefly afterwards about Higher Education standards and take some vanity photos with him.

On Sunday evening I went to dinner with a bunch of the Embedded Developers. I enjoyed discussing the Balloon boards with Nick and Wookey as well as talking to Philippe about various JTAG interfaces which one could build. This was a really cool group of people in a Turkish restaurant near to ULB. Afterwards a number of us headed back to La Grand Place and had drinks in the Novatel where the speakers where staying until the bar closed. I talked to Justin about HPC and the Oxford BSP work before we found another little quiet pub which was still open until late, and had some quiet drinks before returning to our hotels.

On Monday I visited Leuven before returning to my Hotel. Other stuff happened but not all of it is going to be mentioned here.

Jon.

[ from the playing-with-random-hardware dept. ]

I bought a Xilinx Coolrunner II devkit and it has arrived. The photos show what it looks like, I fixed rather a tricky bug today too, and now I need to get ready for FOSDEM.

Jon.

[ from the this-scheme-is-managed-by-jcm-cctv-services dept. ]

I installed Gallery after it came up in conversation during my visit to see hussein. Please test it out.

Cheers,

Jon.