Hanging out with the GUADEC dudes was pretty excellent yesterday – they’re a really awesome bunch of people, with Rolf taking me out for a spin in his plane. Unfortunately it was a short 10 minute flight, but it was a really cool experience. Thanks dude!
I’ve arrived in Kristiansand after more than 48 hours of travelling. I’m pretty happy to be at the end of it, and I think booking with Lufthanza and flying to Stavanger were pretty bad choices. I got to sit in a cramped plane with sweaty Russians and Germans with no TVs behind the seats, and then had the joy of waiting at the train station for 3 hours before I could get started on the 3 hour journey down to Kristiansand. After a quick shower at the hotel, I wandered over towards the college for the volunteer meeting. I figured the college was close enough to walk over, but when the heavens opened with some pretty torential rain, I gave up and returned back to the hotel completely soaked. Okay, so not the best start ever, but having hung out with the GUADEC guys today, this year is going to totally rock.
It’s hard to believe that GUADEC is next week, and that I leave for Norway in a day’s time. Not hugely looking forward to the long haul flights and my itinerary isn’t all that kind to me – probably being awake for at least 48 hours before having to get a train down from Stavanger to Kristiansand. I’m looking forward to the conference and to my week back in Dublin seeing friends and family right throughout the trip. Having already travelled a lot this year though, it’s hard to get excited by another journey.
I had a rather startling thought this morning reading through PlanetSun. Why aren’t people like Jonathan Schwartz and Scott McNealy blogging on blogs.sun.com? I for one would love to see some entries from them, and this level of openess from Sun. Come on guys, get with the program [grin].
So Pia managed to find her way down to Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, and we organized a bit of a roadtrip leaving early Friday morning for Dunedin. The start of the trip was pretty unpleasant, with the car feeling like an icebox. We’ve been meaning to fix the heat in the car for a while, and I think this might be the wake up call I need to book an appointment at the mechanic. We drove inland towards Mount Cook, past some amazing landscapes, but also some pretty dismal tourist spots which we had a bit of fun at. Managed to win at the stone skimming contest, but embarassingly lost at the snowball fight. It was good to catch up with her again, this time for long enough for a chat. We narrowly made it to Dunedin in time for Pia to catch up with some of the guys in Dunedin. Best of all, I got told many stories to embarass Jeff. Hooray!
Dunedin was quite a nice place, and we got some wonderful weather heading out along the Otago peninsula to see some albatrosses. We bailed on seeing some yellow eyed penguins and opted for an afternoon in the Speights brewery tour. Much more beneficial. The All Blacks game was game. It was a pretty intimidating atmosphere for the tourists to play in, and with a deathly cold night the rugby suffered a little bit. There were sparks of magic from the All Blacks, but a rather disappointing score of 30-3 to the All Blacks showed out a pretty weak English team. Looking forward to the South African game in late July. Had a pretty relaxed Sunday heading back to Christchurch, dropping off a present to Carolyn’s friend Ange along the way. Finished up the day with a nice take away from the Noodle box. Yum.
Pretty happy to see that blogs.sun.com was officially announced, and a typical reaction. It’s just another step toward a more open and communicative company. Awesome stuff. I got in early and registered gman, although I don’t expect I’ll have much to say there.
So, Robert Love has nicely thrown a spanner in the works with a proposed module inclusion of GNOME Volume Manager for GNOME 2.8 – only because it’s a significant amount of work to get the backend pieces in shape for Solaris [HAL, D-BUS, …]. Hoping it happens though – project Utopia rocks.
Had a pretty lazy bank holiday weekend. The Opshop/Feelers gig on Friday night was groovy, although went on quite late. I was slightly disappointed by the Feelers though – they certainly didn’t pull of a performance like Opshop did, but I probably didn’t know their songs quite as well. Went into town on Saturday night to celebrate Andy and Drek’s birthdays for a few pints. Sunday started with a brunch celebrating JP’s birthday, a friend of Carolyns. While Andy and Maeve headed off to Arthur’s Pass after cheering Steve in the Christchurch marathon, lunchtime wine got the better of Carolyn and myself – we resorted to a quiet evening of a bottle of wine and watching a DVD. Sunday involved a pretty cruisey walk up the Bridle path in the Port Hills and a drive over to Littleton and Governor’s Bay to blow out the cob webs.
The car passed the WOF again. Hooray! Andy celebrated by buying 2 new front tires for it.
It’ll be interesting to see how Java plays out in the next couple of months. With an ‘announcement’ yesterday to open source Java at some stage in the future, and the recently launched JDIC project for providing developers an opportunity to integrate into desktop platforms without compromising platform independance it feels like Sun is making little steps, but all important ones.
I’ve been an Irishman for quite some time – in fact most of my life. But never before had I dared to try bottled draft Guinness. Why would I? But living in New Zealand has brought new experiences to my life, and today I took the plunge and tried it for the first time. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s quite like draft Guinness from a can – perhaps even a little bit lighter. It’s not the real thing though, and I have less than a month before I’m drinking it again.
John, the game was a trial match for the All Black rugby team. Can completely understand how the National Anthem might feel so right for many US people at the moment. Interestingly, the Irish rugby team has 2 anthems, because with some many non republicans on the team, they felt alienated. Now we have Ireland’s Call, which quite frankly does it better for me.
It’s been a pretty busy week or two. Completely frustrating at times in work, but it’s been nice to find life outside and away from the hassles. Last weekend we headed up to Hanmer Springs. Maeve had been given a recommendation of a holiday house up there, so a bunch of us [Maeve, Andy, Sam, Steve and Carolyn] drove up there for a pretty relaxing weekend. We did a bit of hiking, a good deal of drinking and eating and stayed a while in the thermal pools, underneath a disappointingly non-starry sky.
Went to watch the All Black trials with Carolyn and housemates this week in her local. It’s the first time they’ve put on the trials for a while, and it seems to have created quite a bit of excitement. The Probables versus The Possibles. For much of the game you could see the Probables taking for granted their place in the side. They didn’t hold hands at the start for the national anthem, they didn’t seem to even have the desire to play a good game and come out fighting. By contrast the Possibles wanted to win and prove a point, and for much of the match they succeeded. Like the Super 12 final, Mehrtens turned the match around when he came on. This time doing enough to take a narrow victory. Of course, this was all the more amusing when you have 4 or 5 passionate Kiwis sitting in the pub with a few beers heckling anyone who screws up – which mostly seems to be the Aucklanders on the team. Looking forward to seeing the England game down in Dunedin next weekend.
Tomorrow we head to see Opshop and The Feelers live in the Civic Theatre by way of a Thai and a few drinks.
