Category: general

From frozen to rainy lands

Yet another London cliché
Yet another London cliché!

So, here I am, finally, in London. In the last 25 days (most of them without internet access at home), Carol and I have been doing basic settling in stuff, doing some sightseing, going to some nice concerts (I really love to have a real cultural life again!), getting scared by the insanely high living costs, and all other obvious things a couple would do in their first month in London. So far, so good.

For us, there’s a very strong relief feeling associated with this move. Mostly because being in London marks the end of a very painful visa process (and all the consequent problems) that we went through in last 5-6 months. I feel a bit frustrated with all the wasted time and energy during this period. It’s like there’s a kind of “hole” in my 2008 which made lose most of motivation for a lot of things I love to do (which made me suck a lot as a GNOME guy this year btw). On the other hand, the new life in London brings me a refreshing energy now.

As you probably know, London is the land of clichés.Yes, anything you do has probably been done by some milion of other people already. So, I couldn’t help myself to have cliché photo in this post!

GNOME Annual Report 2008 Kickoff

It’s time to start working on our 2008 annual report (actually, we’re already late…)! Last year we had a very nice report. So, let’s make it even better this year! I’ve created a wiki page to organize the work. The current content is just an initial proposal. Feel free to add your ideas there.

Any kind of contribution is welcome! There are several ways to help:

  • Assign yourself to write one of the sections
  • Add links, references and other information sources to help writers to produce the content
  • Add new ideas, suggest, review the content
  • Add links to high resolution photos of GNOME people
  • Anything else! :-)

I’ll soon start to directly contact some people for specific tasks (as this is a more effective way of getting volunteers). Anyway, if you want to help and/or have any questions, feel free to contact me.

In Boston

So, I just arrived in Boston. When I got to the hotel, my room was not ready yet so I had to randomly walk around the city for about 1 hour. I was quite tired but it was a nice walk after all. I found this nice bookstore where I bought two books I was looking for with very good prices: the biographies of Coltrane (by Ratliff) and Davis (by Davis). I’m reading now the biography of Jimi Hendrix (by Cross). Cool stuff.

Anyway, if you’re around and want to have dinner/a beer this week, just let me know.

Back

Long time, no blog posts.

I’ve been going through a stressful UK visa process since mid-April and that (in addition to several other small problems occured during this time) gradually busted most of my energy for GNOME stuff. Anyway, the good news is that the visa process is over and I’m back!

Some quick/random notes:

  • GNOME 2.24 was released! Congratulations to everyone who contributed to this release!
  • The new much-saner session manager was integrated in GNOME 2.24! I was a bit worried about this because, in middle of the development cycle,  I realized that I wouldn’t have time to finish what I started on time for the 2.24 release. Fortunately, Jon McCan stepped up and made all the necessary major changes and fixes to make this release possible. So, big thanks to all contributors of this gnome-session release, especially, Dan Winship, Jon McCan, Matthias Clasen and Vincent Untz!
  • LiTL stuff is moving on very well: great team, exciting project. The whole LiTL team will meet in Boston during the week before Boston Summit and some of us will attend the Summit this year. If you’re interested in working with us, talk to Havoc!
  • Carol and I have been watching lots of movies. We got some DVD boxes: Die Hard, Band of Brothers, and The Godfather. Also, some TV series: Lost, In Treatment, Heroes, CSI, and others.
  • I created some “topic-oriented” pages in my blog to share my experiences with jazz and wines. I’ll gradually increment the content of those pages. I’ll write a new musical snapshot soon as there are lots of new stuff to talk about now.
  • I bought a Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens. Nice and relatively cheap. Here are some photos took with the new lens.

GNOME 3.0

GNOME 3.0

So, just after the Kris‘ keynote presenting the GTK+ 3.0 plans, we, your beloved release team, quickly presented our proposed plan for GNOME 3.0. There are still lots of details to discuss but the important thing is that our proposed mindset for 3.0 is in place for discussion now. It involves a relatively smooth transition from 2.x to 3.x, a more focused and inclusive development process, long-term development cycles, and more. We hope to get some fruitful discussions during GUADEC and to present the plan in a more structured and detailed way to everyone soon.

More and more GUADEC

So, here are my quick comment for the day:

  • Luis opening talk: quick and nice.
  • Release team meeting: we prepared some interesting slides.
  • Board meeting about where the next GUADEC will take place.
  • Had time to attend two talks: Clutter and Leisa Reichelt. Both pretty cool.
  • Spent the rest of afternoon working on the organization of the Drooling Macaque “concert” and jam session.
  • At night, “concert” and jam session: I think it was really fun! Thanks to everyone who participated by being part of the band or by just being a nice audience!
  • Tomorrow: maybe more small meetings, some talks to see, and boat party at night!

More GUADEC

More quick comments:

  • Saw half of two talks by Vincent about release notes and translation web tools and process. Cool stuff, as usual.
  • Spent most of the day on the advisory board meeting (which was a much better because of Stormy‘s coordination).
  • Unfortunately, because of the advisory board meeting, I couldn’t play soccer. Maybe next year?
  • Went for dinner with a bunch GNOME people.
  • After dinner, long conversation with Vincent about several GNOME topics (future of the project, board, new contributors, current situation, etc).
  • Tomorrow: one more release team meeting, one more board meeting, maybe will see some talks, and jam session at GUADEC’s opening cocktail (you can’t miss this!).

GUADEC

Some quick comments:

  • Istanbul is great: the weather, architecture, … a nicely chaotic city. Be careful with taxi drivers!
  • Met most of my great friends in GNOME. Cool, really cool.
  • As you probably read, Stormy is our executive director now. This is exciting news, really. Welcome Stormy!
  • Spent most of the day in board and release team meetings. Good ones.
  • Tomorrow, more meetings, maybe soccer, and more fun, for sure!
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0.