Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Previous post about moving to London was 1st April joke. We plan to move from Poznań but not outside of Poland. So sorry guys — we will meet in UK one day but it will be short visit not staying.
I have to admit that I did not thought that so many people will take that post serious. First congratulations came less then half hour after publishing, then IRC greetings… Probably this is because it is so near to true — as person working alone at home I miss contact with coworkers (as this often ends in brainstorming) and OH office has some interesting gadgets :D
Why “moving to London” was chosen? I did not had a good idea for April’s fools joke and Ania (my wife) gave me this suggestion. Other ideas were:
- starting to work for Microsoft Canada (I had such offer month ago but no one would believe in this)
- dropping OpenEmbedded/Poky in favour of T2 from TimeSys (also hard to believe)
And few others also too hard to believe so I wrote what I wrote. Sorry guys.
Tags: england joke 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
After long discussion with my wife we decided to move to London, UK.
Why such move? Many reasons — I will name a few:
- Many of our friends are already there.
- I miss leaving home to go to the office (especially since I have small daughter).
- I miss contact with coworkers.
- More gadgets available at work.
- End of hardware problems as company provides it.
When will it happen? I already discussed it with Matthew and it will happen in June/July (to be able to travel to GUADEC with all OH guys).
UPDATE: No — I will not move to London. This post is (maybe a bit cruel) 1st April joke. More info in other post.
Tags: england poky 7 Comments »
Friday, December 21st, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During last summer I was at GUADEC in Birmingham, UK and enjoyed that. Then I was at OpenedHand X-mas party. Both trips gave me some time to observe other culture and this is what I want to write about.
I will not write about cars on wrong side of road because this is already known and it is easy to get used to it. Did not have problems with it even when I was sitting in front left seat during car trip.
The thing which annoys me is “double taps”. At GUADEC place it was OK as hot water was only warm so I did not needed cold one but during my recent trip they were everywhere… I wonder how they use as hot water is too hot usually and cold one is rather not warm enough. One of solutions is plugging washbasin and wash hands in mixed water — but this is not too hygienic rather…
What was nice to see is mix of people on streets — in Poland we basically have only one type of people — white, Slovian, usually catolics. There were too many of them to count.
Next thing — all those informations everywhere… “Garage in constant use — parking not allowed”, “Fire doors — keep open”, “Private parking — you will be towed”, “No parking here — £75 penalty”, “Keep this place clean — use ashtrays”, “It is against the law to smoke at those premises” etc… Those kind of messages were in nearly each place which I visited.
During walk through GUADEC building I saw few nice places. First was a bunch of shelves — each one signed and it looked as place to use if you want to give something to “owner” of shelf as there were many books, compact discs and other stuff there. Another thing was message table with many informations for lonely people, for victims of sexual molestation or voluntary offers.
It is other type of country then Poland. I am not yet ready to move there I think… Never mind that Matthew asks me each time (nearly - last time he forgot) we meet when I will move to London.
Tags: culture england guadec travels 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Few months ago in post about my OpenEmbedded related trips I wrote that Bromley is part of London. Since then I was there during OpenedHand X-mas party and was told that it is not true.
So it looks like all my trips related to OE ends in cities which names starts with “B”. I just hope that next one will not be to Brisbane or Beijing :)
Tags: england travels 3 Comments »
Monday, December 17th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
I arrived at Luton airport about 12:50, grabbed luggage and got the bus to Victoria station (it costs 8 quids). From there train to Bromley South and short walk to the hotel.
According to the guy at reception I was first one (not counting people which came a day before). So I dropped bags, took a shower and came directly to OH office.
Office… Guys building Falcon Millennium from LEGO bricks, lot of strange devices on shelves (old E-ink readers, old PDA such as Apple Newton MessagePad and different developer boards). I toyed a bit with Nokia devices, played Metal Slug with Tomas using very nice dualpad controller. It was funtastic evening.
Next day started with breakfast (at least hotel used this name). Then grouping in the office and car trip to the Hop Farm when whole fun planned for this day had to take place. I have to admit that sitting on ‘driver seat’ (from European point of view) and not having driving wheel was not a problem for me. No minds like ‘they going to kill us’ etc related to driving on the wrong side of road.
The Hop Farm… Shooting (rifle and pistol — I prefer pistol), arching… QUADS and 4×4 driving!
Combine quad bike with mud — what will you get? Lot of pure fun (maybe not exactly pure due to being muddied from head to down) — especially second run was great. Quad was sliding, drifting, rotate when I tried to make a turn at full speed. It was really best part of day.
Other nice part was 4×4 driving — blind folded. One drives and someone behind him gives directions which way to turn. During after lunch run place was so muddied that we were able to take very sharp turns which were not possible before. But the real fun started after we did blind fold driving… We got offer to just drive — no limited seeing etc. Gods… This Jeep reacted to driver moves very nicely, especially during sharp turns which were quite easy to do — just turn driving wheel to the max and accelerate ;)
Big thanks for Sid (Matthew’s wife) for organizing whole event — it was really nice experience :)
After whole day of fun we came back to the office. Some interesting discussions took place and we made a trip to the Tiger’s Head for a dinner. The taxi driver surprised me with Christmas wishing in Polish — we are everywhere ;)
Food was nice, so did beer (the even had Laffe). Matthew gave gift for each of us. I got ‘panic button’ ;) And I am curious which keycode it sends.
Next day was return trip. This time not alone as part of it I did with Dodji. We came to Bromley North station then switch on Groove Park and ended on London Bridge. From there we did a walk to Liverpool station where we split as he was going for EuroStar train and I to Stansted airport.
Tags: england flights travels 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Tomorrow I will go to England — this time for OpenedHand Xmas party which will take place somewhere near London.
This time I plan trip with more attention to details. First connections from Luton airport -> Bromley. It will probably be bus to Victoria Station, then train to Bromley South and finally walk. Return one from Bromley to Stansted airport will be two trains + walk (Cannon Street Station -> Liverpool Station) + train to airport.
As I had no time to buy London city map I will take Nokia 770 tablet with Maemo mapper and set of downloaded maps so I should not have problems like I had in Birmingham during GUADEC.
Tags: england flights travels 1 Comment »