Hrw website

GUADEC - last day

Wednesday was last day of GUADEC for me. Getting from bed was hard — party and night talks made it really hard. We came to conference and started to put OH stand working and waiting for other guys to get here.

There was GMAE meeting which I attended to get some idea what is going on. Many people, many different projects etc… One of interesting parts was during break when I got Apple iPhone in my hands — it’s interface is really fast and has some interesting ideas in it. For example Safari browser render only tat part of page which is displayed on screen — you can see it when fast scroll page. On screen keyboard is very easy to use with bare fingers — no need to look at it if you remember layout of standard QWERTY one. Many reviews noted ability to automatic screen rotation. It is not automatic — application needs to support it otherwise nothing will change when you rotate. Another extra stuff is multitouch screen — zooming works really great in apps which I tried (Maps, Photos, Safari). And the great part of touchscreen is that it is integrated into top of case — it is totally flat.

Today I attended Lighting Talks — some of them are interesting (like GPE^2) some are not.

Evening will be other — food at OH apartments, some beers and talking about anything. Tomorrow early morning wakeup and long trip back home — taxi, train, plane, taxi (about 10h in total including stops).

Tags: conferences england guadec openmoko phone Comments Off

GUADEC continued

Tuesday I spend mostly on OpenedHand stand. We had ST Nomadik board there and it was my part of work to get it booting — with serial cable it was fast stuff. Then I updated it’s software to latest build. We also had few OpenMoko phones with some experimental software on it — new Today application is great — old one can not be compared.

I decided to skip most of presentations as I did not found any interesting. There was one which I decided to saw — something about multi-user session handling. It was quite interesting but I think that it will require lot of work to get it done.

During evening there was a GUADEC party at “Workabout” — few beers, lot of talks etc… There was a guy from iRex Technologies which we talk with — he will work on integrating his work with upstream OpenEmbedded version. Some parts will be not integrated because they can not (or not want) to open everything.

After party we had discussion in OH apartment. I gave some ideas to Chris and Neil about new stuff for OpenMoko Today/Dialer stuff. Finally I was able to get to sleep.

Tags: conferences england guadec openmoko Comments Off

GUADEC - day 0

I decided to call this day ‘Day 0′ because most of it was taken by going to GUADEC instead of being on conference.

I had to wake up at 5:20 and get first train at 6:25 (Częstochowa -> Katowice). When I arrived at station I found out that there is one more train at 6:20 so I took it as this gave me few extra minutes in Katowice to catch bus to airport.

After 50 minutes in bus I got to airport. It was full of people waiting for my flight — Wizzair to London Stansted. Queue was moving quite fast and I spent time talking with one guy about embedded devices (do not remember for which company he works — something with WiFi and long range comes to mind). After boarding we got first surprise — Wizzair do not number plane seats so first on plane == better choice (and we were last ones :( — so no talk during flight). Then plane captain gave us another bad information — flight was delayed due to local ‘rush hours’ in air ;( Finally we started — with over 40 minutes delay so I was not be able to catch train from Standsted Airport to Birmingham New Street at 12:25.

Flight was ok — standard problem with lack of space for legs and some turbulations during landing. And I finally ended reading a book — Robert Ludlum ‘Covert One’ which I read for over 6 months.

There was a funny part with my passport — on the photo I look like terrorist (which I am not) so I decided to show passport in Poland and my ID at Britain to avoid any extra questions.

After coming to airport I took my laggage and bought train tickets (as I will go back very early there was no discounted tickets for it so buying tickets in advance was the same as buying Standard Return Ticket) and (as I had over hour to spend) took a look at airport’s terminal. I found Rynair desks so will not have to do it on Thursday, got something to eat/drink and returned to -1 level to catch the train.

British trains… nearly no space for legs like in Airbus 320 and one interesting difference between Polish trains — space for luggage. Instead of solid rack where you can put everything you have to put it on special rack right after you enter wagon (because overhead racks are designed only for small items). Before that trip I read and heard that British trains are slow and unreliable but that one is going quite fast.

Now it is time to shutdown laptop as battery in my D400 gives me less then 40 minutes of work (with backlight set to lowest readable). After GUADEC I will know do I need to buy a new one or can I live without it.

Finally I got to Birmingham and take a walk to hotel. It took me about one hour to go that one mile because I got lost few times. Too many streets without any names…

During evening there was OpenEmbedded meeting when we discussed many things which should improve our project.

It was busy day…

Tags: conferences england flights guadec openembedded 2 Comments »

GUADEC: preparations to travel

Time to really prepare for GUADEC trip. Tomorrow we are going to another wedding in family (3rd in this year) and during Monday I will travel to Birmingham to meet OpenedHand team (without Dodji ;( — visa laws are strange), OpenEmbedded guys, maybe someone from OpenMoko (Mickeyl does not count) and many other people working on misc projects.

Travel times noted (trains, flights, buses), maps from train station to hotel printed, some GBP bought — so now it only left to pack. I even bought backpack for laptop so will be able to test how does my D400 behave (especially it’s battery as it does not give too much time). Good that I have that huge plug which is used in England already — one thing less to care about.

And I hope that I will have more luck then people which were on Akademy and my luggage will follow me ;)

Tags: conferences consulting england flights guadec openembedded openmoko travels 1 Comment »

British rail

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate… leads to suffering.

If Yoda would live today he would say something similar after trying to buy tickets for British trains. There are few (8 or more?) train companies and over 10 types of tickets. If you go to National Rail site you can check trips, prices but if you want to buy you will be presented with list of companies and moved to their websites where you have to repeat whole track.

I was suggested to use Time TrainLine service. It allow to search for trip, select prices in easier way then NR did. But each reload can mean other prices. And even if you select one and then register (what for?) then you are presented with nice thing — you can live in ANY country in the world as long it use UK postcodes. Who coded that website?

Hopefully I will be able to buy those tickets with help of UK citizens.

Tags: england 1 Comment »

Weather differencies between Poland and Britain

I wake today and opened window to get some fresh air and discovered that there was snowing during night. It is winter here so snow is nothing special. But…

Few hours later at work I discussed with OpenedHand guys and talk switched to weather. British citizens were astonished that they have snow. Britain and snow? Cities paralyzed, trains not working all because there are few inches of snow…

Tomas Frydrych has nice summary for it:

I had real laugh at my previous job when two of my colleagues were discussing how unfortunate Britain was to suffer from such weather extremes; I could not resit asking which extremes exactly they had in mind.

He is from Czech (so he remember how winter should look) and live for several years in Britain. Another thing which he told was:

It has to be said that proper, cold, winder is actually more bearable than what we get here; because of the humidity, it feels much colder here at 2°C than at -10°C in the old country.

Now imagine how rest of talk was looking when there was mention about eyes freezing when temperature is below -25°C :D

UPDATE: Rob wrote that this is normal behaviour there ;D

Tags: england weather Comments Off