Hrw website

Back from holidays

We spent previous two weeks on so called holidays. Why “so called”?

They were quite exhausting two weeks — first two days trip from Poznań to my parents which live in Olecko. We did a break in Grudziądz — I recommend “City” hotel if someone will go there.

On Tuesday I had crazy trip to London, UK… First train, then train, then 3rd train… Lunch in “Złote tarasy” shopping centre and then public bus to Warsaw “Okęcie” airport. Few hours later landed on Luton airport and finally after 13h trip I was at hotel. But that trip was worth it — we were informed that there is no OpenedHand anymore, we “are” Intel now (”" because we needs to sign papers etc).

Two days later even more crazy trip back… This time from Heathrow airport to Warsaw and then night public bus to Olecko (I got sitting place after 4h of standing). Nothing strange that I was zombie on my brother’s wedding which took place on same day when I got back…

But finally I was able to make use of free time — walking though Olecko is good thing. There are many green places, no big traffic etc. Great place for holidays. And there are many lakes around… This year (as we do each year) we also walked around “Olecko Duże” lake — this takes few hours as whole path is over 12 km long but it is worth doing.

In meantime we made short trip to Vilnius, Lithuania where we visited some interesting places and on back trip enjoyed visiting Trakai castle.

It was maybe a bit exhausting some times but overall I enjoyed that time.

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UK - my observations

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 »

Bromley is not part of London

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 »

OpenedHand X-mas

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 »

Preparing to next trip

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 »

Battery replace time?

During GUADEC I decided that I need to buy new battery for my Dell D400 laptop. Current one is giving me 40-50 minutes of working only. According to ACPI informations it is really low charged:

11:44 hrw@maluch:BAT0$ cat info
present:                 yes
design capacity:         42000 mWh
last full capacity:      11530 mWh
battery technology:      rechargeable

So it does not get even half of nominal charge. I wonder how much time I will be able to get from 4400mAh battery (current one is 3800mAh when most of available ones are 3600mAh).

And this time I really need to buy one.

UPDATE: bought one — will get it in few days.

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