Netzflocken

Some news from this side if my life.

I’ll be at the Samsung Smart TV Developer Day 2010 this week in Frankfurt.

Next week I’ve the pleasure to host a BoF named “Android and Its Impact On Home Entertainment and Home Automation” at this years CELF Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Cambridge, UK.

Returning from ELC-E I will head straight to elektro:camp(<<2010>>). A barcamp in Kaiserslautern about Smart Metering Home Automation Home Displays …and much more. It is the first of its kind and I’m really looking forward to this to learn more about volkszaehler.org and see what the folks from Flukso are coming up with.

And last but not least I’ll be in Munich on November 9th for the Google Developer Day 2010.

Having time to write a post here - doesn’t that sound very suspicious?

But this happens - more or less only - due to being “stranded” in the United States.

I was invited to do a talk about Mirabeau and Coherence at this years CELF Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco.

Following that I had the pleasure to attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which was co-located with the ELC.

Very remarkable talks in both conferences, met a lot of interesting people and gained quite some new insights.

And being already here I thought of adding one more weekend to do some sight-seeing, exploring the city, watch the annual Northern California Cherry Blossom festival, visiting Muir Woods, which I last had the chance some six years ago.

And along came Eyjafjallajökull.

Not only for me, pretty much all the flights of the European attendees of the conferences have been canceled. As mine was scheduled for todays afternoon I had some hope that it might be just in time for the European air space getting opened up again, but failed. Lufthansa seems to operate as of now at least partially from Frankfurt again, but Star Alliance partner United Airlines decided to keep their planes on ground.

After some first evil tidings - next possible flight to Europe would be 25th, no, 26th, no, hang on, not before 27th - Nadine, event manager of the Embedded Linux Conference - who, together with her team, did a really tremendous job in organizing the conference, managed to get me rerouted on a flight for Thursday 22nd.

Nadine, thank you so much!

Now I unintentionally will get the chance to see some of the United States airports - leaving San Francisco in the early morning, going to Denver, from there to Washington, changing plane there for the leg over the ocean, arriving in Zürich on Friday morning and, one last hop, should be in Frankfurt around noon.

Probably more endurance testing than travel, but never mind, it will get me home. And, not to be sneezed at, within my supply of insulin and blood sugar checks.

With that option available I decided to stay in my very comfortable room in the Kabuki in Japantown, use the wifi here to do some work and maybe even find time to check in some long outstanding Coherence patches, and enjoy some more days of Japanese food and culture.

That year was crammed - two Coherence sprints, GCDS, particication at Les Trophées du Libre, two talks at FOSDEM 2010, school enrolment of our youngest daughter - the last of four enrolments, now we can start thinking about the first confirmation, being in the parents’ association of two schools, returning to the classroom myself for the boat driver permit - just to name a few.

Not mentioning the things needed to make a living. ;-)

Nevertheless it was a lot of fun and thanks to everybody who had a part in that!
For “the finale” we decided this year to throw a small party to see my birthday in, which was for a small minority of our guests a bit challenging. [Not telling any names :-P]

The challenge on my side was the main-course - filet de bœuf wrapped upon filet de veau, based on a recipe by the great Johann Lafer. Nearly five kg of high-class meat, a beaf olive like a lindworm.

As you can see it worked out really well.

Curious now what this year will bring.

Actually I just arrived in the really nice hotel in Brussels

after a remarkable unspectacular flight.

Will later meet Philippe for dinner and probably discuss some last-minute modifications - nah, just kidding - of our Mirabeau presentation about creating personal media networks and bridging UPnP over XMPP on Saturday 6th in the Jabber/XMPP dev-room at 16:00 o’clock.

Having dinner before the beer-event is actually quite a good idea™.

I’ll do another presentation on Sunday morning in the CrossDesktop room at 11:00 o’clock titled Coherence - the Digital Living room and beyond.

Stop by if you are at FOSDEM too.

This time I had planned to fly out on Monday evening, to have some time for sight-seeing, but we have decided to take part in the XMPP Dev Challenge.

So probably again no time for visiting the Atomium.

On Saturday morning the kids got up shouting “There is snow outside!”.

Probably enough in the city to build one snowman, but it’s a start. ;-)

Well, not quite yet. Again a heavily delayed fight, but at least not canceled yet.

My plane was supposed to leave today at 13:20, apparently it is broken and they need to get a replacement aircraft over. My confidence in Condor is a bit shaken.
But at least they handed out two 10€ coupons for food and beverages - that will allow me to throw a party here if I can’t make it to the one on the island tonight. ;-)
For the moment I made myself comfortable in a small bistro here with my own power-outlet.

Departure is now scheduled for 20:00, meaning I won’t be in Las Palmas before midnight.

Anyway, hopefully being there ready for the talks on Monday morning. The talk Philippe and I am giving is on Tuesday morning, which I’m now somehow quite happy about.

Last weekend we had some friends over at our place for a little barbecue. Among the “ordinary” steaks we prepared: chicken and rocket bruschettas salad of prawns, peas, celery and mint king prawn spits, marinaded with chili and ginger brown mushrooms and porcini, chopped spring onions, thyme and cream in preserving jars grilled asparagus (green) and spring onions, with a tomato, mozzarella, olive oil and honey dressing punch with strawberries, oranges, tonic water and Aperol

Just some stimuli for your next BBQ. ;-)

I’m usually not using trains, the city I live isn’t that well connected to the German railway system, so usually I’m faster by car or for longer distances I go by plane.

But for the travel from Valras-Plage to the Trophees du Libre in Soissons I had chosen to use the TGV - there is a direct train connection between Beziers and Paris that covers the distance in a bit more than four hours.

I booked première class - it was only a few €s more than seconde, and I had learned from my trip to Paris for the KDE/Coherence sprint that there is no power outlet at the seats in the second class in a TGV.

The ambience in the train was very decent. A lot of space - I had booked a single seat with a table, no people yelling into their mobiles, more or less all have been muted, and everybody speaks with a lowered voice.

In that pleasant atmosphere I used the ~ six hours time to work on some of the loose ends in Coherence.

• creating a picture-frame MediaRenderer that should serve as an example on how to implement a simple MediaRenderer
• the implementation of a Digital Security Camera device, based on the general purpose GStreamer pipeline element from the TestStore backend

As you might see on the first result, I’m quite pleased with it.

And I do now understand people a bit better who always told me how great traveling by train is.

Coherence has been awarded the “Prix spécial du Jury” - out of the 130 competitors of this years Trophées du libre contest and in addition made second place in the “Media” category. N’est-ce pas magnifique! A huge MERCI to all of you making this possible, to the jury and to the organizers of the Trophées.

Erwan and Frank being very happy
Champagne and snacks at the Mairie of Soissons
PS3, Sheevaplug, Denon amp and Prizes

The Sheevaplug was kindly donated by Marvell to support further development on this truly awesome device - thx again Rabeeh, and DENON France has graciously provided us with one of their high-end DLNA-enabled amplifier to demonstrate a real user living-room experience.

Erwan and I are presenting Coherence here in Soissons.

We just had our first presentation to the jury of the ‘Media’ category, more will come in the afternoon.

So keep your fingers crossed!