Thursday, July 14, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
living backwards
My Next Live
by Woody Allen
In my next life I want to live backwards. You start out dead and fet that out of the way.
Then you wake up in and old people's home feeling better every day.
You get kicked out for being too health, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.
You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.
You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school.
You then go to primary school, you become kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in a luxurious spa with conditions like central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then, Voila!
You finish off as an orgasm!
I rest my case.
Dear Woody,
if you've seen the RedDwarf, you would know it is not just roses. Just think of Santa Clause! That bastard who is stealing the presetns. And after the orgasm, you would end-up as floating sperm in your father's balls...
by Woody Allen
In my next life I want to live backwards. You start out dead and fet that out of the way.Then you wake up in and old people's home feeling better every day.
You get kicked out for being too health, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.
You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.
You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school.
You then go to primary school, you become kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in a luxurious spa with conditions like central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then, Voila!
You finish off as an orgasm!
I rest my case.
Dear Woody,
if you've seen the RedDwarf, you would know it is not just roses. Just think of Santa Clause! That bastard who is stealing the presetns. And after the orgasm, you would end-up as floating sperm in your father's balls...
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Rad Kite Trip II
.. a chance came by to join a friend on his EuroTrip, so I booked tickets to Malaga and three months later here we are, back to Tarifa and while we were there we took the possibility to taste a little bit of Africa..
Day 1 Thursday
Swaped with Marketa at the Airport, just enough time to get some coffee, pickup my heavy luggage and hurry to meet Radek and then we moved straight to Tarifa. We staged on the Rad advised free spot, pretty good community.
Day 2 Friday
Or lucky day, we got just enough wind to test our bigger kites (13m) and get warmed up for Saturday. Checked Tarifa just to find out my friend turned dreams into reality as we saw Rebels Kite Shop right on the main street. Got a new cap. Bought some stuff at Lidl, WiesBeer is NOT a beer.
Day 3 Saturday
I've tried one session in the morning, but the wind got too strong already so I was kinda lucky to get back to beach OK after few 35knots gusts on my 10m. Perfect day for 5-7m kites (which I do not posses). So we moved to our little french safe-hold and drink most of the day.
Day 4 Sunday
As the wind was still too strong for our kites we just stayed in the safe-hold, tasting another 6-7 beers just to chill out. Met bunch of czech guys which are working in Gibraltar and took some magic time off in Tarifa. Pepe was so kind and drank all my WeissBeer, he is a nice guy. Wind got so strong (in gusts over 40 knots) Rad managed to trash is train-kite lines...
In the evening I've tried to launch my 10, but wind was very unstable so I instead managed to cut my feet pretty bad from unwanted gust. Just to get more I landed one jump so badly something cracked in my left leg joint..
Day 5 Monday
Wind still strong so we moved north to Sancti Petri where Rad managed to launch his 8m and had some good time. In the evening we tried another session with 8m at Valdevaqueros beach resulting in loosing by board when too strong gust came and for a moment I was thinking I will be blown across the Atlantic. Rad then had a nice look-for-a-board session and about 30 mins later I found my board on the beach... lucky! Since there was no sign of wind dropping down I've started to look for a smaller kite in the shops.
Day 6 Tuesday
We moved to Los Lances to test on 7m kite and spend some nice session on Rad 8m. Met some mix (Canada, US and UK) of very nice people on the beach.
We definitely decided to go for a Morocco trip. So we got our tickets (ranging from 200-360€ depends where and how you ask!) and prepared the car for the trip. Managed to get 7m 2009 Best Waroo, hope I will use it somewhere..
Day 7 Wednesday
Here comes Africa! Early morning we boarded our F.R.S (Fast Ferry) and in 40mins we landed at Tagner harbor. Morocco is -2 hours compared to Spain. On the way out through customs we got our first lesson in 'tipping' the locals. Need to get some MAD (Maroccan Dirhams) quick. The rate is about 10MAD~1€.
We left Tanger and used the payed highway to get quickly as south as possible. Looking at our Kite&Windsurf guide we followed the coast and stopped on few places. There was no wind. We passed Rabat, Casablanca and took the main road to El Jadida. The coast line was beautiful, a lot of people just wondering at the shades others tried to sell some fruit or other stuff.
After El Jadida we took the coast road and headed down to Safi where we've been told of beach Lalla Fatna which should be our spot for today. On the way there we stopped at couple of spots, but either no wind or more like wave surfing.
At the end of the day we got close to Safi and found Lalla Fatna, very nice hidden beach with free parking and tents right on the beach. Got welcomed by locals. Waited for sunset and cooked the worst lentils tin I've ever had (bad Lidl!). Spent the night in the tent.
Playa Lalla Fatna
Day 8 Thursday
We've spent morning talking to locals which was fun as they spoke French and we English. Been invited to tea, got some soup and then up to noon we've been fishing. Shit, I got one fish. (check the photos!). Then we moved down towards Essouria.
We managed to do about 2h session in a 'Dead City'. It was a completely new village with pier, long sandy beach, but no-one was there. It looked like it was struck by recent economic crisis.
We moved further south, noticed the country is already different to fertile north with more water systems used to grow stuff. Later that day we parked our car at Moulay Bessah and watched about two dozen of WindSurfers enjoying about 3m waves with cross-of-shore wind. There was no place to launch the kite, but instead we got over-helmed by local kids trying to sell some hand made head caps using different techniques (from smilling to crying). "Une le'photo deux Dirham!!!". Decided to stay over night and got our first fish in local Lawama bar for prices about the same as in Spain..
Day 9 Friday
We moved to Essauira, one of more tourist city in the Morocco. We had excellent afternoon kite session with calm water and 1,5m waves wich was fun to tackle. Managed to get some decent jumps and few back-rolls.
After sunset (bit desperate of the lack of shower in the recent days) we tried to look for a camping area, but the bastard wanted to keep our passports for a stay which is a no-go for us. So another night in the car it was. We parked close to Medina ("old city") and had some excellent fish for two, salad and drinks for 140MAD (14€).
After that we've walked Medina up till midnight. Need to learn to haggle as I do not believe the T-shirt are for 18€, that is still cheaper then in EU, but not that much.
Day 10 Saturday
No Wind... Fog came from the ocean and visibility about 40m. We just stayed at the Mistral Club, chilling out. Got some cold, could hardly blow a nose. We've met Ian from France and spend few hours together tasting some vodka, Moroccan chocolate and checking his five months trip in Morocco.
Later on we walked to Medina to get some fish, but we were late (about two hours after sunset) so we moved more into Medina to get some food local food. We ended eating 3 course meal with Couscous and got so stuffed we could barely walk back to the car. We did about 5km trip. Not even a cup of coffee would help.
Day 11-14 Sunday-Wednesday
Those were pretty ordinary days with temperatures about 30 degrees of Celsius, no or some wind, lots of riding, fixing Rad's kites several times and riding again. Most of the days I had a cold which allowed me to progress with the "Girl with the dragon tatto" book from Stieg Larsson, its a good book.
In the evening we either got space caked, taste some Moroccan chocolate or just stayd in Ian's camping car. Last two days he was so kind he cooked great pasta which was more than handy after several hours in the water.
We were thinking about going to Marrakesh, but the temperatures there reach over 50 degrees easily so we rather changed the place and made a trip about 40km south to Sidi Kauki.
Where I had this soup
and it totally got me out of cold.
Did some shopping in Medina with various result, once you go home and feel you could get half the price if you were good enough, then you get used it and just accept the price you paid. But we are getting better as it just need experience to negotiate.
...
Wind is picking up, time to take my newly acquired 7m Best Waroo kite for a ride .)
P.S.: WE ARE GETTING VERY LOW ON ALCOHOL!!! Luckily Ramadan ends tomorrow.
Day 1 Thursday
Swaped with Marketa at the Airport, just enough time to get some coffee, pickup my heavy luggage and hurry to meet Radek and then we moved straight to Tarifa. We staged on the Rad advised free spot, pretty good community.
Day 2 Friday
Or lucky day, we got just enough wind to test our bigger kites (13m) and get warmed up for Saturday. Checked Tarifa just to find out my friend turned dreams into reality as we saw Rebels Kite Shop right on the main street. Got a new cap. Bought some stuff at Lidl, WiesBeer is NOT a beer.
Day 3 Saturday
I've tried one session in the morning, but the wind got too strong already so I was kinda lucky to get back to beach OK after few 35knots gusts on my 10m. Perfect day for 5-7m kites (which I do not posses). So we moved to our little french safe-hold and drink most of the day.
Day 4 Sunday
As the wind was still too strong for our kites we just stayed in the safe-hold, tasting another 6-7 beers just to chill out. Met bunch of czech guys which are working in Gibraltar and took some magic time off in Tarifa. Pepe was so kind and drank all my WeissBeer, he is a nice guy. Wind got so strong (in gusts over 40 knots) Rad managed to trash is train-kite lines...
In the evening I've tried to launch my 10, but wind was very unstable so I instead managed to cut my feet pretty bad from unwanted gust. Just to get more I landed one jump so badly something cracked in my left leg joint..
Day 5 Monday
Wind still strong so we moved north to Sancti Petri where Rad managed to launch his 8m and had some good time. In the evening we tried another session with 8m at Valdevaqueros beach resulting in loosing by board when too strong gust came and for a moment I was thinking I will be blown across the Atlantic. Rad then had a nice look-for-a-board session and about 30 mins later I found my board on the beach... lucky! Since there was no sign of wind dropping down I've started to look for a smaller kite in the shops.
Day 6 Tuesday
We moved to Los Lances to test on 7m kite and spend some nice session on Rad 8m. Met some mix (Canada, US and UK) of very nice people on the beach.
We definitely decided to go for a Morocco trip. So we got our tickets (ranging from 200-360€ depends where and how you ask!) and prepared the car for the trip. Managed to get 7m 2009 Best Waroo, hope I will use it somewhere..
Here comes Africa! Early morning we boarded our F.R.S (Fast Ferry) and in 40mins we landed at Tagner harbor. Morocco is -2 hours compared to Spain. On the way out through customs we got our first lesson in 'tipping' the locals. Need to get some MAD (Maroccan Dirhams) quick. The rate is about 10MAD~1€.
We left Tanger and used the payed highway to get quickly as south as possible. Looking at our Kite&Windsurf guide we followed the coast and stopped on few places. There was no wind. We passed Rabat, Casablanca and took the main road to El Jadida. The coast line was beautiful, a lot of people just wondering at the shades others tried to sell some fruit or other stuff.
After El Jadida we took the coast road and headed down to Safi where we've been told of beach Lalla Fatna which should be our spot for today. On the way there we stopped at couple of spots, but either no wind or more like wave surfing.
At the end of the day we got close to Safi and found Lalla Fatna, very nice hidden beach with free parking and tents right on the beach. Got welcomed by locals. Waited for sunset and cooked the worst lentils tin I've ever had (bad Lidl!). Spent the night in the tent.
Playa Lalla Fatna
Day 8 Thursday
We've spent morning talking to locals which was fun as they spoke French and we English. Been invited to tea, got some soup and then up to noon we've been fishing. Shit, I got one fish. (check the photos!). Then we moved down towards Essouria.
We managed to do about 2h session in a 'Dead City'. It was a completely new village with pier, long sandy beach, but no-one was there. It looked like it was struck by recent economic crisis.
We moved further south, noticed the country is already different to fertile north with more water systems used to grow stuff. Later that day we parked our car at Moulay Bessah and watched about two dozen of WindSurfers enjoying about 3m waves with cross-of-shore wind. There was no place to launch the kite, but instead we got over-helmed by local kids trying to sell some hand made head caps using different techniques (from smilling to crying). "Une le'photo deux Dirham!!!". Decided to stay over night and got our first fish in local Lawama bar for prices about the same as in Spain..
Day 9 Friday
We moved to Essauira, one of more tourist city in the Morocco. We had excellent afternoon kite session with calm water and 1,5m waves wich was fun to tackle. Managed to get some decent jumps and few back-rolls.
After sunset (bit desperate of the lack of shower in the recent days) we tried to look for a camping area, but the bastard wanted to keep our passports for a stay which is a no-go for us. So another night in the car it was. We parked close to Medina ("old city") and had some excellent fish for two, salad and drinks for 140MAD (14€).
After that we've walked Medina up till midnight. Need to learn to haggle as I do not believe the T-shirt are for 18€, that is still cheaper then in EU, but not that much.
Day 10 Saturday
No Wind... Fog came from the ocean and visibility about 40m. We just stayed at the Mistral Club, chilling out. Got some cold, could hardly blow a nose. We've met Ian from France and spend few hours together tasting some vodka, Moroccan chocolate and checking his five months trip in Morocco.
Later on we walked to Medina to get some fish, but we were late (about two hours after sunset) so we moved more into Medina to get some food local food. We ended eating 3 course meal with Couscous and got so stuffed we could barely walk back to the car. We did about 5km trip. Not even a cup of coffee would help.
Day 11-14 Sunday-Wednesday
Those were pretty ordinary days with temperatures about 30 degrees of Celsius, no or some wind, lots of riding, fixing Rad's kites several times and riding again. Most of the days I had a cold which allowed me to progress with the "Girl with the dragon tatto" book from Stieg Larsson, its a good book.
In the evening we either got space caked, taste some Moroccan chocolate or just stayd in Ian's camping car. Last two days he was so kind he cooked great pasta which was more than handy after several hours in the water.
We were thinking about going to Marrakesh, but the temperatures there reach over 50 degrees easily so we rather changed the place and made a trip about 40km south to Sidi Kauki.
Where I had this soup
and it totally got me out of cold.
Did some shopping in Medina with various result, once you go home and feel you could get half the price if you were good enough, then you get used it and just accept the price you paid. But we are getting better as it just need experience to negotiate.
...
Wind is picking up, time to take my newly acquired 7m Best Waroo kite for a ride .)
P.S.: WE ARE GETTING VERY LOW ON ALCOHOL!!! Luckily Ramadan ends tomorrow.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Facebook killed my blog
It was about the time to return the favor. I feel miserable for not updating the blog for a while, a lot of happened . But I guess that is OK, there were just better things to do.
So in short, Eva and I got married, almost a year ago .)
Then we planned our honey moon in Egypt, but we've got pregnant in the meanwhile so we canceled the flight and went for just few days to Croatia. Beautiful but quite expensive (I got 4000,- Euro phone bill which I had to pay ... bloody facebook .) ). Those are things you want to forget in your life ..
Fast forward in time I was sent on a trip to Japan for three weeks, just enough time to see the most famous places in Tokyo (35 millions of people, shit no kidding).
Then, sick of bosses (except for the very first one) I got a new one. This one is the worst, it is me. Started stereoIT , hope it lasts until my retirement .)
My very good friend died, only when the death is near one realize how fragile everything is. Makes you think about a life quite a lot.
And then best "thing" in my life happened.
Filip, my son was born, love him with all my heart. I can watch him for hours. Sort of makes me feel good there is someone else who has to carry all the hassles on now, yet there is plenty of time before that. weird though ;) Now we have to think about new flat ... again?
I've turned 30 and so I am having my last battle with my body before I let it go. Running, biking and now, here I am, in Greece, working through day, kiting in the evening. Refreshing.
Oh, I also keep ranting on twitter time to time. Peace, out!
So in short, Eva and I got married, almost a year ago .)
Then we planned our honey moon in Egypt, but we've got pregnant in the meanwhile so we canceled the flight and went for just few days to Croatia. Beautiful but quite expensive (I got 4000,- Euro phone bill which I had to pay ... bloody facebook .) ). Those are things you want to forget in your life ..
Fast forward in time I was sent on a trip to Japan for three weeks, just enough time to see the most famous places in Tokyo (35 millions of people, shit no kidding).
Then, sick of bosses (except for the very first one) I got a new one. This one is the worst, it is me. Started stereoIT , hope it lasts until my retirement .)
My very good friend died, only when the death is near one realize how fragile everything is. Makes you think about a life quite a lot.
And then best "thing" in my life happened.
Filip, my son was born, love him with all my heart. I can watch him for hours. Sort of makes me feel good there is someone else who has to carry all the hassles on now, yet there is plenty of time before that. weird though ;) Now we have to think about new flat ... again?
I've turned 30 and so I am having my last battle with my body before I let it go. Running, biking and now, here I am, in Greece, working through day, kiting in the evening. Refreshing.
Oh, I also keep ranting on twitter time to time. Peace, out!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Spring Break
Ok, March was 200 hours just on company projects, April was pretty much about the same and upcoming installations during May and June will take some extra hours as well. With that desperate vision I booked flight to Malaga and the day before the flight it looked like: no wind forecast, no sure place to stay as the guy I was supposed to stay with had to move to Stockholm temporarily.
Friday
Got up at 1:45am, moved to Germany, hugged almost-wife and ola to Spain. Switched planes in Mallorca (that place is so German) arrived in Malaga, hired car, took A7 to Tarifa and enjoyed 3 hours of perfect wind. Met some Czech people and found very nice place to stay.
Saturday
Got to the beach just when it started to rain, met some Germany guys who takes old cars from Switzerland and move the to Morocco (one way) all the way to mountains Atlas and then fly there with hang-gliders and then come home with small back pack by plane. Enjoyed sort of up-hill rally and got back to the beach for some wind. Took out my 13m kite, but after 40minutes of riding the wind got much stronger, I was glad to land safely and refreshed with few beers in the city center later that night.
Sunday
Got late, moved to beach but no wind today. Few people (including me) were waiting if termic wind picks up, but it did not. Instead I got some interesting sun burns, ouch! Cooled down by few beers in PachaMama and met friendly British girls who lives in Morocco and wave surf there, wow!
Monday-Wednesday
Get up late, make sandwich, move to kite beach and enjoy it until late. Then come home, get shower, apply cooling cream for the sun burns, wash the kite stuff and explored the city as much as possible. Kiting was great, some waves came and even it took me while to learn how to get over them it was worth it. Managed to do some very first and small jumps with landing downwind, can't wait to get more :) I think I am hooked for life.
Thursday
Up 5:03, moved to Malaga and 10:05 flight to Dusseldorf and at 17:15 I kissed my pretty-soon-wife again .)
Refreshing, enjoyable those small little trips.
aloha
 |
| From Tarifa 2009 |
Friday
Got up at 1:45am, moved to Germany, hugged almost-wife and ola to Spain. Switched planes in Mallorca (that place is so German) arrived in Malaga, hired car, took A7 to Tarifa and enjoyed 3 hours of perfect wind. Met some Czech people and found very nice place to stay.
Saturday
Got to the beach just when it started to rain, met some Germany guys who takes old cars from Switzerland and move the to Morocco (one way) all the way to mountains Atlas and then fly there with hang-gliders and then come home with small back pack by plane. Enjoyed sort of up-hill rally and got back to the beach for some wind. Took out my 13m kite, but after 40minutes of riding the wind got much stronger, I was glad to land safely and refreshed with few beers in the city center later that night.
Sunday
Got late, moved to beach but no wind today. Few people (including me) were waiting if termic wind picks up, but it did not. Instead I got some interesting sun burns, ouch! Cooled down by few beers in PachaMama and met friendly British girls who lives in Morocco and wave surf there, wow!
Monday-Wednesday
Get up late, make sandwich, move to kite beach and enjoy it until late. Then come home, get shower, apply cooling cream for the sun burns, wash the kite stuff and explored the city as much as possible. Kiting was great, some waves came and even it took me while to learn how to get over them it was worth it. Managed to do some very first and small jumps with landing downwind, can't wait to get more :) I think I am hooked for life.
Thursday
Up 5:03, moved to Malaga and 10:05 flight to Dusseldorf and at 17:15 I kissed my pretty-soon-wife again .)
Refreshing, enjoyable those small little trips.
aloha
Saturday, February 21, 2009
GNOME and The Cloud
Recently I've read some thoughts on GNOME and its (no) integration with the Internet. Let me throw my 2 cents here:
Please allow user to fill its accounts in 'About Me' dialog. Distros (like Ubuntu) can make a nice wizard. possibly the first time GNOME starts (is installed). It can even simplify the install process a lot. User would fill Name, Password (also default from gnome-keyring) and was allowed to add its on-line accounts (possibly with templates for well known, reccomended and new online services out there).
First time user can benefit in following ways:
Please allow user to fill its accounts in 'About Me' dialog. Distros (like Ubuntu) can make a nice wizard. possibly the first time GNOME starts (is installed). It can even simplify the install process a lot. User would fill Name, Password (also default from gnome-keyring) and was allowed to add its on-line accounts (possibly with templates for well known, reccomended and new online services out there).
First time user can benefit in following ways:
- It is logical to edit this kind of information in one place. It will not have to be entered multiple times in various applications. User will be happy.
- Gnome can automatically start Piding, Empathy or other IM if user has pre-configured at least one IM account.
- Other applications can pull for this information (Ekiga, DropBox, Firefox Plugins?, Banshee-Last.Fm) and use it whenever appropriate.
- The first time application wants to know about specific account, confirmation dialog for access gnome-keyring data is raised.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Internet HD TV
I recently bought an HD LCD TV just to find out the only super picture I can get is from the PS3 console. I can't understand why are people buying those TVs, the picture compared to old analog CRT TVs really sucks unless you get and HD signal. In Czech Republic we have a DVB-T (digital broadcasting) already but as it uses MPEG2 compression so the resolution is still the same (or almost the same) as it was for analog broadcasting. Such a resolution has to be so called upscaled (converted, recomputed) and thats where the crappines comes from. Even if your TV does a good job in this, you are still getting low resolution picture. MPEG4 wich might bring HD signal to your TV is only supported on very few channels provided either via Cable TV or Satelite (DVB-S). Most of the people uses DVB-T.
Luckily we have the Internet. I put aside this 'illegal' content, which can be nice, but is too much of effort for me to do it. I rather reccomend Miro. Miro is an Internet TV. Via nice guide it allows you to subcribe to 'channels' (there are over 5000 already!) you are intereted in. Then whenever there is a new content/episode availabe it is automatically downloaded for you to see later. It includes some nice features like automatic expiring of episodes (until you click to keep them) so you do not have to worry about your disk space, rating, sharing and much more.
Miro was here for some time already, but last year it received one million of dollars for development from Mozilla (yep, the same non-profit company that makes sure the Internet is free, open and safe and gives you Firefox) and there is new 2.0 version out there. It supports Mac, Linux and Windows. So head to getmiro.com and test it for you today.
Luckily we have the Internet. I put aside this 'illegal' content, which can be nice, but is too much of effort for me to do it. I rather reccomend Miro. Miro is an Internet TV. Via nice guide it allows you to subcribe to 'channels' (there are over 5000 already!) you are intereted in. Then whenever there is a new content/episode availabe it is automatically downloaded for you to see later. It includes some nice features like automatic expiring of episodes (until you click to keep them) so you do not have to worry about your disk space, rating, sharing and much more.
Miro was here for some time already, but last year it received one million of dollars for development from Mozilla (yep, the same non-profit company that makes sure the Internet is free, open and safe and gives you Firefox) and there is new 2.0 version out there. It supports Mac, Linux and Windows. So head to getmiro.com and test it for you today.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Dealing with bugs in Linux and Windows
This afternoon Eva told me her Firefox crashes about 10 times a day on just bought Lenovo IdeaPad S10. We've checked that updates are enabled and that she is using latest version 3.0.6 and no extra add-ons are installed but nothing helped. In the end we installed a Chrome for a while. Now what to blame? Old Windows Xp running on netbook, mozilla, antivirus? No clue where to start or what to do next.
Contrary, on my Linux machine one super application stopped working. It is called gnome-do and it is unbeliable productivity booster. I worked for about two days without it and my work flow was seriously disrupted. Today I created bug in ubuntu and joined #gnome-do IRC channel on freenode server and got an answer which has solved my problem within few minutes.
You decide which system works better.
Contrary, on my Linux machine one super application stopped working. It is called gnome-do and it is unbeliable productivity booster. I worked for about two days without it and my work flow was seriously disrupted. Today I created bug in ubuntu and joined #gnome-do IRC channel on freenode server and got an answer which has solved my problem within few minutes.
You decide which system works better.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
1234567890 is here, heureka
Time on UNIX like machines (including Linux) is counted in seconds since midnight January 1st 1970, the moment when time began on the Unix operating system (aka the Unix Epoch).
Today at 00:31:30 CET (23:31:30 UTC) counter showed magnificent number 1234567890 (that happens once in an epoch !) and many hearts of the right geeks have been pleased ;) Congratulations.
Celebrations have taken on many places around the world. Sometimes its the little things I enjoy.
Today at 00:31:30 CET (23:31:30 UTC) counter showed magnificent number 1234567890 (that happens once in an epoch !) and many hearts of the right geeks have been pleased ;) Congratulations.
Celebrations have taken on many places around the world. Sometimes its the little things I enjoy.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sunday Linux adventures
Sometimes it does not help how much you prepare ... the system is mighty.
To keep practicing and learning Linux with my friend we are running small business including hosting couple of websites and running about a dozen of virtualized machines. We are actually proud of our solution as we have managed to build kinda interesting infrastructure that runs for years.
If we have any problem with it, the it is usually with hard drives. We now have achieved 222 days without a downtime (I guess our SLA is now much better then London Stock Exchange powered by Microsoft). With this gained confidentiality we decided to upgrade whole SW stack on our infrastructure including major changes (XEN core, Linux Kernels and up-to-date to all services / packages). We decided to clean up everything for the next big thing.
We spent whole Friday and Saturday preparing all the packages and the process for smooth upgrade. On Sunday before lunch, we were ready just for the reboot. I asked my friend to get to site just in case anything goes wrong. In short we ended up at 1:00am on Monday morning. But we learned a lot, all the services have been restored and machines are ready to rock again.
Now follows Linux rant about the problem:
13:00 - Hypervizor complains about being compiled against wrong kernel headers. Solution was to recompile against latest xen headers. That means boot into usable environment using rescue CD. Our system has not CDROM, create usb stick and boot from that.
14:30 - Root partition is not detected. We use otherwise excellent Enterpise Volume Management System ( EVMS ) stack to manage our disks/partitions. But for some reason the root (main) partition was not detected. Too bad, after some help from IRC we reenabled EVMS flag on the partition and it was back online. Ok we can access everything to recompile the XEN.
15:30 - Hypervizor recompiled and is booting but now complains about mismatch with kernel. It turns out, kernel for some reason was compiled without PAE extension. XEN has dropped support for non-pae kernel in 3.1+ series. Took a while to figure out, but we recompiled the kernel with High Memory Support.
16:30 - Hypervisor boots, kernel boots but now init complains it can't switch root partition from RAM to EVMS partition. After some investigation it turns out something is worng with BusyBox (missing switch_root function). Edited initrd manually and used busybox from working initrd.
18:30 - System boots. We now have our main domain ready.
19:00 - 01:00am we spent in an effort to bring the rest of our services back on line. We allso had to recompile kernel for domU machines, modules for our FireWall to include support for iptables and TUN/TAP interface for VPN services, modify udev rules to create persistent rules for network interfaces.
What a learning experience. Anytime I hear a PM saying upgrade process has to be smooth, there has to be 0 downtime I have to laugh. World is not static, so is not development of the packages. The longer you do not touch your system, the more interesting things appears when you try to get it up-2-date. Linux is great.
UPDATE: One day later we probably could avoid the hypervisor booting and save about 5 hours! Everybody is a general after a battle :)
To keep practicing and learning Linux with my friend we are running small business including hosting couple of websites and running about a dozen of virtualized machines. We are actually proud of our solution as we have managed to build kinda interesting infrastructure that runs for years.
If we have any problem with it, the it is usually with hard drives. We now have achieved 222 days without a downtime (I guess our SLA is now much better then London Stock Exchange powered by Microsoft). With this gained confidentiality we decided to upgrade whole SW stack on our infrastructure including major changes (XEN core, Linux Kernels and up-to-date to all services / packages). We decided to clean up everything for the next big thing.
We spent whole Friday and Saturday preparing all the packages and the process for smooth upgrade. On Sunday before lunch, we were ready just for the reboot. I asked my friend to get to site just in case anything goes wrong. In short we ended up at 1:00am on Monday morning. But we learned a lot, all the services have been restored and machines are ready to rock again.
Now follows Linux rant about the problem:
13:00 - Hypervizor complains about being compiled against wrong kernel headers. Solution was to recompile against latest xen headers. That means boot into usable environment using rescue CD. Our system has not CDROM, create usb stick and boot from that.
14:30 - Root partition is not detected. We use otherwise excellent Enterpise Volume Management System ( EVMS ) stack to manage our disks/partitions. But for some reason the root (main) partition was not detected. Too bad, after some help from IRC we reenabled EVMS flag on the partition and it was back online. Ok we can access everything to recompile the XEN.
15:30 - Hypervizor recompiled and is booting but now complains about mismatch with kernel. It turns out, kernel for some reason was compiled without PAE extension. XEN has dropped support for non-pae kernel in 3.1+ series. Took a while to figure out, but we recompiled the kernel with High Memory Support.
16:30 - Hypervisor boots, kernel boots but now init complains it can't switch root partition from RAM to EVMS partition. After some investigation it turns out something is worng with BusyBox (missing switch_root function). Edited initrd manually and used busybox from working initrd.
18:30 - System boots. We now have our main domain ready.
19:00 - 01:00am we spent in an effort to bring the rest of our services back on line. We allso had to recompile kernel for domU machines, modules for our FireWall to include support for iptables and TUN/TAP interface for VPN services, modify udev rules to create persistent rules for network interfaces.
What a learning experience. Anytime I hear a PM saying upgrade process has to be smooth, there has to be 0 downtime I have to laugh. World is not static, so is not development of the packages. The longer you do not touch your system, the more interesting things appears when you try to get it up-2-date. Linux is great.
UPDATE: One day later we probably could avoid the hypervisor booting and save about 5 hours! Everybody is a general after a battle :)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Back to Athens, Greece
Well after my return from Kuwait, I managed to spent some time back in Prague and visit most of the friends I've been neglecting for a long time. With Eva, we bought some furniture and I've spent like a week to put it all together. But at the moment, the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom are almost finished. Hurray!
And then the good news came and I packed all my stuff (two kites and few t-shirts) and headed back to Athens to spend nice and warm autumn here. I kinda got used to sun this year (spring in Greece, summer was exceptionally hot in Denmark, then Middle East and now Greece again). Staying in the same flat with Petr Novak. Gotta visit Acropolis this time!
My friend Petr Drobny aka 'drobek' (which means tiny, but Peter is almost 190cm tall) arrived and we went to Paros to catch some wind at Punda. We stayed at SunSet studios (place I can reccommend to everyone). No wind on Friday was not at problem as we rented 150cc quads and it was a lot of fun to ride it around the island.
Rest of the stay was great, wind was up to 20knots and we managed to do some small jumps as well. Only problem was my kite, a local guy who knows how to ride told me: 'This is EVIL kite'. True, if I do not watch it for a second, the beast is already going another direction and I shortly fly-follow. Well as they said Nobile High Performance, turns fast, high power, superior hang time. If only I could say I match those prerequisites. Neverethe less I also tested 2009 Cabrinha Switchblade, this is excellent kite for beginners.
Now back to Athens, working for the customer and occasionally trying to catch some wind at Loutsa. Which is always too strong for me, so the whole point of riding is to get to the open water and then spend like 2 hours trying to get back to starting point. But I will manage!
I'm off to have my first lesson of scuba diving.
And then the good news came and I packed all my stuff (two kites and few t-shirts) and headed back to Athens to spend nice and warm autumn here. I kinda got used to sun this year (spring in Greece, summer was exceptionally hot in Denmark, then Middle East and now Greece again). Staying in the same flat with Petr Novak. Gotta visit Acropolis this time!
My friend Petr Drobny aka 'drobek' (which means tiny, but Peter is almost 190cm tall) arrived and we went to Paros to catch some wind at Punda. We stayed at SunSet studios (place I can reccommend to everyone). No wind on Friday was not at problem as we rented 150cc quads and it was a lot of fun to ride it around the island.
Rest of the stay was great, wind was up to 20knots and we managed to do some small jumps as well. Only problem was my kite, a local guy who knows how to ride told me: 'This is EVIL kite'. True, if I do not watch it for a second, the beast is already going another direction and I shortly fly-follow. Well as they said Nobile High Performance, turns fast, high power, superior hang time. If only I could say I match those prerequisites. Neverethe less I also tested 2009 Cabrinha Switchblade, this is excellent kite for beginners.
Now back to Athens, working for the customer and occasionally trying to catch some wind at Loutsa. Which is always too strong for me, so the whole point of riding is to get to the open water and then spend like 2 hours trying to get back to starting point. But I will manage!
I'm off to have my first lesson of scuba diving.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Kuwait, Al Kuwait
Ok, few days ago I moved to do some tasks in Kuwait. I flew with Fly Emirates and yey, what an Airline. On 1,35h flight I got served like a king. It was this huge Airbus (no, not the 380), and the food was delicious. Three courses, compare that to sandwich I get on 1.1h flight to Denmark with CSA (I still like CSA a lot though;) ).
First thing I really enjoyed was the TAXI ride from Airport to the hotel. Perhaps it was because I tried to look like I do not care (or better like 'I own the world' - which was btw another advise from my Danish colleagues ! They said, every Arab behaves like that :)) this guy has impressed me. Driving old Ford (but with at least 5.0L engine) we were in 140+Kmh (or was it Mph?) going on the motorway from one lane to another and honking everyone around. What a ride, say WOW!
Al Kuwait city centre from the Marina Mall.
During a day I was mainly working and because the sunset is about 6:30pm most of the pictures were shot at night when I wondered around the city. Hotel was great and I spent a lot of time in this place ;)
Hotel's pool on top floor (23rd).
Most of the week I was starving. Ramadan in Kuwait is a litlle bit more seriously taken (at least when it comes to people just visiting the place) then in UAE. If they catch you drinking or eating during a day (Iftar starts about at 6 pm) you pay fine of 1000 KWD (about 4000$) and you go to jail until end of Ramadan (about three weeks from now). I really tried my best to not to miss my vacation. So the first day I was very happy to see the hotel service to forgot to clean my room. There were some leftovers from the breakfast .)
In the evening I tried to explore the surrounding areas but at the first sight there is just nothing in Al Kuwait. Only a few people wondering around, lot of dust and heat. This is what the Mall looks like at 7PM. At 10PM it got quite crowded.
Yesterday I got little bit of tired of thinking of Al Kuwait as a bad place to live. I asked the people where the locals go, there has to be some markets right? So I went to Souk Mubarakia. And that changed my mind completely. Temperature got down to about 37 degrees at night so it was 'comfy' to walk around in my full cotton trousers.
The whole markets is consisted of hundreds of small streets connected together. Those streets are full of small shops of various kinds. Interestingly same types of shops are close to each other. From spice shops, dates shops, fish market, meat streets to all kind of groceries shops.
Gold district :0 I am not into gold, but this place is magnificent.
Dinning place, I've really enjoyed local fish with rice, Arabic bread, salads, mango juice and Čaj a lot. Eva would be proud of me for the way I cut this fish and got rid of the fishbones (she is the real master in this!). And all this just for 2KWD, I could barely walk after eating here, delicious!
On the streets one can see the REAL cars! In some way the time is ticking slower than other places. What I also found interesting were the people. Very friendly. And you go somewhere, you think there has to be something special because you see crowds of people there and when you get close, you realize they are just standing there. Talking and nothing more.
I even managed to get to the Liberation Tower and everybody told me it is possible to go up and see the city from the top. Well that turned out not to be so true. Anyway it is magnificent construction, tallest in Kuwait. I've enjoyed the markets a lot, bought a lot of junk (like night vision binoculars which of course do not work and zooming 1:1, but don't buy it if it was 3KWD).
Well, time to say good bye to Kuwait. My flight to back to Dubai is in about 4 hours, then transit to Amsterdam and then back to Prague, home sweet home. Full album is here.
First thing I really enjoyed was the TAXI ride from Airport to the hotel. Perhaps it was because I tried to look like I do not care (or better like 'I own the world' - which was btw another advise from my Danish colleagues ! They said, every Arab behaves like that :)) this guy has impressed me. Driving old Ford (but with at least 5.0L engine) we were in 140+Kmh (or was it Mph?) going on the motorway from one lane to another and honking everyone around. What a ride, say WOW!
Al Kuwait city centre from the Marina Mall.During a day I was mainly working and because the sunset is about 6:30pm most of the pictures were shot at night when I wondered around the city. Hotel was great and I spent a lot of time in this place ;)
Hotel's pool on top floor (23rd).Most of the week I was starving. Ramadan in Kuwait is a litlle bit more seriously taken (at least when it comes to people just visiting the place) then in UAE. If they catch you drinking or eating during a day (Iftar starts about at 6 pm) you pay fine of 1000 KWD (about 4000$) and you go to jail until end of Ramadan (about three weeks from now). I really tried my best to not to miss my vacation. So the first day I was very happy to see the hotel service to forgot to clean my room. There were some leftovers from the breakfast .)
In the evening I tried to explore the surrounding areas but at the first sight there is just nothing in Al Kuwait. Only a few people wondering around, lot of dust and heat. This is what the Mall looks like at 7PM. At 10PM it got quite crowded.Yesterday I got little bit of tired of thinking of Al Kuwait as a bad place to live. I asked the people where the locals go, there has to be some markets right? So I went to Souk Mubarakia. And that changed my mind completely. Temperature got down to about 37 degrees at night so it was 'comfy' to walk around in my full cotton trousers.
The whole markets is consisted of hundreds of small streets connected together. Those streets are full of small shops of various kinds. Interestingly same types of shops are close to each other. From spice shops, dates shops, fish market, meat streets to all kind of groceries shops.
Gold district :0 I am not into gold, but this place is magnificent.
Dinning place, I've really enjoyed local fish with rice, Arabic bread, salads, mango juice and Čaj a lot. Eva would be proud of me for the way I cut this fish and got rid of the fishbones (she is the real master in this!). And all this just for 2KWD, I could barely walk after eating here, delicious!
On the streets one can see the REAL cars! In some way the time is ticking slower than other places. What I also found interesting were the people. Very friendly. And you go somewhere, you think there has to be something special because you see crowds of people there and when you get close, you realize they are just standing there. Talking and nothing more.
I even managed to get to the Liberation Tower and everybody told me it is possible to go up and see the city from the top. Well that turned out not to be so true. Anyway it is magnificent construction, tallest in Kuwait. I've enjoyed the markets a lot, bought a lot of junk (like night vision binoculars which of course do not work and zooming 1:1, but don't buy it if it was 3KWD).Well, time to say good bye to Kuwait. My flight to back to Dubai is in about 4 hours, then transit to Amsterdam and then back to Prague, home sweet home. Full album is here.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
On the trip again, this time Dubai, UAE
There was not enough of wind in Denmark so I took the opportunity to try Dubai.
(the picture is pretty bad, I know)
People said things like this is not a good time to come here (temperature, humidity and Ramadan). A lot of that is true. Yesterday on the beach, I got new kite F-one Revolt 13m and was desperate to try it. But the wind was only about 5-7 knots (about 3m/s) and it was not flying at all of course. The water was so hot, it almost felt like a shower temperature Eva is used to ;) I tried to stay in the shade of the kite, but was sweating too much. By coincidence there was a 'ultimate survival' show on national geography that evening that showed how to squeeze a seaweed to get some water, will try that next time.
Then you get into taxi, and you get cold immediately. I think Taxis here are like public fridges. The temperature in it is close to zero. Everything here is air conditioned, so while you are in the building, Dubai looks like a great place, until you go out of course. Like trying to catch a taxi for 30 minutes makes you learn how to swear in Arabic. My colleague says, it is ok, you just get a shower three times a day. I agree.
My Danish colleagues also said a lot of other things that you cannot wear shorts on public, one cannot see womens face and more of that stuff. It took me several days of sweating in the trousers to figure out this is not true at all (they were just joking, like always). Dubai is actually quite open minded in those terms. People are very friendly. Just respect some basic rules and you are ok. It is Ramadan, so do not eat or drink on public as that is a sign of disrespect to those who are fasting them selfs. But takeaway is doable (just use the curtains in the hotel room).
Food here is great, you can pick from Indian, Pakistan, Japanese (I recommend Wagamama restaurant ), Arabic and many other cuisines. Price are affordable. What is really cheap is the oil (of course) and the cars. Friend told me a new VW Touareg costs around 110 000,- Dhs (around 20 000 Euro). Unfortunatelly you can't bring them back to Europe. Shops are huge, the only one I was to is Mall of Emirates, but that is enough.
I can't take photos, it is too humid here these days. This is the best I got to.
The temperature is close to 40 in the shade, I am heading off to Kuwait in two days. There is 50+, will see.
While in Dubai I met another Czech guy living in there. His name is Honza, he is kiting a lot, likes bikes and he is a great company, follow his story here. His friend is Passi (Finish guy, I hope I got it right) and he gave mi a ride in his Chevy Corvette. That car has 505HP and can do 0-100Kms in 3.6s (I witnessed it ;) With them I visited a place called Barasti Bar. One of the top rated bars in the world, check it out if you are in Dubai.
Ok, off to Kuwait now.
(the picture is pretty bad, I know)People said things like this is not a good time to come here (temperature, humidity and Ramadan). A lot of that is true. Yesterday on the beach, I got new kite F-one Revolt 13m and was desperate to try it. But the wind was only about 5-7 knots (about 3m/s) and it was not flying at all of course. The water was so hot, it almost felt like a shower temperature Eva is used to ;) I tried to stay in the shade of the kite, but was sweating too much. By coincidence there was a 'ultimate survival' show on national geography that evening that showed how to squeeze a seaweed to get some water, will try that next time.
Then you get into taxi, and you get cold immediately. I think Taxis here are like public fridges. The temperature in it is close to zero. Everything here is air conditioned, so while you are in the building, Dubai looks like a great place, until you go out of course. Like trying to catch a taxi for 30 minutes makes you learn how to swear in Arabic. My colleague says, it is ok, you just get a shower three times a day. I agree.
My Danish colleagues also said a lot of other things that you cannot wear shorts on public, one cannot see womens face and more of that stuff. It took me several days of sweating in the trousers to figure out this is not true at all (they were just joking, like always). Dubai is actually quite open minded in those terms. People are very friendly. Just respect some basic rules and you are ok. It is Ramadan, so do not eat or drink on public as that is a sign of disrespect to those who are fasting them selfs. But takeaway is doable (just use the curtains in the hotel room).
Food here is great, you can pick from Indian, Pakistan, Japanese (I recommend Wagamama restaurant ), Arabic and many other cuisines. Price are affordable. What is really cheap is the oil (of course) and the cars. Friend told me a new VW Touareg costs around 110 000,- Dhs (around 20 000 Euro). Unfortunatelly you can't bring them back to Europe. Shops are huge, the only one I was to is Mall of Emirates, but that is enough.
I can't take photos, it is too humid here these days. This is the best I got to.
The temperature is close to 40 in the shade, I am heading off to Kuwait in two days. There is 50+, will see.
While in Dubai I met another Czech guy living in there. His name is Honza, he is kiting a lot, likes bikes and he is a great company, follow his story here. His friend is Passi (Finish guy, I hope I got it right) and he gave mi a ride in his Chevy Corvette. That car has 505HP and can do 0-100Kms in 3.6s (I witnessed it ;) With them I visited a place called Barasti Bar. One of the top rated bars in the world, check it out if you are in Dubai.
Ok, off to Kuwait now.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
and she said Yes
Well it is probably time to tell everyone. Nine years ago I fell in love with Eva.
Our life together until now was like a video game with all the ups and downs. However last time I was in Czech, we took the boat and in the middle of the Máchas lake she said Yes.
And now, the game is over :)
(thanks to my lovely family for the perfect gift)
Our life together until now was like a video game with all the ups and downs. However last time I was in Czech, we took the boat and in the middle of the Máchas lake she said Yes.
And now, the game is over :)
(thanks to my lovely family for the perfect gift)Monday, July 21, 2008
something about me
so skip if not interested.
I've decided to post about me, mainly because I wonder how is it to read it when one gets older .)
so, at the moment I am 28 years old guy, living in Denmark and traveling a lot. Doing an interesting job and meeting a lot of new and intelligent people. Enjoying life with lovely girlfriend and I can't believe I haven't married her yet (got to fix that really soon). I also like Linux, Gnome, Python and Open Source thinking in general. and I love my parents (with all the quirks included ;)
The Job
Still when people asks me what do I do for living, saying "I work with computers" is probably the easiest way to go. However there is so much more to computers then just that, hard to explain though. At the moment I find the IT industry really interesting place with a lot of things happening (unlike Physis :)
I still dream about realizing my own business and slowly walking there. Yet many times I also find my self in the middle of million things (ideas/unfinished stuff..) but trying to reduce this lately (with various results).
Hobbies
Recently I started to enjoy the wind and a sea a lot. trying to catch up on some sports and health in general. My music taste is satisfied with streams from soma.fm and downtempo.org (I would like to know where djdusty is gone). Regarding movies, beside the regular stuff, the southpark online is worth it.
Otherwise, I still feel unwise yet a little bit more experienced. I think I have really great people around me and it means a lot to me.
So far so good.
I've decided to post about me, mainly because I wonder how is it to read it when one gets older .)
so, at the moment I am 28 years old guy, living in Denmark and traveling a lot. Doing an interesting job and meeting a lot of new and intelligent people. Enjoying life with lovely girlfriend and I can't believe I haven't married her yet (got to fix that really soon). I also like Linux, Gnome, Python and Open Source thinking in general. and I love my parents (with all the quirks included ;)
The Job
Still when people asks me what do I do for living, saying "I work with computers" is probably the easiest way to go. However there is so much more to computers then just that, hard to explain though. At the moment I find the IT industry really interesting place with a lot of things happening (unlike Physis :)
I still dream about realizing my own business and slowly walking there. Yet many times I also find my self in the middle of million things (ideas/unfinished stuff..) but trying to reduce this lately (with various results).
Hobbies
Recently I started to enjoy the wind and a sea a lot. trying to catch up on some sports and health in general. My music taste is satisfied with streams from soma.fm and downtempo.org (I would like to know where djdusty is gone). Regarding movies, beside the regular stuff, the southpark online is worth it.
Otherwise, I still feel unwise yet a little bit more experienced. I think I have really great people around me and it means a lot to me.
So far so good.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
the Fox did it again, Firefox 3 is out!
Ten years ago, when bugged Internet Explorer was dominating the web browsing area and was not aligning to the web standards and thus hurting everyone, a Mozilla was born.
The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone. We are best known for creating the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Indeed, Mozilla succeed and brought back the Web Experience it should be. Now they are back with Firefox 3 which brings a lot of new stuff whether it comes ti user experience, performance or security. Just check out the new features.
Plus one more thing, ever attempted to make a world record and always failed? There is another chance today, head over to www.spreadfirefox.com and try to help with setting in new world record of the most downloaded software in one day.
Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers
grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the
fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own
image as promised by the
sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was
naught but a follower.
grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the
fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own
image as promised by the
sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was
naught but a follower.
from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)
This is taken from Mozilla Manifesto:(10th Edition)
The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone. We are best known for creating the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Indeed, Mozilla succeed and brought back the Web Experience it should be. Now they are back with Firefox 3 which brings a lot of new stuff whether it comes ti user experience, performance or security. Just check out the new features.
Plus one more thing, ever attempted to make a world record and always failed? There is another chance today, head over to www.spreadfirefox.com and try to help with setting in new world record of the most downloaded software in one day.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
It is the WashingMachine!!
Many times I got bad talked by my girlfriend that not putting socks together is the main reason for loosing them. I was never sure, but I always had a weird feeling it has to be the washing machine, just never caught it, until today! I am really sure the machine ate one white sock! hahaaa!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Upgrading to Hardy Heron
With 7.04 version of ubuntu I was quite happy, most of the hardware worked and GNOME was already very usable and cool. I was looking forward 7.10 to polish some issues and be THE DISTRO for masses. I even got new Dell Vostro laptop with mostly Intel hardware.
Ubuntu 7.10 is quite cool distro which delivered some very nice features but many things didn't work. It was probably because most of the open source conferences where held at spring and then came summer and not much time was left to polish and test. Laptop was without a sound at all, email client evolution gave a lot of nasty bugs, cisco vpn client didn't compile and few more. Similar situation with friend's Dell Lattitude which also includes problems with Boradcom wifi driver. However over time I managed to get everything working (except for the integrated microphone). But I had a wierd issue with Cisco VPN client which corrupted my username in config file whenever I presses Ctrl-C on login promtp. The microphone and this was the only thing I was not happy about. Otherwise the system was fast (I never experienced "window refresh is being rendered" feeling like I regurlary get when working with MS Windows), stable and joy to work with.
However I discovered new version of Cisco VPN client is out, so I compiled and it worked.... for a few minutes. Then hard freeze, only holding power button for 4 secs (I wonder how many people know this trick and how many are pulling the cable) helped, something really happening in the kernel. I managed to track it to:
So I typed 'update-manager -d'
and updated my system to latest version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, scheduled to be out in about a Month. Rest of this page tracks what is not working and possible solutions.
First I was very pleasantly surprised by the update process (very simple, not error given), system was updated and while being updated most of the desktop still worked. After update I rebooted (it took a little bit longer than 7.10 but this might just be only a issue of not updating the progress bar) and was presented with working GNOME environment, working evolution, working VPN client, webcam, wifi and sound ;) Just integrated microphone refuses to work. After I got home I discovered couple of more bugs, but something might be because it is not integrated yet (Gnome 2.22 is to be released tomorrow).
Current bugs preventing "THE DISTRO" syndrom:
Ubuntu 7.10 is quite cool distro which delivered some very nice features but many things didn't work. It was probably because most of the open source conferences where held at spring and then came summer and not much time was left to polish and test. Laptop was without a sound at all, email client evolution gave a lot of nasty bugs, cisco vpn client didn't compile and few more. Similar situation with friend's Dell Lattitude which also includes problems with Boradcom wifi driver. However over time I managed to get everything working (except for the integrated microphone). But I had a wierd issue with Cisco VPN client which corrupted my username in config file whenever I presses Ctrl-C on login promtp. The microphone and this was the only thing I was not happy about. Otherwise the system was fast (I never experienced "window refresh is being rendered" feeling like I regurlary get when working with MS Windows), stable and joy to work with.
However I discovered new version of Cisco VPN client is out, so I compiled and it worked.... for a few minutes. Then hard freeze, only holding power button for 4 secs (I wonder how many people know this trick and how many are pulling the cable) helped, something really happening in the kernel. I managed to track it to:
- recent upgrade of ubuntu kernel
- recent wierd behaviour of ipw3945 (likely after the kernel upgrade)
- cisco vpn client
- SMP system (as others suggested)
So I typed 'update-manager -d'
and updated my system to latest version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, scheduled to be out in about a Month. Rest of this page tracks what is not working and possible solutions.
First I was very pleasantly surprised by the update process (very simple, not error given), system was updated and while being updated most of the desktop still worked. After update I rebooted (it took a little bit longer than 7.10 but this might just be only a issue of not updating the progress bar) and was presented with working GNOME environment, working evolution, working VPN client, webcam, wifi and sound ;) Just integrated microphone refuses to work. After I got home I discovered couple of more bugs, but something might be because it is not integrated yet (Gnome 2.22 is to be released tomorrow).
Current bugs preventing "THE DISTRO" syndrom:
- #182284 - slow scrolling of webpages (Xorg going to 100%), seems to be fixed by installing xserver-xorg-video-intel - 2:2.2.1-1ubuntu4
- #176090 - no LED activity for wifi (Intel iwl3945)
- #200950 - wifi cannot connect to WPA+WEP based networks, likely bug with WPA supplicant
- #183968 and #180766 wifi is renamed to wlan0_rename
- #201326 - Shutdown button does not work
- #188972 - Integrated microphone does not work
- #201338 - Evolution crashed with SIGSEV in camel_exchange_journal_delete()
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
bye Brussels, FOSDEM, I am back to work
Times flies, weekend in Brussels is over (actually it is Wednesday now already!) and I am back to work. I hardly managed to put some pictures from my Monday's tripping in the city on-line. By checking the google earth measurement feature I managed to walk over 15 kms with more than 14Kg heavy backpack, in the end of day I was looking for any excuse to sit down for a while. PSP is very handy in those moments.
Brussels is very interesting city, de-facto capital of the European Union, hosting many of its key institutions. It also has beautiful wide streets full of any kind of shops one can imagine. It starts to wake up at 10am and tends to live up until late hours in the morning. I had whole Monday to explore the city. This time I skipped Grand Place and Manneken Pis statue as I saw it last time I was there and instead walked the city from Palace of Justice to the St. Mary's Church and then down to central station and from there to Basilica of Sacred Heart, 6th biggest church in the world. I watched the Zeitgeist the evening before, so I find it kinda funny to see all those huge buildings built in the name of God which might actually be just a worshiping of astrology signs. By the way I can recommend Zeitgeist to anyone, very interesting movie, scoring 8.9/10 on imdb, so check it out.
After long time I also managed to get together with a very close friend, so thank you for everything.
FOSDEM'08 was great, as it was my first bigger conference I consider it a huge success. I've met a lot of interesting people, managed to visit a lot of interesting talks and learn new stuff as well. I hope to post some more articles about FOSDEM if time permits. Looking forward to next year. Btw, the GNOME party on Saturday and GNOME people just rocks!
Brussels is very interesting city, de-facto capital of the European Union, hosting many of its key institutions. It also has beautiful wide streets full of any kind of shops one can imagine. It starts to wake up at 10am and tends to live up until late hours in the morning. I had whole Monday to explore the city. This time I skipped Grand Place and Manneken Pis statue as I saw it last time I was there and instead walked the city from Palace of Justice to the St. Mary's Church and then down to central station and from there to Basilica of Sacred Heart, 6th biggest church in the world. I watched the Zeitgeist the evening before, so I find it kinda funny to see all those huge buildings built in the name of God which might actually be just a worshiping of astrology signs. By the way I can recommend Zeitgeist to anyone, very interesting movie, scoring 8.9/10 on imdb, so check it out.
After long time I also managed to get together with a very close friend, so thank you for everything.
FOSDEM'08 was great, as it was my first bigger conference I consider it a huge success. I've met a lot of interesting people, managed to visit a lot of interesting talks and learn new stuff as well. I hope to post some more articles about FOSDEM if time permits. Looking forward to next year. Btw, the GNOME party on Saturday and GNOME people just rocks!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Going to FOSDEM
While reading my favorite planet I noticed FOSDEM'08 is this week. As I am now living in Copenhagen which is relatively close, flights are cheap and I was always sorry I could not attend any real open source conference and meet the real people behind all this exciting stuff, I decided to go. As the conference is really close (this Friday) I have to act fast. Flights are sorted, now I am looking for some couch/sofa to stay at night, couch surfing seems like a great option. Agenda is really long list of exciting events and I spent whole yesterdays night just to try to pick some of them. There are still overlays but I'll try to sort it out as times permits.So far I picked those:
Saturday:
10:00 - 10:30 Opening: Welcome
10:30 - 11:30 Opening: Tux with Shades, Linux in Hollywood
11:30 - 12:30 Opening: How a large scale opensource project works
12:30 - 13:15 Opening: Status update of Software Patents
13:30 - 14:15 LPI - LPI 2008 - a certification passage
14:00-14:45 Janson Perl6
14:30 - 15:15 Gnome Gnome Developer Kit
15:15 - 16:00 Gnome More Clutter - Animation Kit
16:00 - 17:00 CentOS Introduction to CentOS
16:15 - 16:30 - openSUSE - Builde Service Overview
16:15 - 16:30 - openSUSE - Builde Service Web interface
16:45 - 17:30 Gnome Elisa
18:15 - 18:45 Gnome GUPnP
18:00 - 19:00 CentOS Pluggable real-time monitoring with dstat
Sunday:
10:00 - 11:00 Chavanne Xen
11:30 - 12:00 openSUSE - Kernel, udev, D-Bus, HAL, NetworkManager and Friends
12:00 - 13:00 openSUSE - Suspend
12:00 - 13:00 X.org - Fixing X input
13:00 - 13:45 CrossDesktop - Farsight 2: Video conferencing made easy
13:00 - 14:00 H.1309 CentOS Introduction to CentOS
14:00 - 15:00 Janson Conary
14:30 - 15:00 openSUSE - One Click Install
15:00 - 15:15 talk - IOGrind: locating I/O performance problems
15:15 - 16:00 CrossDesktop - Deb Packaging Introduciton
15:00 - 15:45 Packaging - PackageKit
16:00 - 17:00 CentOS Hosting custom applications on CentOS 5
16:00 - 16:45 CrossDesktop - GEGL
17:15 - 18:30 Janson The Endgame
17:00 - 18:00 CentOS CentOS 5 and Virtualization
Event is happening at the ULB Campus Solbosh, so I can check what the studies looks like in Belgium. And I see LPI certifications are available, time to test my Linux skills. Now if I just manage my phone to sync to Google calendar, both Goosync and Scheduleworld are not working for me now.
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