Present Perfect

Barcelona

The day we got back from GUADEC I was planning on going to see Nada Surf play at a small club in Barcelona. However, it seemed nobody felt like going with me that day, and I didn't feel like being alone and tired there for some two hours before the band actually started. But right before deciding to go to bed Andy called and said he was up for it, so we went, and it was great. I just don't get to enough shows round here, more bands need to come to our wonderful city.

At work, we've had our first "brainfarm" session. Ralph Giles (from Xiph/Theora) is here for a month, and Conrad Parker (from Annodex) dropped by our office as well. We've discussed some items that we want to see happening, like images in Ogg streams (so we can put slides of talks at a high resolution in the Ogg stream), how we could hook up to XDamage (for screen recording), how we can integrate Annodex stuff into GStreamer and Flumotion, ...

I packaged up the Annodex stack for Fedora Core, which I'll be putting into Extras soon. I poked at it a bit, made some patches for various small issues, until I had even the Apache module working correctly. I used Conrad's oggzdump tool to look at the stream archives and figure out where the problems were. One of the problems was a bug in theoraenc that was actually spotted by Tim before the last release, but I guess nobody really understood how that bug needed to be solved. Embarassing bug :) But now I understand the problem and we can fix the bug. What's more, a small tweak to one of Conrad's example programs allows me to fix the bug on the recorded streams.

We had a nice barbecue with everyone there, including Brian Cameron, who also dropped by, and Ralph's girlfriend and daughter.

During the week, as Christian reported, Conrad managed to lose Wim's only set of keys. Wim was at that time on holiday for a week in Portugal. Getting Conrad back into Wim's place to pick up his stuff so he could leave for Germany and Japan was something of a challenge. First of all, Conrad had to wander around aimlessly after losing the keys at 4 AM until the next morning. So he crashed in our office on the couch :) Second, we needed to get hold of Wim to get some info. You can't just change the lock on any random door. Third, Wim's agency suggested we change the lock since they didn't have a key themselves. They didn't seem to think it necessary however to make sure we weren't thieves :) Of course, lock services didn't want to change the lock without explicit consent from the owner. But hey - don't owners always have a spare set of keys to throw out malicious renters ?

So, fifth, contact the owner, after asking the agency. Answering machine. Callback next day, they are coming to the city. Send over Conrad and Andy to collect the keys because we have some conf call. Conrad back with keys, happy. This is Friday, Conrad wanted to leave Saturday. Finish at office, plan dinner. Before dinner, go to Wim's to get Conrad's stuff. Key doesn't work on the door. I try as well. Nope, neither key works on neither door. Panic. Call owner again. Leave message. Have dinner. Get callback. Owner says it's not possible, this is the right set of keys. Yes, he owns that particular place. Yes, he owns no other apartments. Yes, he has more keys, but they're all the same. Can we come over and compare keys ? Sure.

So, sixth. After dinner, Michael and Conrad hop in the car with me, we drive around for an hour trying to find the guy, knowing only roughly where he lives and that we're supposed to meet him by the mechanical stairs. It was around this time that Conrad started accepting his fate, speaking the immortal words "Losing the keys was my fault. I admit. But everything after that ...

Finally we find the stairs, call the guy (who sounds sleepy), climb the two hundred meters of mechanical stairs that aren't very mechanical at the moment, and end up in a seedy back area at the top. Some guy walks over to us and hands us some keys and a paper with a copy of his id (in color !), saying he needs to go back to bed because he needs to get up at 7 (and by this time it's 1 AM). Finally, the keys ! Back in the car, notice I have a message on my cell phone, listen to message - it's the guy saying that we shouldn't come by anymore because it's too late and he needs to get up at 7. Glad I didn't hear it before calling him.

Back to Wim's place, finally open the door, get Conrad's stuff, go back home, and have a few well-deserved cocktails. Mental note - copy Wim's keys for next time this happens...

Barcelona The day we got back from GUADEC I was planning on going to see Nada Surf play at a small club in Barcelona. However, it seemed nobody felt like...

First of all, for people who are wondering what's up with the archives of the streams: don't worry, we're working on them. The online copies have a few problems, most of them related to networking problems during the conference (ie. parts of the stream never reached our online platform). But don't worry, we have local copies that we are currently fixing up and cutting nicely, and we will put them up as soon as they are done.

GUADEC

plane hackin'

So, wrapping up GUADEC. Excellent conference, as usual. While GUADEC itself was great, I really need to do something next year so I get to enjoy more of the conference itself. Running the streams is a pleasing thing to do, but it makes you miss out on a bunch of the talks, and it doesn't give you as much time as usual to talk to a bunch of people you otherwise don't get the chance for. Which is, after all, the main reason we want to go to these conferences. Oh, and getting up at 7.30 is no joke either for someone like me.

There were a bunch of logistic issues to deal with as well that I really need to make sure are solved for next year. The volunteers did great work. But I feel there are some baseline issues that need to be guaranteed in some form so we can avoid the more silly problems like "no network" and "no power".