I left my air conditioner on all day yesterday. In fact, since I ran it over night, I had it running from about 9pm on the 26th, through 8am this morning.

Obviously, I didn't do this intentionally. I was barely home all day yesterday since I went to a TPSC meeting after work and went out for drinks after that. I didn't get home 'till 11pm at which point I discovered that my absent-mindedness had contributed to the smog index in the city that day... and it was an ugly day yesterday.

So I have this Idea I'd like to look into. I want some way to control my A/C remotely. Either by way of an interface between the air conditioner and my computer, or as a second option, an interface between a power adaptor and my computer. I'd then log into MoulinRouge and somehow either monitor (how cool would that be?) or just outright turn off the unit if I'd left it on.

...But I have no idea where to start. Colin: does such hardware exist? I'd write the drivers myself, I'm just curious.

When I don't have internet access, I tend to blog to a flat file with the file name of the current date & time so I can set it manually later. I just added created the blog command:

alias blog="vi \"/path/to/blog/dir/\`date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'\`\""

We're all stuffed into the Jetta and on the slow progression home. The ride up here was an easy 4hours (Jo is fast) but the return trip looks to be taking a bit longer due to congestion and ugly weather. It's alright though, the company is good, the music friendly and despite the small size, very comfortable.

I've been playing Zelda for an hour and a half now and after getting my ass handed to me by the 6th boss, I'm taking a break in favour of some blogging.

The week has been fun, though to be honest, I think the majority of that fun is the result of my lack of responsibilities this week rather than the symposium itself. Pavel and I had a friendly roommate in our hotel suite and he made for fun company for much of the week. The majority of the courses available were well over my head but there were a few moments where I felt like I actually knew what was going on. What I'd hoped for the most though, figuring out how to setup GL transitions on my laptop, just didn't happen. I talked to a bunch of smart people and with the exception of Andrew, most were rather unhelpful. That's ok though, I did manage to garner enough information from enough smart people to get myself started so hopefully some day soon I'll be able to make it happen.

I also started playing with Gnome (pronounced "G'nome"), a desktop environment like KDE, but a little more lightweight and more Free too.

I also discovered that while I seem relatively socially adept in most situations, I find that I just don't seem to know how to act around males. Girls are easy to chat with, but... I just don't get guys -- does that make sense?

Better than the symposium itself though, was probably my time with Chrystal and Syntax. I really miss my life with both of them and it's nice to spend some time in that situation again. Even though I know we didn't work, I still miss those days.

Anyway, we're at a rest stop now and I want to stretch my legs a bit before we head back out on the road. I'm seeing Melanie tonight and I really hope she likes all the stuff I brought her :-)

I woke up early this morning to a phone call from Noreen that lasted a couple hours. It was nice to hear a friendly voice, even if it was a distressed one. After that, there was some shameless MSN flirting with Melanie, then a hop over to the convention centre where I sat in on a talk called "Why NFS Sucks" -- it sucked so I left to play Zelda for a while.

Now I'm in a seminar called "Reverse Engineering USB Drivers for Compatibility", and I'm sitting next to a guy that works for AMD. Back later.

2006-07-21 19:47:09

Well, like nearly everything else here, the reverse engineering class was way over my head. It was kinda neat though. The presenter had taken a sampling from the output of USB Snoopy and fed it through his own parser to create a dump file that Ethereal could parse... So we were able to sift through USB output generated by a Windows machine's USB driver using a network analysis tool. Very neat.

The next class I attended was something I was waiting for for over 3years: The future of the Linux desktop wrt to 3D objects. In plain speak that means changing the windows on your screen from static rectangles drawn on the screen, to three dimensional, textured objects (like in a video game) that can be warped, and mangled in real time... on the hardware. Think OSX, but prettier.

The class covered the "status so far" and described what code was written and what still needed to be done. The presenter went into detail, with diagrams describing how things used to be done and how, with various extensions, we are all moving toward a true 3D environment. Very neat stuff, and unlike most of the other meetings, I probably understood about 50% of it.

For those interested in trying out GLX on the desktop, I found a great HOWTO for Gentoo.

After the cool GL class though, I couldn't find anything on the schedule that I found interesting so I killed an hour playing Zelda in the lobby and called Chrystal to see if she wanted to do something. We ended up at the Parliament buildings.

This was the 4th time I'd visited our capitol buildings, but only the second time I was able to go into the House of Commons and the Senate on the ground floor as both political bodies were not in session. i got some great pictures and will share them all when I get back.

Now I'm just waiting 'till 8pm when the last classes start. I'm torn between a conversation between Gentoo folk and the group pioneering the One Laptop Per Child project. I'll start in with the Gentoo people but if it looks to be over my head again, I'll head on downstairs.

I woke up late today 'cause I was up 'till 4am working on Matt's website... I'd been putting it off for way too long though so I guess I deserved it. The plan is presently to go to be reasonably early tonight and wake up at 6am tomorrow to go for a swim.

I'd also like to share that the water pressure in our hotel room is frickkin' awesome.

I'm currently sitting at a table outside two of the conference rooms waiting for the next rotation as there's nothing interesting happening just now. The next class I'll be going to is ""perfmon2: a Flexible Performance Monitoring System"

Oop, times up.

2006-07-20 17:04:20

In a complete twist in planning, I decided to bail on much of the symposium today in favour of spending time with Chrystal. I'd gone through the schedule and realised that I didn't have much on the list I was interested 'till 5pm so instead of sitting through a bunch of presentations I didn't understand, I bailed and had lunch with my ex. After which, we wandered over the to Canadian War Museum where for $10 we walked through the history of the country from native warfare through the Cold War.

The museum isn't impressive. It's not pretty or awe-inspiring. What it is, is effective. I got very emotional strolling through the halls, looking at the killing machines my grandfather manned, and over the Paschendale exhibit, where a man lay dead, face down in the mud. It's graphic, but everyone should see it.

I'm back at the conference now and will be sitting in on a class on "The Digital Divide". We'll see how it goes.

2006-07-20 18:43:35

The digital divide class was interesting. It was hosted by a guy who's trying to form a sort of volunteer support base for building Linux infrastructure in developing countries. The guy who's responsible for the software arm of the $100 Laptop program was there as well, along with an American writer/lawyer, the guys from GOSLING and a number of others. The talk was scattered, and I had to ask the question of *should* we be doing this and if it's any different from Christian missionaries -- they made a convincing argument that they were not imposing values and were rather offering tools to allow people to develop their own culture -- an aim not generally shared by the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I'm not sure much will come of it though. The talks were, as mentioned above, quite scattered and I have my doubts as to whether or not a volunteer army can by formed... But I'll offer my help where I can.

2006-07-20 19:27:09

So... bored.... Can't... stay.... awake....

I took this course 'cause I figured it'd be worth learning about given where I'm starting work on Monday but it doesn't seem that interesting.

I'm so tired.... and I can't leave now.

2006-07-20 19:49:16

Person 1:	Can someone give me an example of some of the companies using Xen for their own products?
Person 2:	Well, actually, the best example and the biggest implementation I can think of would be Amazon... Is there someone from Amazon here?

A young man stands up and starts talking about Amazon's experiences with the software...

That's pretty damn cool.

Melanie sent me an ASCII rose via a text message today.

She is so damn cool.

I should probably stop gushing.

I'll be keeping these posts private for as long as I'm in Ottawa.

I'm sitting in a crowded auditorium surrounded by geeks and laptops, waiting for the start of the big "Kernel Report", a sort of "State of the Union" for the production of the kernel - (read: the core of Linux).

I'm in a tough spot for a few reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I am SO over my head with regard to what's be discussed, but also everyone seems to know everyone. More later

2006-07-19 11:06:34 EST

I'm now sitting in on a discussion called "Open Source Graphics Drivers Don't Kill Kittens" and it's hosted by the guy who writes the DRM code for the Linux kernel. How cool is that? ...and apparently ATI has not been kind to Linux lately :-(

2006-07-19 12:13:39 EST

Alright, the kitten lecture is over now and I can't find anything very interesting to sit in on for the time being so I'm in the hall plugged into one of the many freely available power bars and connected via the free wireless.

I'm quickly coming to realise that I'm very much over my head here and that the decision to blow $600 (pass+hotel) was probably a bad one. I'm being exposed to a lot of cool information, but I don't think that I'm capable of really absorbing much of it given my current stage of technical kung-foo. That's not to say thta I want to bail and go home early, just that I'm a bit disappointed that the learning curve is as steep as it is here. I just wish there were a few mid-range papers being shown so I wouldn't feel like a complete dumbass.

2006-07-19 16:27:30

I made the mistake of selecting "Catalyzing Open Driver Development" as the presentation I wanted to sit through for this portion of the day. See, I figured it'd be a more political talk, something about getting hardware vendors interested in getting their stuff into Linux. Instead, I'm sitting through a very long, very dull talk about how these two people got their comany's cards to work in Linux. ...I can't really leave 'cause it's a large, closed room and it'd just piss off everyone off, and I can't think of anywhere else I'd go anyway. So, instead, I blog here.

Wow, these guys really suck. They mumble, they're quiet and they're not very interesting.

I did run into something pretty cool though. One of the geeks who sat in on the "Write a real, working Linux driver" class i went to had some very cool stuff running on his laptop. With Linux, he was making it look and act a lot like OSX, with flapping, translucent windows, 3D spinning desktops... very cool stuff. He gave the name(s) of the technology involved and when I have time to do stuff independently, I'll have to tinker with it.

Now the audience is getting ornery... I guess I'm not the only one dissatisfied with their presentation skills.

As an aside, the wireless access here sucks ass. I'm constantly having to reconnect and I have no idea why.

2006-07-19 20:34:31

I just got back from a very interesting "BoF" (Birds of a Feather) talk during which the following was said:

"...[DRM] is going to go into camcorders, which has all sorts of implications. Imagine using your camera to film your child's first steps. He hobbles across the room and you're getting it all on tape and then, he walks in front of the television set and the camera shuts off because it's been programmed not to allow the recording of tv signals."

The meeting was chaired by GOSLING a non-profit group setup to lobby government regarding Free software issues. A full hour of copyright discussion, and property rights -- very, very interesting. So far, that was the coolest thing I've seen here.

At the moment, I'm in the main hall, where all around me geeks are stationed at little tables by candle (and LCD) light where we're being served free alcohol and nibbles complete with a penguin ice sculpture. This is all courtesy of Intel who, I suspect is hosting this evening with the hope of this very thing happening, that is, people like me mentioning their name in a public forum in support of Linux. There you go guys, thanks for the great work on the video drivers ;-)

Anyway, I don't know anyone here and I'm not feeling all that social as yet so I might just head back to the hotel --

'Course, just as I wrote that, a fellow Torontonian (can I say that?) came up to me with a "hey, do I know you from somewhere?" He recognised me from the GOSLING brainstorm and proposed we start something similar in Toronto... I can't say that I'm adverse to doing it too since it's an "in" to Queen's Park which is where most of the environmental stuff I want to see happen seems to have to start. OLS is neat!

I had an awesome weekend but didn't blog about it 'till now because of my leaving my former employer -- I figured some of my coworkers might stop by and wouldn't be interested in non-company stuff.

Anyway, my weekend was more or less devoted to Melanie -- something that may sound a bit obsessive, but we both had fun anyway. The whole thing started off with my goodbye party at Andy Poolhall where my coworkers made sure to buy me lots of shots and get me a little drunk... something I had not experienced since my terrible "I hate the world" incident in my teens. It was funny, and Melanie laughed at my over-concentration when attempting to walk.

After the party, Melanie and I walked down the Danforth to Alexandros for a gyro and walked home in the rain. The next day was full up with a trip to a tatoo place on Yonge where Melanie got two new tatoos and I took pictures. I also got to meet a bunch of her friends who were all very cool, some of which were getting tats themselves. After the various needlings, we made our way to Swiss Chalet and enjoyed some food before heading home.

Of course, some where in all of that, I was supposed to meet Charlie uptown for a big salsa party, but with the meeting of all the new friends and the late start that morning, everything fell apart and i ended up bailing on the guy (I'm so sorry Charlie!)

Sunday was even better though, I woke up late and headed back up to Melanie's place where I met another friend of hers and played videogames... all day. It was frickkin' awesome. I have a really cool girlfriend.

They say that the Universe puts you into situations in the hopes that you might to understand something, so it helps to see every stage in your life as a learning experience. Before I worked for this company, I don't think that I really understood what went on in the machines that ran the world. It's too easy to characterise corporations by their deeds without considering the people just trying to make a living behind them. Capitalism is fucked up, and more than anything else, it means that good people everywhere are responsible for things I spend my life fighting against.

Goodbyes are hard for me. I pretend like it's no big deal, but the fact is that I've become emotionally attached to everyone in that office and the thought that I won't be able to chat up Jeannie on my breaks, or go to lunch with Colin, or get chair-humped by Charlie anymore is a terrible one to consider. The office became a sort of family to me -- the result, I suppose of the small-company atmosphere. Jacky was like the house Elder, Sephron the doting mom, Markus the clown, and so on. My job had become more than just a means to pay the bills, but rather a second home, a second family. I'm sorry to leave, but if I had stayed, I couldn't have been me anymore. I'll miss them all.