A boringmost blog about bugs

Logo & T-shirt design BoF at 1pm today room 405

2011-08-10T10:43:55Z

In hopes of getting some of our projects a logo (BugSquad, Calligra are both looking...), I'm holding a logo bof. I'll quickly go over what you should consider when designing a logo or t-shirt, and then we can brainstorm ideas for anybody who tells me they want a logo. :)

This blog site's mobile version doesn't work, and the non-mobile version takes too much bandwidth, so look for me on identi.ca or irc.

Monday at Desktop Summit in Berlin

2011-08-10T10:39:33Z

Last of the talks today. Afterwards there was football and volleyball. Lesson: sign up for things ahead of time if you want to get a t-shirt. They didn't have enough made from the morning's count. There were lots of people at volleyball. I met bug triager gkiagia, and the kivo guy who was here all the way from China. There were a bunch more, some of whom were really good volleyball players, but I'm pretty bad with names... You're all great anyway! Especially the folk that hadn't played for a long time, or had never played and were still willing to play! Hope your bruises aren't too bad.

The network has been very sad, I finally switched to 3G to be able to post to identi.ca. I wish people were better at using the offical conference tag (wasn't it #ds2011?) on all their posts, but I guess it hasn't been announced as widely as it could be. As a result, to get all the posts I have to search on #desktopsummit, #ds2011, etc. On twitter and identica. Over flaky network.

There were awards: BugSquad's very own Dario Andres won one for unwavering dedication to bug triaging. Also, Martin Graesslin got one for doing all kinds of cool stuff to kwin. And one to Mirko Boehm for Desktop Summit organizing work. And one to the sysadmin team, but they couldn't quite do that, so they "went older" and picked Toma. Gnome had their traveling pants award. Matthias Clausen won it with a standing ovation...

Nokia & Qt? Don't panic.

2011-02-11T20:05:16Z

There are some really shrill voices out there of people predicting doomsday or saying how quickly they will leave to some other non-Qt toolkit. Honestly people! Take a Valium and come back on Monday, once we get more details. This was big and secret from everyone, it will take time for Nokia groups to get details. It is very silly to be calling for a Qt fork at this point.

Incidentally, I got up at 5am and watched both parts of the screencast, and they seemed pretty cagey about Qt and MeeGo. One slide came with two disclaimers: "not including MeeGo devices" and "not actual numbers". Not quite that wording, but you get the idea.

So wait and see.

I'll leave it to others to say why KDE should be unconcerned at this point.

Plus a big thank-you to Lydia Pintscher for running KDE's Code-in!

2011-01-14T18:28:51Z

She did a lot of work to keep things running smoothly for everyone! Furthermore, she covered for me during my frequent travels, especially when I was stranded at Heathrow for six nights! And let me say that was a horrible experience! I'm also not impressed with British Airways having me on hold for 40 minutes to say they "couldn't" refund my return fare, and in broken English at that. The earliest flight they could rebook me on (that ended up not being canceled) was on the 25th! I wasn't about to spend the 24th in an airport, so left and took a ferry to the Netherlands and a solid internet connection. I understand that under EU law, they are required to refund it, so I get to waste more time and figure out how to force it. Since this blog syndicates to tens of thousands of people, I

I should also thank my employer, froglogic.com for being understanding during my Heathrow adventure. We're probably still hiring, btw. ;) Hamburg is a great city, and if you're a sales engineer, we're looking for someone in the USA.

Guest blog: Samuel Brack, Google code-in student and new bug triager

2011-01-14T17:58:38Z

I'm really happy with how Google Code-in went! If you check the youtube KDE channel, you'll see some of the new Konqueror screencasts. There is one that shows off the JavaScript debugger too! We also have some screenshots for promo/etc, and a new FAQ. Here's a report from one of our triager students. Meet one of BugSquad's newest triagers:

My name is Samuel Brack and I'm a 18-year-old student from Germany. I participated in the Google Code In contest and here's my summary of what I've done.

It all started in November with a blog post in Nightrose's blog mentioning a contest where you get mentored by KDE people and do some useful work. Additionally you receive a T-shirt and some money if you participate. Since I wanted to collaborate in KDE for a long time but never took the steps to find for a task myself, Google Code In was the right place.

So, I set up an account and started working. Today I've done 11 tasks for KDE and one for the operating system Haiku. Unfortunately, my coding experience is not high enough that I can produce good code, so I decided to do only tasks where I didn't have to program.

My first choice was writing a tutorial for using Jabber in Kopete. That was quite a lot of work but I learned some features I didn't really know in Kopete (even though I use it daily) and was proud to have contributed in the KDE community for the first time. Thanks to my mentor Anne for helping me with this.

My next task in KDE was cleaning up bugs in the Amarok section in the KDE bugtracker. My mentor Myriam introduced me into working with the bugtracker and it surprisingly pleased me to work there (especially when you find a duplicate or – better – can close a bug report), because before this I thought bugtrackers were big unsorted blackboxes. ;-)

Following up on that, I found a quite small task – writing an article for the Amarok Insider about the project „Amarok LiveCD“. After having installed it and playing around a bit in a virtual machine, I wrote this article. Thanks to Valorie for mentoring me in this case.

The last eight tasks I did in KDE were all of the same kind. My work was to clean up some bugs either in the Konqueror or in the KDE area of the bugzilla. I went through 160 bugs in these days and could close some of them (thanks for the permission to edit bugs), too. I now know Konqueror and especially khtml much better than before and am able to sort and test bug reports, which is actually useful in the KDE community. Thanks to Alex in these tasks.

All in all, I can say that the GCI helped me to join the active KDE community and it showed me how things are organized within the project. Thanks especially to my mentors and to Nightrose, who coordinated all that stuff on the IRC channel.

Things that could be done a bit better in future contests are mainly the Google Melange website, that's quite slow and querying the task database needs very much time. The rest was very fine and I'm looking forward to participate in GSoC one time perhaps, since this is my last year in school.

Konqueror screencast: Code-in student submissions!

2010-12-08T13:18:46Z

Konqueror's students were some of the first ones done with tasks!

We have a spiffy new FAQ (there is a task to further expand it!), some new screenshots, and a screencast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO3fIAPPZGs

Thanks to Snizzo for the screencast! You've had lots of compliments on irc. The other task results will get added to the website (http://konqueror.kde.org) and where promo people can find them.

If you are interested in one of the current tasks, feel free to join #khtml and ask questions. There are more screenshot and screencast tasks!

Also: There are bug triaging tasks. If you would like to triage bugs, you can join #kde-bugs and learn how. Once you know what you are doing, you can finish triage tasks very quickly! If you know javascript, you can write testcases.

A new BugDay! this Sunday

2010-07-30T21:22:30Z

Looking for a good way to contribute and got some spare time this weekend? KDE BugSquad is holding a Bug Day revival this Sunday 1st of August and still looking for people who'd like to help out with getting Dolphin bugs under control.

We'll be gathering in our IRC channel (#kde-bugs) starting around 10:00 AM european time zone. As always, no coding skills required. All you need is a recent version of our beloved KDE Software Compilation. Senior bug triagers will be around to help you get started.

More info on: http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Bugsquad/BugDays/DolphinDay1 (available soon)

See you there! :-)

Can't make it then? That's ok, we'll have another. Promise.

But feel free to drop by anytime, bug reports always come in, and somebody has to look at all those duplicates!

Then the big question: do we hold our Bof in the back of a bus next year too? It makes it hard to take a group photo!

CampKDE 2010 Day 0

2010-01-18T00:33:06Z

CampKDE 2010 Day 0
Originally uploaded by Blau Zahl

First froglogic CampKDE t-shirt sighting!
On the left is the second youngest attendee, Ryan, newly turned 18. (Youngest would be Cryos' one-year-old.)

Froglogic CampKDE T-shirts? :)

2010-01-16T20:32:27Z

If you don't have one yet, come find me. I think I've given out most of today's batch, but I'll have more tommorrow.

froglogic at CampKDE!

2010-01-15T01:21:02Z

Looks like I have everything set... I'll be in San Diego Friday night. And with some froglogic give-aways! So come find me, or keep asking where Alex is until you do. :)

Silly icon:

Phonon Bugday

2009-11-08T19:23:29Z

Woke up to find the Phonon BugDay is going well. They're halfway through, but could still use some help with the second half! Also needed: someone with an external usb sound device and someone using KDE on MS-Windows. Join in, #kde-bugs on irc.freenode.net!

Hot day, bad day. No cat. But new hackergotchi! Nepomuk?

2009-09-27T14:05:59Z

I've put off blogging for a while, but I've been meaning to do a series of posts on social media/networking/desktop/soldering irons (hey, everything is "social" now). It was way too hot to post today, as least by the metric of "hmm, I've drunk half of the lemonade for the week while walking home from the farmer's market, and I'm still thirsty." But it's night now, so you'd think it would be better, except my wifi is messed up, and I had to sit on a chair, and I hate chairs. I was also catsitting my old cat. :( He's ended up with a bad tail injury. I'm a little flipped out on that. So I think you get to wait on the "social" posts. Sorry. I'll sleep, and then declare it a new day when I wake up. It'll have to be better then.

I'd like to thank Marijn Kruisselbrink (Mek) for my new hackergotchi photo.
Thanks also to Fredrik Holgrund (fredrikh) for post-processing. Check out that drop shadow, woot.
Now you can see that, yes, despite the gender neutral "Alex" you can call me by, the "A.L." I'm formally listed as on most everywhere, and the mysterious "blauzahl", I really am female. I wonder how much online harassment that has actually saved me over the years? I've gotten surprisingly little, really. Or I just expected so much worse based on stories, that what I did get seemed fine.

One reason I've put off posting is that I haven't updated trunk for quite a while... Since before GCDS! I got tired of breaking things the night before a talk/con/travel/etc (they never break otherwise!), so just didn't update. And I'm not sure how many conferences I went to right after that. I think two. And then I started my new job, which probably should get it's own entry when I'm more chipper. The important part is: I don't know what apps use nepomuk now, and who has added capabilities for it. I was stunned when I did an svn up and saw what gwenview last had. So please tell me if your app does more with it than before GCDS. :) I thought I heard that digiKam was using it now.

Ghost from the past: GCDS forgotten blog entry

2009-08-09T06:07:48Z

So we'd get back late at night, and dani_l would look at me as I'd pull out my laptop, and say, "You're going to blog? At this hour?" And yeah, I did. I think consistently, even. Well, here is a post from the auto-save of my blogging software.

Yesterday was the last day of GCDS at the university for me. I dragged myself out of early to go and do DrKonqi stuff in the morning. Lunch was more "food". Then back to do more DrKonqi. Oh no, the paintball trip... Where we were supposed to leave from the Auditorium which we were no longer meeting at, nor were we anywhere near. So an interesting calling around began to see what was going on. Most people on the list seemed to have canceled from being too tired. Quite understandable at this point, really. Anyway, the locals finally found the name and location of the place and called us a taxi. Four of us took a rather scenic taxi. Er, well, yeah. The guy couldn't find the place, and so we drove around in circles on gravel roads and got to see ruins of houses built into cliffs and some nice rocks. (They're very good at using basalt here as accents in buildings, btw.) He didn't understand where we were going, and nobody seemed to be able to give him good directions. Anyway, we ended up getting off back at the Auditorium and had people come pick us up.

After that misadventure in transit, we were actually at paintball. It was quite interesting to see people running around diving into crouches and stuff. It was also kinda amusing to see who was good at it, but I think it safe to say you shouldn't mess with some of our developers. It was fun, and maybe something that can happen at a future aKademy. We all went home with bruises on random spots. [Who has the group photo from this anyway? URL please!]

Walking home, as it wasn't actually that far from the Auditorium, we decided to go back to our hotels, shower, meet up for food afterwards, and then go clubbing or something and enjoy the (for-most) last night. On the boardwalk, I finally got to eat proper tapas (finally, REAL FOOD! And fish even!). We found the Amarok hotel, and decided to howl at them and see who would answer back. They did! We then grabbed some other people, and wandered around the island looking for a reasonable club. We failed. Amusingly enough, Qt development discussion came up. And there is NOTHING like running around and talking about software development at 2am in the morning. We did find some actual dancing. When I left the others at 4am, they were talking about Qt again. :D

Wandering around was interesting: KDAB has half the island wearing their shirts now we could watch for people wearing shirts from our conference and randomly (or not) talk to them. The downside of this conference is that we've been too spread out. There's lots of people I'd like to have met, that I've barely ever even seen. And people I usually talk to I've seen almost zero of. I have met new people though, and have gotten to know some from online better. I wonder how many people have left by now. [ereslibre grabbed me online wanting to know if I'd met him or if I'd met an imposter! I have no idea! Did you bring me the real ereslibre or not? Collobora party]

I'm here for tomorrow still. I'd like to go rockhounding up by the stuff we were walking by yesterday, but we'll see how blistered my feet are. I seem to have really torn them up from the combo of paintball/dancing: I should have been paying more attention to the fact that my shoes were too loose. Heh, I should pack my bag first and see just how much less I'm taking back. [I was too tired to go walking that far. I instead found that our hotel was *right* by the rocky section of the beach and that late at night was low tide. Sand and saltwater feel very good on blistered feet and I got some great rocks!]

---------------------------------

By the time I left, 2am and 4am were normal "evening times" for me. There is nothing like night on a beach... And then watching the sunrise. There was either/both a full moon or strong light pollution: even though it was dark, you could see the whites of the breakers as they crashed. It was an entirely new pattern/way to watch an ocean. And beautiful.

I'd like to thank Sealne for letting me crash in the Penthouse my last few hours there. And for suggesting the hotel in the first place. I'd also like to thank Markey & Mamarok for letting me hitch a ride to the airport with them. I guess I owe you all beers. :) [&&]

Suggestion for next year: Nokia-sponsored beanbags in the hacking room. Or bring the Google ones over.

[&&] They can even be non-virtual!

drkonqi: not everyone is home from gcds yet

2009-07-10T10:09:15Z

Drkonqi discussion. Now. 3-1. Till we get bored or hungry.

p.s. for some reason syndication decided to take my "music" tag and make that the subject line of my last post. bah.

Sleeping in at GC till 10am, then rolling down sand dunes

2009-07-09T22:45:47Z

For the first day here, I was able to sleep in till the grand hour of 10am. This was incredibly luxurious, although I could certainly have used more. Nobody from our place was involved in Plasma or KWin so we could skip that bof. :) We left in time to make sure we caught the bus for the trip, and ended up being early enough for me to catch the Community bof. There we discussed having party packs to give to people who were having parties to promote kde, and how exactly that might work.

After that, it was time to go on the Formal Field Trip Thing. Which involved us splitting up into 3 buses, having one (or two?) of them break down, and us standing at a balcony overlooking dunes while we waited for the rest. Of course, we went to play! I'm sure someone will post photos. Perhaps even me, at least, what I took before I did the ill-advised move of rolling down a sand dune while holding a camera. The mechanism isn't entirely happy with me atm... I'm not sure who started with sand dune rolling: I saw someone do somersaults down a big one early on. That had to hurt somewhat. The idea of it is what tempted me to go ahead and get my shoes all sandy and join in the sand dune play. Indeed, it turned out to be quite fun, and you can go very fast when doing a proper roll from a large, sharp dune. *grin* (Those physics classes were good for something: maximizing angular momentum!) You then sort of stop when you hit the bottom, sand scatters everywhere, and find yourself looking up into the world. Sand dunes tower above you, and you are somewhat dizzy for a bit. I did this at least five times. And ended up with sand all over my skin, inside of my clothes, and even inside of my ears. I kind of wish I'd done it some more. I think I had more fun doing that then playing in the ocean later. (We also later saw a lovely church, and some of the bright pastel-colored city architecture up close. I found myself studying the rock makeup of one of the cornerstones. And identifying Tomaz's beach rocks. Those geology classes were good for something too! :)

I still have sand in my ears. Shower time. :)

We get up bright and early tomorrow: I expect we'll do some DrKonqi work where we can find a whiteboard and a somewhat unobtrusive spot. Amazingly enough, Dario has been working on keeping up with bugs while here. Otoh, he's also been sick at home lots, and is coughing up a storm these days. Hopefully he'll be well enough tomorrow.

Signing off, shower and rumor has it there is food in the Penthouse... At least, they have my gluten-free pasta and just came to take our forks.

"Did you really enjoy eating that?" (or, food help!)

2009-07-09T03:34:41Z

Is what I was asked by someone after a recent meal. The answer is, no, I didn't really enjoy it, but in terms of eating out, so far it was one of the better things I've had that I didn't have cooked in one of our kitchens. The meal? One of the "salads". In this case, tuna in the center, with some tomato, cucumber, something else, and shredded egg on top. I should post a picture, they look really goofy. And not like salads at all. I have celiac disease, so I avoid grain products pretty strictly [#]. I'm going to hit the bottom of my energy bar supply after our little field trip tomorrow. So I'm going to start needing to either figure out how to pack a lunch here, decide that the plain almonds I have left are tasty, or get used to paying 6.50 euros for a bizarre salad.

Ideas?

p.s. Yes, I will admit that the water tastes kind of bad. I wonder if it is more energy-intensive to import bottled water, or to desalinate the water here. Both are pretty bad.

[#] Note that I'm also allergic to milk (yes, allergic; I thought I could just eat lots of manachego while here, but the first time I had some it turned out to be too milky. Opps. My ears are still messed up. Better not be sinus infection.) and I'm quasi-vegetarian. Quasi.

Collaboration!

2009-07-09T03:24:31Z

Was told my bof was the most collaborative yet. Bugsquad met up with Tobi, one of the Gnome people, and we traded secrets. We also talked with a few developers, some prospective helpers, and I managed to see Dario and Grundleborg in the same room. :)

Tonight was the Collabora party. As the evening wore on, the early trend of swapping nametags rapidly picked up. It became a game to see just whose you could get. I'm not sure who has mine right now. But I have ereslibre's, which is neat, because I didn't realize he was here, and I wouldn't have met him otherwise. Which is the downside to this conference: it is rather large. If you don't know who you are looking for, you might not necessarily run into them. All the same, I did run into and manage to talk to Sumana for a bit, which was pretty cool, as I haven't seen her since she moved out to NYC.

I was kinda dubious about to what extent having GUADEC and aKademy together would work, but some things do seem to have been perhaps more useful than they first seemed (not to be). Given who I've seen talking to each other in the hallway, anyway. And the conversations I got into at lunch. Anyway, late now, so signing off. But I get to sleep in tomorrow. :)

GCDS: Random notes on how to build QtWebKit from Simon "bof"

2009-07-08T15:07:27Z

from a talk by Simon on webkit stuff at GCDS
#webkit #qtwebkit

building instructions:
http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/BuildingQtOnLinux

Overview of QtWebKit classes:
http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/QtWebKitHacking
" QtWebitContrib

Get the source
http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk or
mirror:
http://gitorious.org/qtwebkit/qtwebkit
/fonts

Patch queue: http://webkit.org/pending-review

WebKitBuild/ Release/ WebCore/ Makefile --> make install install-layout(?)
debug
--------------------------------------------------

Upload a patch:
1) [git/svn] diff
2) WebKitTools/ Scripts/ prepare = Changelog for ex: WebKit/ qt/Changelog ... WebCore/Changelog
3) edit changelogs
4) Create new bug on bugs.webkit.org component QtWebKit
5) attach patch including changelog
6) mark attachment for review with r?
7) wait or tag someone on irc #webkit for review and pending =--> r- then 1)

WebKitTools/Scripts/bugzilla-tool
....
8) rt & fork

-----------------------------------------------------

Unit tests
WebKit/qt/tools

Layout tests
LayoutTools/
WebKitTools/Scripts/make-webkit-t{ools|ests}?

platform/qt/Skipped (?) skips half the tests

GC continues: the new location, laundry, TBD drkonqi hacking session, unsolicited medical advice

2009-07-08T11:13:29Z

We got up early to walk somewhere to take a bus to somewhere. I am now sitting in a room, which thankfully has internet via wire. AND works. That is the upside. The downside is that only the front of this room seems to be wired, so we can't pick a corner per se. This room is rather large, so I'm not sure how well it will work for random discussion for a drkonqi thing later. If you're interested in that, btw, you should give me your contact info. I can't get twitter to my spanish cell phone... So you'll have to find some other way. ;)

Currently I'm in the secondary hacking room on the 3rd floor, btw. The other annoying thing about these is that they are all fixed desks and chairs. *cry* Not only that, the tables are VERY high up. I should have brought an external keyboard. I think I'll be moving to the floor RSN [*] as my wrists will be in pain very quickly if I'm in this bad of a configuration. Not to mention that I will bounce uncontrollably in a chair. [#] :) Chairs and I just don't get along. Our sponsors have not given us beanbags though. :)

Last night's amusement was doing laundry. The amusement part comes in with us attempting to read the washing machine (including one native spanish speaker, but there weren't exactly instructions; you could pick centrifugal amount!). I picked one of the three or four options for 40 degrees Celsius. That was last night. I went to go pick it up this morning, and found it was STILL going. That's some wash. And I'm not actually sure *what*. Hopefully my laundry is still good!

No clue where we're supposed to go for lunch exactly. But I'm wired. And just from writing this amount my wrists hurt.... OUCH. Hope the floor is cleanish. :P It looks very hard tho.
Maybe the table is softer to sit on?

At any rate, I'm wired, done writing. Time to work. Ping Dario or I on irc if you're interested in the drkonqi hacking session, especially since I don't know who is interested... Or when/where we'll meet. It will probably be later in the week, actually.

[*] For the uninitiated, look up RSI. Soft tissue injuries from overuse and misconfiguration. :} It isn't just the much-publicized-let-me-fix-you-for-$$$ carpal tunnel, it's an entire slew of injuries you can get from sports too. At any rate, no clue what I'm generating atm. [%]
[#] As I write this, I am sitting cross-legged in a chair and still bouncing. Oh, did I mention our lovely Nokia sponsors gave us lots of free drinks at our social get-togethers? I think I had 8 or so.... All caffeinated. I'm badly addicted now. :}
[%] For moving to the floor, I should have brought our lovely sponsor-provided Qt Software towel. I would have been stylish at least. Except, it's still in the laundry. Oh well, I guess Douglas Adams was right!

More from GC: eV meeting & "the web problem"

2009-07-08T02:42:50Z

The infamous eV meeting (first I've attended, being a brand-new member) wasn't bad at all. The worst part was being deprived of network access randomly and having my laptop decide it would randomly power down. Which didn't really matter, since things went really fast. All too soon we were out for lunch and for the first time since I've been here, I hit the beach. Certain people die for posting those photos. :D

The water was not that cold and not that warm, and very salty. Probably also the roughest surf I've played in. Fun blackish sand. :)

Anyway, lunch finished, we went back to do one or two quick votes, then hung around and I tried to finish up some stuff. No, that's a lie. First there was a meeting of web-developer people (at least the ones that heard about it) and it sounds like we're meeting again tomorrow sometime after lunch. So some session I'm in I'll be double-booked for... As tomorrow are bofs, including the bugsquad one, a git one, and grundleborg's telepathy one. All worth attending, of course. :) Developer feedback is welcome at the bugsquad one. We'll also talk some about burn-out, recruiting, planning, and take a group photo (do we have a photographer volunteer?). I've been asked to find a Tobi(Toby?) from Gnome, who wants to talk with us later on too. So this should be interesting. Finding anyone in this place is insane: we're spread across who knows how many hotels, and rooms in two buildings on several different floors...

Speaking of hotels: Mine is amusing. I'm rooming with the infamous Dario Andres (who has probably triaged all of your bugs), and the mysterious dani_l (kde edu young'n). We've dubbed our room "funroom". Upstairs is KDAB and other people on the top floor in the "penthouse". So late at night we've often end up chilling upstairs while on laptops (of course). Ok, there might be some beer involved. We've ended up sharing some cooking, which has been fun too. Tomorrow we change where we meet for the daytime events, so we have to get up at 0830. I don't even want to look at the timestamp on this post... (But I'll have clean laundry!)

Oh, and my quick word on "the web problem" or whatever we're calling it: I watched undergrads. All they care about when it comes to the web is if youtube, gmail, facebook, and AIM work. (Ok, I guess AIM isn't strictly the web, but it is a "critical" application.) So we have a flash site, a nasty javascript site, and a site that is just a pita for us to deal with. (Oh, and a closed protocal.) Fun. Good luck getting any browser that isn't the monopoly one to deal with all that. BTW feel free to use comments to mention any websites you think are particularly important that say khtml devs wouldn't have run across naturally. Full urls please. Testcases better, toss those directly to bugzilla. ;)

GC summary so far:

2009-07-06T12:13:02Z

* Aftershave doesn't make for good shampoo. Opps.
* People are happy to trade ice cream tickets for coffee tickets.
* We've had network from day 1, I hear this is unusual. However, the packet loss...
* SVN konvi doesn't scroll right. I cry. Also apologies for disconnecting every two seconds.
* I have not figured out celiac food here at all...
* That hasn't mattered, as I mostly haven't been hungry, as I was dehydrated instead
* They are obsessed with bottled water here. Water rant follows:
Isn't this a first world country? I shouldn't catch anything from it, right? Am I wrong? Are all the pipes lead? I can't tell why exactly it isn't "safe to drink". I've had one person say it was chlorine in the water. But apparently plastic in the water leeched from plastic water bottles is safe to drink. I don't mind chlorine, I like my water dead. This has resulted in me not getting enough water... (One place refused to serve tap water; I had to spend 2 euro for a tiny tiny bottle) So I've been getting mostly bottled distilled water: zero salts at all. Little food, none of it containing salt... I went and bought a thing of salt and salted some water to make a rehydration drink. Water started being appealing again. Looks like I'll be drinking salted water from now on. Glad I brought my water bottle.
* The beach might as well be in another city. Vs. Jamaica, where we all sat on a deck next to the beach & coffee and hacked, here you have to find someone to leave stuff with and walk more than ten feet. I haven't made it there yet. I wore my swimsuit today tho, so maybe this will change. Having the hotel farther away doesn't help either... Hopefully things will improve once we change venues. (Having neither beach nor network is VERY frustrating. I seem to prefer network. :)
* Work! I gave two lightening talks. The first was one about DrKonqi that Dario and I put together. The second was on BugSquad in general.
* Collaborate! One of the Gnome bugsquad-equivalent people is now interested in us and will track me down. I'll note that BugSquad has a bof on one of the bof days. We'll do some planning and have a group photo. Everybody is welcome to come: you can drop by and say how much you love us or how much you hate us. If you want to drop by and say how we can effectively triage your bugs, that would be great, I'm happy to write up some kind of supplemental documentation to our stuff.
* Photos. Of course I have photos. Maybe they'll get posted someday. Especially the "tall guys" one.
* Qt gave us all green towels. Way cool and useful.
* I've met so many people I only knew from online before. Including one gnomey I knew from way back when. He was rather drunk and probably doesn't remember tho. (The meeting or who I am.)
* Dfaure said he liked seeing new faces... Perhaps those of you who didn't want to ask the eV for travel help should do it next year. ;) Make David happy.
* I can't hear properly: I had too milky of cheese the first day. It hasn't gone away yet! Apparently I'm speaking too softly. :P
* My hotel has Bugsquad, KDAB, and Kubuntu people in it. We've cooked food for each other and hung out at night, it was cool.
* I have an Ultimate frisbee. Who wants it?
* I terrified people with Twinkes and Sno-balls.
* Dario Andres of bug triage fame is here. He's one of my roommates. :) Tell him hi.
* KDE group photo tonight after awards, I'm being told.
* Did I mention I've met interesting people? One way to guarentee this is to offer to trade something with them, it turns out. Do I owe somebody lemon-honey-almonds? Do you need sunscreen?
* Er, many things I've forgotten. (Like plastic wrap for my laptop on the beach!)

microblogs and phones.

2009-07-05T17:39:49Z

Currently I send identi.ca-->twitter, and I usually microblog via SMS-->twitter. So I got a temporary Spanish phone... Except, twitter won't send to Europe atm. And I still can't SMS-->identi.ca. This all leaves something to be desired. Especially as it might be nice to tell you what I'm doing in Gran Canaria atm. And yes, I did eventually make it there, after much airport badness. Note: you cannot make it from one side of the Madrid airport to the other (which is practically in another city, you take a bus to it), and through customs and immigrations, and the slow luggage handlers in half an hour.

DrKonqi work at aKademy^W gcds

2009-06-29T22:09:05Z

We'll have some kind of DrKonqi development session/meeting/pool-gathering at Gran Canaria. Also, there's a BugSquad Bof, and you should feel free to come and complain or laud. Or just join.

Oh, there's a lightning talk on it too.

BugSquad helpers rock! BugDay redux and thanks; countdown to gcds....

2009-06-29T14:06:15Z

Another BugDay done... Something I shouldn't forget to post is the list of cool people who joined us:

siyuan *
dtritscher
freinhard *
Edulix (developer on hand, but he triaged too :)
xxtjaxx *
anselmolsm *
aalpert *
MJD *
Dario_Andres
myself

I put a little * next to all the new people. Check out how many that was! Very dedicated too, most came back later in the weekend. Thanks everyone! Thanks also to old-timers on the list, and to Pino, who helped run/train.

Now I'm just panicking: I leave for GCDS in under 24 hours! Ack! (Then the cat and cat sitter get to take over, happy cat...)

Iran wtf????

2009-06-25T09:05:43Z

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/unimaginable-horror-in-tehran/

http://aricmayer.blogspot.com/2009/06/turning-point-in-green-revolution.html

Axes? Attacking people on pedestrian bridges and trying to throw them off?

"Allah - you are the creator of all and all must return to you - Allah Akbar -"

If you haven't watched any of the youtube videos, find one of people calling Allah-u-Akbar from the rooftops. Hopefully things turn out ok, and people we know are ok.