Greece, Spain, Brazil
I have been way too busy to keep this up to date, but let's try to
summarize the most important events of the last weeks. Most of it is about
travel, and I'm sure people will be envious… but I should mention that
this travel is for work and not purely for holidays; while most people see
the fun side of travel, they often don't realize that it's a lot of work
attending conferences, and it takes quite a bit of energy since lots of
people want to talk to you, etc. This does not mean that I don't enjoy it;
it is usually great fun, but also very exhausting.
Anyway, at the end of April, I spent a few days in Greece for a conference.
First, six international speakers (well known Free Software and Open Source
people) gave a talk in Athens, and the following day we were sent to
different cities all over Greece. Georg Greve (FSF Europe) and I went to
Thessaloniki. The following day, I returned to Athens for a few hours and
managed to go to the Acropolis with Konstantinos Margaritis and Kurt
Gramlich. I had never been to Greece before, so it was good to get a first
impression, but it wasn't long enough to see much.
Then I actually stayed at home for a few
weeks, I had to present my research at a department internal PhD
conference. My supervisor seemed happy with my presentation so that's
good. At the end of May, I went to Majorca to talk about quality assurance
at a conference organized by the LUG
there. The BULMA folks have a really strong LUG, and I had lot's of fun
there. Celso Gonzalez was so kind to show me around Palma, and he also
took me to the beach for a few hours. I really enjoyed this trip.
Unfortunately, everything was a bit hectic after this trip… I returned on
Sunday evening, and had to leave again the following day. On Monday, I
went to Edinburgh (meeting Steve Kemp, Henning Makholm and
broonie in the evening) to
attend an academic conference about data mining on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I
had to fly to London to get my flight to Brazil… I managed, though, and
met some Debian people at the Sao Paulo airport where we were waiting for
our flight to Porto Alegre. DebConf4 and FISL were fun; I guess I don't
have to say much since other people did, but I really had a good time
there.
On my way back, I made a stop-over in Rio de Janeiro. I did some
sightseeing on the first day and went to the beach on the second day…
Copacabana is really great and definitely one of the best beaches I've ever
been to. Unfortunately, while I went swimming (the water was surprisingly
warm), my trousers with my wallet (bank card, money) and my glasses were
stolen. Fortunately, I had a credit card at the hotel, but getting back to
the UK without being able to see properly and with few people speaking my
language was quite… challenging. However, I managed, and I have new
glasses already thanks to Vision Express (suggested by mjg59) so I'm back to work.
It's a shame that such a nice time ended with such a stupid incident, but I
guess it's my own fault for being so careless even though lots of people
told me that Rio is a dangerous place. Maybe I should really look into
those eye surgeries seriously; in the 7 or so years I had glasses, I never
fully got used to them (they are not a major problem, but I'd still like to
get rid of them).
So I'm back in Cambridge now, catching up on e-mail and research, and
actually staying here for two weeks before I'm off to conferences again
(LinuxTag, USENIX and possibly Spain).