The other Cambridge
So, I arrived in the other Cambridge. I decided to walk to cjwatson's place where I'm staying for the next few days. I was actually a bit surprised that I found the place all by myself. On the other hand, it is a fairly easy route if you don't take any shortcuts. While I don't know many details about Cambridge, I seem to have a general idea of where some important things are. Colin was surprised to see me there since we were supposed to meet at the train station.
I checked some e-mail and unpackaged some of my luggage, but I soon found out I was quite tired and hence took a nap for two hours or so. Then I went to the Department of Engineering to hand in a scholarship application. However, I was told I shouldn't bother since I have been awarded another scholarship I applied for. Excellent.
Then did some shopping since I'm really starving and went home. My feet hurt. Gar! I'm in Cambridge and I don't have a bike. This is so wrong!
Bits and peaces from the last days
So I did met with Bradley Kuhn, as planned, although it took me some time to find the FSF office. We went to Chinatown, had lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant and talked about Debian's and FSF's relationship. I think the meeting was quite fruitful. Then I went to the airport where I was again annoyed by the new security measures. The flight was really short, though. But I guess that's normal after trips like Europe to Australia (22+ hours) and Australia to LA (about 14 hours).
Anyway, so I ended up at Heathrow airport (unfortunately without much sleep). And the first thought I had again (just like in February) is: why is the UK so expensive? Why does it cost 2.70 GBP (or was it 3.70?) to go to the city from the airport while it only costs 1 US$ from Logan? And why do I pay 15 GBP for a single ticket to Cambridge when I can go from Boston to NY for just 10 dollars? (I don't know the distance, but London-Cambridge is about one hour while Boston-NY is over four.)
And gone
Excellent weather today. I did some shopping in the morning and now I just finished packing my luggage. I'm about to head to the Free Software Foundation office to meet Bradley Kuhn. Afterwards, I'm going to the airport to go to the UK. It's amazingly cheap here to go to the airport. The underground, the T, takes you there for just 1 US$.
MIT and Debian folks
Went to MIT and first met with Karim Lakhani of Sloan to discuss a possible research collaboration. Then went to see Noah Meyerhans in his office at the Laboratory for Computer Science and chatted about various Debian stuff. Later met Susan Kleinmann and first went around Boston a bit and then had dinner at Legal Sea Foods which was excellent. When I came home, I found another Debian developer there, David Z Maze. It's amazing how many Debian folks are around here.
(I love) NY and back
Returned from New York City. Took a bus from Chinatown on Saturday morning. Thanks to Verena, Mako and others for the hint about the Chinatown busses. They are half the price of Greyhound. I arrived there in the early afternoon and met with Guillaume Morin who showed me around the city. Unfortunately, it was raining quite heavily and we got pretty wet. We took the ferry to Staten Island and back. I was surprised by the size of the Statue of Liberty — it's tiny (I guess it shrank due to GWB). Then went back to Chinatown where we had dinner with Clint Adams, Greg Pomerantz (Debian's new trademark lawyer) and Peter Eckersley (whom I know from Melbourne; the world is so small). Afterwards, Guillaume and I went to the place of one of his friends and then to a club in Queens where we had fun and got drunk. On Sunday, we saw Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero and Times Square. Went back in the evening and arrived to a raining Boston.
Dinner, mdz
Had dinner in a Korean restaurant and got to know Matt Zimmerman and others.
Having fun at HBS
I'm at the Harvard Business School (HBS) and I am having great fun! I just drew the Debian swirl on the door of Siobhan O'Mahony and wrote “Debian rules the HBS” below it. (They're going to tear down the building next week.)
The conference is over, and it was pretty good. After the conference, Siobhan interviewed me for over two hours to get a better understanding of Debian. I also talked to Alan MacCormack to see whether he's interested in doing collaborative research with me and he seemed interested. Got some papers from him which I'll read.
I will soon go to have dinner with some Debian folks.
Free/Open Source Software conference
Spent the whole day at the Free/Open Source Software conference hosted by HBS and MIT. HBS was fairly easy to find. The conference was fun. There were some interesting papers and discussions. I also met some interesting people, such as Lisa Goldstein of the FSF. RMS gave a talk and Bob Young gave a little speech after dinner. Bob's really entertaining. Lunch (at HBS) and dinner (at MIT) were both excellent; I'm glad that I don't know what they pay for it. I'm really tired now… and they're starting at 8am tomorrow, but I don't think I will make it that early.
Boston
Arrived in Boston. Met with Karl Ramm who incidentally had a flight from London today which arrived about an hour before mine. Took a cab with him to his, Sam Hartman's and others place who kindly let me stay there for a while. So I'm in the other Cambridge now. Chatted with Karl and Sam and read some more e-mail. Used a wireless network card for the first time (yeah, I know I'm backwards). I was surprised that everything Just Worked when I put the card in my laptop. Nice.
Really tired now, and I have to get up in about 6 hours (ouch) and will spend the day at a Free/Open Source Software conference organized by HBS (Harvard Business School) and MIT. There will be many people I want to talk to, so that should be fun.
Dinner in LA
Dinner was really nice. We had good Thai food and met Matt Kraai, John H. Robinson, IV and others. I'm now staying at Richard's place over night and going to Boston tomorrow. I've been up for well over 30 hours now and I'm really getting to feel tired. So I'm off to bed.
LA
Arrived in LA and spent the afternoon with some good sight-seeing, thanks to David Nusinow and Richard A. Hecker who took me around the city. We went to Venice beach, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Boulevard and the UCLA campus. It has really been great fun, although I'm slowly getting tired. I had to get up at 7am to catch a flight at 10, then had a 14 hour flight and then arrived at 7am on the same day. I read during the flight that the body needs one day per time zone to adjust… that would be 17 days… but tomorrow I'm going to change another 3 time zones and next week another 5 or so - although I'm going back eastwards… so perhaps I can subtract it from the 17? ;-)
Anyway, we're soon off to Santa Monica for dinner with some Debian folks. No photos, sorry; my digital camera is still broken.
Stressed…
Okay, finally got everything done. Over the last two days, I managed to review a paper, meet with my supervisor to finalize some things before I'm leaving, get some US dollars and pound sterling (just before the bank was closing), submit a scholarship application and prepare another, pack my luggage, clean up my room and lock everything in the closet and prepare my presentation for the LinuxUser show. I'm really stressed out now… and I have to get up in less than 6 hours to catch my flight to LA.
I'm really looking forward to summer, though. It seems everyone seems to be complaining about it, but I'm fed up with winter in Australia (even though winter here is much better than winter in the UK or in Austria).
Uff
Okay, completed my exam. I'm happy it's over. While the sample exam contained some knowledge questions, the real one put the emphasis on understanding, which is good… but now I feel as if I've wasted so much time cramming in all those facts. Anyway, it's over, which is good.
Now I have a busy weekend preparing all kinds of stuff because I'm leaving for my big journey on Tuesday. I have to do the laundry, clean up my room (put everything in the closet so they won't charge me for the room during the holidays), and do some more stuff for uni. At the moment, I'm trying to catch up on e-mail.
Bug statistics
I looked at the bug statistics from the last two years of 83 packages which are part of Debian's base system and the results are depressing. There are more and more bugs and nobody seems to care.
Debian MIA scripts
Did some work on the Debian MIA scripts which are used in tracking down inactive Debian maintainers. I should've done other work, but this was more fun…
Exam, Friday the 13th
Just realized I have my exam on Friday the 13th. Fortunately, I don't believe in this stuff…
Chinatown, Little Bourke St, Phone Booth
Went to Little Bourke St (i.e., Chinatown) with Peri and had dumplings and noodles. Then went to the movies and ended up with tickets for the wrong film (Phone Booth).
Evolution of Language, Consciousness & co
Finally found some time to read the transcript of the 5th lecture of BBC's Reith Lectures 2003 on The Emerging Mind by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. He's highly entertaining and very thoughtful. Everyone interested in the brain/mind should read the whole lecture series. I especially like the bits where he talks about reasons for having a consciousness and about the evolution of language. Some good academic papers about these topics are on Ramachandran's homepage.
Yet More Conferences
My talk for AUUG 2003 Conference, the annual technical conference of the Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group got accepted. This means I'm going to Sydney in September. I'll have to mail the SLUG (Sydney Linux Users' Group) folks in order to arrange a meeting. AUUG 2003's theme is Open Standards, Open Source, Open Computing and I'm talking about the open development model of Debian.
I also heard earlier today that I'm supposed to give a talk about Debian at LinuxUser & Developer Expo 2003 in Birmingham later this month.
Hello World!
I recently noticed that everyone seems to have a blog, even my friend Colin Watson, and thought it might be a good way to stay in touch with my friends. Hopefully, this will please all those folks who constantly complain that I never write what's going on in my life (although I shudder at the thought of my sister spying on me this way). Daniel Silverstone was so kind to give me an access code so here I am… it wasn't that easy, though. I had to discover that my nick, tbm, had been stolen by a group called the birthday massacre. I first wanted to steal someone else's nick but then my moral consciousness kicked in and I settled on the current one.
Many years ago, when blogs weren't as popular as now (or even virtually non-existent) I had this dream of becoming a famous author, travelling around and sharing my insights with other people via my web site… kind of what Robert Anton Wilson does in his Thought for the Month, just more often (which reminds me I have to do more reading (which reminds me I should study (which reminds me I should go to bed so I can study tomorrow))). [the former sentence reminds me of LISP, ick!] Anyway, I'm neither an author nor famous… but at least I have my own blog!
So beware!