Update from the Left Coast.

Sorry for the blog delay, things have been busy here. Please, won’t you enjoy another edition of “Boring News About Me”? K thx.

On Wednesday night, I finished The Time Traveler’s Wife, which was heartbreakingly wonderful in a really loneliness-inducing kind of way. (Why yes, I am a big sap. Why do you ask?) In all seriousness, highly recommended.

Thursday morning I was able to catch a number of great talks on the emerging desktop paradigms on which the Red Hat folks in Westford are working. Havoc Pennington (please, hold your screaming until the end of the paragraph) talked about a really cool model for a desktop that removes the reliance on a 30-year old view of file-centric computing. You can see a lot of the progress through the Big Board posts we’ve been seeing from Bryan Clark and others working on Mugshot and related technologies.

In the afternoon a bunch of Fedora folks (including your humble reporter) gathered in a posh executive conference room, complete with snazzy lighting and decor, for a video interview conducted by Kim Jokisch and mainly shot by Red Hat filmmaker extraordinaire Tim Kiernan. Tim pops up again later in this post. We talked about all the cool things going on in Fedora, including but not limited to the new release. We also talked about what is so fricking cool about working on Fedora. Why do we do it, beyone the simple “scratch an itch” answers? I’m hoping some of this interview will make it out into public space at some point.

That took up a large part of the afternoon, and then we gathered to talk about release cycles, and how to address some of the things we felt could be done better for Fedora 8. With every release, there are things that happen magically, and things that (magically or otherwise) fail to happen, and it would be good for us to be more deterministic about that stuff for the next release and beyond. It was a pretty informal discussion that was a little spontaneous based on John Poelstra being around for us to bend his ear, and vice versa. The real conversation will happen out on the lists and IRC as people figure out how to do a better job with F8.

There was a nice, low-key margarita party last night with tasty beverages served in “glasses” that lit up with pretty colors. Maybe this was to hypnotize us into drinking more of them; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Then we boarded buses for the Aerospace Museum for dinner and carousing.

The museum was great, full of antique planes and replicas thereof, and a lot of associated wartime memorabilia from World Wars I and II. There were a bunch of naked plane engines to ooh and aah over as well, including a couple rebuilt ones that had been chrome-plated for maximum sexiness. A really good band played about 15 dB too loud in the central atrium (am I too old now?), but was very enjoyable from the separate ring of museum exhibits that ran around the perimeter. I toured around with Jesse, Chris, and Mike while Chris regaled us with tales of his aerial prowess and cool facts about planes and the engines that drive them. Jesse and I even enjoyed some flaming fruit — no jokes please — in the form of tasty crepes. Raspberries! Pears! ON FIRE!

Mike McGrath and I had a really awesome conversation about an idea for some new documentation that’s badly needed, applications that could fit around it, and the market for delivering training to supplement it. Then we ran into the aforementioned cinematic wiz Tim Kiernan, and talked about the genius of Grind House. Tim, if you’re out there, no kidding — your work is great, and I would love to sit down with you someday when you’re not dervish-whirling around with a camera strapped to your neck and just talk about film.

During the summit I also got to connect up with other associates such as Joshua Hoffman, Brent Langston, and Randy Russell, and talk to them a little about tools and processes. I suspect those conversations will continue into the coming months.

After the party, I returned to the hotel — fairly early — and did some work on the release notes package for Fedora 7. Looks like we have more translations finished than last release, thanks to our awesome translation teams and their work with the localization subproject. With the week’s slip recently announced, we may have time to get a couple more locales into the package!

Right now a bunch of us are in Rik van Riel’s “Virtualization Food Fight” talk, each trying to simultaneously take care of three tasks at once while still ingesting his material. I’ll write back later today if there’s time — many people are leaving today or tonight, but I’ll be here until tomorrow morning. I’m itching to get home to my family but a redeye would just put me out of commission for part of the weekend, so no sense losing a day if I don’t have to.

Emotional journey.

OK, so the trip from Dulles to San Diego was more of a leg-cramping, neck-cricking journey, courtesy of United. But did have the following observations.

An older, married couple were sitting a few rows up from me on the plane. When the wife (center seat) returned from the rear lavatory, the husband (aisle seat) was up and waiting for her. They kissed in an easy, spontaneous way as she brushed by him, and his hand passed lightly over her back and hip unselfconsciously. It was clear this man was still crazy about his wife after many, many years of marriage, and it made me smile. (I suppose they could be newlyweds, each on their umpteenth marriage, but I prefer my version.)

I read most of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Richly observed details about the joys and pains of love and parting make this a truly enjoyable work. It’s been quite a while since I enjoyed a novel this much, perhaps since I read Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt (which, incidentally, is quoted in this novel at one point). I admit I got misty several times and was thankful I wasn’t sitting with anyone I knew.

The hotel here is quite comfortable, with big airy rooms and a balcony that looks out over the water. The two “wings” of this hotel are separated by a sizable walk and a marina chock-full of sailboats and powerboats. The hall outside my room is striped in a bold, strange way that makes me think John Goodman is going to come around the corner with a shotgun and set the hall on fire. The wired internet is a completely unreasonable $12 a day, but fortunately Red Hat has generously set up very responsive (and free) wireless around the conference areas. I am continually disgusted at hotel executives’ refusal to realize that free Internet connectivity brings you more guests.

The reception was very nice, good food of the light California cuisine style and plentiful drinks. I was very good and had only a few beers, but it didn’t keep me from having a splitting headache all morning thus far. I saw many friends including Jeremy, Jesse, spot, Rex, Alex, Max, and Greg, and also got to meet Dimitris, who traveled a lot further than many other people here!

The keynotes this year were a bit of a letdown from last year. Matthew Szulik again did a solid job of framing Red Hat initiatives in terms of larger issues and the company’s core values. But of the other three keynotes, only AMD VP Henri Richard’s presentation seemed to strike a note with the attendees, in a complete reversal of last year’s showings where the hardware partner speeches were practically a snoozefest. Richard spent a substantial amount of time talking about fairness in the marketplace, how to build business while generating social good, and an alignment (more or less) with the core values Red Hat espouses.

The biggest disappointment was the Open Source Voting Consortium’s Alan Dechert, who was clearly unprepared for his presentation. What should have been a barn-burner of a speech about ensuring the equity, security, and integrity of our democracy and its primary engine of expression, the vote, was instead a rambling and at times incoherent stringing together of event histories and jokes about poorly-designed Diebold hardware. Last year’s presentations by Cory Doctorow and Eben Moglen set a clear standard to which all Summit keynoters should aspire.

I’ve found this year that I’m a lot more interested in the developer tracks, possibly since in the last year I’ve found myself digging into Python and some of the more byzantine innards of Fedora. (Of course I don’t flatter myself that I’m yet qualified to talk about any of those innards, but I find that repetitive exposure to a cloud of topics better equips me to learn the hands-on details.) There was a good talk on SystemTap this morning and I’ll be seeing information on Frysk, GFS, and virtualization as the week goes on.

That’s all from here, more later…

You can love Mugshot, just don’t LOVE Mugshot.

Yes, I spent way too much time being distracted by Mugshot. Probably just itchy to get on a plane to the Left Coast. If you’re going to the Summit I’ll probably run into you there!

Scourge.

I hope Jack Valenti’s successor is up for the battle.

Weekend prep.

Thursday night: Brought Honda to service station in full realization that 120K service tabs are hell. Hell. At least they gave me an estimate beforehand. Caught up on some email. Coped with daughter’s wild enthusiasm for tomorrow’s Field Day at kindergarten. Funny, I had forgotten altogether the superlative beauty of egg spoon runs and wheelbarrow races.

Friday: Work here and there, between watching the boy, reading, and carrying on domestic activities while I waited for the shop to call back, hoping that there wouldn’t be any surprises on the Honda. (There weren’t, although a $1150 bill being “good news” is somewhat amusing.) Heard all about the goings-on at Field Day from a little girl who smelled exactly like the promise of summer, all over sunscreen, dandelions, and potential. Eleya and I saw Little Miss Sunshine, which was… surprisingly less original and riveting than I would have expected of a Best Picture nominated film. Alan Arkin was pretty frickin’ great, though.

Saturday: Book review work, got some birthday loot for my brother, and a few suitable shirts for next week’s trip to San Diego. (I hear margaritas may be involved at some point.) Watched the far more satisfying Notes on a Scandal. And I have to say, Jud Dench flat-out ROCKS.

Two steps forward, no steps back.

Today’s 3122 kernel and iwlwifi-0.0.16 have taken care of kernel oopsing, and my Intel 3945 wireless happily associates with my AP in open, WEP, and WPA modes both with SSID broadcast on or off. Thanks to the upstream people who made this happen, with some “rabble rousing” from dragoran, and John Linville for sticking with this problem too. I have no idea whether Dave Jones helped, but holy hell, the guy works like a maniac, so thanks to him too.

I have no idea whether F7 will hit a target of having anaconda detect the wifi NIC and grab the right firmware, but I’m pleased as punch that a Fedora disc will get friends’ Intel 3945-equipped laptops off the ground all by its li’l lonesome.

Time to grab some dinner, then read over meeting minutes, and hack on the Installation Guide.