Busy Days: FOSDEM, MozCamp, Vienna, Stockholm and Sevilla
Just a short (hopefully) update on what all has been keeping me busy lately, in no particular order, and containing far too much rambling, as I'm tired and really shouldn't be taking out the time to try writing here. First the most recent event: last Friday I attended MozCamp Utrecht, the first of a series of Mozilla organized events on "the open web". I was asked to give a presentation on HTML 5, preparing for which gobbled up the last of the free time I already didn't have during this last week. I found it hard to envision my audience for this talk, and I still didn't succeed in getting my Ubuntu laptop to send output to the beamer (I hate how hard that is; the only consolation being that the backup Windows laptop had exactly as many problems with being set up; why do beamers have to be so difficult, while an external monitor on the laptop just works out of the box?), but I still think the talk went reasonably well. It ended up generating some good discussion and questions at the end, and I think I managed to convey the important parts about why HTML 5 exists, while dispelling some common misconceptions about it; if that impression is correct, I'd even call it a success.Beyond this selfish focus on my own presentation, I found the day to be highly inspiring and worthwhile; the Netherlands is running far behind in various ways wrt promoting the open web (just look at the abysmal Firefox market share in the Netherlands, way behind any other country in Europe), but this is not due to the people who were here. Had some very interesting talks with various people, got to meet some new Mozilla people who I knew by nickname but had never met in person before, and generally had a good time. (And upon arriving home, I collapsed into bed, slept for a solid 13 hours, and still had to fight off tiredness throughout the rest of the weekend as I enjoyed the company of friends at a birthday party and a boardgames day.
About a month before MozCamp I attended my third FOSDEM in Brussels, where I ate yummy Belgian waffle, and at the conference spent most of my time in the Mozilla devroom, also being heavily inspired and getting to touch base again with various fellow Mozillians (plus scoring various Mozilla-related laptop stickers, and my third Mozilla t-shirt). :D
City tripping was my modus operandi for pretty much the entire month, as besides Brussels, I also visited Stockholm, Sevilla and Vienna. Stockholm was visited as part of the SwedeMeet reunion. Some of you might remember me going there back in February 2003 before, just because the insanity of going to Scandinavia in February appealed. The appeal still held, and so a large part of that previous meet was reunited this time around, while we even managed to lure teh Sam over from the USA. I finally got to meet the Minxie, catch up with Addy, and once more wander the SF Bokhandeln (somehow I picked a hostel within crawling distance of this most magnificent store; Books Before Breakfast should become a tradition!) :) The best part of Stockholm was sitting in several of its awesome basement cafes, where lazy chairs and couches were the perfect accompaniment to huge mugs of hot chocolate and tea. We also did some wandering through the lightly drifting snow, snapping pictures of the lantern-lit winding cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan. After freezing half to death in Stockholm, the next stop for me, Sam and Nevman was Sevilla, where the 20 degree temperatures of our first day were bettered on the second day with 25 degree temperatures. We sat outside under the blue sky eating tapas, visiting the Roman ruins at Italica, spent just a wee bit too much time taking photos at the Plaza de España (which is pretty on the entire range of scales from tile to building), and generally relearned what it means to be warm. A lesson well learned, as back home in the Netherlands last week (on Friday the 27th of February) I saw the first spring flowers popping up out of the ground, and by now most stretches of grass are covered by a carpet of color. I do so very much love spring!
And what a contrast this with the freezing temperatures we experienced in Vienna a few weeks ago; the actual temperature probably wasn't much colder than in Stockholm, but a strong wind made it all feel much colder, and so the group of friends I met up with there was constantly retreating inside to warm up. Sadly enough we then invariably lost grip of our sanity, and proceeded to go outside again, and this pattern repeated throughout our entire stay in Vienna. I can't help but grinning broadly as I think back upon those days there, though. It's been entirely and far too long since I've laughed that frequently. Get the right group of people together, and anything and anywhere is enjoyable. How come so many of my friends live so far apart anyway? It's totally not fair!
The coming weeks will probably see me mostly staying at home. The days will be no less busy, I suspect (have been busy penciling in events already), but hopefully they'll still end up being slightly less tiring. I really should be more rested so I can focus on work a bit more; I've been feeling like I haven't been able to give it as much of my attention as I'd like - while I really love the environment where I work now, and they deserve more from me than me "just doing my job".
I also need to start plotting a 'vacation' for some point in this year, and maybe do some more city tripping. If anyone has suggestions (especially friends in places that are good for visiting during a long weekend), I'd love to hear them. For the moment, I'm pondering each of Ireland, Croatia, Southern Germany and Estonia/Latvia for a trip of 2-3 weeks, and Prague, Budapest and Rome for shorter city breaks.