Archive for June, 2006
Apachecon days 1 of 2, and more
Posted on June 27, 2006, under general.
So, Apachecon days 1 and 2 have been great, of course. I’ve been run off my feet getting network up and running. We’ve been donated an STM-1 from the great people at BT Ireland, over which we have provisioned 100 Megabits of connectivity to the HEAnet network. The guys at BT did a great job getting the fibre provisioned in time, with a lot of work outside working-hours to get it done, but it took us a lot of work on the Apachecon side (including running our own fibre within the Burlington) to be able to use it properly.
The hackathon has been going really well, and it’s been great to catch up with a lot of people I havn’t seen in a while, though I havn’t done much hacking yet.
In other news, Vincent Jackson was elected to Lord Mayor of Dublin, which is an amazingly big deal for Vincent, his wife Veronica, the rest of his family, everyone else who knows him, including me and my family. Noirin and I went along to the Mansion House last night to help celebreate, and she’s uploaded a flickr set of the event. Hopefully it will be a great year!
Exciting times
So, Apachecon Europe 2006 is upon us. It’s been a somewhat hectic time preparing for it, but it looks like it’s going to be totally worth it. We’re going to have several hundred Apache developers and enthusiasts in the Burlington during the week.
The keynotes are going to be great too, we have Canonical and Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth to give the opening plenary, and – somewhat unusually – we’re going to have Microsoft Ireland’s Robert Burke delivering a sponsored keynote on Microsoft Atlas, their AJAX framework (which is permissively licenced).
There’s going to be a hackathon, and a docathon too, which Noirin is particularly looking forward to helping with. Sun are very kindly sponsoring Noirin to be at the Con, and are putting her up in the hotel, so I’ll be staying with her, despite only living about 10 minutes walk away. Now that’s lazy!
It’s not too late to register for the con, and if you’re based in Ireland, you can still just turn up as late as the Wednesday or Thursday and pay there and then. If you havn’t been to an Apachecon before, keep an eye on the wiki for the KeySigning event, as that’s one of the best ways to get to know people (it’s what I did!).
On a completely unrelated note, a new Lidl opened right around the corner from my parents’ house, where I grew up. As usual, it’s got some cool deals, and I bought some shoes. Normally I dislike shoe shopping, to the point where my last two pairs have been bought online. But the lidl shoes are great, really comfortable and they seem durable and well made. Best of all, they cost me a mere €12.99!
Taking up a new position
Alas, with the way things are in Dublin these days, the unthinkable has happened. I’ve joined a US-based multinational IT company. I know, I know. What can I say? Yes, it’s a total 180 degree turn for me, and I’ve no doubt it will mean a lot of hard work, but I guess it’s just unavoidable. It’s not as bad as it could be though, as the number of Pacific-coast timezone meetings really is kept to a minimum. There is the potential for travel; as ever, the usual US destinations, but also other regional IT hubs, like Sri Lanka.
The application process was gruelling, with rigourous peer evaluation and feedback at each stage. Strong input from the teams I’ll be working with was, of course, prioritised. Challenge after challenge, test after test, and some of the toughest technical problems I have faced in my career. And that was just the screening process. The real emphasis was on how I behaved as a person, how I interact with the team, could I join in in the community, would I fit in? The usual story these days. I guess no company wants to be lumbered with bad apples.
Naturally I’ve always held a very strong interest in the company. I’ve been using their products as long as they’ve been around, and I’ve helped them out on a freelance basis here and there for the last 4 years. I even had a very small part to play in a project they later aquired, such is the nature of the market these days.
It’s yet another non-profit, so the benefits are pretty terrible and the salary is even worse, but the possibilities and prospects are pretty great. It’s an amazingly exciting opportunity for me. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that some of most gifted people in the field are all working here.
Of course, it does come as a great pity that it happens just a few weeks before getting my new HEAnet business cards, but I’ll be equally proud of my new card and my new title:
Update: Despite the “humour” tag, it appears I may have taken the satire ever so slightly over the edge and managed to confuse quite a few people with this post. To be clear; I am still, and will continue to be, gainfully employed by HEAnet, but am now a member proper of the Apache Software Foundation.
Apachecon Talk
Owing to a calendar malfunction on my part, not having any free time until this weekend, and being in the unique position of being the only ApacheCon speaker who lives about 5 minutes walk from the venue, I’ve only just finished my presentation.
I’ve re-done a lot of the work, using dtrace for some nifty statistics, including with brandz to get the relevant information for Linux, and it’s worked out well. Of course I usually end up tweaking a presentation even more by the time it’s actually given, but hopefully some of the new information will be useful to people. Only 3 weeks to go, so we’ll soon find out.
apt-get update
Posted on June 4, 2006, under general, photography.
So, I’ve updated a few things. Bowing to Noirin’s superiour knowledge, I’ve finally re-activated my flickr account, which is now here. For a few days now I’ve been meaning to write a script using the flickr API to re-order my photos based on the date taken rather than the sequence they happen to have been uploaded in.
Unfortunately the flickr API authentication layer really sucks for that kind of application, and none of the API implementations in languages I know are quite up to it yet. If anyone has any suggestions of any flickr-integrated apps in which I can more easily edit the photo-uploaded attributes, I’d love to hear about them!
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I’ve upgraded my desktop in work to Ubuntu Dapper, and very nice it is too, it took only a few minutes to get my dual-screen setup working again, and no problems so far.
On Friday, I finally finished, for the next few weeks at least, the initial migration of HEAnet servers to our new services PoP. It’s a great feeling at least have that part over with. Hopefully once we get the last few things moved I’ll finally have some time to get back to regular work. I’m really looking forward to at least having some time to code for a change. I’m also looking forward to simple things, like being able to walk to work again and not having to worry about traffic so much.
I haven’t put many of these online just yet, but some photos of some of the facility are in my flickr HEAnet services PoP set. Right now it’s considerably less empty, and less messy too. I’ve also taken some photos of George’s Dock 5, where our offices will be in just a few weeks time, in the heart of the IFSC and the Dublin docklands. A lot of changes are coming!
Thanks to the brilliant weather, I finally got a chance to drive up the mountains and test out by new tripod and camera remote-control which I got from Noirin for my birthday. The sky was clear enough to get some nice shots of Dublin Bay by night, though it might be an idea to go further West along the mountains next time and try and get more of the city in-shot.