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Archive for August, 2008

Railsconf Europe 2008

August 30th, 2008

Time flies like a cheetah on speed, and here we are already: september.

Next week i’m going to Berlin to attend Railsconf Europe. Railsconf Europe is about the only big-time event around Ruby and Rails in Europe right now, so i have to attend it at least once, if only to see my colleagues’ demographics, and get a peek at the Rails A-listers for myself.

I’m going to try to be there for the Bratwurst on Rails thing, the informal meet-and-greet on the first of september – though my plane’s getting in a little late.

The next day i won’t be attending the tutorials, but rather see what i can do in the Community Code Drive, basically the local hackaton.

Then wednesday and thursday will be spent in the usual conference fashion. Hopefully i’ll also be able to look up with a couple of friends who live in town.

Let me know if you’re attending, maybe we’ll be able to hook up. Looking forward to it … maybe next time i’ll be able to present something, who knows (which might cut the total cost somewhat).

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Posted in Uncategorized

7 blogs

August 27th, 2008

Koen Vervloesem nominated my blog in a list of seven blogs he’d like to share with the word. I’m quite honoured, since his blog is definitely a notch above average, intellectually.

It’s one of them hot potato things, so i’ll pass it on – trying to distinguish the less common blogs in my feedreader that could be of interest. Seems like i don’t read that many obscure blogs … i’m a herd webivore (dang).

The German Component: blog by a spanish person living in Belgium, so i’ve got no idea why it’s called like that. Nice blog of small trivia, with a different angle.

Shoob: Francois Lamotte’s blog. Less active lately, probably since he started freelancing, but it used to be a good source of early adopter info.

Igvita: OK, not exactly a small blog. Ilya Grigorik won one of the Ruby Heroes award at Railsconf 2008, and with good reason: his blog is incredibly useful for all kind of small ruby or rails tricks. Kudos to Ilya for generously sharing hard-won knowledge.

Peter Van Dijck’s guide to ease: Peter Van Dijck is a kind of Information Architecture guru. His blog is interesting because he’s actually microblogging: one-liners, referencing things he likes. Plus he (sometimes) talks about IA, which is a side-interest of mine.

Catalog of visual interestingness (?): Johan ‘wolfr’ is one of the netlash coworkers (thanks Bart for the correction ). He also seems to be a man of taste: he gathers in this blog pictures he likes, and i tend to like what he selects. FFFOUND type of blogs are way to prolific to follow on a normal day – this is a more human-paced blog.

Where is Ploum ?(french) is a blog with few, but long posts. And funny. Written by a young IT guy with a preference for open source, a critical eye on today’s society, and bad luck with dogs.

Brutin.be: acidic, acerbic, neurotic, bitchy, you name it. But when he’s on a roll, it’s a good read.

Of course, i browse some of the usual suspects on the belgian blogscape (Tales of drudgery and boredom, Lamazone, bnox, eMich, Denis …), not to mention the Boingboings, slashdots and Techcrunches of this world. I don’t think they need any link love, particularly.

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Posted in Bloggers

Tags: Bloggers blogs

(Brussels?) Girl Geek Dinner 7

August 21st, 2008

Tantieris asked me to write this post, to reassure the world that i got home safely after last night My ride skipped out on me. Fortunately, i found friendly replacement in the person of Goedele.

Edition 7 of BGGD was organized by bnox yesterday in Leuven, this time in combination with the Open Coffee Club, the meetup for entrepreneurs by Robin Wauters.

The location was pretty nice – the Remy tower in Wijgmaal, which is an old industrial building, restaurated from the inside out.

Two presentations talked about shopping behaviour differences between genders. Sounded fairly stereotypical, but i suppose i’m not exactly a typical woman.

Anyhow, it was a busy night – talking to lots of people. In the end, those gathering are slightly unsatisfying, because you don’t get time to really talk at length to any one person, and you certainly can’t talk to everyone present. Speed-dating.

But at the same time i get the impression those gatherings get more interesting as they expand – more new faces, more initiatives and ideas. Way to go.

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Rails Contacts plugin and channl.tv development

August 17th, 2008

I was able to open source (with permission) a tiny part of the channl.tv code: an addition to Mislav Maronic’s contacts plugin. It allows you to import Yahoo contacts as well (where Mislav’s plugin only did Google contacts).

There you go. Channl.tv is evolving:

we added Vimeo en Blip.tv to the video sites you can add from automatically.
From monday onwards (releases just before the weekend = not a good idea) it will be possible to twitter a video or channel one likes from the application. Pondering addition of Del.icio.us.
We added an API (read-only at the moment) for interaction with channl.tv’s content.

I also dumped Ferret as a search tool, because it started throwing up weird C errors, and regenerating indexes or any of the usual restarts could not cure it. I’d heard that Ferret could be a tad unstable. QED. Ferret out, Sphinx in (again, starting on monday).

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Posted in Open source, RoR, developer, rails

Tags: channl.tv contacts rails search

Moving abroad doesn’t make you happy

August 16th, 2008

Or unhappy.
There’s lot’s of valid reasons to move abroad, and it’s an educational experience – but i would advise against moving abroad because you’re vaguely dissatisfied and think somehow it will be better out there.
Been there, done that. This is what i learned.

FACT: people are the same everywhere. The cultural undercurrents are different, but you get the same shares of nice people and narrow-minded stupid people. If anything, less prosperous or war-scarred countries might make it more difficult to find out who are the nice ones.

FACT: to put it bluntly: you stay yourself. The ability to be happy depends largely the ability to make the best of what you’ve got, to see the positive side of things, and to be able to spend a time doing things you like. That works wherever you are.
The psychological luggage that makes your life what it is just now will be with you when you get off the plane. If you want to be happy anywhere, you need to work on that as well, not just move and think you will be a new you.

FACT: change of scenery also means change of habits, assumptions. You’ll need to get into the local culture and history to really start to get half of the casual conversations. Think of film references, jokes based on advertisements from 20 years ago, religions and childhood figures. Open-mindedness: position of females, outlook on homosexuality, other aspects vary widely.

It might be even more of a shock in the US or Australia, where people look like us, talk a familiar language, but definitely have a different culture. Not to underestimate.

Most conversations will start with ‘where are you from?’, which can get annoying after a while. Also, while being a foreigner makes you attractively exotic, it also makes you a bit of an outsider. A lot of expats end up ghettoing away with their own countrymen, just because the effort it takes to get past those barriers.

FACT: it takes time to build a new support cast. You will miss what’s going on in the lives of your current friends and family. A loving group of people you understand is also an important component of being happy, for most people. That will only come clear to you after a few months, when the excitement wears off, in what’s known to most expats as the first bout of homesickness.

So anyway, it’s not that easy. It’s better to start for the right reasons (job opportunities, nature, weather), and with reasonable expectations. Then the experience will be worth it.

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Posted in life

Tags: life live abroad travel

The long and sad story of the blue Brompton

August 2nd, 2008

Blue Brompton I ordered a Brompton at the very start of june. I’d looked around and convinced myself sufficiently that it was the best option in the foldable bike category. Not the cheapest, definitely.

I go to this shop which is a known distributor of Brompton in Brussels, and after some parleying order a bike. The standard color is black, not bad at all, but i’d spotted and decided for a lovely shade of blue. I figured, if you’re going to pay that kind of money for a bike, might as well make sure you like it.

The saleswoman tells me: “OK. if you want a custom color, you’ll have to wait for 8 weeks”. I ask “really 8 weeks ?” “well, we say 8 weeks to be sure”, she grants, conspiratorial.

So i go home, more or less confident in the fact that 6 weeks later, i’ll have my bike. Trying to imagine a painting process that takes up to 8 weeks: an old guy in the Welsh hills painting bikes with a tiny brush, in a mad british version of zen craftsmanship.

After 8 weeks, i phone the shop. “So, do you have my bike ?” The guy answers, faintly annoyed, that no, otherwise they would have phoned me. After some talking he says that they’ll have a delivery the next thursday.

The next thursday afternoon i phone again. The conversation gets a bit tense when i realize they don’t have my bike, and that i can phone back in ten days, and will you please leave me alone.

Yesterday, i get a phone call, and a guy announces me that the bike has arrived. Christmas come early ! But no, because in fact in the meantime i’ve found out that i need a telescopic saddle. Tall, you see – i need more distance between my seat and the pedals.

The guy tells me i’ll have to pay for this extra. I reply that they never offered me this, while i’m very obviously tall, and i never even got a chance to try out a bike. So the service they offered was bad, ergo i don’t have to pay. He promised to find out if that’s true, and never phones me back.

This morning, then, i take the trip to the shop, and after some negociating they admit that in fact, i seem to be quite tall, indeed. Sorry. No extra needed.

But, (confirming the theory of the old man in the hills) they tell me that no two bikes are the same, and that it’s not that simple to change a saddle. They’ll need an extra WEEK (!). So 10 weeks later, i’m still waiting, and wondering if they’re pulling my leg. Which is long enough already.

Update: they phoned me last night – the complex surgery required to add the saddle was performed ! I’ll go and get it tomorrow, Inch’Allah.