J5’s Blog

I thought I was going to be on vacation for my birthday this year but it turns out I’m leaving the day after so I decided to do something this Friday to celebrate with people in Boston.  I’m going to have a small dinner with close friends at Good Life Bar around 8:00 and then perhaps some drinks at Jacob Wirth.  In any case I’ll be microblogging my whereabouts on identi.ca so use it as an excuse to come down, drink a few beers and have a good time.

That is to say I have a direct flight today from New York to Istanbul today.  I’ll be ariving early tomorrow morning and will be staying at the Hotel Golden Horn in Sultanahmet.  This should prove to be one of the best GUADECs ever.

Getting in touch with my Italian roots while running around Florence was great fun.  Thank you Dorothy and Karl for getting married and sharing the moment with all your friends and family.  I’m busy uploading all of the photos which I managed to save after my camera started corrupting the memory card.  More on my time in Italy later. Now it is time to go and check out buzzgrinder.com - a music blog one of the guests at the wedding maintains.

I’ll be in various places other than the Boston area for most of November.  Starting this coming Friday I will be driving down to NY where I am catching a flight to Florence, Italy for a friend’s wedding.  I’ll be there for a week and then am going to work from Atlanta, Georgia while visiting my best friend who is getting married next spring.  To round things off I will be working from NY through Thanksgiving.

The Italy trip is pretty booked but I should be visiting the ATL and NY Red Hat offices to say hi since I will be there anyway.  If any Fedora or GNOME folks want to grab a beer or just meet up let me know.

I won’t be at the Gnome Summit on Saturday because of prior engagements (literally, I am going to a wedding).  We were however fortunate to get money from Google to host a Beer Summit on Sunday night starting at 7:00pm at Flat Top Johnny’s.  There are a couple of pool tables reserved and free beer available so hackers can exchange ideas, build friendships and hustle each other in an enjoyable setting.

Now for a small update on the Cookbook.  I haven’t had much progress since a large number of unexpected distractions have popped up.  The good news is Lulu.com updated their site and one of the options is a wizzard for cookbooks.  Of the three designs for page layout submitted by,  Vinicius Depizzol, Silvia Miranda, and Diego Escalante Urrelo, I liked them all and they all fit very well with each other so you all are going to be the first to get a book, payed for by me, once it is published.

As for my name on this list, I would like to thank the Acadamy, my Mom - hi Mom - Roderick’s Mom, and…what I don’t get to make a speech for being on the “B” list and I still have to wait in line at Spagos?  That’s it, I’m firing my agent.

I just found out a couple of days ago my best friend proposed to his girlfriend Missy and she said yes. That is great news in itself but I also found out I am to be the best man at their wedding. I haven’t known Missy for that long but I do know she is beautiful and sweet and a perfect match for Charlie.

Recipes

The GNOME Cookbook Project is now in full swing. We now have a wiki and mailing list. Anyone who has mailed me with a recipe can you please post it up somewhere and provide a link on the wiki. Feel free to add the recipe as a wikipage. We also need more contributers. Please pile on as many recipes as you wish.

Photos

Remeber we also need high def pictures ready for print so all you GNOMIES out there with SLR cameras, it is time to team up with some cooks and get snapping. Hey you might even get a free lunch or dinner out of it.

Design

Design is also very important. All you design gurus out there we need to slap together a workable layout using open source tools. Are you up to the challenge or are you affraid your hunger will get the best of you? Feel free to take breaks and cook up the recipies you are laying out.

Cover Art

Have you ever said to yourself, I wish my design would end up on the front of a GNOME Cookbook? Well now is your chance…to say that to yourself and compete to get your art on the cover. Whoever wins I will personally come over, if am ever in their neighborhood, and cook them a dish from the book.

Remeber GNOMERS, feet are vehicals for finding food and fine food is worth finding. So run, don’t walk, to contribute to this wonderful symbol of our community on this, the tenth anniversary of GNOME.

I just found out my bro has put down his deposit on North Eastern Univeristy. Last time we spoke it was between that and Loyola, Maryland. I was a freshman dropout of the Univeristy of Maryland* so I was worried about him going to Loyola. At least in Boston, if he needs to unwind he can always take the T to my place to decompress for a bit. It is also far enough from New York that he can feel independent but still go home when all of his friends aren’t around.

As a graduation gift I am taking my brother to Amsterdam the week after GUADEC.  Anyone have suggestions of where we should stay?

* I later graduated Hofstra which in a winding path finally led me to Red Hat, so no regrets

Before I became a Frontman for the Drooling Macaque Band I headlined for an independent band out of White Plains, NY called Torque. Fresh from being digitized on YouTube, footage from the White Plains High School battle of the bands where Torque took home gold in 1994 is now online. This includes our grand entrance, the crooning original rock balad Hour Glass and rocking rendition of Come Together. Looks like my friend and fellow band mate Aaron is posting the whole show piece by piece so check back on his YouTube page for more.

Ahh, now I can laugh and cry any day of the week. Crazy kids.

After popping champagne (actually Cava) on Bryan Clark’s roof I can proudly say my New York New Years traditions have been put to rest and in its place a new Boston/Cambridge tradition has been born.