I just had a surreal experience with some of my best friends from high school. Even though we all live in different states, some in New York, others in Texas, still others in Seattle and California, and myself in Boston, we were all occupying the same space tonight as we watched a live stream of the band God Street Wine. This was the band that defined us in High School and now when we all have other priorities that keep our lives apart it still was able to evoke a kinship as we live commented on the performance over Facebook. This reminds me of the power of Open Source communities which are drawn together through social means as well as technical. Some of the first social networks happened over forums, mailing lists and irc. The biggest issue we face is we are an exclusive club. While we pretty much invented the social Internet our exclusivity pretty much means that any innovation is looked at with an air of suspicion leaving propitiatory companies like Facebook to fill that vacuum. The question going forward is how do we turn our social know how into areas of general interest instead of just technical pursuits? How do we open up our technology to a wider audience without “selling out”?
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]August 10, 2012
July 30, 2012
GUADEC A Coruña Restaurant Suggestion
Just a bit of a service announcement for those looking for a good bite to eat here in A Coruña. Last night Colin, Emily and I found ourselves sitting outside Tapa Negra looking for a bit of food and wine. We were not disappointed. The food was simple yet flavourful and the wine list quite extensive. Since most of the dishes are topped with some sort of meat or fish, the chef even made an amazing veggie dish for Colin off menu. I recommend trying one of the Tostas, thick cuts of toasted bread topped with fish or meat and some sauce. The prices were a bit higher than surrounding restaurants but the quality and service made it worth it.
I had some duck in a cream sauce over toasted bread. I don’t have a picture of it but Emily had sliced cured beef similar to Iberico Ham over toasted bread with a high quality EVOO drizzled on top.
This was the dish the chef made for Colin. It was a tower of sautéed vegetables topped with goat cheese and caramelized onions with EVOO and a balsamic reduction drizzled on top.
I was quite impressed and the small dish sizes left room for some desert with the mandarin orange sorbet being my favorite. The complete meal left us completely satisfied.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]April 6, 2011
Boston/Cambridge GNOME 3.0 Launch Party Locations
Hey all. We are winding down the release and ramping up to getting our party on! The Boston/Cambridge GNOME 3.0 Launch Party will be happening this Sunday down in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. We will be meeting for dinner around 7 at The Blue Room and then going to our tradition hang out spot, Flat Top Johnny’s, for drinks and a couple of rounds of pool. If you are planning on coming please add your name to the wiki ASAP so I can make reservations. I plan on making them by tomorrow night. Hope to see you there!
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]April 4, 2011
Boston GNOME 3.0 Launch Party this Sunday
Hey all you Northeast GNOME developers and users. We are having a GNOME release party this Sunday, April 10th sponsored by Red Hat. We are still scouting for a good location but the idea is to go to a bar with either a bowling lane or pool tables where drinks, games and food will be sponsored. Please head over to the wiki and let us know you will be coming so we can figure out the best venue to hold it.
Come on down and have some fun while we celebrate the hard work that went into this historic release for the GNOME Project.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]July 16, 2010
GUADEC is Almost Here!
Are you getting excited? GNOME’s flagship conference, GUADEC, is taking off in a little over a week in Den Haag, The Netherlands. I’ve got my bags packed and a draft of my talk written.
With one more concert tonight in New York City, I set off tomorrow evening for a much needed vacation in Macon, France where I will be learning classic French cooking at Robert Ash’s cooking school. The first lesson happens on my birthday, when I will be turning a nice and ripe 33. Fresh fare such as bar à la crème de fenouil avec ses pommes dauphinoises, confit de canard, and profiteroles au chocolat, among others are set to be learned. I’ve been playing with the idea of having a fund raising dinner with all the proceeds going to the GNOME Foundation during this year’s Boston Summit. Perhaps after the course I will feel confident enough to trade donations for my cooking.
Afterwards there are a couple of days of layover in Amsterdam between when the course ends and GUADEC begins. At GUADEC I am going to be devoting most of my time to whipping PyGObject into glorious introspection shape. Please join us at the BOFs to learn more, help us hack or get help porting your apps to utilize the power of introspection. There will be a BOF on general GObject Introspection on Monday the 26th between 14:00-16:00 and on PyGObject(PyGI) on Thursday the 29th between 14:00-18:00. Otherwise you can find myself or any of the other introspection and GNOME python hackers any time during GUADEC. If you are a newbie developer looking for something to hack on to get your name out there while learning some core GNOME technologies, there are some really easy bits to sort of take control of and run with. There is a lot of detail work such as fixing annotations or doing simple overrides that would take little effort to get up to speed with but make a huge impact on the final quality of the introspected bindings. Heck, find me over a glass of beer at one of the after parties and I will wax poetic on the thing needed to be done to finish the last mile of our Python plans.
After GUADEC, Colin Walters and I will be travelling to Berlin, both to save airfare by flying out on a weekday and to decompress after a week of non-stop hacking. I’m looking forward to seeing many old friends and making new ones. Let’s make GUADEC rock and continue to push GNOME to continue to excel at excellence. With this year’s focus on GNOME 3 and the underlying technologies that support it there will be a lot of exciting things to see and hack on.
June 7, 2010
The Road to GUADEC
I’ll be heading to GUADEC this year thanks to the generous support the GNOME Foundation Travel Committee but that won’t be my first stop in my mega marathon travelling month of July.
- I will first be travelling to NY around the 8th for the God Street Wine reunion concerts and will be making a pit stop at the Long Island Linux Users Group to give a dry run of my GUADEC talk entitled “The Future is JavaScript” which will continue with my theme from last year of continuing to meld the GNOME Desktop with the web platform (this year focusing on what JavaScript brings to the table)
- I fly out of JFK Airport on the 17th for Lyon France where I am taking the week long Robert Ash cooking course at Rue du Lac in Macon, Burgundy
- The class ends on the 23rd and my Hotel is booked for the 25th in The Hague so I am not quite sure if I will stay in Lyon or start my way up. I know I have some GNOME friends living between Lyon and The Hague so I am offering to cook dinner for anyone who will let me crash at their place for a couple of days before GUADEC.
- And then there is the main event – GUADEC. My talk is on Wednesday the 28th at noon. It shouldn’t be missed.
- To relax a bit more, save money on airfare and because I love Germany, I am heading to Berlin for a couple of days before flying back to the US
If anyone is going to be in any of the areas I will be in and wants to hang out. Let me know and I’ll see if I can make time.
August 19, 2009
To Vegas
In an effort to recreate “The Hangover” I am heading to Vegas tomorrow morning for one of my closest friend’s bachelor party.
I’ll be back Monday with some pretty cool announcement involving JavaScript and native messaging support. Let’s put it this way – if this works out implementing D-Bus in pure JavaScript might be a fun side project.
Until then I’m going to be incommunicado except for my cell phone. Get in touch with me only if there is an emergency, otherwise I’m pretty much stepping into the alternate dimension that is Vegas.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]July 14, 2009
GNOME Boston Summit Details
For those not at the AGM during GUADEC I had announced confirmation on this years GNOME Boston Summit in October at MIT.
Details
Dates
October 10th, 11th and 12th
Location
MIT Sloan Building (E51)
Cambridge, MA
Rooms 315, 325, 335, 345
Hackfests
As of right now we have funding thanks to Novell to hold one hackfest the week before the Summit. The content of that hackfest is yet to be determined. As always since hackfests are focused on getting specific teams together so that they may plan projects face to face, travel sponsorship will be done via invite and handled by the specific hackfest organizers.
If you are a company or organization which wants to organize and sponsor a second or even third hackfest please get in-touch with myself (J5 on irc) or the GNOME Foundation Board.
Event Sponsorship
We will be looking for companies to sponsor events such as a lunch, a snack hour and the ever present Boston Beer Summit. These events help people unwind and socialize between the intense hack sessions and BOFs. They have also been used by the sponsoring organizations as a thank you to developers and to make significant announcements of work being done by the sponsor.
Last year saw Litl throw a snack hour catered by Sel de la Terre where they announced their work on JavaScript bindings, now being extensively used to build the shell for GNOME 3.0. They also answered questions and reveled small bits of the project they have been working on.
Novell had budget left over from their hackfest and cosponsored with the Foundation an open bar at our annual Boston Beer Fest. Over pool, drinks and food GNOME hackers got to discuss numerous subjects and make new friends in a relaxed atmosphere.
On the last day of the Summit the GNOME Accessibility team through Sun sponsored a pizza lunch as a thank you for the support the Foundation members and hackers have given the Accessibility team (though I really think we should be thanking them for the work that they do).
Again if your are interested in sponsoring one of these events please get in-touch with myself (J5 on irc) or the GNOME Foundation Board.
Travel Sponsorship
Traditionally the Foundation has not sponsored travel to the Summit, relegating that to our flagship conference, GUADEC, and several regional conferences where we felt GNOME needed a presence. Unlike GUADEC which is a meet and greet for users and developers of the GNOME platform and related technologies, the Summit is a more intimate working event with specific goals in mind.
This year however, we do want to start sponsoring specific people to attend the conference who would otherwise not be able to attend. The difference is, anyone applying for sponsorship must have a specific reason for coming and detail concrete goals which they aim to accomplish at the Summit. The Board and Travel Committee are still working out the details so look for more announcements in the future.
Make your travel plans now and start getting psyched up to have another successful Boston Summit come this Fall. If last year’s Summit successes continue their momentum, look to see even greater things to come out of Boston come October!!!
Notes
It is unfortunate that the dates, October 10th-12th, conflict with the Maemo Summit but should be noted that we have for the most part always had the Summit on the second weekend of October (Columbus Day Weekend). Those plans were set in motion well before we were able to get a definite confirmation on the venue and make a formal announcement. We should perhaps use the Foundation as a way to coordinate all GNOME related gatherings in the future.
–
John (J5) Palmieri
January 19, 2009
Adopt a Hacker – Become a Friend of GNOME
For only cents a day, less than a cup of coffee, or Brondo(it’s got what plants crave) , you can make sure a GNOME hacker has all the resources they need to hack late into the night and into the early morning. So become a friend of GNOME and donate $10 a month. Doing so will make you elegeable to receive a signed postcard from your favourite hacker (only valid for participating hackers) . You can even watch their progress through their personal blog and see what a difference you have made. Remember, as of today I am not just the GNOME Board’s Treasurer, I’m also a Friend because everyone needs friends.
Disclaimer: Donations do not go to individual hackers you specify (though feel free to thank them directly via a gift or even better, a thank you and pat on the back – just not when they are sleeping, that is kind of creepy). The money you donate to the Foundation goes into the general Foundation budget and helps ensure that GNOME continues to be a free (as in libre) and open source desktop by providing resources to developers, software and education for end users and promotion for GNOME worldwide.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]December 17, 2008
On Today’s Todo List – Pick Up 10lbs. of Meat
Thanks to Joe Shaw’s recommendations five months ago I joined the Chestnut Farm’s meat CSA. Today, fighting Cambridge/Arlington rush hour traffic I picked up my first monthly 10lbs. share. It was kind of funny finding a mail in my inbox stating that I had signed up some time ago and oh ya you need to go pick up your share this Wednesday. I almost skipped the mail but after looking at the quality of the meat I’m glad I read it.
It looks really tasty, unfortunately I spent last night cooking up 3lbs. of chuck beef stew which means I can’t justify cooking anything up just this minute. I will however be taking some of it to my parents house for the holidays and cooking some for them.
At $8 a pound it is pretty expensive but I am treating it like a learning expense. Since I don’t know what type of meat I will get each month I have to learn to cook almost any type thrown at me. I figure during the colder months I will stick with soups, stews and brazing while during the warmer months I will switch to grilling and slow roasting. If I like what they are sending me I may even get adventurous and see if they can send me the more exotic bits like sweetbreads though I suspect they sell those at a premium to restaurants.
Once I figure out my budget I may just start one of the vegetable CSA’s too.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]