Went to a Unity Design Feedback session in which I lamented aloud the lack of sloppy focus support. Others raised points both positive and negative about the design and we got some clues about how some of the current issues will be resolved in this cycle. (notes)
Next up was a session on debugging suspend and hibernate support. The presenter had some interesting ideas about how to get debug information from the kernel when it freezes before things like video are brought up. The basic idea was using either the PC speaker or a keyboard LED to encode the state of the system. This would be recorded using a camera or audio recorder and sent to the developers, who would have the tools to extract the data. (blueprint, notes)
I then went to a session on dual-monitor support. The general idea of this was that the current way of setting up multiple monitors is crap and that it can be done much more intelligently. (blueprint, notes)
Last up before lunch was a session about porting Gwibber to GTK3. I’m a huge fan of Gwibber in general, but it takes up far too many resources in its current state. Happy to hear they’re moving all the logic into the back end and rewriting a very simple client in Vala. (blueprint, notes)
After lunch I went back to my room to relax a bit. Tried to call Emily but I guess my timing was not as good as I had thought.
Next was a session on Ubuntu’s distributed development processes. (blueprint, notes)
After that I went to a riveting session on postinst scripts for kernel packages and how to align them better with upstream initramfs-tools. (blueprint, notes)
Last session of the day was a Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth about governance in the Ubuntu community. He answered questions about how decisions like those around Unity and Banshee were made and how processes like those could be improved. (notes)
After dropping my bag in my room I met up with a large group heading to the Invisible Exhibition. Some members of the Hungarian Ubuntu Local Community team were gracious enough to guide us through the extensive public transit system to the exhibition and arrange for English-speaking guides for us. The exhibition itself consisted of several environments which we had to navigate and interact with in total darkness, simulating the everyday life of a blind person. There was a cabin, a forest, a busy street, a statue garden, an apartment, and a bar. In each place we tried to find our way around using only touch and hearing, helping each other as best we could. The statue garden had replicas of famous statues which we had to try to identify just by touching them. In the bar we were given the chance to buy a drink. Not being familiar at all with the coin of the realm made this a challenging and entertaining endeavor. Surprisingly enough I only messed up the value of one coin and I was able to enjoy a beer in total darkness.
When we had re-acclimated ourselves to the light we took a streetcar back toward the hotel and ended up at a little Italian restaurant where we had pizza (again!) and talked a while before heading back.
Up early, still a bit woozy from jet lag (or perhaps an overabundance of cheap beer). Breakfast in a beautiful gallery encased almost entirely in glass. Lots of natural light. Helps with the waking up.
First session of the day was a discussion with some of the Qt developers. They talked about some features and upcoming Qt releases. (blueprint, notes)
I was still feeling a bit off and perhaps I overdid it at breakfast, but I decided to take a break during the second session and have a brief nap in my room.
Next up was a session on Ubuntu One and its model for sharing files with other people. Several paradigms for sharing were discussed including public sharing, private sharing, and collaboration. The main sticking points were how to handle each type gracefully and expose the options to do so to the user without overwhelming them. (blueprint, notes)
Following that I attended a session checking up on Ubuntu’s relationship with Debian. I’m told that in the past these sessions got pretty heated, but judging from the tone of this particular session things must be improving. (blueprint, notes)
After lunch I spent some time in the super secret OEM private room, where I got a preview of some upcoming projects and some really cool toys.
Next I went to a session discussing uploading packages by committing to a package branch rather than uploading a whole source package to the builder. There are some technical nits that need picking on the bzr side (of course they use bzr 🙂 ) but it looks like it could streamline the packaging process a bit. (blueprint, notes)
Last session of the day was a discussion of simplifying Ubuntu’s hardware verification tool. Apparently there are several versions of it floating around used by different groups and the goal is to merge all of them into a single code base. (blueprint, notes)
After the sessions a few of us rented bikes from the concierge desk and took a little sightseeing ride around the city. We rode across the Danube into Buda (our hotel is in Pest) and along some riverside trails before finding a pathway to a little island in the middle of the river. We rode around the island a bit, spotting some ruins, a bird sanctuary and even an Ultimate Frisbee game. We eventually found a nice beer garden where we stopped for dinner and drinks. I finally had some dark beer the name of which I couldn’t pronounce and some pizza which I could also not pronounce but it had mushrooms, broccoli, and corn on it. Pictures of the sightseeing ride and from the rest of the trip can be found on my flickr page.
As it was getting dark we headed back to the hotel. A relatively early night.
After several hours attempting to sleep on the plane, gave up and decided to watch The Green Hornet. Not bad from what I saw, but what I saw didn’t include the last 20 minutes since we landed just as the movie was reaching its climax. Going to have to Netflix it just to watch the end.
Landed in Budapest around noon, only three hours after I’d planned to. Traded in some dollars for Hungarian forints and hopped on a shuttle bus to the hotel.
Emailed my new manager asking where I might meet him then took a much-needed shower. Got a response by the time I was done and headed down to the main floor to start my first day of work.
Spent most of the afternoon meeting various Canonical and Ubuntu folks and attending UDS sessions.
The session on cleaning up the startup apps was pretty interesting. It was more about cleaning up the UI for setting startup apps, but there was some discussion of what should be there by default. (blueprint, notes)
Also attended the session discussing whether to continue limiting the size of CD images to 700MB (I know that sounds weird). Points were raised about how many folks actually burn the images to CD vs. using a USB thumb drive and whether the DVD image might be made smaller. (blueprint, notes)
After the sessions was a meet-and-greet where everybody was able to schmooze it up over free food, beer, and wine. Speaking of schmoozing, I met Mark Shuttleworth and got to talk to him for a few minutes. I managed not to ask him about space (I’m sure he gets that a lot) and he said he was very excited about what the OEM team (which I’ve joined) is doing and how it will help spread Ubuntu to the masses.
Caught up with Lyz Krumbach and a couple of my new coworkers. Heard some stories of past UDS shenanigans. Apparently the UDS in Brussels was legendary. They told me tales of pants dropped and cut rear ends.
Once the free beer ran out we took the party to a nearby bar. Discussion ranged from perspectives on working for Canonical to Lyz’s perspective as a community member and mine as the new guy and what type of beer is popular in Australia.
Got back to the room way too late. This is the start of a pattern.
Continued wrapping up projects. Rebuilt toolchain and kernel for memory leak problem using customer’s configuration. Still can’t reproduce. Asked for more details (if they’re using custom hardware, etc.).
Got in touch with Canonical’s travel folks and let them know that I need to depart from Detroit but return to Pittsburgh. Picked from a set of itineraries. Waiting for final confirmation.
Began my farewell tour of favorite Downtown lunch spots with DiBella’s. It’s a recent entry but quickly rose to become the best sandwich place in the Golden Triangle.
Started looking at travel arrangements for UDS. New manager said he’d put me in touch with Canonical’s travel people.
Started helping with support issues since I’m not taking on any new projects. Andy gave me a nasty support ticket about a possible memory leak in the USB gadget driver for one of our boards. I shouldn’t have said anything
Home then off to guitar lesson. Learned some interesting finger picking styles and variations on Travis picking.
to the exhibition and arrange for English-speaking guides for us. The exhibition itself consisted of several environments which we had to navigate and interact with in total darkness, simulating the everyday life of a blind person. There was a cabin, a forest, a busy street, a statue garden, an apartment, and a bar. In each place we tried to find our way around using only touch and hearing, helping each other as best we could. The statue garden had replicas of famous statues which we had to try to identify just by touching them. In the bar we were given the chance to buy a drink. Not being familiar at all with the coin of the realm made this a challenging and entertaining endeavor. Surprisingly enough I only messed up the value of one coin and I was able to enjoy a beer in total darkness.
little island in the middle of the river. We rode around the island a bit, spotting some ruins, a bird sanctuary and even an Ultimate Frisbee game. We eventually found a nice beer garden where we stopped for dinner and drinks. I finally had some dark beer the name of which I couldn’t pronounce and some pizza which I could also not pronounce but it had mushrooms, broccoli, and corn on it. Pictures of the sightseeing ride and from the rest of the trip can be found on my flickr page.