I've got a new job. I'm now working for Intevation, a very small
but growing
free software company. I'm actually their first real
employee. It also
means that the other Bernhard is
now my boss :-).
I've already been working on my first project for the
last few weeks.
It's a web-based mapping application called MapIt!.
Unfortunately, this project also means that I don't have
as much time
for Sketch or the Vectorgraphics-Foundry
as I would like at the moment.
HHLUG
The second day of the HHLUG
install
party on Sunday (September 10th) was very much like the
first (see my
previous entry), although we did more installations. One
problem with
the location was that we hadn't access to a phone line,
neither analog
nor ISDN, so we couldn't check whether the new linux users
would be able
to connect to the internet. Well, that's something to do
better next
time.
Oldenburger Linuxtag
Together with the other
Bernhard I went to
the Oldenburger
Linuxtag this
weekend. We had two and a half posters. One was about the FreeGIS Project and the other
was about
software patents and the petition against
software patents
in Europe (If you haven't signed it yet, please do so
now). Both
attracted quite a few people. Many signed the petition,
especially after
Georg Greve (of Brave GNU World fame) mentioned it in
his talk.
The "half" poster was a smaller Sketch poster that
managed to attract
some visitors too and I got to demonstrate Sketch or answer
questions
few times.
The whole event was bigger than I had expected. The
exhibition space
was bigger than at last year's Bremer
Linuxtag, and I
think there were more visitors, but Alan Cox did draw quite
a crowd last
year with his keynote.
One of the most prominent attendents was Wichert Akkerman, who allegedly
played
moonbuggy the whole weekend. I can confirm that he did play
moonbuggy
and all the time I saw what he was doing at his computer he
played
moonbuggy, so that rumor must be true. :-)
Films and Books
Saw X-Men, Being John Malkovich and
Titan A.E.
recently. X-Men was entertaining but not really
something you
have to have seen. At least I saw the original version and
not some
localized German one.
Being John Malkovich OTOH, is hilarious. I saw it
in English
too, although it had German subtitles. I find subtitles
irritating. Most
of the time, I've got a reflex (sort of) to read them even
when I
understand the soundtrack quite well. If you read the
subtitles you
don't have time to actually watch the movie because
your eyes are
fixed on the text and can't take in the visuals of the
scenes
themselves. Luckily, this time I somehow managed to somehow
block them
out completely after a few minutes.
Titan A.E. was an interesting mix of hand-drawn
animation and
computer graphics. AFAICT, there wasn't an English version
shown here in
Hamburg, so I saw a German translation.
Saw Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel Look to
Windward in a
bookshop a couple of weeks ago. 36DM are a bit steep for a
paperback, if
you ask me. I think I'll wait until I find it cheaper
elsewhere or on
the internet. OTOH, I found his The Business for 21DM
on Monday
morning in Oldenburg before I took the train back to
Hamburg.
Another book I've bought (and read) recently is the
paperback of
The Fifth Elephant which is already available here in
Germany in
some bookstores even though it's not available in the UK
until early
November. Heh.