Marcin Juszkiewicz - flights

OpenedHand X-mas

2007-12-17T00:04:00+01:00

I arrived at Luton airport about 12:50, grabbed luggage and got the bus to Victoria station (it costs 8 quids). From there train to Bromley South and short walk to the hotel.

According to the guy at reception I was first one (not counting people which came a day before). So I dropped bags, took a shower and came directly to OH office.

Office… Guys building Falcon Millennium from LEGO bricks, lot of strange devices on shelves (old E-ink readers, old PDA such as Apple Newton MessagePad and different developer boards). I toyed a bit with Nokia devices, played Metal Slug with Tomas using very nice dualpad controller. It was funtastic evening.

Next day started with breakfast (at least hotel used this name). Then grouping in the office and car trip to the Hop Farm when whole fun planned for this day had to take place. I have to admit that sitting on ‘driver seat’ (from European point of view) and not having driving wheel was not a problem for me. No minds like ‘they going to kill us’ etc related to driving on the wrong side of road.

The Hop Farm… Shooting (rifle and pistol — I prefer pistol), arching… QUADS and 4x4 driving!

Combine quad bike with mud — what will you get? Lot of pure fun (maybe not exactly pure due to being muddied from head to down) — especially second run was great. Quad was sliding, drifting, rotate when I tried to make a turn at full speed. It was really best part of day.

Other nice part was 4x4 driving — blind folded. One drives and someone behind him gives directions which way to turn. During after lunch run place was so muddied that we were able to take very sharp turns which were not possible before. But the real fun started after we did blind fold driving… We got offer to just drive — no limited seeing etc. Gods… This Jeep reacted to driver moves very nicely, especially during sharp turns which were quite easy to do — just turn driving wheel to the max and accelerate ;)

Big thanks for Sid (Matthew’s wife) for organizing whole event — it was really nice experience :)

After whole day of fun we came back to the office. Some interesting discussions took place and we made a trip to the Tiger’s Head for a dinner. The taxi driver surprised me with Christmas wishing in Polish — we are everywhere ;)

Food was nice, so did beer (the even had Laffe). Matthew gave gift for each of us. I got ‘panic button’ ;) And I am curious which keycode it sends.

Next day was return trip. This time not alone as part of it I did with Dodji. We came to Bromley North station then switch on Groove Park and ended on London Bridge. From there we did a walk to Liverpool station where we split as he was going for EuroStar train and I to Stansted airport.

Preparing to next trip

2007-12-11T16:19:00+01:00

Tomorrow I will go to England — this time for OpenedHand Xmas party which will take place somewhere near London.

This time I plan trip with more attention to details. First connections from Luton airport -> Bromley. It will probably be bus to Victoria Station, then train to Bromley South and finally walk. Return one from Bromley to Stansted airport will be two trains + walk (Cannon Street Station -> Liverpool Station) + train to airport.

As I had no time to buy London city map I will take Nokia 770 tablet with Maemo mapper and set of downloaded maps so I should not have problems like I had in Birmingham during GUADEC.

Greece - we are coming

2007-09-15T15:10:00+02:00

Yes — next two weeks I will spend with my wife Ania on Zakynthos island in Greece — we are going there for honeymoon trip. Whole too weeks without working on Poky, OpenEmbedded, OpenMoko, without computers — just we, sun, water and walking, taking photos etc.

I do not promise any texts from our honeymoon as I usually forgets about writing them :)

My OpenEmbedded related trips

2007-08-06T09:18:00+02:00

Yesterday during evening talk I found out one funny thing — all my trips related to OpenEmbedded was to cities which name starts with “B” letter.

First it was Berlin — first OEDEM (in 2006). Then it was FOSDEM 2007 in Brussels. Latest one was GUADEC 2007 in Birmingham. Next one will be OEDEM 2007 — Berlin again.

Before or after OEDEM I will probably also attend Bromley to visit OpenedHand office but this does not rather count as Bromley is part of London.

GUADEC - day 0

2007-07-16T23:32:00+02:00

I decided to call this day ‘Day 0’ because most of it was taken by going to GUADEC instead of being on conference.

I had to wake up at 5:20 and get first train at 6:25 (Częstochowa -> Katowice). When I arrived at station I found out that there is one more train at 6:20 so I took it as this gave me few extra minutes in Katowice to catch bus to airport.

After 50 minutes in bus I got to airport. It was full of people waiting for my flight — Wizzair to London Stansted. Queue was moving quite fast and I spent time talking with one guy about embedded devices (do not remember for which company he works — something with WiFi and long range comes to mind). After boarding we got first surprise — Wizzair do not number plane seats so first on plane == better choice (and we were last ones :( — so no talk during flight). Then plane captain gave us another bad information — flight was delayed due to local ‘rush hours’ in air ;( Finally we started — with over 40 minutes delay so I was not be able to catch train from Standsted Airport to Birmingham New Street at 12:25.

Flight was ok — standard problem with lack of space for legs and some turbulations during landing. And I finally ended reading a book — Robert Ludlum ‘Covert One’ which I read for over 6 months.

There was a funny part with my passport — on the photo I look like terrorist (which I am not) so I decided to show passport in Poland and my ID at Britain to avoid any extra questions.

After coming to airport I took my laggage and bought train tickets (as I will go back very early there was no discounted tickets for it so buying tickets in advance was the same as buying Standard Return Ticket) and (as I had over hour to spend) took a look at airport’s terminal. I found Rynair desks so will not have to do it on Thursday, got something to eat/drink and returned to -1 level to catch the train.

British trains… nearly no space for legs like in Airbus 320 and one interesting difference between Polish trains — space for luggage. Instead of solid rack where you can put everything you have to put it on special rack right after you enter wagon (because overhead racks are designed only for small items). Before that trip I read and heard that British trains are slow and unreliable but that one is going quite fast.

Now it is time to shutdown laptop as battery in my D400 gives me less then 40 minutes of work (with backlight set to lowest readable). After GUADEC I will know do I need to buy a new one or can I live without it.

Finally I got to Birmingham and take a walk to hotel. It took me about one hour to go that one mile because I got lost few times. Too many streets without any names…

During evening there was OpenEmbedded meeting when we discussed many things which should improve our project.

It was busy day…

GUADEC: preparations to travel

2007-07-12T18:09:00+02:00

Time to really prepare for GUADEC trip. Tomorrow we are going to another wedding in family (3rd in this year) and during Monday I will travel to Birmingham to meet OpenedHand team (without Dodji ;( — visa laws are strange), OpenEmbedded guys, maybe someone from OpenMoko (Mickeyl does not count) and many other people working on misc projects.

Travel times noted (trains, flights, buses), maps from train station to hotel printed, some GBP bought — so now it only left to pack. I even bought backpack for laptop so will be able to test how does my D400 behave (especially it’s battery as it does not give too much time). Good that I have that huge plug which is used in England already — one thing less to care about.

And I hope that I will have more luck then people which were on Akademy and my luggage will follow me ;)

Attending GUADEC?

2007-04-22T14:56:00+02:00

Yesterday Koen asked me on #oe will I attend GUADEC this year.

22:59 [koen] hrw: attending guadec?

22:59 [hrw] koen: not planned to

23:00 [koen] mallum and I thought it would be funny to bring you there

I do not think does it have sense for me as KDE guy to visit GNOME conference. I do not have plans to switch GUI environment and I think that GNOME team too much tries to make usage simple as possible. For me they oversimplified it already. And when last time I used G* (Ubuntu 6.10 LiveCD) I had a feeling that it does not fits me — Terminal application (most used application at that time) which need reconfiguring to be usable, which hijack F10 key to enter menu… ARGH

But I looked at price of flight connections and discovered one interesting thing. PLL LOT (Polish airlines) are something to avoid if want to flight from Poznań to somewhere else. Same flights checked on Lufthansa website costs 2/3 of LOT price. Someone takes quite lot of money just to sell someone’s other offer isn’t it?

I am living in a village

2007-01-27T17:33:00+01:00

As many of you know I am living in Poznań, Poland. This city has about 600 000 citizens but I will call it ”village”. Why?

We have international airport here (IATA: POZ, ICAO: EPPO) but this is emigration airport rather then travel — most of flights are to Ireland or England which are popular countries for those with emigrate to get better paid job. So if you want to flight to other part of Europe you have to use train/bus/car or other way of transport to get to other airport.

In February I go to Brussels, Belgium to participate in FOSDEM conference. After checking prices and times I chosen to get WizzAir from Warsaw, Poland to Charleroi and then train to Brussels. So it looks like I will go out from home at 12-13 in Friday to be in hotel on 23:30 probably… Return trip is not fun too..

I checked other possibilities. Train to Berlin, flight looks a bit better, also more expensive but return trip suxx too. Looks like next year I will go though London or other city which is reachable from Poznań…

Summary:

Poznań 13:35 -> Warsaw 16:40 (Express train)
public transport to airport
Warsaw 19:20 -> Charleroi 21:20
Charleroi airport -> Charleroi train -> Brussels — or Charleroi airport 22:30 -> Brussels directly
fast shower at hotel
FOSDEM beer party