In past years I was writing some kind of summary of previous year. In form of kind of timeline, with info about each month etc. Time to write something about previous year but in other form.
SBSA Reference Platform
At work my main project in 2023 was SBSA Reference Platform. In QEMU, Trusted Firmware (TF-A) and Tianocore EDK2 projects.
In May I gathered feedback from Leif, Shashi and others about how do we plan to version the platform. There were plans for upgrades but those had to be done in some sensible way.
More about it is in Versioning of sbsa-ref machine blog post. We managed to do several version bumps and finally got it done in proper way.
There was a time when wrong USB controller was given by firmware compared to what hardware had. And as it was on non-discoverable system bus some operating systems ignored it and worked (Linux) while some (BSD) complained and hang.
More about it in Testing *BSD post.
November brought TF-A 2.10 and EDK2 202311 releases which gave us official firmware for our platform. Where everything works as expected on all operating systems we checked (*BSD, Linux, MS Windows).
We are quite close to SBSA level 3 compliance.
Personal projects
software ones
My system calls table project got several updates as Linux kernel got some new entries. There were several code cleanups to not list calls which are preset in kernel but not implemented. Or were already removed and I missed it.
Also merged my Python system-calls project into above one. It made my life easier as they duplicated each other. Now script which generates my Linux kernel system calls for all architectures table uses Python class so I have less code to maintain.
More AArch64 SoCs appeared in AArch64 SoC features table. Nice to see that there are more and more Arm v8.2 SBCs and newer and newer cores appear in Android phones/tablets.
Wrote ArmCpuInfo application to be able to check which cpu features are supported from EFI shell level. Feedback from community was positive.
hardware ones
After several attempts I got ‘virtual kick in a butt’ and finally ordered new furniture to my kitchen. It just got mounted so I am now in a middle of handling changes but it will be nice improvement.
Other thing was move from Ikea Trådfri to HomeAssistant with Zigbee dongle. Lot of cursing later things (usually) work as intended. Some interesting upgrades done, some areas have different level of light depending on time of day/night. Some buttons switch lights in several areas at once.
Travels
2023 was Europe only. One of reasons was Linaro Connect which took place just once (and it will stay that way) and I did not attended any out-of-Europe conferences.
FOSDEM
Great as usual.
The Netherlands
February in the Netherlands was time nice spent. I took my daughter to visit (again) friends in Eindhoven. Carnival time was nice. All those dressed people…
While there we went to Amsterdam to visit Anne Frank House museum and it was time well spent. This place is “a must visit” if you are in area.
As our Museumcaards from our summer 2022 trip were still valid we went to NEMO science museum. “Would you like to see dead fetuses” was the question of a visit as there was an exhibition of human fetuses in formalin(?).
As we had some time between NEMO and Anne Frank museums we got some good ramen in same place as in 2022 (Vatten Ramen Zeedijk restaurant). After food we visited Koninklijk Paleis Amsterdam (Royal Palace). Interesting place. Especially for 0€ price ;D
Return trip involved visiting Warsaw so we met some friends there, visited Copernicus Science Centre and went back home.
Linaro Connect London
I was in London before so it was kind of ‘meh’ trip when it comes to sightseeing.
Was great to meet co-workers, people from all those projects where Linaro is involved and discuss random things with them. Discussed SBSA Reference Platform future steps with other developers.
And on way from hotel to airport I visited Imperial War Museum. It was interesting to look at World War I/II from other perspective. Have to visit similar museum in Germany.
Vacations
In Poland, by car. As usual. Met family (we are quite spread through the country), long-time-no-see friends and rested a bit.
Several museums again. There was small automotive one in Gdynia, large one in Babki Oleckie, one small one with American cars in Kościerzyna.
We saw some cemetery in a middle of a forest, visited church were The Holy Grail was present few centuries ago, some other old churches.
One day we went to see żubry. In English they are called “European bison” but we had discussion that maybe American bison should rather be called “American żubr” :D
Manga/anime/fantasy events
My daughter is manga/anime fan. So on her birthday I gave her 3rd book from 乙嫁語り (Otoyomegatari) series. In Japanese as one of my friends was in Tokyo, bought it and brought to FOSDEM. There was some laugh and book landed on shelf next to previous ones in Polish.
June meant Pyrkon (fantasy convent) in Poznań. I was tough due to climate conditions. Friends, talks, discussions, cosplayers… Nice time. The good thing is that in 2024 Mira will go there with her mother instead of me. I am tired of Pyrkon already ;D
In August we went for Mizukon convent in Przecław, close to Szczecin (public transport reachable). It was great event. Met some interesting people, had nice discussions, watched several talks. I even managed to win “Anime in 90s” quiz despite not watching anime at that time (did not had access to satellite tv).
October brought Japan Fest in Szczecin. I had a feeling that it was organized by mostly the same people as Mizukon. It was fun to see that people recognize me from previous event.
Summary
In the end it was quite nice year. There were tough times but amount of good ones was much higher. Looking forward to 2024 ;D