Marcin Juszkiewicz

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…

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 ;)

If you are one of those developers (or even normal users) who want to buy FIC Neo1973 (GTA01 version) you can do it online via OpenMoko webshop. Two versions available (Base and Advanced), payment only via credit card, shipment via UPS.

So go and get it before they will send all available ones! Then unpack, hack, write software let OpenMoko platform grows!

During last months most popular search which made people visit my page was like “neo1973 buy” (which is nothing strange as my website is on first page for that query). Also from time to time someone asks me on IRC about it.

So how to buy Neo1973 phone? This is good question but it is hard to give proper answer. Basically few hundreds of them are already built and occupy space somewhere in China or Taiwan. Currently OpenMoko company works on making a way to sell them to developers (at least I think that this blocks selling). When phones will be ready to order proper information will be sent to announce mailing list. Until then there is no way to buy Neo1973.

I hope that this will give answer to some people — but keep in mind that I am not a part of OpenMoko team so nothing in that post is official.

UPDATE: Sean wrote on announce ML that phones will be on sale starting from 9th July 2007. Two configurations on sale:

Neo Base — everything the mobile application developer needs to enjoy the benefits of the first freed phone, the Neo 1973:

• Neo 1973 (GTA01B_v4)
• Battery
• Stylus
• Headset
• AC Charger
• Phone Pouch
• Lanyard
• SanDisk 512MB MicroSD Card
• Mini USB Connectivity Cable

Neo Advanced — everything the mobile device hacker wants to get down and dirty with the first freed phone, the Neo 1973:

• Neo 1973 (GTA01B_v4)
• Battery (2x)
• Stylus
• Headset
• AC Charger
• Phone Pouch
• Lanyard
• SanDisk 512MB MicroSD Card (2x)
• Mini USB Connectivity Cable (2x)
• USB Host Mode Cable
• Debug Flex Cable
• Debug Board v2 (JTAG and serial console)
• Ruggedized Toolbox with shoulder strap
• Guitar Pick (for opening case)
• Torx T6 screwdriver

14th August 2007 will be important day for me — I will marry Ania at 16:30 in Szczecin, Poland.

It took many days (usually weekends) to organize whole stuff — find restaurant/hotel for wedding party, choose music band, photographer, camera man… Invitations was another thing to select from many different templates but we found nice one and it was even not so expensive (included personalization).

Still need to buy suit and wedding rings and probably lot of other stuff but I feel that it is nearly done as most of things to do can be done in Poznań.

And I still have to finish webpage about our wedding (Polish only)…

From time to time there is situation when you need to use kernel sent to you by vendor which you support (or use device which they made). The problem is that often all you can get is one big tarball with “our current code” which means Linux upstream + extra patch(es). How to get something usable from it?

First step is checking version of vendor kernel (if unknown). If you are lucky then main Makefile contain informations such as “2.6.19-rc3” which is a sign what to get as clean base.

Then clean sources — simple make mrproper will remove all results of compilation so diff will have less work to do.

Third phase is taking first diff:

diff -Naurpw linux-original/ linux-vendor/ >vendor.diff

Result will be probably very big but often can be made slower by looking inside of it. Check for backup files, extra log files etc crap — here I usually use Midnight Commander due to it’s “patchfs” which allow to go inside of patch and work on “per-file” changes.

Next step can contain searching for popular kernel patchsets which can be in vendor kernel. This is hardest part as there are many of them and often only parts of them are applied.

Same rules apply to other code from vendors — toolchains, libraries and other forks.

Today I had to remove my favourite network card to fit other PCI card (microATX board has only 2 PCI slots). And then I got my old problem — desktop card MAC was same as router one so wrt54gs refused to work with it.

I tried to set wan_hwaddr, def_hwaddr NVRAM entries to other MAC but it was ignored each reboot (even after nvram save). Finally I found a way to resolve/workaround it.

As OpenWrt use simple init from BusyBox I added one script into /etc/init.d/ directory — S07-hrw-set-nvram:

nvram set wan_hwaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE
nvram set def_hwaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE
nvram set il0macaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE

So as result MAC of router card is set to my value and do not conflict with my desktop network card.

I just came back home from the Star Wars marathon. We started at 12 and decided to end after 5th episode (we became too tired).

Did you know that cutting hands using light sabers was quite popular? Each episode results in few hands cut and Anakin Skywalker/Lord Vader had worst luck — right hand cut twice (episode II during fight with Count Douku and episode VI during fight with Luke Skywalker), left hand cut in episode III (by Obi-Wan this time).

Such long marathon is exhausting but also fun — lot of discussions during some scenes, between movies etc. And it is important to have big screen — we were using video projector so the picture was big enough to watch. 5.1 sound would be also nice to have but stereo sound (like we had) can be also good.