Aigarius Blog

As soon as my laptop came back from repairs, I started to feel better - being back with 1920×1200 resolution is great! NVidia is much more stable than ATi and Intel wireless is just great!

And then last weekend I was in Berlin for the FFII board meeting and used the opportunity to see the city with my girlfriend. I must say that there is a lot of interesting things to see in Berlin.The things I would recommend everyone are: go to the Zoo (5-7 hours of superb fun), then take bus 100 to Alexander Platz (driving by all the main landmarks), go up on the TV tower, then come down and sometime late in the night go to ‘Weekend’ dance club.

(Continued)

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With the cost of plane tickets approaching 2000 USD it is rather hard to sell me going to the Debconf 8 as that can be approximated as 3-4 months of my income. I did apply for travel sponsorship, but due to some kind of brainfart I misread “Amount I am unable to fund myself” as “Amount I am able to fund myself” and thus asked for far less money than I actually need. Therefore, after the Debconf team strictly stated that the requested amount can not be changed at this point, it has become clear that I cann’t come to Debconf 8.

/sadpanda

I would still love to come if there was sponsorship money to cover my fare and even suggested putting me to the end of the sponsorship priority list, but apparently that is not happening. Have fun, and see you all in Spain in 2009.

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I have decided to do something special for my 25th birthday this year so I have made plans to visit Frankfurt from 23rd to 25th of March with my girlfriend. Her birthday is just a day before mine.

I have read the Wikitravel article and am looking forward to seeing the city. Is there anything special that I should look up? I am interested in trying some German traditional food while I am there, any suggestions on food to try and places to get it from? And finally, are there any Debian developers that would care to meet for a drink and maybe point us to some places only locals know?

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I can’t believe I have not bogged about this before. With all that terrorism threat bullshit, wouldn’t it be nice if there was an airline that would declare itself to be ‘terrorist friendly’ - i.e. all passangers are welcome to come on board with just a simple identity check, no security check, no baggage security check, no delays. You can arrive 10 minutes before departure and just fly away. Wouldn’t that be nice?

A budget company could do that to spare on airport security fees and high-end airline could do it just to spare your time. All flights could be marked private charter for legal reasons.

Can we please return to a world when I can take a bottle of mineral water and a nail clipper on board with me?

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My blog server has been down ever since I left off to Edinburgh for the 7th Debian conference. Since then I have been busy taking photos of everything and everyone here AND I am not alone in that. Enjoy!

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Debconf is coming. And I fully agree with Amaya regarding the much needed battery recharge that brings to people (and me in particular.
And to the contrary to the information two posts ago, thanks to getting an unexpected side income from the nice folks of FFII, I did manage to buy myself a Canon 400D instead of my old camera that was stolen from me recently. Unfortunately, I do not earn well enough to also buy a good lens, so I will have to document this Debconf with the kit lens :P. If you want something better, then I beg you to lend me some better Canon (EF or EF-S) lens for the time of the Debconf. Canon EF 17-40 f/4 L (like the one that I took the last years group photos) would really be great!
This year I am thinking of doing both the group photo and the mugshots. Any other ideas for the paparazzi?

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You know that you haven’t blogged in a while, when you realize that you have changed your address twice since the last post.

Changes in my life since last post:
* finished my Masters paper and submitted it, waiting for viva now :S
* moved back to Latvia, lived for some time with parents (and no Internet) and now moved into an apartment in Riga - great place
* working on projects to make living
* got my camera stolen at some point during my move from UK to Latvia, and my finances will not allow to replace it this year ;(
* another person is contributing heavily to SBackup and is single-handedly doing the bulk of the bug fixing for a new stable release of SBackup !
* another patent treat is looming (EPLA - a united patent court under EPO), but this time we are asked for our opinion by our government - nice change of pace there

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For the last couple weeks I have been concentrating on things related to my studies and on some events related to it. I posted pictures from these events on my Flickr photostream: a colleague from the institute finished his PhD and we had a goodbye dinner, my supervisor invited me to his son’s first birthday party. Also my friends Bunja and lastguru came to UK. With one I took photos of a night playground and squirrels and with other one some photos of the Eye and Babbage’s brain.

However the main theme of this post is the Game On! exhibition in the London’s Science Museum. They have the best games playable there starting with the classic Pong, Lara Croft, Bomberman, Mortal Combat and up to Halo 2 on XBox 360. Even my non-gamer friend lastguru found a thing to drool upon - his childhood obsession: Elite.

Update: Almost forgot to mention - the exhibition is great: it shows the evolution of gaming and allows to experience the most important games again and it also brings a huge amount of joy to anyone who has ever played these games before - the return to childhood is imminent. I never expected that something as simple as the original Pong can be so exciting in a good company. Very recommended!

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The I18N meeting in Extremadura is almost over - tomorrow everyone is leaving to the airport at different times. So, enjoy the group photo of the meeting. And if you click the photo, that will bring you to a Frickr photoset that contains all the other good photos that I took at this meeting. Enjoy!

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Ryanair finally sued the UK government for 3 million pounds for the air traffic disruptions, just like I called it!
Now they only need to team up with British Airways (who demand their money from goverment’s BAA) and all the other affected airlines, so that the court doesn’t just dismiss it right away. Also it would be nice if Ryanair rallied the people to halp them - demonstration in front of the courthouse and bumper stickers saying “Keep Britain Flying!” and “Keep US Flying!” (along with t-shirts, umbrellas and sports style water bottles) would also help to rally public support.

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