Posted by George Wright
Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:10:00 GMT
It’s been a while since I last wrote anything. The main reason for this is that my server decided to throw a hissy fit back in November or so. We took the opportunity to replace the disk drives at the same time, and now one of the new disks is playing up. But after failing the disk in the RAID it all seems to be working fine, and I’ve finally had time to migrate my data over…
The past few months has been great; I’ve been playing FAR too much Wii (especially the New Super Mario Bros game, that’s addictive); doing lots of work at RIM; moving office so I’m no longer a 10 minute walk from work (but rather a 10 minute subway journey, bah) amongst countless other things including my health finally getting back on track after 5 months of coughing/being ill/etc. Hurrah!
So 2010. I saw 2009 off in style by flying down to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in Washington DC. I even met up with Roey Katz (a KDE groupie) whilst I was there! Hoping to fly to the US a lot more now that I live next door - next stop, New York City!
But what does the next year hold in store for me? Well, I’ll be working on honing my shooting skills (I’m trying to get onto a national team at the moment, so we’ll see how that goes). Work will, as ever, play an important role and we’re doing some very cool stuff at the moment involving open source and other gubbins. I will (hopefully) be flying around the world a lot and trying to live life a bit fuller - on the itinerary for this year are (in no particular order): Bologna, London, Vancouver, Fort Collins, New York, Washington DC, Ottawa and perhaps San Francisco. Whew! Going to be a busy year!
Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t have enough time, therefore, to be able to attend KDE conferences anymore, or at least not for the full time - I may be able to whistle by for a weekend. I’m simply using up all my spare time either shooting or randomly globetrotting! I will, however, try to keep in touch with as many KDEers through the intertubes (Troy - I’m looking at you), and continue to host random KDE gatherings in my apartment (anyone is welcome, really! except maybe Troy). I’ve now hosted… three random gatherings I think. Go KDE Toronto!
So in that vein, 4.4 release party anyone? I think Troy wants to host one in the fake London, but I think the KDE Toronto massive are pushing for one closer to the second centre of the universe (the first being the Real London, or wherever I am). On a side note, I’m far too old and set in my ways to start using this newfangled “KDE SC” terminology, so I will continue to use the old style here, not least because it makes it more interesting for you to guess which of the 80 possible meanings of “KDE” I’m referring to.
So for me at least, 2010 is looking like a hopeful year, and I hope it is for a lot of you as well! Have a good one!
Posted in Misc | 7 comments
Posted by George Wright
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:19:00 GMT
Well I guess it’s been a pretty interesting three months in Canada so far.
I’ve settled down in my new home; the company I worked for was bought out by RIM; I’ve done no open source work; I hosted Troy over the weekend when he came to Toronto for the Ontario Linux Fest; I’ve played a lot of Super Mario World on my new Wii; I’ve seen Niagara Falls and finally I’ve been bloody ill for the past 11 weeks which culminated in 3 trips to the doctor, two courses of antibiotics and almost every weekend indoors sleeping.
What a great way to start life in a new country! Thankfully it looks like I’m finally on the mend and I’m feeling better than I have done ever since arriving in Toronto. I reckon it’ll be another week or two before I’m healthy again - just in time for Hallowe’en!
Maybe I’ll be able to go out on the bike at last.
Posted in Misc | 16 comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:03:00 GMT
Three weeks ago I moved to Toronto to start my new job at Torch Mobile, and so far it’s been an amazing experience.
With the exception of the in-flight entertainment being broken for the first 3 hours of the flight, the move went fairly smoothly, and I managed to get all my sporting kit (bike, target rifle, etc) over without any trouble - I’m surprised at how easy the whole process was.
So far the job’s been a steep learning curve; it’s been a while since I’ve done much coding, so I’m a little rusty, but it’s nice to get back behind a keyboard and work with the guys I’ve known for half my life. At the moment I’m just doing various bits of random WebKit work so nothing too exciting.
Another KDE person who’s just moved here is Jakob Petsovits who is a great guy if a little crazy (but aren’t we all!). Other KDE people in Toronto who I’ve met so far are Eugene Trounev and Shawn Starr, not to forget George Staikos. We held an impromptu KDE 4.3 release party at my place, but it ended up just being a pizza + wii party which didn’t turn out so bad. Mario Kart is such an addictive game…
Last week I shot in the Ontario Rifle Association’s annual provincial championships meeting, and somehow managed to come off in third place (out of 80+) in the main competition I entered - here’s hoping I can continue shooting this straight! All the shooters here have been wonderfully helpful and I can’t thank them enough for all the effort they expended in making sure I was able to shoot that meeting. One guy (an Olympic/Commonwealth games shooter and all-round legend) even made all my ammo for me for the meeting, and that stuff shot like a laser beam.. If it didn’t go in the middle, it was my fault!
As for now, I’m quite ill with a really, really bad cough (no, Jakob - it’s not swine ‘flu) so I’ve spent most of today sleeping to try and fight it off (it’s been 3 weeks now.. hurry up and go) so that next weekend I can do some more sightseeing with Jakob, not to mention getting back into the saddle and seeing Ontario from my bike!
Speaking of new beginnings, my parents have decided to move back to Australia and are now leaving the UK; what with me here in Toronto, my parents in Sydney and my brother in Beijing it seems we’re a truly international family (again)!
Posted in KDE, Computing, Misc | 16 comments
Posted by George Wright
Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:05:00 GMT
Today I accepted a job offer from Torch Mobile as a software developer in Toronto working alongside a few other KDE developers on WebKit/Qt.
So, pending my visa application, I’ll be relocating to Toronto in August. I can’t wait - here’s to pastures new!
Posted in Computing, Misc | 40 comments
Posted by George Wright
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:48:00 GMT
I have now joined Twitter! Final year’s going to be a laugh…
Follow me!
Posted in Computing, Misc | 2 comments
Posted by George Wright
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:33:00 GMT
Now my college can wake up to this in the morning:
Dhoom Clock
Posted in Cambridge, Misc | 4 comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:28:00 GMT
So I’ve been working at Cendio for a week now; I must say it’s been one of the best times of my life.
Sweden’s a great place, especially Linköping; it’s clean, cycletastic and everyone is so friendly here. Our office is a fantastic place - it’s spacious, cosy, has a hot chocolate machine (!!!) and my colleagues are awesome! I especially like that I get my own office as well.
Over the evenings and weekend I’ve been on the bike a fair bit, having nearly been run over by several buses (silly traffic driving on the wrong side…) and tomorrow I’m going with Inge Wallin (of KDE fame) on some boat thing on the canal which should be great fun.
The cycle routes around here take a bit of getting used to; in the UK I’m quite happy to cycle alongside cars on dual carriageways and take on large roundabouts without any trouble, but with the combination of being on the other side of the road, and not knowing the customs on the road here, I’ve been sticking to country lanes and cycle paths for the time being. I’ve had no crashes so far this year (as opposed to six last year, including 3 pretty major ones…) and I intend to keep it that way!
I shall be sorry to leave on the 15th July.
Posted in Computing, Misc | no comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:48:00 GMT
Today’s been a somewhat hectic day for me; after getting up at 0500 to get to Heathrow by 0700, I managed to get on my 1030 flight to Arlanda and arrive in Stockholm just after 1400. After hopping on a train to Linköping, I was greeted by my contact at Cendio, Peter Åstrand, who has been exceptionally helpful and accommodating with my moving in.
I’m staying in university accommodation which is rather nice; it’s a bit Ikea-y, but not too shabby. There was a particularly bad dead fly infestation in my room but a dustpan and brush seems to have taken care of most of it, and I may have to vacuum around when I can get hold of one. The luxury of an en-suite is always welcome, and I have a 10Mbit/s internet connection which is definitely most welcome!
My room
As for my job out here, I’ll be working on the next release of ThinLinc, Cendio’s flagship remote desktop product. At first I believe I’m mainly doing testing of the upcoming release to ensure it meets quality standards, but Peter is keen for me to dig into the coding side soon.
In my spare time, I decided to bring my bike over and I’ll hopefully spend most of my evenings racing around the roads on it. It really is a delightful little machine. When I’m not on the bike I hope to get some work done on nxcl/qtnx as well.
The bike
Posted in Computing, Misc | 14 comments
Posted by George Wright
Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:17:00 GMT
As I’ve heard so many great things about zsh I decided to give it a spin and I must say that I’m quite impressed on the whole. I especially like the less intrusive way it displays possible tab completion values, as well as the vi keybindings that come with it (although I’ve had to bind a few keys which I keep hitting out of habit, such as end/home and delete). The configuration system it brings up on first load is really spiffy as well, and I like the fact that there’s an option to append command history to the log file instead of replacing it - extremely useful given that I tend to have ~10 terminals open at any one time.
I also finally got round to building a more up to date copy of KDE 4 and I’m really impressed with the progress they’re making; it really is astounding how quickly it’s all coming together. I’m currently in the process of installing an SVN build on my X40 so that I can run it full time on there - I think it’s finally hit the stage where I can run it full time.
Posted in KDE, Misc | 5 comments
Posted by George Wright
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:19:00 GMT
With the recent announcement of the Google Android mobile phone and the subsequent release of their SDK, I couldn’t resist downloading it and giving it a play.
First thoughts are very positive; the user interface is clean, uncluttered and I think it makes good use of the screen space. One of my favourite gems is the iPhone-like scroll bar mechanism, which only appear when you’re actually scrolling and disappear, thus not wasting a valuable column of pixels on needless information!
As anticipated, there are still a few rough edges, but as it’s still very early on this isn’t surprising. Nonetheless, I’m very impressed with their SDK (which is only a 55MB download!) and I hope to have a look at the actual APIs soon. Hopefully some day I’ll be able to put this on the HTC Universal!
In unrelated news, a Google Summer of Code 2007 shirt arrived for me at home today; thanks Google!
Posted in Computing, Misc | 3 comments
