November 26, 2005
Current Favourite Album!
Fantastic, particularly disc 2 - a mix between melodic trance, techno and Paul van Dyk's own style of dance music :)
Technorati Tags: Dance, Music, Paul van Dyk, Trance
November 25, 2005
Snow in Frankfurt
Last night snow fell over Frankfurt, leaving a blanket of white fluffy powder up to 10cm think in some places. Usually Frankfurt is one of the last places to get snow since it's a city in the center of Germany and generally a few degrees warmer than other parts of the country.
Not this winter though - some years we were lucky to get snow before Christmas, looks like this one will be a cold and snowy one! Great for skiing :)
November 23, 2005
Specifying which gcc version to use during a build
Just came across this little golden tip lying somewhere in the Debian amd64 mailing list.
Especially useful when you have multiple versions of GCC installed and you'd like to select a certain one (that isn't the default /usr/bin/gcc) when building a software package due to compatibility reasons, etc.
November 22, 2005
Running VMware on unsupported Linux kernels
If you're trying to run VMware on an unsupported Linux kernel (or derivative distribution), check out the the vmware-any-any patch and information.
I was just able to use it to get VMware up and running on my Debian system with kernel 2.6.14, which normally results in compilation errors during module build/configuration.
November 17, 2005
LinuxWorldExpo 2005 in Frankfurt
Yesterday Torsten and I attended the LinuxWorldExpo 2005, which was held in Frankfurt at the trade fair grounds in the city.
Wednesday was when all of the english speaking keynotes were held so I thought it would be good to head down and hear what the speakers had to say.
The three speakers presentations we attended were:
* Bdale Garbee - Reaping the benefits of the community development model
* Jon "maddog" Hall - Free and Open Source: The next twenty years
* Havoc Pennington - The future of Linux Architecture
I enjoyed all Jon's presentation the most, mainly due to his nature of presenting with anecdotes, side stories and quotes from moments in the computer history. His presentation also sparked a lot of thought, and was along similar lines to when I heard Eric Raymond speak at LinuxTag in Stuttgart a few years back.
It's interesting to see that Linux is still growing in commercial use today, many of the survey's showed that Linux is still being adopted by companies, replacing closed and/or proprietary systems creating an environment of mixed machines and operating systems. Now's more of a time than ever for interoperable systems.
Afterwards we got to speak with Bdale for a while which was great, as a Debian package maintainer it was great to meet a DPL.
Surprisingly Microsoft was also present in the exhibition hall. They were mostly advertising Windows and .NET which was no surprise, however there was some sign advertising interoperability services for Unix.
Most of the major Linux distributions were present including Debian, Gentoo, SuSE, Redhat, Ubuntu, etc, along with some major free software groups such as Samba, Asterisk, FSF, etc, as well.
November 16, 2005
November 15, 2005
Evening at Adler online
Drunkenbatman has been able to make the "Evening at Adler" available online as a video and audio download.
"Evening at Adler" was a forum where 10 of the top Mac developers sat down in Chicago and talked about all different kinds of subjects surrounding software development, the Mac platform, etc.
The entire video goes for almost 2.5 hours so there's quite a bit of content there, and it's also H264 encoded which is cool for bandwidth (~530mb download, not bad considering it's 2.5 hours long).
I'm only part way through it but I can tell already it's definitely worth the watch. It's also great to see the faces behind some of the big name Mac applications and companies out there like NetNewsWire, Quicksilver, Rogue Amoeba, Delicious Library, etc.
Everything is over at DrunkenBlog
November 13, 2005
Surfing at the English Gardens!
In Munich I was surprised to that there's even a strong surfing community.
At the English Gardens there's a fast flowing water stream that runs under a certain bridge crossing Prinzregentinstrasse, and directly afterwards forms a standing wave due to the (modified) shape of the rivers surface.
The wave stands around 4-5 feet high and is around 5-6 meters in width. When I was there, 4 surfers took it in turns to ride the wave for about 3-4 minutes each.
The water flows quite fast so the surfers had to spend a lot of time pushing forward on their boards to prevent them from being washed over the back of the wave.
Also, since the water flows quite fast there's no paddling - the surfers jump right on to the wave from the sides of the river standing up.
The water (straight from the alps) must have been quite cold, as the guys had quite think wetsuits, booties and gloves on, although I did see one of the surfers go at it barefoot (wow!).
Well, I think if I lived in Munich I'd be keen to give it a go - the dynamics must be a bit different than surfing a real wave in the ocean, but it still must be a lot of fun, and a great way to keep in surfing form inbetween trips back to Australia!
Munich!
Just returned from a visit to Munich for a two day seminar in the city. Had a wonderful time, Munich is a really beautiful city, with a very proud Bavarian Heritage. I found the people to be very friendly and helpful, and also found a vibrant expat community there as well.
Had some fantastic German Food (eg. Schnitzels, Haxen, Hendl, Ente, Weiss wurst (those white sausages they eat for breakfast, etc - awesome!)), and Beer (Loewenbraeu, Augustiner, Prinz-Leopold, and many more).
Looking forward to the next trip a bit later in December when the Christmas markets will be out and the streets covered in snow!