Wed, 17 Mar 2010
Baobab
So, we recorded the performance. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the sound for sunday was not recorded properly, so while the image looks far better, having a video with no sound is hardly interesting.
But as a 'sneak preview' for the people involved, I uploaded one fragment of the Saturday recording to youtube:
There's a lot of grain in this image, courtesy of the fact that two of our three cameras just weren't very good. But beyond that, it looks quite good, I'd say...
Tue, 16 Mar 2010
Stuff
I'm running again.
No, not running in a bubulle style; I'm running for DPL. It started as a fairly last-minute decision because I would hate to see an election with only one candidate, but then two other people submitted their candidacy right after me.
As I stated in my candidacy email, I had "a concert" this weekend. Actually, there were three two-hour performances; two on saturday, one on sunday. Early on, I also suggested videotaping the performance (using the excellent dvswitch, for which I added a patch to support crossfading transitions) to the organising group within the choir, and they liked that. Apart from dvswitch, we used the theatre's own audio mixing setup (so I wouldn't have to worry about that too much) and the theatre's intercom system. I'd made some tally lights, but in the end we were not entirely able to use them, because there were some issues to be dealt with that meant I couldn't quite get them working properly.
So on saturday, I was in the theatre pretty early to get everything set up, did some explanations to the volunteers who would do the actual recording, drove my dad (who'd done the direction for the video parts) home, went home, and found my bed at around midnight.
On sunday, I got up fairly early, booted my laptop to update the live images with some fixes for some issues we'd encountered on saturday, left for the theatre fairly early again, set up the extra camera position, found out that one of the laptops was actually running at 100Mbit rather than a gigabit and that therefore the extra camera wasn't going to work, learned that one of the volunteers for sunday had done some other camera work for another performance right before that, for which he'd rented some high-end DV-capable cameras. So we broke down the two low-end set-ups, set up the high-end cameras, connected them to the laptops, recalibrated the whitebalance and the diaphragm setting, and restarted the streams. Then one laptop started failing. Since we had had to remove one camera anyway, I just replaced it. By that time, I had about 15 minutes left before sunday's performance would start, so I went to prepare for that.
After the performance had finished, I found out that something had gone wrong with the sound of sunday's performance; rather than music, we only heard crackling all the time. Luckily, the sound had also been separately recorded to a different medium, and that recording is fine, so we only need to resync the audio to the video, which should not be a problem.
All in all, I had an extremely busy weekend. The alert reader will note that I didn't mention 'food' anywhere in the above paragraphs, mostly because I hardly ever found the time to eat. But it was also extremely satisfying. We still have some postprocessing to do, but I expect I'll put some videos online once we've done that. They're truly stunning, at times.
And then yesterday I still had to spend some time writing my DPL platform, and doing some campaigning work. All in all, I didn't find my bed until approximately 4 AM... oh well.
I look forward to the election time, and hope that I will do well. I don't need to win, but I'd hope my result will be at least as good as the last time...
Update: we used the theatre's audio setup, not video setup -- oops :-)
Wed, 17 Feb 2010
Booked flights
Whee.
As usual, I'll be there the whole time, both for debcamp and debconf. In addition, since I'll be halfway there anyway, I'll be paying my niece a visit after the conference; she lives in Portland, OR.
Should make for a good holiday, I would say.
Fri, 12 Feb 2010
FOSDEM 2010...
... is over (for almost a week now), and it was a blast again.
If you went to one of the distro devrooms, I would appreciate it if you were to reply to this mail. We need feedback to improve stuff for next year.
Thanks.
In related news, I've uploaded the slides of my (unexpectedly horrendously successful) talk here
Sat, 30 Jan 2010
On MySQL and Oracle
I think Monty has well and truly lost it.
The European Commision, after careful consideration, has cleared Oracle's purchase of Sun:
The Commission's investigation showed that another open source database, PostgreSQL, is considered by many database users to be a credible alternative to MySQL and could be expected to replace to some extent the competitive force currently exerted by MySQL on the database market.
I'd go one step further, and would say that MySQL is not a credible alternative to PostgreSQL. But whatever. Hopefully, if MySQL fails, then PostgreSQL will (finally) get the attention that it deserves. I'll have a real database every time over this piece of... anyway.[1]
This is a fair argument, and to be sure it is certainly not a problem for anyone to migrate from MySQL to a MySQL fork, or (with some work) from MySQL to PostgreSQL. But Monty seems to disagree, and now tries to get Russia and China to block the merger.
What's next, Andorra?
[1] comments on this blog item in defense of MySQL will be vigorously moderated away. MySQL is a POS that falls over if data is corrupt, that corrupts its own data (most distributions call 'mysql_recover' in their initscript for a reason), and whose C API does not properly support cursors unless you want to block concurrent access until the cursor is closed (paragraph 3). Every time a customer asks me about MySQL, I vigorously recommend against it, because it's a bad idea.
Tue, 26 Jan 2010
Going, obviously
If you thought otherwise, you're crazy, but just for reference:
This year I volunteered to organize the "distributions" devroom/track, because it seemed to be going nowhere, and the people who where supposed to do so were too busy with other stuff. I'm still not very fond of the idea of mixing all distributions in one room, but at least we managed to avoid complete and utter disaster wherein nearly no talks would have been submitted.
Let's see how it goes, now.
Fri, 22 Jan 2010
Clijsters out?
Whoa.
Kim Clijsters, Belgium's number 1 female tennis player of the moment, just got booted out of the Australian Open by Nadia Petrova. Not what I'd expected—especially not with this kind of score; 6-0 6-1. To call this "unexpected" would be a severe understatement.
Seriously.
That leaves Belgium's hope with Justine Henin or Yanina Wickmayer. I say "or", because they'll next meet eachother in Melbourne. Sounds like an interesting match, indeed.
Wed, 30 Dec 2009
On cultural differences.
Christian writes about differences on the international level; how even something as simple as people's names isn't always easy, and that one has to be quite careful to avoid calling people 'Dear Verhelst', or some such, because you assumed that their first name was indeed their given name, while in their culture the last name is the given name.
Funnily, Christian advocates using capital letters to clarify which part of one's name should be considered the family name.
Sorry to disappoint you, Christian. Writing one's last name with all capitals is a French typographical convention. While it is understood in other places, it is not often used outside of France (except in organisations with a strong link to France, obviously); and it is, in fact, shouting.
It is also not actually helping any. I should, in fact, somewhere in my mailbox archive have an email reply from a South Korean guy that starts off like so:
Dear TIA,
to which I then had to explain that no, TIA is not my first name, it is an abbreviation for "Thanks In Advance".
Note the use of capitals.
Wed, 18 Nov 2009
Debian @ FOSDEM '10
As I do every year, this year too I asked for a devroom and a booth at the yearly FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
We've been granted a booth. We've not been granted a devroom.
This is not because the organizers hate Debian, but because the organizers wish to organize things slightly differently this year. As a matter of fact, they've not granted a devroom to any distribution project.
Does that mean we can't hold talks at FOSDEM? Certainly not.
Instead of a bunch of distribution devrooms, there will be a 'distribution miniconf' that the Debian distribution has been invited in. What wasn't clear from the initial mail (at least not to me), however, was that talk proposals can already be sent in.
If you want to hold a talk about a Debian-specific subject, you should subscribe to the relevant FOSDEM mailinglist, and send your proposal there. However, do note that since it will not be a Debian-specific event anymore, that while the talk may be about something related to Debian, it should target people who may be involved with other distributions. The goal is to learn from eachother.
With that out of the way, I guess the booth will gain on importance this year, since there will not be any other Debian-specific bits anymore. As such, if people would like to come up with suggestions on what to do with it, that would be greatly appreciated. These should probably go to debian-events-eu@lists.d.o.
See you at FOSDEM,
Mon, 07 Sep 2009
Tennis: Back Again!
It wasn't too long that Kim Clijsters retired from Tennis, with Justine Henin following her not too long after that. At that point, with the next best player, Kirsten Flipkens, being ranked a hundred-something, I thought it'd be a long time before we'd see Belgian women's tennis reappear. Certainly I didn't think we'd be hopeful this year already.
As such, I'm delighted to be able to say that not only is Kim Clijsters making a smashing come-back—already beating Venus Williams, ranked 3rd on the WTA lists, at the US open, and only a few months after her returning to tennis at that—but Yanina Wickmayer, ranked 50-something on the WTA lists by now, has managed to reach the last 16 players. With Kirsten besting her career record by reaching the 3rd round of the US Open (before being ousted by Kim, no less), I feel the future of Belgian Women's tennis is looking very bright indeed.
Perhaps I should think about getting that cable subscription, so I can actually watch the matches.
Tue, 25 Aug 2009
Shirts
I so want the t-shirt...
Mon, 17 Aug 2009
New toy: Nikon NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4D prime
Ever since I first borrowed such a lens from Tiago, I loved it. People have often told me that the pictures I took at Debconf8 were great; well, they only were because I borrowed that lens for half a day. I did the same thing at Debconf9, and again came up with wonderful pictures. It's not just the lens, of course, but it helps. I've been wanting to buy this thing ever since.
I can't really afford it yet, but I just didn't care anymore. So today, I went to the shop and bought the thing.
In short: I'm not regretting it.
More on my Flickr photo stream.
Thu, 06 Aug 2009
'night
Didn't feel like cooking today, so I went out to have a steak in a nearby tavern. As I had finished my meal and walked home, I saw the moon peep through the clouds, right around the corner of where the apartment is. I just had to take a picture, so I went home, grabbed my camera, put on the 18-70mm lens, and went out again.
Taking a picture with 4 seconds of exposure isn't easy, especially so if you don't have a tripod. But after six tries, I managed to come up with the above. It was a matter of sitting down, leaning one arm against the wall to the left, and not breathing. Oh, and cropping some wall away afterwards. But hey.
I'm not 100% happy with the result (the top edge of the frame should've been a little higher), but it's close.
note: this was written last night, but the commit failed because I misconfigured my server. Whatever.
Thu, 30 Jul 2009
The lying will stop
A few hours from now, this site will stop lying in its section of past events of the same type.
One might think I'd be happy about the end of lies; but given what it implies, not quite so.
I guess I can't wait until some other future site starts lying about past events.
We'll see.
Fri, 17 Jul 2009
Long Live Mass Travel (not)
I blogged a few days ago that I'd be leaving on the 14th to Cáceres, for a slated arrival on the 15th. However, as it turned out, I misread my tickets, and apparently they were valid for leaving on the 15th, arrival on the 16th.
So, my trip to DebConf was supposed to be:
- 2009-07-15 15:00 Mechelen - Brussels ~15:30
- 2009-07-15 16:13 Brussels - Paris Nord 17:36
- 2009-07-15 19:45 Paris Austerlitz - Madrid Chamartin 2009-07-16 09:10
- 2009-07-15 some time Madrid - Cáceres
Unfortunately, though, something in the neighbourhood of the Paris Nord trainstation caught fire, and the fire department required that, for safety reasons, the electricity be shut down in the Paris Nord trainstation (which is understandable). As such, my train was delayed for approximately two hours, and I missed my connecting train to Madrid. So they offered me another ticket to Irún, where I was to take the 8:25 (or some such) train to Madrid:
- 2009-07-15 15:00 Mechelen - Brussels ~15:30
- 2009-07-15 16:13 Brussels - Paris Nord 19:30
- 2009-07-15 19:50ish Paris Nord (subway) - Paris Austerlitz 20:05
- 2009-07-15 23:10 Paris Austerlitz - Irún 2009-07-16 07:32
- 2009-07-16 8:25 Irún - Madrid Chamartin
But then in Paris Austerlitz, the 23:10 train to Irún was delayed too, by about an hour. This meant that I just missed the train to Madrid as well. Additionally, I was smart enough to actually forget my Paris-Madrid ticket on the train at Irún station, so I had to go back to Habaye right across the French/Spanish border (a four minute tram ride) to fetch it. When I got back to Irún, I had 15 minutes left before the train to Pamplona:
- 2009-07-15 15:00 Mechelen - Brussels ~15:30
- 2009-07-15 16:13 Brussels - Paris Nord 19:30
- 2009-07-15 19:50ish Paris Nord - Paris Austerlitz 20:05
- 2009-07-16 00:10 Paris Austerlitz - Irún 08:30something
- 2009-07-16 09:17 Irún Colón - Hadaye 09:23
- 2009-07-16 10:03 Hadaye - Irún Colón 10:07
- 2009-07-16 10:30 Irún - Pamplona 13:...
- 2009-07-16 14:35 Pamplona - Madrid Puerta de Atocha 17:38
Originally, my arrival was to be 09:10 in Madrid Chamartin. With the train Madrid-Cáceres leaving at 16:something, I had not bothered to buy a ticket yet, instead planning to see whether a bus was leaving sooner than that (and if not, I was going to be buying a ticket in Madrid, rather than at home). But now, with all these delays, I couldn't even take that 16:something train. Goody.
Anyway, turned out that there was still a train from Puerta de Atocha at 19:09, which got me in Cáceres at 23:00. Plenty late, but at least I got here now.
Whee!
Mon, 13 Jul 2009
Debconf9
I'm a bit late in announcing this, I guess, but...
I'm leaving tomorrow evening, in fact. Still shitloads to do, but I'm sure I'll get there.
See you all there!
Wed, 10 Jun 2009
Elections: followup
My somewhat emotional message from earlier this week got some response from Dag, who, let's say, does not seem to share my ideas about flemish separatism.
First, Dag, yes, I agree that the flemish Greens could do much better. The fact that the walloon greens are, in fact, doing so much better than the flemish ones is part of why I believe I live in the wrong part of Belgium; it's not just these elections. I'm not saying I don't understand why they happened, but that doesn't make me feel better about it.
I'm also not saying that there are no issues in Belgium, nor that more autonomy for Flanders can't possibly be the solution for at least some of them. There are cases where doing something at the regional level will make more sense than doing it at the federal level.
What bothers me, however, is the fact that parties such as the N-VA seem to think that everything can be solved by more authonomy, and that an ultimate goal of chopping up this already too small country into a yet even smaller one is desirable. To me, it is not, and that's what my post tried to express.
To give just a bit of background: My mother grew up in Kuringen, a small town near Hasselt, while my father grew up in Ekeren. After they married, they went to live in the province of Antwerp (in Ekeren eventually, after a short stint in Mortsel). My father's twin brother moved to Wijgmaal near Leuven after his marriage, while my mother's oldest sister married a guy from West-Vlaanderen and moved there. As a result, I have aunts and uncles in all flemish provinces (apart from East-Flanders), which gives me a somewhat unique perspective on the differences that exist within Flanders.
People sometimes say that there are monetary flows between Flanders and Wallonia, and that therefore we should split up, since that would allow a higher budget for Flanders. I say that there are such differences between Flemish provinces, too; should we therefore boot out some of those provinces as well?
People sometimes say that there are cultural differences between Flanders and Wallonia, and that therefore there is no link between the two. I say that there are cultural differences between Flemish provinces too; should we therefore boot out some of those provinces? As a very stupid example of this one: in Limburg, it is traditional for guests to give a standing ovation to the bride and groom when they first enter the location where the dinner is going to be held. No such tradition exists anywhere else in Flanders. There are more such differences, however.
People sometimes say that Flanders and Wallonia do not speak the same language. Arguably the best argument in favor of separatism, I would still challenge you to put a person from Limburg in front of someone from West-Flanders, and have them talk to eachother. It's going to be similarly hard for them to understand eachother as it is for them to understand someone from Wallonia.
Anyway, I'll not further bore my readers with Belgian politics. But I'm still unhappy about the election's results.
Mon, 08 Jun 2009
I live in the wrong part of Belgium.
Compare this against this: the flemish greens (Groen!) are losing even more of their base (6.77%, from 7.6%), while the walloon ones (ecolo) more than double their support, to come in at an impressive third place. In Flanders, the left side of the political spectrum (Groen! and SP.A) has mainly lost voters, while in Wallonia, they are stronger than ever.
Some people (Dutch only) seem to think that being a separatist is going to solve everything, to the point of even campaigning with things like 'more autonomy in flanders will allow us to solve the current economic crisis'. Utterly delusional, of course; Flanders, more than ever, is part of a European economy. To get that economy running again, what we need to do is to coordinate with neighbouring regions. More autonomy for Flanders will not bring that, on the contrary.
Yes my fellow Dutch-languaged Belgians seem to disagree.
I live in the wrong part of Belgium.
(No, I'm not going to be moving south any time soon. But yes, I'm angry)
Note: the above is my opinion, and I'm not planning on changing my blog into a political forum. Therefore, any comments on this blog item will be moderated away into oblivion.
Wed, 06 May 2009
Star Trek
So, as a birthday present to me, I just returned from watching the new movie. Since the official release date is only in two days (but movies are traditionally released on wednesdays in Belgium, so they moved it ahead over here), and since this was in fact the first time it was shown, I guess there's not that many people who've seen it yet. So I won't disclose too many details.
I can say that it's an interesting movie. Funny, exciting, and with an unexpected ending.
Hrm. Well, no, that's not exactly true; the buildup to the ending starts pretty much halfway in the movie. However, you wouldn't expect it before seeing it, that's for sure.
Best joke in the whole movie, in my opinion: Pavel Andrejevitch "wictor, wictor" Checkov trying to authenticate to the computer.
"Access code unknown".
grin.
0x1f
Yes, exactly a year from now, I'l again be able to say I'm 20 years old. 0x20, that is.
Mon, 13 Apr 2009
Not voted
So apparently Steve got re-elected this year. Congrats, also to Luk; and to Zack, who didn't do too bad.
Careful readers may notice that, for the first time since early 2001 when I achieved Debian Developer status, I did not exercise my right to vote. This was not because I didn't care about the vote, but because if I were to vote honestly, I would've done something like '11-', which has mostly the same effect as not voting. The candidates this year were both equal in my opinion, so I just didn't bother.
1 billion seconds
... turns out to be slightly over 31 and a half years.
According to the text of my birth certificate, I was born at 13:20. So, with that, we can make the following calculation:
wouter@celtic:~$ date -d '1978-05-06 + 13 hours + 20 minutes + 1000000000 seconds' Tue Jan 12 15:06:40 CET 2010
Since I missed my 10000 days, and I was sortof unhappy about that, I guess this one is a good substitute.
Unfortunately the 12th of January is a tuesday, but I guess I can throw a party during the weekend...
Tue, 31 Mar 2009
Debconf9 by train
This friday, I had to go to a customer whose office is close to the Brussels South station. As I went back, I missed the train to Mechelen by a few minutes, and had to wait about 20 minutes (IIRC) for the next one.
So rather than sitting there, doing nothing and twiddling my thumbs, I thought I'd go to the ticketing office and ask about prices.
Since trains can only be booked about three months in advance to the actual trip, now is still too early to get a definite price. However, I asked for an estimate, and they were kind enough to get me one.
Looks like a one-way ticket from Belgium to Madrid is going to be €150ish. Of course that doesn't get me to Caceres yet, but since I'll need to get from Madrid to Caceres whether I go there by train or not, that isn't going to make a real difference.
I'm sure it's going to be cheaper if I book a flight with the likes of Ryanair or some such, of course, but €300 isn't too much of an inconvenience; and taking a train rather than a flight is much more appealing to me. So that's what I'll do.
Wed, 25 Mar 2009
93
films=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM films;
count
-------
93
(1 row)
There were several additions, including one which I actually had when I wrote the previous entry but forgot to add to the database.
One of the more recent additions is Memoirs of a Geisha, an intriguing and compelling piece about some of the more mysterious parts of Japanese culture, and how World War II affected this—wrapped in a love story.
It's unfortunate that the movie depicts Geisha as prostitutes (which they are not), but other than that, it's a pretty solid movie.
Another movie which I recently acquired is Requiem for a Dream, a somewhat harsh movie (definitely no happy ending here) about addiction in all its forms. I think this movie is a must-see for everyone, really; not only because of its message (and boy, does it have one), but also because of the way the movie is filmed; split screen, snorricam, and other inventive camera and montage techniques all add to the movie's excellence. And then there's the soundtrack. Oh boy, that sountrack.
There were more, but those were not as interesting.
Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Debconf9 by train
With Debconf9 being on the european mainland this year, a plane flight isn't necessary. Since flying in cattle class isn't my idea of 'fun', I had been planning to take the train to Caceres this year.
So, with the public announcement of debconf registration being open, I thought I'd look at train options. Short version: I think I'll be going to the train station and ask them there, rather than looking something up on the NMBS website.
Long version:
| Trajectory | Date | Departure | Arrival | Train |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mechelen -> Brussels North | 2009-07-13 | 07:02 | 07:18 | IR 3128 |
| Brussels North ->Köln Hbf | 2009-07-13 | 07:27 | 09:15 | ICE 11 |
| Köln Hbf ->Mannheim Hbf | 2009-07-13 | 09:54 | 11:24 | ICE 515 |
| Mannheim Hbf ->Basel SBB | 2009-07-13 | 11:36 | 13:47 | ICE 375 |
| Basel SBB ->Arth-Goldau | 2009-07-13 | 14:03 | 15:45 | IR 2177 |
| Arth-Goldau -> Milano Centrale | 2009-07-13 | 15:50 | 18:50 | CIS 21 |
| Milano Centrale ->Barcelone Estacion de Franca | 2009-07-13/14 | 19:40 | 09:43 | EN 11274 |
| Barcelona Estacion de Franca -> Barcelona Sants | 2009-07-14 | 09:43 | 10:28 | Transfer |
| Barcelona Sants -> Madrid-Puerta de Atocha | 2009-07-14 | 12:00 | 15:23 | AVE 3122 |
| Madrid-Puerta de Atocha | 2009-07-14 | 16:40 | 20:02 | TLG 194 |
And that's after asking to arrive 'around' noon on the 15th. Although I'd love to combine ICE ('Intercity Express', German high-speed trains), CIS ('Cisalpino', Italian high-speed trains), EN ('EuroNight', pretty much what the name says), and AVE ('Alta Velocidad España', Spanish high-speed trains) in a single trip, I think I'll pass for this particular suggestion. And that's ignoring the fact that 5 minutes for a transfer in Arth-Goldau (a place I've never heard of before, let alone been in that train station) is rather tight, and that I don't know whether I'll be able to make it in 45 minutes from one train station to another in Barcelona without actually knowing the city.
More soon.
Mon, 09 Mar 2009
Uitmuntend
Yesterday, the choir of which I've been a member for these past few years went to the provincial tournament—for the first time in its existence. For those of you unaware with what this is: the "provincial tournament" isn't a tournament in the traditional sense (which would have a winner etc); instead, you get to sing in front of an expert jury which will classify you in one of six categories; the category you're in then determines government subsidy your group gets. This is done for all nonprofessional music groups, and makes for a pretty fair way of deciding who gets what, IMO. Apart from that, it's of course also fun.
Anyway, as said this was the first time our choir went to such a "tournament", but of course we weren't alone; apart from us, there were six other choirs, two of which were also part of the Ekerse C-koren: Cantando (the semi-professional choir of our group) and Cantilene (for those between the ages of 18 and 25 (or 16 and 25 for boys).
And we did well. Cantilene (who did very well in the most recent edition of the 'Koor van het Jaar' contest) was categorized in the 'superieure afdeling' ('superior category'), with 75% in that category. Cantando did even better than that; they achieved a score of 93%, also in the superieure afdeling. This is the highest category in the whole system, so it deserves some special praise.
Caljenté, our choir, didn't quite reach that level yet; considering the fact that we've only existed about three years, however, that isn't very surprising. Yet, we did quite well; we were categorized in the 'Uitmuntendheid' category, with a score of 75% in that category. Uitmuntendheid (which would translate to something like 'greatness') is the third possible category, which puts us in the top half of the choirs of the province of Antwerp.
Quite an achievement for what is, after all, a fairly new choir. Of course we're all very happy with that—especially so our conductor, who was rather surprised when she heard the outcome...
For those interested, one of the choir members had a camera with him, and he put the four pieces we sang up on youtube: Credo, Dostoyno Yest, Wals van kwart voor middernacht, and Hodie Christus Natus Est. There're also films of the other choirse, but you'll have to look for those yourself ;-P
Thu, 05 Mar 2009
83
films=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM films;
count
-------
83
(1 row)
I made a little database the other day, with just one table, to keep track of the DVD's I own. This is just the movies; I also have a bucnh of TV-series on DVD, but I didn't include those. Yes, I guess you could say I'm a movie buff.
Two days ago that output was 80. Yesterday, I bought a box with three of Sergio Leone's movies: 'For a few dollars more', 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly', and 'A Fistful of Dynamite'. These go nicely together with 'Once upon a time in the West' that I also have, and which is one of my favourite movies of all time.
Anyway, I watched 'For a few dollars more' and 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' yesterday. 'For a few dollars more' is Leone's second movie, and while it's not a bad movie, it's also not as wonderful as 'Once upon a time in the West' is, in my opinion. I guess this has everything to do with Leone not being as experienced yet at that point in time; 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' (TGTBATU), which was his next project, shows a lot of growth, and is much more enjoyable.
Of course I already knew about TGTBATU, and had, if not the whole movie, at least seen fragments of it. The mexican standoff at the end is a classic, the buildup of tension throughout the movie is wonderful, and the acting is great. Not much more to say about that, really.
I don't know what I dislike about 'for a few dollars more'; it's not so bad that I don't want to see it again, but otoh I felt slightly disappointed when it was over. There were some parts where I thought the music could've been better, but whether a movie is good doesn't depend solely on the score...
Mon, 16 Feb 2009
Heather Dale: Live in Köln
Last june, I went to Cologne to visit a friend
I'd first met Heike at Debconf7 in Edinburg, where we had much fun playing some music together. So the next time we met, which was at FOSDEM '08, she told me that she'd been playing in a band. As in, the kind of people who make music profesionally. Which was really cool. She also told me that this band, which consists mainly of a Canadian couple, would be playing in Cologne in early june, and that perhaps it'd be nice if I could come over to watch.
Considering that'd be a nice excuse for a short holiday, I went, and had a great week in Cologne. Since Heike and the others had to practice, I only saw them in the evening; but Cologne is a great city, with interesting museums and other things, so I would spend the day sightseeing in Cologne (and Bonn on one day), and would be at the particular bar or whatever where the concert would be in the evening. I had a great time. Before going home, I bought one of their CDs, since I really liked the music.
Anyway, at this year's FOSDEM, Heike told me that there was a new CD out (actually MP3 downloads), made from a recording that was done at one of the concerts. So, today, I bought a copy.
Come to think of it, this is the first time I bought an album of a concert that I actually went to, and where I did not perform myself. After all, I don't really go to concerts all that often—unless I'll be on stage.
What's strange is that the music sounds slightly different from how I remember it. The mind can do strange things... or is it the case that a recording is not the real thing?
Probably. In any case, the music is great, so go check it out!
Sat, 14 Feb 2009
Debian @ FOSDEM 2009: Postmortem
Well, no, neither FOSDEM nor Debian are dead. But FOSDEM '09 is gone, over, and dealt with.
It was a breeze, for the most part. I'm still not very happy with the booth; that needs to be done better next year. Help and suggestions in that area are more than welcome.
One thing that more than deserves a follow-up is Lucas' post about FOSDEM:
On a more sad note, the worst talk of the week-end was without any possible doubt Frans Pop's release team bashing. Nobody is claiming that the release management of the lenny release cycle was perfect: there's always room for improvement. But given the context and the constraints, I think that they did a very good job. Frans' talk boiled down to: "The release team doesn't know what they are doing, I would have done much better because I'm so qualified."
As the person responsible for allowing Frans on the schedule in the first place, while being fully aware of the relationship between Frans and the release team (not at first, but certainly in time to kick him off if I'd have wanted to), I'd like to comment on that.
First of all, I do not agree that the last statement in the above is true. Frans showed a few stories of things that went on in the release team, and gave his opinion on what he believed went wrong. He also explicitly said, at the beginning of the talk, that none of the talk was meant personally; that he wanted to offer some constructive criticism instead. I believe he did not fail in doing that, but of course YMMV.
Secondly, and more importantly, I do not believe it is healthy for
Debian (or any project, for that matter) to reject criticism. Indeed,
nobody is claiming perfection. I do not believe any venue where talks
can be had should be a good news show
. People in a position of
power—not just the release team, but also, say, the DPL,
ftp-masters, buildd maintainers and whatnot—have received our
trust to do what they need to do to the best of their abilities. If
someone in the project would believe that I can significantly improve my
work as buildd maintainer, it is not just their right, but indeed their
duty to inform me of that fact. This is exactly what Frans was
attempting to do, and there is nothing wrong with that.
It is also not as if he's not tried reasoning with the release team first. He has made suggestions, which have gotten ignored. I feel that talking to more people about what he feels is right, to see whether they agree with him, is the next logical step to take, and that this it is exactly what Frans was attempting to do at FOSDEM.
Having said that, I agree that finishing the talk late was a very bad thing. If anything, a talk on a subject like this should have more, not less, time for discussion. So while I do not agree that his intentions were wrong, I do agree that the execution could have been better.
There, that was criticism too. Now, what's next?
Oh yes, suggestions. If people have suggestions on how to improve the Debian presence at FOSDEM next year (especially, as above, ideas for creative use of the booth would be welcome), then please send me an email, making sure the subject contains the word 'FOSDEM', so my mailfilters know what to do with it. You'll preferably do so now, while FOSDEM is still somewhat fresh in your memory; I'll take notes and use those for doing better next year.
Thanks,
Sun, 18 Jan 2009
FOSDEM Debian Devroom: annotated schedule
FOSDEM is a 2-day weekend of insanity. 218 talks this year; if you want to understand exactly how insane that is, have a look at the schedule grid. There are 19 rooms where events are held; possibly more, since I understand not every devroom has sent in its schedule yet.
Might be hard for people to make a choice that way, I guess.
Now there're supposed to be abstracts of each talk on the FOSDEM website, but reading them all can be quite tedius. In an effort to help, at least for the Debian devroom, here's the schedule for our devroom with a bit of explanation of what it's about. Note that this is mainly aimed at people not familiar with Debian; those who are should probably understand it enough by looking at the titles.
Saturday:
13:00 - 14:00: 'Outside broadcast on a budget - the DebConf video team and DVswitch'. DVswitch is the software used to create those excellent Debian videos. The best ones yet, IMO, are the ones of Debconf8. Check them out. There's nothing Debian-specific about DVswitch, except that it was written by Debian people. It's a great way to do live Internet .ogg streaming by using nothing more than DV cams, Firewire, and plain old Ethernet.
14:00 - 15:00: 'Ultimate Debian Database: datamining Debian made easy!'. UDD is a SQL database containing a shitload of data related to Debian, and which should allow easy datamining. Hence the title. This probably won't be of any interest to people who are not either a Debian Developer or a statistician, but I might be mistaken.
15:00 - 16:00: 'Introducing DDE, Debian Data Export'. This is a new project Enrico came up with, and which is related to the same subject as the previous talk. I don't know much more beyond what's in the abstract. However, given the fact that Enrico is going to be doing this talk, it can't be bad. Seriously.
16:00 - 17:00: 'The Debian status quo on the Openmoko Neo Freerunner'. Yup, Debian runs on the OpenMoko, and has done so since Debconf8, last august. This talk should give some more insight; if you have an OpenMoko, this definately is for you.
17:00 - 17:30: 'Running Debian on Inexpensive Network Storage Devices'. I've been running Debian on a Thecus N2100 for a few years now, and it's great. There are more options, however, and Martin does most of the hard work related to these devices. He's done a similar talk on the two previous FOSDEMs (go check out the videos), and this one will mainly be an update on what's going to be new in Lenny.
17:30 - 18:15: 'Grid Computing with Debian, Globus and ARC'. These guys are a group of academics from three different universities who've been doing grid computing (i.e., something like 'SETI@Home', but then somewhat different) with Debian and some other technologies. They'll be explaining how, exactly. I don't know much about this talk; it could be great, or it could fail miserably. I guess we'll see.
18:15 - 19:00: 'What does the DPL do?'. This is really firmly targetted at Debian people. If you're not in the least interested in how Debian does things, you'll be bored.
Sunday
09:15 - 10:00: 'The state of Virtualization in Debian'. If you're a Debian user interested in virtualization, this talk is for you. Henning will explain what virtualization options exist in the upcoming 'Lenny' release, and how to use them.
10:00 - 11:00: 'TDebs'. This might not be too interesting to you unless you happen to be involved in Debian infrastructure. TDebs don't exist yet, but will sometime soon; Neil will be explaining how, why, and what.
11:00 - 12:00: 'Internationalization in Debian: How to improve further?' If you're interested in i18n, this is probably for you.
12:00 - 13:00: 'The Common Debian Build System (CDBS)'. CDBS is one way to build a Debian package. This is probably only of interest to Debian people.
13:00 - 14:00: 'Release management in Debian - can we do better?'. Frans isn't a member of the release team, but has some criticism on how they function. He intends to present his arguments in order to start a discussion. This is Debian internal kitchery, really.
14:00 - 15:00: 'Lenny - the road to release'. Neil is a member of the release team, and is going to explain how we got to the current state. I hope he'll also explain why we still haven't released. I guess we'll see :-)
15:00 - 16:00: 'The long road to KDE4 in Debian'. Um, yeah. I'm not a KDE guy, but I understand some other people are. In any case, might be an interesting talk even if you don't use Debian, since I understand it will look at some of the new features in KDE (and how they relate to packaging).
16:00 - 17:00: 'Debian and Google Summer of Code 2008: wrap-up and insights'. I guess Leslie will be there. The speaker was a student working on Debian during this year's SoC, and he will present what's been accomplished.
There, that's it. Now my only hope is that there'll be many people attending. If previous editions are any indication, however, that won't be a problem.
Of course I am
In case there was any doubt:
Not that I think there was, but, well.
In related news, there've been some minor updates to the devroom schedule, especially on saturday. If you were interested in some of the saturday talks, you'd better go have a look.
Wed, 14 Jan 2009
FOSDEM Devroom schedule
I just mailed the schedule for the FOSDEM '09 Debian Devroom to the -events-eu mailinglist.
Also note that Bdale Garbee will be doing a Debian keynote talk on saturday morning.
Mon, 12 Jan 2009
Hackergochi 'meme'
Christian, you forgot my (not so) recent hackergochi redo :-)
Anyway, the picture I took of you back in Argentina isn't great hackergochi material; it cuts off part of your chin and the top of your head, which will get you a very very ugly hackergochi if you try to use it. Trust me—been there, done that. In addition, it's very likely that you like the picture because of the somewhat dark background, even if only subconsciously; by turning it into a hackergochi, you cut out that background, so the appeal of the picture gets lost somewhat.
Since you won't be at FOSDEM, I can't offer to take another picture of you. And since the picture you refer to is mostly great because of the lighting (which will no doubt be completely different, it freezing right now over here and everything) and the lens I used (which wasn't mine, but belonged to someone else; I just borrowed it for a few hours), I seriously doubt that I'll be able to get a picture that's in any way similar to the one you seem to like so much.
Having said that, taking a good hackergochi picture isn't too hard; just think of a few basic things while taking it. If you're not happy with any of the pictures you already have, then take a new one! The following might help you with that:
- You'll need a halfway decent camera. Webcams probably won't do, but your el cheapo digital camera will likely cut it.
- Good lighting. Try to use sunlight if at all possible; at any rate, try to avoid the use of a flash (except if you have one of those extremely expensive flashes that will simulate sunlight, but you probably don't).
- Turn yourself so that the sun casts some interesting shadows. Do not move at a 90-degree angle, because such long shadows are not interesting anymore; Something like 45-degree would probably be nice. At any rate, make sure the sun is not in the background of the picture, unless you want to see a black hackergochi.
- Frame the picture well. The more pixels you have for your head, the better. Make sure your head and neck fill as much as possible of the picture's frame, but do not zoom in too much—you do not want to have any part of your head and/or neck even touch the edge of the frame.
- Find a bland background. Something monochromatic is the best; think 'bluescreen'. Make sure you get a wall that is not near the colortones of human flesh.
After that, just cut out the head and add a dropshadow. Even if you're not very familiar with The Gimp, that shouldn't take you a very long time; andn The Gimp is fun enough to play with anyway. Hints: Look for 'scissors select'; the dropshadow is in 'filters' -> 'light and shadow' -> 'dropshadow'
Good luck :-)
Sun, 11 Jan 2009
FOSDEM 2009: Debian talk schedule almost ready
Lessons learned: using the phrase third, final, and slightly desperate is an excellent way to motivate people into reacting to your Call for Talks. I've even had to reject some people now, unfortunately.
Maybe next year, I'll use that phrase in my first call for talks.
Then again, maybe not.
Anyway, of course that does mean that there are no slots available anymore. If you wanted to hold a talk in the Debian devroom, you've had plenty of opportunity and will now have to wait until next year.
There are still some minor loose ends that need to be filled in (of course there are always people who will wait until the very last moment to send mails they need to send... including me), but once that's done, I'll announce the schedule on the -events-eu mailinglist, and probably here too. And if you're worried that the word 'desperate' perhaps got us some boring talks in the end, don't be; the talks that are on the schedule are, I hope, all very interesting. Watch this space!
So, things left to do, in no particular order:
- Do a schedule for talk announcers. There's enough volunteers now, I only need to assign slots.
- Come up with something cool for the booth. There's going to be T-shirts, as always, but more things are always welcome.
- Booth volunteers. Since I haven't been at the booth much during these past few FOSDEMs, and since two years ago it turned out that my 'great idea' about organising that wasn't such a great idea after all, I did the right thing and decided to delegate organising the volunteers to someone else. That someone else is Nattie; so if you want to help out at the booth, be sure to contact her.
That's it for now, I guess. Back to your regularly-scheduled flamewar.
Fri, 02 Jan 2009
Sven Luther and Debian mailinglists
A few days ago, I forwarded a mail from Sven Luther to the debian-vote and debian-project mailinglists. The reason I did so was that, apart from the last two paragraphs, the mail's tone was reasonable, polite, and did not try to rehash the old arguments. Also, and more importantly, I thought it was a useful contribution to the discussion at hand. I then received a private email in response to that forward from someone—who shall remain nameless—that expressed disapproval of this forwarding. Not because of the content (which i could understand), but because of the person whose mail I forwarded.
I am shocked beyond words that such a thing is possible. Mind you, I'm not supporting at this point that we just allow Sven back in the project; the decision to throw him out was based on solid arguments, and though I am sad that it was necessary, I do support the decision that has been made. However, I would think we would have expelled him because of the problems that resolved around his person, rather than because we didn't like his name, background, or, say, the color of his skin.
Problems can be solved. Personalities can change. Throwing a person out of the project because of interpersonal problems is one thing. Forbidding him to ever join it again is quite another.
I'm not saying we should just forget the whole thing, pretend it never happened, and move on. However, I do not think that just because the man has a history, we should ignore his useful contributions.
Although I disagree with some of the suggestions he made, I do happen to think that this particular contribution was useful, and so I forwarded it. I do disapprove of some of the things he's done, but that doesn't mean I disapprove of the person; I do believe any person deserves a minimum of respect.
Apparently some people in this project disagree with me on that, however. I'm not sure what I'll do about that, but suffice to say that I will not be part of a project that considers a person's history to be of more importance than a person's current behaviour.
Let's hope this is just the opinion of one person...
Sun, 23 Nov 2008
Music is Math
Gintautas Miliauskas blogs about a computer program that can generate something which reportedly really sounds like composer-written music; apparently it has passed a 'turing test' where people listened to music generated by this thing, and music written by a human composer.
I'm afraid, however, I'll have to disappoint him a bit, really. If we ignore the effect that music can have on the emotional state of a living being for a moment, then it's a plain and simple fact that music is pure math:
- 'An octave' is the musician's term for 'a doubling in frequency'. As many people know, a center A on a piano is tuned at 440Hz; it follows that an A one octave higher is tuned at 880Hz, and that the one which is one octave lower will be 220Hz.
- 'Chords' are based around that, too. A regular C chord, for example, contains the C, E, and G notes; and usually, a C at one octave above the first C is included, too. The frequency of a G is exactly halfway between the two C notes, and the E is about halfway between those. Most chords are built in such a manner; the sound waves of those notes will build an interference pattern that is perceived as a chord.
- A melody usually starts with the base note of the key in which the piece is written, and almost always (except during a short time in the early baroque) ends with that same base note. Note that the 'base' note is not the same thing as the "bass" note (although the base is often used in the bass).
There are many other things in music that can be expressed as mathematical rules; learning to how to compose music involves learning those rules, which is a long and tedious process.
Now I'm not saying that following those rules will necessarily lead you to an interesting piece of music; the fact that it's possible to create something ugly while still using chords etc. But since so much of it already is math, I can imagine it not being extremely hard to figure out what the other rules are (the ones a composer figures out by imself as opposed to being taught them), transferring them into a computer program, and using that to generate music.
That's not to say that such a thing is easy to do, and I'm sure it's still an impressive feat to create a computer program which can create "nice" sounding music; but I don't think this would qualify as 'artificial intelligence'. At least not any more than Deep Blue
Mon, 10 Nov 2008
Belgian Griffins - Lille Vikings: 30-0
Soccer fans will see the above score as immense, but this isn't soccer; it's American Football.
Yesterday, the Belgian National American Football team played a practice match against the Lille Vikings, and won by four touchdowns and a field goal. Unfortunately they missed one of their conversions, hence 30 points rather than 31. They actually even scored a safety in the final seconds of the match, but the officials did not count it.
Still, that's a good score, so congratulations go out to all Griffins.
The game took place on the new field of the city of Andenne, in Namur—in fact, it was part of the official opening ceremony—and will be the home field of the Andenne Bears team that plays in the LFFAB, the french-languaged American Football league of Belgium. This field is now probably the best field of its type in all of Belgium, and I imagine we will be seeing it more often from now on.
Anyway, the main reason I was there was bifold. The first was called Joris Verhelst:
Number 85, my brother. The second was my D50. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to get a good action shot of my brother. He's a Tight End, and did get his share of the game; but when he did, either I was too far away, or someone else was in the picture, or—as happened all too often yesterday, since the lighting was rather dim—the picture was too blurry to make out anything interesting.
All in all, it was a nice day, and the ending was really great:
See you next time, Griffins!
Fri, 29 Aug 2008
Debconf8, and the m68k meeting in Kiel
As I start this blog post, I'm on the train between Amersfoort and Osnabrück, on my way to Kiel, where there'll be a meeting of the m68k porters, kindly organized by m68k kernel maintainer Christian Steigies. I took the 8:40 train in Mechelen this morning, and if all goes well, I'll be arriving in Kiel at 17:22 tonight. Some train trip... but I certainly prefer that to any flight.
Anyway. The days of Debconf were very nice. Debconf is a lot of things to me. Travel. Hacking. Mao, evolving into a drinking game. Beer. Attending talks. Giving talks. Meeting people. Face-to-face non-flaming. Gesturing for an extra knife at luunch. Hangover. Whiskey. Talking to the person next to you—over IRC. Getting killed before knowing what the rules of the assassins game are. Filing bugreports in person. Pictures. Kilts. Streaming video. Not being sick, hopefully. Name badges. Flying. Sleeping. Yes, sleeping.
Most of all, though, this year, Debconf was just great. Thanks. You know who you are.
After debconf, I flew to Buenos Aires, where I slept for one night in a Youth Hostel somewhere downtown. They were affordable, but the bed wasn't great—the mattress sorely needed replacement. Since I had a day in BA, and since there were apparently not enough people on the schedule, I'd agreed to hold a talk, and came up with the idea of a 'debian secrets' talk—about Debian-specific commands, such as dpkg-divert and update-alternatives etc—so that people could learn how to use their Debian system more efficiently.
As I was sitting in Andreas' talk, who was right before me on the schedule, suddenly Dag walked up to me and said hi. This was unexpected; Dag is a fellow Belgian, who's involved with the CentOS project, and who maintains a positively huge RPM repository at his site—if you maintain an RPM-based system somewhere, you'll probably know about that site. So while I recognized him, I immediately wondered what he was doing there.
Turned out he was invited to hold a talk at the Free Software event to which Debianday was attached (and which would not start for another day or two), and that when he saw my name on the schedule, he decided to attend. Fun. He learned a thing or two from my talk, and was talking later about writing some tools for RPM-based systems that would perform the same or similar functionality implemented by some of the Debian tools I talked about. Great. We had a picture together (in front of the DebConf banner—hah) that I still should upload, and then went out for lunch together with some other CentOS guys.
The talk itself seems to have been well-received, and I'm glad about that; I only gave it because there was a need for more talks, not because I felt confident I was very knowledgeable about that subject. In fact, I did have to ask on the debconf-discuss mailinglist for some input (which I received) so that I could make sure the talk would actually be useful to people. That helped a lot, I guess.
After that, we played some mao in the lobby of the DebianDay venue. While doing so, I overheard Dag talking about CentOS, advocating it to some of the people there, which I must say felt pretty weird on a Debian event. Not that there's anything wrong with it, of course. Except that Dag was supposed to be writing his talk slides. How did that work out, Dag? ;-)
Eventually, I got in a cab to the EZE airport, and flew home. That wasn't fully without issue, but I did get there.
And now, I've been, eh, overloaded. Still have to follow up on a question a customer asked me, but I've barely been home or at the office, just enough to sleep really. Should do something about that, I guess...
Two days ago, I also managed to forget my camera somewhere. For 12 hours, I was worried, even though I had a pretty good idea of where it was; but since I'm getting quite good at taking pictures now, and since I really like doing so as well, I really didn't want to lose my camera. Fortunately, when I called this morning to the place where I thought I'd lost it, they told me it'd been found, and where to get it. In other words, it's safe, it's taken care of, Philip went to get it, and I just need to arrange to get it when I get back. Which is a relief.
Let's not be so stupid anymore in the future...
Finishing up now, a day later, and I'm at Christian's office, playing with his and my coldfire board. As it happens, it appears that Freescale has brought out a new BSP for these boards, so that's nice. Let's see whether we can get those to boot again...
Wed, 20 Aug 2008
The (almost) €429 tripod
Some interesting two days have just passed. I took the airplane from Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires on the 17th, slept one night in a hostel on a mattress that felt like stone, and went to the 'Circulo del Officieles de la Mar' (or some such, I don't know spanish) where I had to give a talk. The oral feedback I've gotten so far indicates that people did appreciate it, which is good.
I had originally planned to do some sightseeing in Buenos Aires after my talk, but me being tired and not immediately finding anyone else to go with me changed those plans. Instead, I just stayed at the C.O.M., where we played some Mao. Amongst other things.
About an hour before I left the place, Holger Levsen gave me a tripod, with the request to take it with me to Belgium, and keep it until FOSDEM. As that would also give me the use of an tripod, and being the photography hobbyist that I am, I was too happy to oblige. There was just one problem: the suitcase that contained my luggage already had a bulge from here to tokio, so adding it was a no-no.
No problem, I thought. I'll just keep it in my carry-on luggage. There's some space left there, and I certainly didn't have 5kg of carry-on luggage yet. Problem solved. The 'security' in EZE is a joke; the security officer doesn't even look at the screen while X-raying my luggage. Well done.
So I fly from EZE to MAD on the first, 11-and-a-half-hour leg of my flight. Madrid Barajas is a crazy airport, with its own private metro. Somewhere between gates R-something (where IB6844 from EZE arrived) and J40 (where the flight to BRU will depart from), we need to go through a security checkpoint. Strange, since I hadn't had to do that on my way in from BRU to EZE; but of course you have no choice, so I comply.
As I've gotten used to by now, what with the mess of cabling in my laptop bag and the other metal objects there, I get a baggage check. The security officer who goes through my very messy bag asks me to open the bag containing the tripod, so he can see it. He then promptly decides that it is a "sharp" object, and that it is "not acceptible". Here the fun begins.
Of course, trying to argue with a security guard isn't the best idea if you want to be allowed on any flight, ever, so I don't even try that. I ask him 'can I check that in, instead?' and he tells me how to go back, to the exit, and to the departures hall where I can have that little tripod get checked in. So I go there. The lady at the check-in desk tells me that she cannot check the tripod in, because the flight has already been closed and I'm too late. I tell her I'm from a connecting flight, and that I can't help that. She says she knows. So I ask her what my other options are. She tells me I could try to get on the next flight to Brussels, which is at 20:00 (rather than the 16:20 flight that I was booked on). I consider that an acceptable compromise, so ask her how to get that done, and she refers me to the ticket sales desk, some 10 meters to my left.
Unfortunately, the 20:00 flight turns out to be completely booked, and there are no other flights on the same day. The best alternative he can give me is a flight to Amsterdam at 19:20, which would cost 'a little more'. I ask him 'how much more'. He starts looking up things in his computer, and after a few minutes tells me that he cannot refund my ticket for the 16:20 flight and that a flight to amsterdam would cost me €429. At this point I get somewhat angry, and tell him that this is not acceptable. He refers me to the customer service desk right across.
The lady at the customer service desk is friendly, but firm: she cannot help me. Either I leave the tripod behind, or I pay whatever the ticket service asks me—she takes my word that it is €429, because she cannot check it, and cannot change it, either. I get more agitated, and ask to see the supervisor. She points me to a lady a little across who can 'call' the supervisor. At this point it is 15:55
As I reach that lady, apparently someone else had just asked for the same thing, and starts arguing with a guy in black uniform, who appears to be the supervisor, about the fact that he's got more than 30kg of luggage which he isn't allowed to take along with him. Dude, not a single airline will let you do that, no matter how much you argue. I let them argue for about 10 minutes, all the while nervously looking at my watch, but then I interrupt with 'please, I don't have much time left before my flight leaves'. That gets his attention. In our two-minute conversation, the guy in black backs up everything the other three people have told me, adding that '429 is reasonable; your luggage is already on the flight, and it will cost Iberia a lot of money to delay the flight and get it off'. I curse. He also seems surprised at the notion that I'm not allowed to take a tripod in my carry-on luggage.
Hmm.
Figuring I have nothing to loose, I curse one more time, and make a run for it. When I reach the security checkpoint, I ask to be allowed to skip the queue in front of it, on the grounds that I have only 15 minutes left before my flight leaves. Mind you, this is not the same security checkpoint as the one where I was rejected about an hour earlier; this is the security checkpoint between the departures hall and the secure area, whereas the other security checkpoint was one between two different terminals. I am granted my request, and quickly throw everything in the X-ray boxes. They need to go through my bag again. I help them, showing where everything conspicuous is, and opening my flute box so they know what's in there. He looks at everything, and signals that I can move on.
Hang on, I think. This can't be right.
'Okay,' I ask?
'Yes,' he says.
I run for the nearest info desk, show them my boarding pass, and tell them 'please, my flight leaves in 10 minutes, can you tell me where to go?' They are quick and efficient. Gate J40. I make a run for it again, and just make it in time. Of course, I could forget about my plans of finding a power outlet, plugging in my cell phone and calling my parents, but that's not a big deal—there's a train station at Brussels Airport.
So what have we learned? Security on airports is random, arbitrary, non-standardized, and utterly stupid. Items that pose no danger at all—plastic bottles containing more than 100ml of water, small quantities of yoghurt that are over 100grammes but not over 100ml, tripods—are not allowed, while on the other hand I've occasionally gotten through security carrying knives and tools that are clearly forbidden by the rules.
We've also learned that the rules very much depend on the particular person checking you. If you're refused for an item that is not a knife or a gun or something else similarly problematic, it may help to just find a different security checkpoint and try again. It's not as if they make any sense, anyway.
Thu, 14 Aug 2008
Knife
Yesterday, I was rummaging in my backpack, to make space for a few things I wanted to put in there and that I wanted to take along with me on the daytrip. As I was doing so, I found I'd forgotten to remove a knife from it before leaving for Argentina. Not just any knife, mind you:
Yet with this monster in my backpack, I managed to pass security in Brussels International Airport with no issues. At all. Luckily I didn't have to go through security a second time on a different airport, or I might have been in serious trouble.
By their own rules, however, they failed. Utterly.
