Dublin Adventures: Dublin Pen Corner

I’ve been wanting to buy myself a new Lamy pen for quite some time. I was looking at either getting the black Safari, AL-star, or Vista. I’d looked up pen stores in Dublin…

I’ve been wanting to buy myself a new Lamy pen for quite some time. I was looking at either getting the black Safari, AL-star, or Vista. I’d looked up pen stores in Dublin before my trip and narrowed down to discovered Pen Corner. I’m happy that I didn’t go entirely broke shopping there. I got myself the black Safari. It’s a beauty to write with and two Rhodia notebooks. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Rhodia and it does handle fountain pens really well. I have a problem with hoarding stationery – especially notebooks. I’m finally using the paper I got from Tokyo last year. I’ve been using the meeting book though. It helps a lot to sit down after a meeting and write down notes and action items in pen and paper. It makes it more final for me rather than using a Google doc alone.

 

Dublin Adventures: Howth Cliff Walk

In Dublin last month, I did the Howth cliff walk. I originally intended to do the walk, but when I reached Howth, I wasn’t sure anymore. I was tired and it looked like it might rain. Turns out, I was just hungry. I stopped at a pub for…

In Dublin last month, I did the Howth cliff walk. I originally intended to do the walk, but when I reached Howth, I wasn’t sure anymore. I was tired and it looked like it might rain. Turns out, I was just hungry. I stopped at a pub for fish and chips, and cider. Then, I decided I was going to do the walk anyway. I picked up a map of the route along the way. There are four different routes: Lower Cliff Loop (easy), Tramline Loop (easy), Masts Loop (moderate), and Bog of Frogs Loop (hard). I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do just the easiest loop. I was contemplating doing the Bog of Frogs Loop as I started. The route starts off with a paved road that takes you along a sharp uphill. There are some views out to the beach along the way. Once you reach a reasonable height, there’s a parking area. This is where the hiking trail actually starts. The map in the parking lot said that the Tramline Loop would take me a good 1.5h to 2h to complete and Bog of Frogs Loop would take about 3.5h. I decided I’d take a mix of both. I wanted to go as far as the Baily lighthouse. Then, I’d trek back to the Summit and head to the railway station.

The weather was near perfect. To Dubliners, I suspect, it was just hot. The trail was crowded as well. I saw people of all ages along the way. On the trail, I watched the Dublin Bay Cruise ship making its way out of Howth. I even saw a couple of flights on their arrival path in Dublin. On my own flight into Dublin, I had seen the cliffs. The cliffs were windy, green, and the air was filled with the sound of seagulls and the waves crashing along the cliffs. I stopped to take pictures along the way, but was among the more faster walkers.

I’d picked up a local SIM earlier in the day, so I was also sending pictures of the cliff walk to friends and we had a banter about it going on. Every turn brought with it new sights. I finally reached the turn, from where I could see the lighthouse. That’s when I noticed that I’m at the highest point of the path I was currently taking. The walk down to the cliffs would be a sharp downhill. I have pictures of this, but the pictures don’t do justice. Climbing down was scarier than climbing up. If I had to do it all over again, I’d tell myself to travel with a good pair of hiking shoes rather than running shoes 🙂

After I reached the lighthouse, I went back up to the sort of “peak”. The path to the actual Summit was a little more harder than I expected. I managed to brave it through. Sadly, there are no pictures of this feat. I was busy trying not to fall. From the top, I expected to see Dublin city. It was a gorgeous day, but not clear enough for me to get a clear picture of the view. With most of the hike done, all I had to do was walk back to the railway station and finally head back to my hotel. This stretch was much easier. I should have done this hike in reverse. That would have been a much smoother experience. When I was crossing a row of houses, I met someone who lived nearby. He walked in step with me and asked me about how the hike went 🙂 He’s done the Bog of Frogs Loop, the path I did not fully take. The next time I travel, I’ll plan to allocate more time to hiking.

Howth Cliff Walk 2018

Open Source Summit Europe 2017

In September, I attended Open Source Summit Europe. I realized this week that I haven’t written about it yet. The conference is massive…

In September, I attended Open Source Summit Europe. I realized this week that I haven’t written about it yet. The conference is massive. This edition had 2187 attendees from 65 countries according to the post-event email. The great part of the big event is the chance to meet and socialize with people I don’t otherwise get to meet. The side effect is that you often have more than one session you want to attend. The other end of that is you’re about wiped out at the end of every day. Even before the social events for the day start.

I did not get to attend all the talks I wanted to. I did skip a few sessions and spend some time recovering. Here are the talks that I liked.

The keynote by Reuben Paul about security was quite fun. It’s rare you see someone show a live demo on stage and have it work well. His talk is a reminder to developers that obfuscation is not security. When you build something, think about it from the point of view of an attacker. In the world of IoT, the question is not “if” you’re compromised, it’s “when” you’re compromised.

My colleague Robert Kratky talked about modular documentation. This is one of my favorite talks from the event. I’ve taken copious notes about it. The summary of the talk is to build modular use-case oriented documentation. “How to make an omlette” rather than document that talks about knives, chopping, onions, and eggs. While references need to exist, documentation needs to solve users problems.

I don't remember what I'm passionately arguing about

The first evening, there was a CentOS-Fedora-EPEL BoF hosted by Jim, Peter and Brian. This session teased out problems in the ecosystem and how it some of our solutions aren not perfect. For instance, a package in EPEL cannot override a system package, because it’s meant for RHEL as well. A package in CentOS SIG can override system packages. This is the recommended route for non-EPEL packages into CentOS.

On the second day, I attended a half day session about CHAOSS project. It was a good introduction to metrics and what other communities do. Amar and I attended the session together. We’ve come back with a long-list of things we want to do to track the health of our community. The session was quite long, technical and educational. If I had spare cycles to contribute, that’s where I’d be spending my time. This session also gave us a chance to talk to our friends from Bitergia.

My talk was on the last day of the conference. I like my talk being on the first day because it lets me be stress free for the rest of the event. I talked about testing products where there’s a wide range of configuration options. The premise of my talk is that “Unless you can prove it with a test, a feature is assumed to not work.” My approach is that the product needs focus on solving use-cases rather than features. We need to view every feature with the lens of what problem it helps solve. This will let us narrow down configurations which work best for use-cases. This reduces the permutations of configurations which need to be tested.

Image credit: Linux Foundation OSS EU (license)

Acrophobia – The Fear of Heights

Last month, I spent a week working with my colleague, Matt, in Bridgend. While there, he took me indoor climbing at the local leisure center. It’s the most…

Last month, I spent a week working with my colleague, Matt, in Bridgend. While there, he took me indoor climbing at the local leisure center. It’s the most fun I’ve had and the scariest thing I’ve done. When climbing, I’m hooked to an inertial reel. They’re great because I’m not dependent on a human paying attention to me the whole time. They are a bit scary, because the way to get down is to lean back and let go.

Before I did any actual climbing, I got extensive training on “letting go”. There’s something about falling backwards that scared me. I think it’s my instinct from riding a bike, I felt naked without a helmet. The instructor, Nathan, had me try it with me on the ground. Phew, that was scary stuff. After a bit, I got past the fear and let go. The ground is a soft mat, so there’s a low chance of injuring myself if I did hit my head. I tried it 3 times until I was sure I was okay to let go!

The wall. The inertial reels are in red

Once I mastered that, he had me climb a bit and try it again. After a few tries, I decided I had enough control of my fears and went all the way up. Oh, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Nathan had to coach me to trust the reel and let go. After that attempt, I got a bit of confidence and tried out the different levels they had. I got the 1 nailed, then 2 and 2+. I didn’t get past the 3 though. My arms were completely fatigued and I kept slipping on the 3.

Now, I was past fear of letting go. I slipped a few times on the 3 and I was completely okay. Lesson learned, climbing isn’t about upper body strength, it’s more about technique. Just about when our time was finishing, I tried out the highest wall they had (30ft), without bothering with the grades. It was kinda special going up all that high and looking down 🙂

The smile doesn't show how exhausted I was at that point

Just before we finished, Nathan came up with an absolutely crazy thing to do. He suggested climbing to the top of the 20 ft wall, standing on the ledge, taking a few pictures, and jumping down from there. That sounded scary, but the adrenaline rush was tempting. Standing on the 20 ft ledge, I could see how high up I’d climbed. That’s when my mild acrophobia hit me. Going down meant turning back, holding on to the bar on the ceiling that’s also holding the reel, and letting go.

Looking deceptively calm

It’s one of those things. I knew exactly how it would go once I let go, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. After some deep breaths and pep talk from Nathan, I did let go. The adrenaline rush was great!

If I get the time, I’m going to be hunting down places to do indoor climbing in Delhi and give it a shot. After all, how hard can it be? 😉

In Tanzania Again

It’s been 6 months since I finished the last training in Tanzania In a way, it’s great to be back…

It’s been 6 months since I finished the last training in Tanzania. In a way, it’s great to be back. It’s great to hear that people have attended your training and have applied that in practice. Before I flew in, my briefing said that they were ready to launch an open portal. Truly an exciting time to be assisting them with a final push.

I flew on Qatar Airways this time. I’m not too fond of Qatar Airways since the last time I flew via Doha airport, I didn’t like the experience entirely. It felt very crowded and I suspect that it was indeed very crowded. I had better hope this time, I was flying into the new Hamad International Airport. I managed to get some sleep the previous night, so I wasn’t completely groggy when I arrived at the airport at 1 am.

Chocolate Bar

I tried something new this time, flying only with check-in luggage! Frequent fliers are probably rolling their eyes right now. I carry very little check-in luggage anyway and waiting for it didn’t make sense. The check-in process was quick and I was through immigration and security in no-time. The flight to Doha was a pleasant surprise. It was one the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner . I found them quite good, though, I’m not fond of luggage racks on these. You push the rack up to lock it. I feel like these are more susceptible to falling luggage that the ones were you pull the rack down. The entertainment system at my seat didn’t work. Or rather, the remote didn’t. That was a let down after getting a fairly new aircraft.

In Delhi, I’d bought a copy of a new Robin Cook book called Cell. As always, it was an excellent read. I have mixed feelings about his writing. He tends to reveal too much too soon and then the reader tends to spend some time watching other people catching up with the plot. On the other hand, after that point, it’s entirely unpredictable and exciting! This one dealt with a smartphone app that would be your doctor.

At Doha Airport, I had just enough time to run to my next gate. In my hurry, I misplaced my glasses at security. I arrived at the gate for my flight to Dar es Salaam just as it opened. With my rotten luck, the entertainment system on my second flight completely failed as well. I figured I might as well read the book, but then I finished the book too soon and there was still plenty of time left over. I found a seat next to a kid where I watched Avengers (Don’t judge me).

There was a couple on a flight booked on a Precision Air flight to Kilimanjaro. It’s not their fault, but the airline canceled their original flight and scheduled them on a flight that took off about 20 minutes after we touched down. They tried to get the air hostess to give them the immigration forms before landing, but the airline didn’t have them on board. So, they were allowed to disembark with the business class passengers.

They didn’t have a visa, so they had to stand in line for that. I had time to fill up the forms and finish immigration while they waited. They tried to talk to a lady from security, but I’m not sure how much good it did. I feel sorry for them while also being a bit angry. They were a bit pushy. It’s not like they were going there to save the world. They had a safari booked. I figured out the stress-free nature of travel without checked in bags as I finished immigration. It realized I didn’t have to wait, I just walked out.

I introduced myself to the hotel folks who’d take me to my hotel and they managed to get me on a taxi that was just about to leave with another lady. She was from The Netherlands and working on horticulture. The taxi ride was about 40 minutes long thanks to terrible traffic, so we talked about our work and travel.

View out my room

I’m on the exact same floor as I stayed in last time. Just a room further down the corridor.