Netzflocken

Having time to write a post here - doesn’t that sound very suspicious?

But this happens - more or less only - due to being “stranded” in the United States.

I was invited to do a talk about Mirabeau and Coherence at this years CELF Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco.

Following that I had the pleasure to attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which was co-located with the ELC.

Very remarkable talks in both conferences, met a lot of interesting people and gained quite some new insights.

And being already here I thought of adding one more weekend to do some sight-seeing, exploring the city, watch the annual Northern California Cherry Blossom festival, visiting Muir Woods, which I last had the chance some six years ago.

And along came Eyjafjallajökull.

Not only for me, pretty much all the flights of the European attendees of the conferences have been canceled. As mine was scheduled for todays afternoon I had some hope that it might be just in time for the European air space getting opened up again, but failed. Lufthansa seems to operate as of now at least partially from Frankfurt again, but Star Alliance partner United Airlines decided to keep their planes on ground.

After some first evil tidings - next possible flight to Europe would be 25th, no, 26th, no, hang on, not before 27th - Nadine, event manager of the Embedded Linux Conference - who, together with her team, did a really tremendous job in organizing the conference, managed to get me rerouted on a flight for Thursday 22nd.

Nadine, thank you so much!

Now I unintentionally will get the chance to see some of the United States airports - leaving San Francisco in the early morning, going to Denver, from there to Washington, changing plane there for the leg over the ocean, arriving in Zürich on Friday morning and, one last hop, should be in Frankfurt around noon.

Probably more endurance testing than travel, but never mind, it will get me home. And, not to be sneezed at, within my supply of insulin and blood sugar checks.

With that option available I decided to stay in my very comfortable room in the Kabuki in Japantown, use the wifi here to do some work and maybe even find time to check in some long outstanding Coherence patches, and enjoy some more days of Japanese food and culture.

That year was crammed - two Coherence sprints, GCDS, particication at Les Trophées du Libre, two talks at FOSDEM 2010, school enrolment of our youngest daughter - the last of four enrolments, now we can start thinking about the first confirmation, being in the parents’ association of two schools, returning to the classroom myself for the boat driver permit - just to name a few.

Not mentioning the things needed to make a living. ;-)

Nevertheless it was a lot of fun and thanks to everybody who had a part in that!
For “the finale” we decided this year to throw a small party to see my birthday in, which was for a small minority of our guests a bit challenging. [Not telling any names :-P]

The challenge on my side was the main-course - filet de bœuf wrapped upon filet de veau, based on a recipe by the great Johann Lafer. Nearly five kg of high-class meat, a beaf olive like a lindworm.

As you can see it worked out really well.

Curious now what this year will bring.

I was sailing around Sardinia a few days ago and bought as a bring along some Sardinian sweets - Sorrisi di Sardegna di Mirto, Mandorlini (Pasta di Mandorle) and Bucconettes Mirto.

Besides these handmade goodies being extremely delicious - unwrapping them is already an experience.

Last weekend we had some friends over at our place for a little barbecue. Among the “ordinary” steaks we prepared: chicken and rocket bruschettas salad of prawns, peas, celery and mint king prawn spits, marinaded with chili and ginger brown mushrooms and porcini, chopped spring onions, thyme and cream in preserving jars grilled asparagus (green) and spring onions, with a tomato, mozzarella, olive oil and honey dressing punch with strawberries, oranges, tonic water and Aperol

Just some stimuli for your next BBQ. ;-)

FOSDEM was great!

A much larger embedded dev-room, free bus-transportation from the venue to the train station and even a cloak-room!
Thanks to all the people there for making that event possible.

For someone living in one of Germany’s wine-areas attending the FOSDEM Beer Event is quite a challenge.
I read that this year the bill was a new record, exceeding 10.000,- €.

And it was time for enjoying some other Belgian specialties too - at the best chippy, at least the best that was open on early Saturday morning and in walking distance from the Delirium Café.

Larger View

I had switched from car to plane as I feared a bit the announced snow in Brussels and did not wanted to end in some other 100km traffic-jam driving home on Sunday evening, but not one snow-flake showed up over the weekend.

But that gave Lufthansa the opportunity to serve me another culinary extravaganza on my flights to and from Brussels.

PS: Remind myself next year that the Godiva store near the venue is closed on Sundays.
PPS: Our spontaneous Coherence meeting was a big success too, but more on that in separate post.

In our little sushi sequence we learn today - with the help of a very illustrative video - the proper way to eat sushi in Japan.

Enjoy, and may you always have ohtoro on your fresh sterilized geta.

It’s a hard task to stay on top - at this very moment only on the second place - the Sushi Eating HOWTO.

Eugene Ciurana does a great job with that HOWTO, that tries to teach us non-Japanese people how to eat sushi. It is a worthwhile reading with much more than just the usual sketchy babbling, with a lot of respect for the sushi history and the itamaes, and with gems like the walmartdotcomaki.

Itadakimasu Yuji-san - thx and please keep that great work going!

via Jan:

MoMa’s "Sushi Time" platter

More than 30cm diameter of bone china is one perfect place to enjoy Sushi. By oneself or for two, as there are two grooves for the chopsticks in the platter. In either case there is plenty of space to arrange your favoured Sushi or Sashimi at the bank of a Shoku lake, and as you can see Gari and Wasabi make a nice visual accompaniment too.

Maybe one day we have a blogger meeting in NY, but as a start we could just share the shipping.