Happy Birthday ownCloud

Seven years ago at Camp KDE in San Diego, Frank announced a project to help people protect their privacy, building an alternative to Dropbox: ownCloud.

I was there, sharing a room with Frank at the infamous Banana Bungalow. Epic times, I can tell you that - there was lots of rum, lots of rain and loads of good conversations and making new friends.





Since then, a lot has changed. But the people who started building a self-hosted, privacy protecting alternative in 2010 and 2011 are still on it! In 2011, a first meetup was held, and the 5 participants at that meetup recently got on stage at the Nextcloud conference to recall some good memories:



Of course, today we continue the work at Nextcloud, that just yesterday published its latest bugfix- and security update. It is great to see so many people have stuck with us for all these years - just this month, the KDE sysadmins migrated their ownCloud instance to Nextcloud!

We'll keep up the good work and you're welcome to join, either if you're looking for a job or just want to code. In both cases I can promise you: working with such a motivated, dedicated, professional team is just plain amazing.

I also published a blog on our Nextcloud blog about this milestone.

EDIT: By the way - there's a meetup tonight in C-Base, B'lin, 19:00 - would be fun to drink a beer on ownCloud's birthday and talk about the future! Join! It will be at least until 10 or so, so if you can't be there before then - still come! ;-)

ramblings on the USA

This country continues to surprise me. Take the concept of lite beer, bringing the taste of this beverage to a new low. Or the fastfoodizing of practically every kind of food you can imagine. And at the same time - fruit and vegetable snack trays in the supermarkets which must be scary healthy to some. Amazing.

Van Camp KDE 2010 - Banana Bungalows, THE place to be in San Diego :D

Then the breakfast - I've had sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly every day, certainly something crazy I'm gonna keep around. However, I won't ever even contemplate having a breakfast at a restaurant around here. I tried an American breakfast 2 years ago in San Fran, and since then I know it's not for me. Way overkill, I'd consider the average breakfast here a heavy dinner... I've even skipped several dinners as the 'lunch' I had was just too much.

Van Camp KDE 2010 - get your FLU shot at the supermarket. ?!?

But of course, I really love the people here in California. The dudes & dudettes at the hostel - so relaxed, chill... Great conversations about the weirdest stuff can happen at any time, people come in with beer and other stuff - happily sharing everything. Just great.

Right now I'm behind my laptop while to my right the gang is gearing up for party mode - loud but pretty OK music, lite beer (I'm having one, gggggh) and some fruit I brought. Good times.

Pic to the beer here. Yes, I'm on facebook (finally). If you can convince me I like you feel free to invite me as your new best friend.

Friday, Frank Chani and me went on a shopping spree after a nice lunch and some walking on the beach. We took a cab, and the Somalian taxi driver asked where we were from. When he received a phone call, he suddenly put the phone in my hand, and lo and behold - the first Dutch I heard in about 2 weeks on the other side of the line... Turned out the friend of the taxi driver had been living in the Netherlands for a few years, in the kind-of rural area of Tiel to be precise. World is small, ej.

From Camp KDE 2010 - Weird sealife friday morning

Then came the shopping, which was fun (I like shopping). New levi's (darn cheap over here), a jacket, some shirts and new sunglasses (the previous pair was broken by Troy when he pretended to hug me, remember?). And I went to a Body Shop to buy something for my mom - I already brought some beer for my dad so it seemed reasonable to grab something for her too. I don't really remember how it happened, but when I stepped out I suddenly realized I just bought about 50 bucks worth of scrubby, smelly and oily stuff... Will make mommy very happy. At least I hope so, as she shouldn't count on more gifts this year.

That evening we had food at Ricks, where Marcus just happened to have dinner with his wife and kid... He stayed for a beer with us and joined us that evening at Banana bungalows.

From Camp KDE 2010 more sea stuff, this time me and Frank ate it...

Saturday morning Frank and Chani left and around 15:00 Wade suddenly appeared at Banana Bungalows, looking for me. Took the ppl downstairs a while to figure out who he was looking for - until he mentioned that I'm Dutch. Oooh, the Dutch guy, of course, he's upstairs... Somehow I left an impression. Must be my orange t-shirt, hehe.

From Camp KDE 2010 - More cute than babies...

Wade and Molly took me on a tour of San Diego - we went to a hilly spot where you could see San Diego, we saw baby seals and had dinner in an excellent and pricey place. Had an truly excellent night. "Peggy" took excellent care of us (interesting to have the waitress introduce herself to you...)

Van Camp KDE 2010 - Wade & Molly. Aren't they a cute couple?

Last day (monday) I had to stop by Macey's on my way to the airport. The cassier had forgotten to remove the electronic safety tingy from my jacket :(

And now I'm finishing this blog in the plane, flying over Texas. Will go and look out of the window now for a while, have a nice day all. Oh, and can I say I love my new noise-cancelling headphones? If only they had a "cancel out stupid girls talking while sitting behind me" knob.

Last days at Camp KDE 2010

Now everyone is gone, I'm the lone wolf here in San Diego. Still working on a couple of loose ends, including the final article (which is next on my todo, after I've done this blog and done some stuff for Qualcomm as we promised during our meeting).

I knew the esp the first to articles were long and booooring - al talks, little fun. This time I'll do better, I promise.

You can expect an epic tale of hackers risking their lifes to get to the university while the streets were flooded, only to arrive in a place threatened by two dragons and a few too-cute babies. And more flooding. If it wasn't for the good care of Jeff we'd have been without beer, snacks and wifi...

So expect an article tomorrow around this time on the dot.

Meanwhile I'm uploading my final pics to Picasa:

Camp KDE 2010

Just before Camp KDE 1

As promised (but a bit late) here's one more blog about thursday (prepare-for-conference-day1)

As I said we went to the venue for the Camp KDE conference yesterday, and below an image of the room & Jeff & the local guy organizing it (sorry, forgot his name):

Van Camp KDE 2010

Upstairs are these computer screend with a camara which tracks sound. I was making the click sound with my fingers to make it focus me instead of jeff (who was talking). Weird thing. You can let it make a picture of you and put it on the web by moving your hand into a square it projects over your image... Which I promptly did, of course. Privacy be screwed!

Van Camp KDE 2010

And below the trunk of the car after we went for shopping. Rest assured we'll take good care of all ya visitors to Camp :D

Van Camp KDE 2010

Today Frank and me were up early and went shopping. We've just returned from "Ralph's" and are being geeky. Weather is good, as the picture below probably makes clear (check the cool sunglasses)!

Van Camp KDE 2010

CampKDE SD 2

Today - was up early (duh) to work on some articles for the dot and other stuff, tried to get online but that didn't work that well. Luckily they fixed the wireless later that day, it's great now. And so is the wireless at the university, btw so our basic needs are catered to (there is also power).

It turned into a busy day - been to the university to talk to some ppl and check things out, then moved on to buying snacks and other stuff at a few shops. Now we're going out to get Frank Karlitschek at the airport and find us some food ;-)

For those coming by plane - the directions on the website about the shuttles is wrong. The one they recommend doesn't exist anymore but if you walk out of the exit doors of the airfield, cross the street, there's a booth or something where they help you. You can get any of the other shuttles, ask the lady or guy there. Costs about 25 dollars...

Will blog more later today (if I find time)...

USA-yihaaa again

Apart from the customs delaying me enough to let me miss my next flight (I had almost 3 hours transfer time, damnit!), the USA's been treating me well. The usual very nice people - somebody pointing me to the right gate, lady at the gate putting me on top of the list of ppl to get spare seats in the next flight to San Diego, and then a taxi driver showing me around. I know, there are all these horrible things when it comes to the USA, from them choosing Bush up to 4 times, the (anti) terrorism stuff, the bombing of people pretty much all around the world. Environment. Politics. Yeah yeah. But they're nice people! Really, in person, I like 'em. At least in California I do...

Beach at night

So after traveling and working in the plane on some feature guide stuff I arrived at Banana Bungalows in San Diego. Well heck. The organizing team did it again - like in Jamaica, this place is pretty much ON the beach... And it's really a surfers dream (of course I don't give a sh*t about surfing - like any sport it can't rattle me for a sec). But a nice room for a decent price, in a good spot, I can appreciate that. Looking forward to seeing the university where we'll work!

At night (ok, it felt like night but it was like 18:00) I went for a stroll, then came back to the hotel for my laptop and went out for dinner. Yes, with my lappy, I didn't expect the service to be that fast...

I went to a place which calls itself "World Famous". Seriously. Not sure if they are (well, they probably have a website...) but they made me wanna support greenpeace. Provided Greenpeace wants to protect the sharks. I do, to preserve that taste for future generations... It's bloody well worth it. Tastes a bit like a combination of fish and mamal, a very smooth, soft kind of meat. Really nice. They had a kind of sweet sauce with it, which I didn't particularly like, and I decided to keep to the seasoning.

foood!

Anyway, those visiting Camp KDE and staying at Banana bungalow - go to the beach, walk left and you'll see it at your left hand. Isn't far, but it's pretty good :D

Of course it has the usual (in the US) nice service and the beer... well, I haven't slept in 20 hours and the last time I DID sleep it was pretty short so you can imagine I can't say much about that. Especially because while I ordered a lager they gave me a white beer. Probably a good idea considering my condition.

Anywayzz. I'm off to bed, just a few things to finish and commit and it's g'night all and see ya soon!

Oh check Camp KDE 2010 for my images ;-) I'll upload them every now and then. Wireless here ain't fast but I'll try at least :D

Edit: in the morning it ain't very warm but as you see it looks OK out here ;-)

Beach at early morning ;-)

Akregator

(for camp kde coverage: there will be a talks day 1 article on the dot in like 5 minutes, and there will be another two asap - due to the dot moving to a new interface (yay!) that can mean something like sunday or even later as me and sebas travel on monday/tuesday...)

adymo writes about KDE 4.2 - excellent interview. I agree with most of his criticism (not all) but I think he is wrong on Akregator. He wrote:

Akregator is definitely useful for RSS reading, but so far it doesn't give any compelling reason to us

Now, I've always been used to the two features I'm about to show, but apparently several people here at Camp KDE weren't, and they were impressed. So I think these two deserve some mention.

Advantage nr. 1: it is a KDE application. Thus why not show the full blog using KHTML?


Hit F2 to configure this per feed:


Advantage nr. 2: it is a KDE application. Thus why not embed kate_part when viewing a text file?

*click link*


And you'll get


including proper highlighting and everything. Works for pictures (embedded gwenview), pdf's (okular FTW), movies (Dragonplayer) etc etc etc.

You might not count these things under features - after all, it is the least you'd expect from a KDE application. But using non-KDE apps now and then (firefox for example, or how about the whole win platform) shows you how much basics you miss in apps build upon other, more shallow foundations - a decent filedialog is the least of it. Funny to see how KDE apps, even with just a few developers, often easily manage to do stuff no competitor probably ever will...

Love from Jamaica ;-)

hi from jamaica

Just watched the inauguration of Obama on the beach. Interesting to see it. It is quite a bit more nationalistic and religious than I'm used too, and there was singing & music in there, but his speech was good. Now see if he can actually do something different...


Geeks are easy to spot :D

Weather here still good, we had a windy yesterday but it's more quiet now. Personally I've hit a little snag - seems like my body somehow didn't appreciate me going from dark & cold Netherlands to sunny & warm Jamaica. I've developed a mild form of sun allergy. Like having a cold during my first few days here wasn't ironic enough... Aaah well, I'm lucky in that it doesn't itch, and as long as I'm a bit careful with sun it's ok. And to be honest, I'd much rather be intolerant to sun than to food, I've never been the sunloving type anyway.

Talking about food, Mrs. Whyte from Sweet Spice deserves a medal. She is apparently the one who provides us with the lunch, and again it was very good.


The French Guy enjoying food

I've had a little sleepy-sleepy on the couch, Till is still going on and on about coding. How can he have so much to say about just some plain textfiles which happen to be compilable to applications? His voice was soothing enough to help me sleep, so whatevah.

sun, sand, rum

Jamaica still rocks.

Yesterday was great. Talks, browsing, swimming in the see, eating Jerk Chicken and drinking rum. Jerk chicken is a local food which came highly recommended by all three Jamaican guys I know here, so it had to be good. I did make the mistake of ordering it at the hotel restaurant, which resulted in a fierce discussion between the waitress and Dmitri, who considered Jerk chicken only any good if you can actually see and smell the smoke. Yeah, it's smoked in a large oil drum with lots of smoke coming out.



Anyway, so I had a chance of making up for that mistake when Dmitri told me there was actual good Jerk chicken just around the corner. We passed it on the way back to the hotel with our drinks, and I convinced Adriaan to have some with me. Us stopping there resulted in the whole group stopping there and simply following us in line to grab some Jerk chicken. I really doubt anyone felt sorry about that. That stuff was really good.

After we arrived back at the hotel a big group went to the beach, sitting on the bench just before the water, drinking rum, having a nightly swim. Imagine floating in the warm sea, looking at the stars above you. Jamaica rocks.



Work? Yeah, trying to get some work done, but I am not as productive as I'd like to. I do have a first article coming which covers the first 2 days. Hopefully that'll go online tomorrow. And I have spend some time on the release announcement and feature guide as well.

BTW it is very cool to see how much people here are thinking and talking about community building. Do check out the video's of the talks as soon as they are available...



BTW2 My previous blog featured a foto from me and a German. In a (weak) effort to ruin his day - we're talking Holger Schroder, KDE-on-Windows hacker here. Sorry, inside joke.

Jamaica rocks...

Working on the articles there were a few things I didn't put in there.

And some things I did :D

Last night I'm sure the Plasma team had their weirdest location for discussing code - ever. The Caribean sea. Now I'm all for technical talk but that went a bit too far for me, Others however, on hearing there was a discussion about plasma going on, joined them. Aaah well. I've been drinking Jamaican Rum and beer, pretty good stuff.



The morning here was interesting, as many ppl had arrived late last night. I just heard Zack appologize for being Zack ("I'm sorry, I'm Zack"), there is a guy sitting next to me with a "One Laptop Velicoraptor per child" t-shirt and I'm sure there have never been so many laptops on this beach. The food is very good. I had a Jamaican breakfeast yesterday just like today, loved it despite having no idea what I was eating. It turned out most of it grew on trees. Interesting. So everytime I saw a blank stare at a plate I just told'em to stop worrying and eat it.