Well, well, well. Hello again everyone, apologies for missing out on a Rewind last week but I did post 3 audio diaries this week, so I thought it was a bit redundant. It’s been a hell of a week, I know I say that every time, but I’ve been at LinuxCon 2009 in Portland hanging out with people I’d only previously read about. It was also my first time in the States. It took me 29 years but I finally made it over the water. So many interesting cultural differences and things to see, it was all a bit of a blur. Especially when combined with the jet lag. I arrived back yesterday morning but missed a night’s sleep because of the plane and the time difference. I slept 16hrs last night and I still feel like I could drop off any minute. It’ll take a few days adjustment I expect. So with a bucket load of stories to tell (far too many to fit in actually), here’s my week:

Jim Zemlin's Keynote

On Monday it was the first day of LinuxCon and I cramped into the main room with everyone to see Jim Zemlin’s opening keynote. It was called “Linux By Numbers” and basically involved Jim showing a number on the screen, followed by an explanation of what it meant. The thing that stuck out in my mind was over 10,000 lines of code added to the Linux kernel every week. But perhaps more importantly, over 5000 lines removed. That’s a hell of a turnover and shows just how many people are working on the Linux kernel worldwide. It was mind numbing to be in a room with so many of the most famous people in the Linux world. I was sat with Bradley and Karen from the Software Freedom Law Center, which was amazing enough in itself. They’re both really great people and I owe them a lot, having someone like that introduce you to people really makes a difference. For example, I was stood in the coffee area after the opening keynote getting a drink with Bradley and Karen when Ted Ts’o came over to say hello. As we were all stood talking I looked to my right and noticed Linus Torvalds stood about 6 feet away chatting with Bdale Garbee and others. I thought at first it might be the jet lag playing tricks on me and I was dreaming, but it was real. Bradley, Karen and I then went for lunch at a Thai place with Jeremy Allison. Jeremy is a close friend of Bradley’s, he works at Google now and he’s the co-creator of the Samba file server. Turns out he’s a big Red Dwarf fan and we talked a lot about that. Over the next few days I ate with Jeremy a few times and also had great fun watching him conduct the quiz dressed as Steve Ballmer. He spent about an hour getting into his costume and it was a closely guarded secret who he was going to be. More about the quiz later. Read the rest of this entry »