Millions of rain drops fell down while I’ve been playing with Drupal and Facebook apps the past days. It feels good to be able to completely plan my own time again. I’m very positive about all the opportunities arising in many places and in many different disciplines. The projects that are close to my heart are moving forward and because of my involvement in them I’ve gained so many insights and skills and I’ve met many people I now consider friends and with whom I want to keep on working.
In the next 6 months I expect more of the same. I will probably spend al lot of time traveling. Now I’m just waiting for my new light-weight tool to arrive in stores in Europe.
When you read this it’s a month ago that I wrote this. I love it, how WordPress keeps on evolving. So it was more than a month ago that I attended the BeVolunteer General Assembly at the LinuxHotel in Essen. It was very inspiring, in the middle of the Ruhrgebiet and nevertheless extremely green and tranquil. And my fellow participants were amazing.
A week before I had left Amsterdam. To hitchhike to Avignon, 1050 km away, to meet up with Elsa and amylin (on the occasion of her birthday). I had planned to spend the night in my tent, that I had recently bought before going to the Berlin Beach Camp. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use it there, because of the physical signs of stress. (Instead I spent the weekend in an extremely luxurious apartment.) My hope however was to be in Luxembourg before sunset and hitch a ride with a car going down South.
As it usually goes, time flies and before you know it’s past 15:00 and you still have to head to a good hitchhiking spot. I prepared my sign “Belgie” in the bus, and because that it only took me three minutes to be picked up by a car driving to Antwerpen. Hitching through Belgium took a bit more effort (waiting times up to 30 minutes), but at some desolate gas station (on the highway) I saw a Dutch car and I asked a Dutch looking guy if I could go with him to Luxembourg. So I made it before 22:00 to the super gas station in Luxembourg, right before the French border.
After 30 minutes a car stopped, asking me about my destination. “Avignon.” “T’as de la chance.” I got in the car and was a bit surprised by the unlit dashboard. The Moroccan driver started driving and I was a bit more surprised. By the sudden changes of speed and the not so steady directions. During our conversation Aziz had asked if I had my driving license. Inshallah, after an hour and a half the driver stopped to pass the wheel onto me. After 5 hours of driving I made it to Avignon in less than 14 hours.
In 2005 I tried stimulating people in Mali to write for Wikipedia when I was in Bamako. Some articles were written, some more when I offered the equivalent of 1 US$ per article. With my limited knowledge of Bambara I added some more structure and I translated parts of the interface by asking if people understood the words I had found in a dictionary. For a long time almost nothing happened apart from inter-language bots and even spam bots and vandalism.
Today the Bambara Wikipedia reached 200 articles. Thanks to the great work of Misbaho, who has started contributing regularly about a month ago.
There is also a discussion going on in the Afrophonewikis group, about setting up an African chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation specifically for issues related to Wikimedia projects in African languages, which was started by Ibou, who has continuously been doing great work on the Wolof Wikipedia.
Saturday I went to visit a meet-up of Project Roomware:
The Roomware Project is an open-source framework for interactive spaces. It allows developers of multiple origins to enhance any venue or event using technologies such as BlueTooth and RFID.
“Roomware” is an application running in a defined space. For instance: linking people’s photographs to the screens of a club, sharing musical tastes with the DJ, finding other interesting people on your mobile phone, a photo booth activated by the entry tickets of two people, etc.
That’s all pretty awesome. On top of that, it’s free software, done by nice people and they even do fun geek stuff such as playing with glasses that track your motion…
I signed up at Last.fm in 2005. I never really used it a lot. Until recently, when I got slightly bored by soma.fm (still great though!). I found out Last.fm is streaming tons of music. A bit like pandora.com, but way better. And it seems they have everything, ranging from Aphex Twin, to the Beatles, your local punk band, Ravi Shankar, Stockhausen, anything.
It can give you recommendations, or you listen to a tag radio (try gypsy, 303, amsterdam, whatever). You can click “love” if you like something and “ban” is even more useful. It’s especially nice to tune into your friends’ radios. Feel free to tune into mine.
There’s even a client for my Nokia N810. Now we just need free wireless everywhere…
Last week I realized that I couldn’t remember when exactly I had not been going out at night. Amsterdam is great. So many people to meet and spend time with. Last Thursday I met up with Niels Fermont, whom I hadn’t really seen the last 12 years or so and whom I found on Hyves a while back. It was great to bring back memories from primary school. We had a very tasty dinner. Unfortunately I suspect the forest mushroom pie to have ruined my digestive system up until today. So I wasn’t able to head down to FOSDEM in Brussels. The up side was that I finally had some time to go through my drafts folder, where emails end up that I still have to write.
Besides all that I am feeling mostly happy with my MacBook Pro. There are some issues, such as the lack of decent shortcuts but it’s a relief to not be forced to keep on tweaking and twiddling settings. I hope some company will be able to create a similar experience based on Ubuntu.
This week I’ll be moving to an awesome apartment and tomorrow I’m expecting a friend I haven’t seen for 1,5 years. And Hyves is moving to a new office.
Ok, even though I’ve been working on Mac OS X
in Brussels, the 23rd and 24th of February.
For the rest, Amsterdam is treating me well. Hyves is exciting and offering many challenges. Living with Robin is great. Unfortunately it will be over soon. He found a place through social housing (after 9 years of waiting) and I will be moving to another place myself the 1st of March. Fortunately that place is really really sweet.
Recent Comments