Since I’m rarely in Toronto and rarely in Toronto for more than a couple of days, I often miss my good and wonderful Torontonian friends.

However, in December, I get to stay a few more days, which I hope to be jam-packed with adventure. Or barring that, hugs and smiles.

I propose that we sally forth on Boxing Day and take over some establishment. An establishment, that perhaps serves food and drink?

Loons
416 Roncesvalles Ave.
26 December 2008 at 19h

( Facebook | Map )

I’m leaving in about an hour for Toronto and will be there until 28 Dec. Torontonian friends, I’d love to see you again.

girl_tm and I are also leaving for Paris on 29 Dec until 2 Jan. Parisian friends, I haven’t seen you in a very long time and it’d be lovely to get in touch again.

To show how small the world is, we’ll be staying in a Parisian apartment, swapped with someone I met the night before he left Montréal for the City of Lights. And this apartment swap was arranged through the miracle of the Internet. For all of its scariness, it sure is helpful!

DemoCamp Montréal 1
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It's been a week since DemoCamp Montréal 1. We held it last Tuesday at the SAT, which had generously donated a venue for this event. I arrived three minutes early, knocking on the door while juggling the supplies I had bought. A few power bars, some name tags, and various pieces of paper.

I entered, drew a few signs, and left the "Hello / Bonjour" stickers by the door. Then I ran around for a while until I realized that there was really nothing to do. Those SAT people were really efficient.

I pulled out the camera that diluvienne lent me and fired off a few test shots. Not being used to this camera in low light, I think things were a little overexposed. But a little photo-editing brought out the details, so I'm pretty pleased.

Audience
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

There were five demonstrations, lasting less than fifteen minutes each. The presenters took a few questions and then got shooed off the stage for the next bunch of people. John Kopanas did an excellent job playing MC, which helped things along smoothly. I spent some of the time talking to people, taking photographs, and heckling.

In the end, we had a big group of people just meeting other people. A sizable number went with John to Le Sainte-Elizabeth for some post-conference drinking. It was getting late, so a bunch of us broke off from the splintering islands of conversation and headed for dinner. All and all, I'm very happy with the results.

Reports about the event are all over the Internet now: Montreal Tech Watch, Evan Prodromou, YashLabs (parts 1 and 2), Silicon Island, Growwwing (parts 1 and 2), and Midnight poutine.

I'm going to put on my organizer hat now and talk about the things that didn't go so well. This is not to say that I'm think we did poorly, but there is room for improvement. It was the first DemoCamp we had with only people from in town, so it seems to be pretty representative of the crowd we'd draw.

First off, the biggest complaint among people was that the presentations weren't very interesting. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it's not that far off the mark. Technical people don't get a lot of practise at public speaking and I think we need to address this.

One of the first things I'm going to propose is to contact speakers before their talk and offer them tips on how to give a good demonstration. You know, stuff like "get to the good stuff quickly", "engage your audience", and "speak to their interests". Not having slides is one way of preventing people from losing the audience. But also showing something that your audience finds sexy is a good technique.

Many of the presentations were pitched as if they were technologies looking for funding. Although there were a couple of investors in the crowd, the vast majority of attendees were technologists, artists, and people interested in seeing cool stuff. There's no way you can please everyone, but getting people excited about what you're demonstrating is a good start. And even if you are pitching a technology for investment, isn't it good to be able to get people interested in your product?

One last thing, before I forget, is that sexism is probably not a good idea. One of the presentations showed a potential advertisement that was in questionable taste. When a woman in the crowd brought up the fact that it could be rather alienating, the discussion did not go to addressing the faults of the ad, but rather into humour. Although jokes can diffuse a tense situation, in this case it seemed to make things quite worse.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on DemoCamp and how to get you to attend, or to return to another event. Please feel free to comment in this entry or to e-mail me privately.

I was hoping for a small reprieve in December, but I should have known better. Through 2006, things had been progressively getting busier and busier until I felt I was about to burst.

It is now 2007 and I can look back happily at the previous year. Whew. So what was last month like?

Cute pottery
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

First I had to see rubythirtythree at the Salon des métiers d'art. I did a bit of shopping there, which turned out to be a good idea.

Angie Johnson
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Then a vernissage at Headquarters Galerie et Boutique. I met Angie and Tyson, who run the store, and they are awfully nice. They run an exhibition every month or so which I'm going try to see.

On stage
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Followed by seeing a drag show with ispyagirl and Mike, an old classmate from Earl Haig. We went to Cabaret Mado, which had lots of people that looked like they were having fun! It was just too outrageous for anything less.

Two chairs
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I took some photos at jbailey's new place. The entire house was bare, so I got to roam around and take pictures of uncluttered rooms.

Skylight
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Lunch with baprime at Café Santropol. It was the first time she'd ever been there, which is quite a treat. We ate sandwiches and drank milkshakes—they were delicious.

Neat dweeb
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

More shopping at the Souk@SAT. This time, I went with angorian and Damian. I showed them fun things and delicious things and they managed to get a ton of their gift shopping done.

Lesbian haircuts
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Then we made the wonderful discovery of cheap Lesbian haircuts on Amherst. I am tempted to go there and check out their bikes.

Tower
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I had a lazy Sunday brunch with le_maistre_e. We ate at John's, which is a little diner that serves a great meal at 1980s prices. I'm definitely going back! I also discovered that the Lachine canal is a gem, if you look hard enough.

Marble cheesecake
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Dinner with vierge_en_trop, completed by puddings at Café l'Etranger.

Crème brulée
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Followed by dinner at mricon's. He made an excellent borscht.

Dinner
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Leading into the Canonical holiday dinner at Los Tios.

Mark Côté
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Ironically placed next to the Goodbye NITI Montreal dinner.

Samba Elegua
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I needed some exercise after all this eating, so I saw jedward play with Samba Elegua. He stayed with me, while his band did their gig for Noël dans le parc.

Gladstone & Ste-Catherine
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Then it was more dinner at superfink's, with a nightcap of The muppet Christmas carol.

Felix
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Followed by another dinner at tygrbabe's.

Dinner on the train
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After that, I got on the train to Toronto, where I spent a lot of time not behind the camera. Although digital cameras are now prevalent, I seemed to avoid getting myself not in front of them.

I just came back from the most exciting morning.

Friday afternoon was a lot of tame fun. I had phở at Pho Hung with makemyway and springbird. Then we did some shopping, split an amazing veal sandwich from California Sandwiches, and ate a salad for dinner. That was pretty normal.

So was our trip to Lula Lounge. Makemyway and I went there to see jedward play with Samba Elegua. They're an amazing act! The crowd was dancing and laughing, well some of it, which was great for Toronto.

We left relatively early so that I could swing by Makemyway's house to pick up my camera. I had forgotten it there the night before. As I left her place, I realized that I had left my credit card at the lounge. So I tried to remember how to get back, paid my bill, and stepped outside. The band was packing up their gear, so I was able to say goodbye.

I was walking east when I noticed two people huddled in a bus shelter. I poked my head inside and asked where they were going.

You see, they were waiting at a Dundas stop for a streetcar. After hours. Which meant they would be spending a very long night in freezing weather. I surmised they weren't from Toronto.

Rodrigo and Francesca are actually visiting from Brazil. And they hadn't worn enough layers. I walked with them to College where we waited for a while, ducked into a convenience store to warm up, and caught the blue-night streetcar going east. I asked the driver to let them off at Jarvis, which is where there hotel is.

I bid them farewell as I got off at the Yonge stop. Soon, the bus came north and a group of us boarded. Most of the passengers were a bit unruly because the bars had just let out. When we got to Eglington, a whole bunch of people got on the bus. They had been kicked off the previous bus, which we saw as we drove past. I asked a girl what happened and she explained that a guy got angry at some other guy and punched out a window. There were about four police cars surrounding the abandoned bus.

Since our bus was quite crowded, I did the only thing I could think of: randomly chatting with strangers. This passed the time until my stop came up. A very drunk man said goodbye to his friends and exited with me. I walked with him for a while and we struck up a conversation. It seems that he is doing an anthropology degree at York.

This didn't explain why he had misplaced his hat in one of his friend's pockets. Or why he hit on every girl on our way north. Or why he had difficulty opening his front door, which I passed on the way back home.

Wasn't that an exciting series of adventures? So exciting, in fact, that now I'm wide awake! It's a good thing that I'm good at falling asleep.

November was just a whirlwind of activity. I was so busy that I barely had enough time to sleep, much less sort through photographs and write in my journal.

So here's an executive summary, brought to you by my photographic memory. That is to say, my photo albums.

Manhole cover
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I started the month by flying to Sunnydale, California. I spent a week at the Googleplex working on Ubuntu during the day.

Drinking
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

My nights were filled with activity as well. I saw old friends, like Peter, and made new ones too.

Donations
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The next week was spent in San Francisco. maradydd took me to a Dorkbot. Fun!

Mark Shuttleworth
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Again, the days were filled with work for Canonical. (I took many wonderfully embarassing photographs of my co-workers.)

Mini camera
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And again, my evenings were also very adventurous.

Skating
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I managed to meet lovely people like Rachel, and Sorrel, and Erica, and Sophy. It's strange, but not that strange, how they all are connected to ioerror somehow.

Laughing squid
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I finally got introduced to Scott Beale at the Laughing Squid party. I managed to convince Marc and Etienne to come along, and I think they liked it. But really, how could they not? There was a steam car, the Photoboof, kettle corn, robots, dancing girls, columns of fire, strange bicycles, art cars, and LEGO.

Decorations
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I returned to Canada where I attempted to collapse, but failed. gorbash_dragon reminded me just how festive this time of year really is.

Pouring
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

This began a whole lot of socializing with my long lost friends. So I went to a diluvienne's tea party.

Len
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And callmepavlov's Munchkin party.

5th anniversary party
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Expozine, which isn't a party at all. But they threw one afterwards.

Eric Dorland
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

And ze_dinosaur's farewell party.

Two-dalla party
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

My final event of the month was a blast. denkizero invited me to a launch party, where everything was two dollars, although bad puns cost extra. There was a fashion show, a marching band, an iPod battle (with real iPods), some television interviews, some drinking, some socializing, and a few time-outs.

Whew.

W Montreal
Originally uploaded by bopuc.

The Wunderbar in the W Montréal is one of those spots where people too cool to hang out at trashy bars go to. Trashy bars are fun places, because the people are shameless at having fun. Cool bars are fun places, mostly because the people are just plain shameless.

I was supposed to meet dzuunmod there, but I was busy packing for my flight to California.¹ By the time I stepped out of the taxi, they were already gone. But I had consciousness to burn, since I had an early morning flight. And there was no way I'd go to sleep. If I did, I'd sleep right through my boarding call.

I walked up to the door, the doorman got it, and I went inside. After checking my coat, I strode into the club.

The Wunderbar is decked out like a dance club on a Friday night. This seemed appropriate, as it was Friday night. There were lights everywhere, lining on the walls, embedded in the wavy plastic ceiling, illuminating the liquours. They pulsated to the beat of the music, as did the patrons.

They clutched their expensive, yet trendy drinks, as they danced to a mix of popular beats. Mostly R&B or hip-hop, with some pop thrown in for good measure. Most of the songs were about women and their sex appeal, which inspired a group of them to get up on a railing and start dancing. I think a bouncer asked them to get down before they broke their necks. This was surprising as few people looked properly drunk. Like I said, the drinks were expensive.

What I've been noticing when I go out is the incredible sameness of people. But here, the sameness is different. There were obviously business types in attendence on the night I went out. Twenty-somethings for whom off-the-rack suits and little black dresses are de rigeur. That's just like those indie shows I go to, where everyone is wearing their horn-rimmed glasses and black hoodies.

Although the bar was decked out like a posh dance club and sounded like a dance club, very few people were actually dancing. Few of them had any rhythm and the ones that did basically stood in one spot and jiggled. Occassionally, some guy would ask a girl to dance, but they'd shimmy awkwardly before collapsing on a couch again.

The others would stand around and try to talk over the music. This was difficult as the bass was pumped until you could feel the floor thump. The treble was tweaked so it sounded ethereal. Still, the DJ was excellent, transitioning so seemlessly that song flowed right into the next. But you could tell that the DJ was there to do his job. He surveyed the crowd with disinterest, from behind in his eerily-lit booth, protected by his headphones and his MacBook. His outsider status was confirmed with his Come on Feel the Illinoise shirt.

On the opposite side of the bar, there's a sunken VIP lounge lined with couches. Moments before I sat down to write in my notebook, the place was filled with people making out. I have no idea where they went. One couple seems to have migrated in front of the bar, which doesn't have a lot of space. People constantly have to squeeze past them.

In one corner, there were some middle-aged businessmen trying to kick back and relax. This was actually pretty difficult as they were being constantly interrupted by us young ones. They also seemed to be actively not staring at the ladies who walked past, attempting to converse uncomfortably instead. After they finished their beers, they gave up and left. They were the only ones that had suits that fit.

For all the supposed exclusivity of the Wunderbar, the bouncers actually do a terrible job of keeping the riff-raff out. While I was there, I managed to see long-haired students waving around beer bottles, a girl in a grey pullover hoodie swigging from a waterbottle, an awkward balding man in an argyle sweater, a lank boy with an improperly tied tie. Oh yeah, they let me in too. But I had a clever disguise on, since I look good dressed all preppy.

I had to leave in the early morning as I had an errand to run, so I picked up my greatcoat and headed for the door. It was an interesting and glitzy place. I wouldn't mind going back and doing more people watching. It could prove to be interesting for a group of us to sit down and take over.

¹ That was over a month ago, isn't that crazy? I'm so late at writing this up, it's scaring me. It's a good thing I took copious notes at the time.

Many of you thought my ideas for public gatherings were good. That's great! So I'm going to suggest that you go to this one, organized by some other fun people.

Manhunt Montreal is happening on Saturday at 17:00. I can't attend, but you can. It'll be fun, I promise.

Blur
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It occurs to me that Montréal doesn't have enough public gatherings.

Oh sure, Montréal has its festivals during the summer. We're famous for them. In fact, that's one of the reasons as to why I moved to this city. Our vibrant street life is very attractive and very healthy.

But sometimes, this seems too organized. What happened to just getting together to do something fun, without having to pay a fee or get a programme? What if you could just pop in and participate? What if you were roped in, as you were walking down the street?

I'm thinking we could use the Tam Tam Jam as a staging area for some of the public events. It'd be easy to get people interested in a party we hold in a corner of the park.

Here are some of ideas for things that I've been kicking about:

DemoCamp — An idea started by TorCamp, you show up and have fifteen minutes to demonstrate something you've made. I think TorCamp people demonstrate programs, but I don't see why you couldn't show off something you've built, or some art you've done.

TuneCamp — In a city that's so full of music, wouldn't it be great to have a collection of people who are enthusiastic about it show up and just play? I suppose it'd be a disorganized concert, much like one held at a house.

Métro party — Get on the last car at Côte-Vertu, decorate it, and ride it all the way to the other side, picking up party-goers along the way.

Picnic in the park — Get a massive, red-checkered cloth and spread it out on the grass. Have people show up with picnic food and have the biggest potluck we can find.

Ice disco — In the winter, they flood bits of Parc Jeanne-Mance to make ice rinks. Wouldn't a skating dance party be just the thing? I think arranging some hot chocolate would be good too.

Pillow fight club — A classic event, we should find a sunny day to do it next year.

Disc swap — How about an impromptu music swap? Have people show up with CDs and DVDs they are bored of to exchange with a random one. Setting up players with speakers would be good, so people can enjoy the music together.

Dancing in the street — On the next car-free day downtown, we should try to get people to just dance in the streets. You know, "a chance for folks to meet?"

Strawberry social — People meet in the park bringing strawberry-themed treats. I think dressing up in hats and gloves would also be appropriate. And maybe horses.

Masquerade — A ball! Where everyone has to show up in costumes and masks.

Santa Claus parade — Doesn't dressing up as Santa Claus and going around town giving people candy canes sound fun? How about going on a pub crawl while we're at it? This shouldn't be restricted to the Christmas season, after all, candy canes go on sale on boxing day.

Free hugs — Get a few people, lots of signs saying "Free hugs / Câlins gratuit", and stand on Ste-Catherines giving people hugs as they go by. We could even augment this with buttons, that we could give away.

Guerrilla gig — Arrange for a band or two to hold an impromptu concert in one of the gazebos at public parks. Just show up with an amp, plug in, play a short set and leave.

Snapshot — We organize a tableau somewhere in the downtown core, where people show up dressed a particular way to do particular things. Then photographers show up to take pictures.

Flash rave — Invite some people to show up with their portable music players, take over a building and dance. We should look for a place that can provide free water.

Theme days — No pants day, Talk like a pirate day, whatever zany day comes up, let's set up a little zone in the city where this kind of behaviour is normal. Most of the time, people saying "yarr" are irregular, but what if we turned the tables?

Who thinks these might be fun?

Eye of my apple
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I just woke up from sleeping in all day. I was so tired when I went to bed that I'm amazed at how refreshed I am. Sleep, beautiful sleep.

Let me back up a bit. Yesterday, Saturday, we arranged to have an apple bee. So I rented a car, drove to vierge_en_trop's flat and picked her up along with callmepavlov, cpirate, and drkeys. We drove south to Mont-Saint-Grégoire, about 50 km south of Montréal. There, we got lost a bit before finding la Cidrerie Leo Boutin, which advertised tempting apple cider.

We parked the van and examined our options. We opted to pick apples first, so we paid for some plastic bags and went out back. I went around tasting the various apples from various trees: Lobos, Cortlands, Paula Reds, Empires, McIntoshes, and Spartans. I was greedy, so I had bought two large plastic bags, which we filled with Cortlands and Paula Reds. I knew I wasn't going to eat them all fresh, so I wanted plenty of apples for processing. Unfortunately, many of the trees were diseased, or had fruit that had been blackened. But we managed to get the best ones. And I got to climb a tree.

Apple pies
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After we picked our fill, we went inside to taste the ciders available. Many of them were quite delicious, so we made some purchases. Then we tried to have a meal, failed, and decided to go back to Montréal instead. This was a great idea, as we got to eat at Café Santropol. After a very tasty lunch, we dragged our apples to my apartment and started to work.

We peeled and sliced and peeled and sliced until our hands ached. I rolled out pie crusts and crumble topping like there was no tomorrow. And the food processor whirred constantly as it ground up apples. For dinner, we had a salad, ravioli in pesto, and apple crisp. The crisp was especially savoury because we had made it by hand, and also because of the generous amounts of butter used.

The apartment smelled of warm apples and cinnamon at this point. In the end, we ended up with about six litres of homemade applesauce, nine pies, and seven apple crisps. It was warm in the apartment, so I threw open the windows, letting in the rainy autumn air. I managed to stay awake until 4:00, tending the oven, when everyone else left with their spoils in hand. I hurt all over and was barely able to stumble to bed. By the time my head hit the pillow, I was already dreaming apple-scented dreams.

蝦餃
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I haven't enjoyed the great outdoors very much this summer. Or it seems like it, at least. So this weekend, I conspired with diluvienne to enjoy the last summer weekend of this year. I invited her over for a sleepover/tea party, which turned out reasonably well. By this, I mean that we went to bed relatively early. Relative to our other tea parties, of course. I reckon that I ought to have more people over. Then we can have a pillow fight, as all proper sleepover parties should involve.

We woke up early Saturday morning to go for 點心 (dim sum) at 富麗華. We didn't go there very directly, as we had both brought our cameras. Rather, we meandered our way down there, taking photographs of various things along the way. The restaurant hadn't yet filled up when we arrived, so we sat by the window and enjoyed a leisurely meal. By the time we left, we had a stack of steamers and very full bellies.

Since dilu had brought her macro lens, we thought to take a few closeups of other brunchers as we strolled back to my place. Then it was time to meet baprime and mricon down in Vieux-Montréal. Their friends Seth and ejchang were visiting, so they were showing them around.

Toy dinosaurs
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After walking back and forth along the harbourfront, we were beginning to get hungry. Icon recommended that we go to Le Taj for some Indian food. We took our guests along Ste-Catherine, so they could see the busy bustle of a weekend in Montréal. Seth quite appreciated the gaudy neon signs. And then we arrived.

We had a nice collection of vegetarian dishes, which seemed quite good but I don't exactly remember what they were like. I do recall that the bhindi masala was cooked well, without the okra turning into slimey mush. And the aloo paratha was very savoury. I think this requires another visit, to properly evaluate the place.

We said good night to Seth and ejchang and then I dragged Icon and Barbara back to my place. I offered up a tub of last-year's pesto and then everyone went home. Except for me, since I was already there.

Greta and Amanda
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The next day, I invited scjody to a Seth-warming party. Lots of wonderful people were involved, including cpirate, swestrup and taxlady. We had pizza topped with pesto, which was delicious. And there were plenty of photographs to be taken, as dilu and vierge_en_trop can attest to. I'm particularly happy with a delightful one that makes Icon look more russian than he already is. There was plenty of good conversation, tall tales, and tea.

We were just wrapping up as ze_dinosaur returned from Toronto. We got our of our things and walked into the pleasantly warm night. Why, now I'm inspired to through another of my intimate tea parties. Intimate only because my apartment is tiny, of course.

Eight people fooled!

Page 2: The notorious Mr. X evades capture!

Page 3: Vice Magazine shocks and amazes readers.

Page 4: I still have cookies. You need to help me eat them.

Page 5: Cat and Girl are well read.

Shoes
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Last night, I had dilu_rss over, with whom I basically haven't talked to in over two years. This might have been a problem, if we didn't have quite as much to talk about. But we spent hours, six hours, having a wonderful conversation. I haven't done that in years, either.

We drank tea, took photographs, and pondered deep mysteries. I don't get to do that enough these days. These days, I'm far more superficial than I used to be, but my accursed wisdom pops up insistently and often. It was cleansing to actually put it to good use. I think we were both enlightened.

And I was inspired to do close-up photography again. I just have to find some way to make them look unlike stock photos. I abhor that.

Je t'aime
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Somehow, I have allowed myself an entire weekend without any plans.

Hurray!

I have so many things that I want to do. There's a new server I want built. And lots of writing to be done. Maybe I could sit around reading a book? Oh, I know! I could do more stuff for work.

But I suppose I oughtn't cut everyone off so completely. So how about people come over for random entertainment tomorrow? That's Sunday, for people who've lost track. I have a few board games we could pull out. Plus, we could buy a film and rent some pizza. Wait, reverse that.

The doors to my place will open at 17:00. If you show up earlier, you'll just have to entertain yourself. (This is actually pretty easy, as long as you like books.)

Lemon cookies
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

For those who didn't come, you missed out.

On stories. About babies and cereal and dentists and life. Shouldn't you have been here?

Yes. No matter how late, we would have welcomed you with open arms. And cookies.

vierge_en_trop has photographs that would make you green with jealousy. I just know it.

Penguin and his boy
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The Ottawa Linux Symposium is arguably Canada's biggest conference about Linux and its associated technologies. It happens every year, right after the Kernel Summit, which virtually guarantees that some famous people stick around afterwards to attend OLS.

Now the Kernel Summit is a small gathering of Linux developers where they hash out big issues in the kernel. After all, it's a lot easier to get your point across when you're sitting in the same room as the person you're talking to. Mailing lists are just not the same. OLS, however, is a free-for-all. If you pay in time, you get to show up. This makes for an astoundingly large conference, about 850 people in total.

I brought along wlach, who had never been to OLS before. So I was doing my part in inflating the number of people there. I think he ended up in the right crowds. Which is difficult, because there are a lot of crowds there. People walk past in a blur and you can never quite remember if you've met someone before.

Bowtied
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

At the conference, there are four tracks of presentations, at any one time. Some of these are perennial talks, like the tutorial on writing your own kernel module. And others change as the years go by. The big topic this year was Xen, the free virtualization software that really got huge in the past two years. Xen allows people to run multiple copies of their operating system inside one computer, with very little overhead. This makes it attractive to a lot of people, be they system administrators, software developers, or people who like fiddling with their machine.

I met a consultant from Chicago that sells Xen-based solutions. She builds a big server and runs various virtual servers for small business inside that one box. It's very cost effective and is a good way to make server maintanance easy. Whenever I wanted to find her, I'd just pop into one of the ubiquitous Xen talks.

The amount of work that gets done at this conference is astounding. You'll see people sitting around at tables hashing out designs and beating out flaws. Hackers huddle around laptops in an attempt to get the C library building on PA-RISC again. That's because the bandwidth to communication is very high and the latency is inconsequential. There were times when I wanted to pull out my laptop and do some work. But then I remembered that I left it in the hotel. Because it's heavy.

There's actually a lot of space at OLS, because it's spread across the three floors of the Ottawa Congress Centre. It's really easy to miss someone for weeks before bumping into him at a party. Like opalmirror, for example, who I was very glad to meet in person. And are there ever parties.

Super balls
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Ostensibly, you go there for the talks. And talks there are: some of them quite good and the vast majority are rather mediocre. They're the results of a year of hacking, months of academic research, or inspired observation. I have to admit that I get a bit lax when attending speakers. It reminds me too much of the classroom. And just like university, I buy the course notes to mitigate my guilt. They make for good reading when finals come along.

It's the conversation that you go there for. When you get to sit down with Alan and have a good laugh about geeky topics. Or buy Donald a drink for working on those ugly network cards all those years ago. You get to connect with people that you've only seen online, or read as their names flashed past in the boot messages. That's that kind of bonding that people yearn for.

I'm looking forward to next year already.

Blizzard
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Last weekend, I rented a car to take a little trip to Toronto. It seems like that city keeps drawing me in. It's quite inescapable now. In fact, I seem to like downtown Toronto more and more each time I visit. It's very different from Montréal, but when you fall in with the right crowd, everything thing seems to just taste better.

Anyway, I rented a car. Surprisingly enough, the Pontiac handled itself well at fast highway speeds. A little on the loud side, but it handled very tightly for an economy car. So I was fairly happy about it. And gorbash_dragon did a lot of sleeping during our nighttime drives.

We arrived early Saturday morning during a thunderstorm. She got out of the car with her luggage and then I drove to where I was staying. letoams had kindly left me the keys to his apartment, so I was rather happy that there was some place to drop my stuff and collapse.

In the morning, it was time to take photographs. I had a little breakfast at the corner café, a place called Java Jive. The coffee was terrible, but the grilled-cheese was fine. Then I walked up Yonge to go to a tea party, but was mugged along the way by a cookery bookstore.

After a bit of walking with some rather heavy books, I made it to the place where makemyway was housesitting. She had two friends along, Chiara and Mariapia, and they were sitting at a table with a teapot and a plate full of cheese. There were no tea cups, but we made do with various random bits of glassware. The house, by the way, is rather beautiful and was furnished properly. But something seemed a bit wrong. The kitchen was mostly empty, even though they had a wonderful gas stove and high-powered range hood.

The house is ruled by a small white cat named Blizzard. He is so adorable and friendly. He seems to love everyone that walks through the door. He was also quite lazy in the heat. Toronto was quite hot that weekend.

Roasted pineapple
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After meeting more people, who arrived slowly throughout the afternoon, I decided that I had to leave for sachachua's barbeque. I hailed a cab and went to Graduate House, where I peeked into the courtyard and saw a bunch of people eating at tables. Down the stairs I went and was welcomed to a bunch of food. We were treated quite well, including some very tasty cheesecake that Warren made himself. But it was so rich that I couldn't finish it.

I met quite a few geeks at this party, and we had a pretty geeky discussion. Then, secretsoflife and Makemyway showed up and we had an even geekier discussion. We talked well into the night, until people kicked us out of the courtyard for being too loud. Then, I decided it would be a good time to retire.

On Sunday, I had a little photowalk before meeting makemyway and her friend (whose name I cannot spell) in Kensington Market. We sat at a little place called i deal Coffee which is really serious about their coffee. In this little shop, they have their own roaster which takes up tons of space. And they have a piston-driven espresso maker, so they are literally pulling shots of coffee. How cool is that?

We walked around the market buying tasty things to eat. Then we went to Chinatown and got ourselves a fresh fish. Which we barbequed. Oh man, was there some good barbeque that weekend. heinous and Joe showed up in their super-awesome Fiat convertible. We took it out for a spin. Wow!

After dinner, I packed up my things, cleaned up the apartment a bit, and then took a nap. Then it was off to collect Gorbash and drive home. By the time I got her back to her place, I was so knackered that I slept in the front seat of the car until the sun came up. It's actually surprisingly good for that, because of the way the seats work.

Forklift
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I look forward to going to Ottawa every June for the GCC Summit. I've gone every year since it started in 2003 and have no intention of stopping. That's because it feels so much like a family reunion. Let me explain.

The core people who have worked on GCC have been doing it for years. They're people who used to work for Cygnus Solutions, back before they were bought out by Red Hat. They're people who work for CodeSourcery. And they're people working for Intel, HP, and IBM who are compiler writers first and employees second. And they all know each other like dysfunctional family.

When I first showed up at the first Summit, Jim and I were the new kids. We had just finished typesetting the Using GCC manual that was published by GNU Press. So I went around absorbing compiler technology by osmosis, and trying to get as many developers to sign by pre-press draft.

The nice thing about the GCC Summit is that there is only one track of talks. So you never have to choose between two talks that you're interested in. It's a little bad though, since you're always tempted to check your e-mail when there's a lull in the interestingness of the presentations.

This year, the focus seemed to be on profiler-driven optimizations. I'm not really sure those are very profitable, as they actually require developers to run their applications as part of the build system. And we all know that humans are lazy. But perhaps I underestimate the heroics that build-systems people will go through to squeeze out that extra ounce of performance.

Danny Berlin and Kenneth Zadeck talked about dataflow analysis and getting rid of the terrible implementation inside GCC. I had heard horror stories about flow.c before, but have yet to actually look inside it. Their talk has disuaded me even more.

The last thing that sticks in my mind is the GDB talk, which seemed to be the only toolchain talk this year. But these things wax and wane.

I skipped out on the afterparty this year, which meant that I couldn't help with the monumental challenge that awaits us after each summit. But I shall return.

Spinning poi
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

24 June 2006

I returned to Montréal to discover that Air France had lost my luggage. This was quite the feat, because I was on a direct flight from Paris. The luggage agent looked in her computer and declared that what had happened was quite impossible. She directed me to look at the luggage racks again, but I didn't find anything. So they made me file a thick wad of paperwork.

When I walked through the inspection zone, the officer asked me where my other bags were. "They lost them," I replied resignedly, and she waved me through.

On the other side, mricon was waiting for me. It was so good to see a cheerful face! We jumped in the car, drove to my place where I threw down my things and got in the shower. Then I packed some clothes and we were off to go camping! I was not about to let airline incompetence ruin my weekend.

We arrived at a campsite about an hour east of Montréal. From the road, you couldn't see much, but as we drove in we saw a lawn full of parked cars and a series of tents. I got my pack out of the car and that's when I saw baprime walk up to meet us. I was witness to a very happy reunion and then was led to the kitchen to get something to eat.

Venison, grilled over natural charcoal, is much, much better than bad airline food.

Archery
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After getting my tent set up, it was time to light the bonfire. This put off a prodigious number of sparks into the night air. I took some photographs and then sat well away from the flames. Fire is hot!

Further downwind, some people were setting up to spin fire poi. They'd been practising all evening and were getting out the fuel. I bumped into Emma, whom I saw spinning in the park a couple of weeks beforehand, and she asked me to take photographs of her. But, of course!

Before long, people harded heading to bed and I decided that it would be wise to join them. The next morning, I prepped breakfast and packed up the tent I was borrowing. After I got all of my chores done, I looked about to see what was happening. Hey, some people were getting out some bows and arrows.

Photographs, of course, were in order. But eventually, too many people and too many mosquitos started congregating there, so I went to sit around and talk with people. Soon enough, the sun was beating down hard and we had to go. Three of us piled into the car and drove back to town, with renewed memories of campfires and the taste of wild strawberries.

Courtyard
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

23 June 2006

Our last night in Paris involved a trip to Au Pied de Cochon in the heart of Paris. Claire organized the trip and I couldn't believe my ears when I heard where we were going. My eyes must have gone as wide as saucers.

I had walked pas the restaurant many times while in town. And it's always open, so you can duck in for a late-night bowl of onion soup. This time, however, we would be having a table d'hôte. After all, we were feeding a huge group of very hungry people.

I gathered a group into one of the hotel shuttle buses and managed to get us all into the city. Along the way, I chatted with Andreas, who had managed to come along with us. We talked about the anthropological implications of studying hackers, who are some of the most introspective people on the planet. He admitted that it was different but he was glad that he didn't have to explain what an antropologist does.

We got out of the huge underground complex and found ourselves steps from the restaurant. We went up the richly decorated staircase until we arrived at our dining room. There were a few people milling about inside, and I started taking photographs while the light was still out.

Cheers!
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

We started with a tender hunk of buffalo mozzarella on a plate of beautiful tomatoes. Then we had a perfectly grilled steak, which came out consistently good, on so many plates. I'm just in awe at their grill station. We did, however, have one hitch in the meal.

Michael Vogt was sitting at our table, and he's vegetarian. His plate arrived with wonderfully cooked vegetables plated beautifully. But in the corner were caramelized onions rich with bacon. Now, I love onions sautéed in bacon fat, but poor Michael just stared at it. I got up, found the maître d' and pointed out that this was completely unacceptable. In as best indignant French as I could muster. After convincing her that there really was meat in that dish, she apologized profusely, and her waiters quickly removed the offending dish.

They returned with new dishes that were missing the offending garnish.

For the rest of the meal, she kept on checking with me to make sure everything was fine. It turns out that her husband is vegetarian as well, so she was quite aware of the problem. And she was so apologetic because she hadn't caught the mistake. We left on very amiable terms, and I promised to return the next time I was in Paris. After all, I really do want to eat random things off their menu.

Notre Dame
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After dinner, a group of us decided to go exploring. The others, I'm afraid, were too tired and headed back to the hotel. We walked past Notre Dame, sat on some chairs, and chatted with some French girls who wanted to practise their English. Then it was off to David's favourite pub.

We crowded our bunch into the upstairs, which was more like a hallway than a room. We sat on some benches and chatted for a while, and then I was accused of impropriety. This amused me greatly. A few drinks were had among our group, which supplemented the ample quantities of wine and champagne served at dinner. This caused some people, names omitted, to become quite entertaining. When the bar closed, I had to prop some of them up as we staggered out.

The vast majority of our group opted to take taxis back home. But the hardcore among us went to a small alleyway outside Corcoran's Irish Pub. There, we entered and ordered some drinks. Well, actually, I opted to stay outside because the heat and pressure within were just suffocating. I watched as a bakery closed and vast groups of American tourists wandered drunkly down the street.

Flaming poi
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

A group of girls from Vermont was asking the doorman of Corcoran's to take a picture of them. They were hanging out with Mexican boys with reasonable English. They saw me writing in my notebook and asked where I was from. "Canada," I replied, which sent them into a gleeful fit. They insisted that I join them in a photograph. How could I refuse? They left with one of the girls leading the way, she had been staying in Paris for a while, and they were here to be shown around.

My friends left the bar with plastic glasses of beer in each hand. I proposed that we head to somewhere quiet where we could sit down, so David decided that we needed to walk along the banks of la Seine. There, we found some small amphitheatres, set in the concrete overlooking the river. It was just like a small version of Tam Tam Jam. There were drummers and people sitting on the steps drinking beer and smoking pot. Homeless people would come by and beg for money, but everyone sitting down seemed to be poor students, so nobody had spare change. I asked some poi spinners if I could photograph them. Nobody refused.

After appreciating the night air for too long, we got up and hailed a taxicab. Good night, Paris. I'll return, I promise.