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!

Attention people from Washington, New York, and Boston!

I will be in your fair country for the holidays and would love to see you. Let us go out, dance in the streets, and shovel delicious food in our faces while laughing heartily.

Road trip itinerary:

22 – 23 December: Washington, DC

24 – 28 December: New York, NY

29 – 30 December: Boston, MA

31 December: Montréal, QC

Send me an e-mail or an SMS or even call me up! For your stalking convenience, my cellphone number is +1-514-839-4887.

I am sitting on the couch eating apples, clementines and curd cheese. Delicious, squeaky curd cheese. This is my final push to eat the rest of the food in the fridge.

There are numerous shirts on the drying rack, waving in the artificial breeze of a fan. They're whites that I'm furiously trying to dry out. This is, of course, because they have to be packed for my week-long trip to the States.

I have to catch the 6:55 train to Kingston tomorrow, so I'd better not get distracted too much. There is an absurd amount of packing to get done and quite a few things I must do. For instance, I've discovered that the blacks have not come cleanly out of the wash. They're going through again right now.

The rest of the family is driving up from Toronto, to meet me halfway. They'll be picking me up in an action-packed sequence where they drive alongside the tracks and I leap from the train on to the roof of the car. Then we'll careen down a hill, jump over a cliff, and end up on the highway to the nearest border crossing. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get the house in some semblance of order. I've stacked the books in piles in the living room, put away most of my tools, and am staring at a pile of dishes. I'll probably get to those after I've eaten. Then it's cleaning out the fridge as best I can and scrubbing the accumulated stains off the stove.

Timin is snoozing on the couch, blissfully unaware of my activity. I think he's gotten pretty used to my crazy late-night packing. The plan for this week is to have cloquewerk and angorian come by every other day and fill the food dish. I have left them little gifts on the table, to make them feel better about trudging through what looks to be bizarre weather. I suppose that cuddling with a cute cat might also be a good reward, but I can never tell how charming Timin is when I'm away.

I never seem to be able to pack light, but by George, I'm going to try this time. I've limited myself to a camera bag, a messenger bag, and a small luggage on wheels. How I'm ever going to get around in style, I have no idea, but we shall see if we can be inventive with the outfits.

As you can plainly see, my mind has started wandering quite a bit. I've had a nap this afternoon, but I can tell that my plan to stay up all night is going to be interesting. scjody is staying over, in the hopes that Aslan can benefit from the same attention as Timin. I have just realized that I've forgotten to tell my wonderful, beautiful, generous volunteers about the extra kitty they'll be feeding. So I hope they don't get too upset upon reading this.

I have been surfing the Internet to find places to eat while we're across the border. Thankfully, the lovely people at …an endless banquet have reviews of New York pizza joints, which I will have to try. But first I have to finish this absurd amount of fruit.

Oh look, that alarm has rung. I'd better go down and fetch the laundry.

The rest of the summer flew by quickly. I had less and less time to take photographs as more and more of it was consumed by, you know… I don't remember. But in any event, I was so busy I barely had time to sit down and edit photographs.

Plus, I started to feel more and more guilty about not writing. You know that feeling, where you haven't done something for so long that you put it off because you're too embarrassed to just pick it up again? Yeah, I knew you'd understand.

Facepainting
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I stayed in Ottawa for the Canada Day long weekend. After lounging around the city, trying to avoid the crazed tourist mobs, I ended up on Parliament Hill with ostraya and her friends. We blew bubbles and painted people's faces, as we waited for the fireworks.

Spotlights
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Through the grapevine, we heard that the organizers might cancel due to the weather, but in the end they launched them. Jas, who had tagged along, eloquently described the spectacle as “fucking awesome”.

Cappuccino
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

When I returned to Montréal, I discovered that the office had acquired one of those fancy Italian coffee machines. I tried my hand at grinding, tamping, and pulling a shot.

Not bad for an amateur, eh?

Pool
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The bosses had been talking about the July offsite meeting for some time and I was beginning to dread it. For some inexplicable reason, I thought of suffering in a lousy hotel at the corner of Nowhere and Nothing.

Instead, we drove to a lovely cottage retreat, had a local restaurant provide us with gorgeous meals, and lounged around in a hot-tub every evening. I love working here!

Colgate
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I soon discovered that my favourite abadoned store, Gillman's, was closing.

Binky Holleran, a local restaurateur, bought it. With the excess unsold inventory in hand, she asked various artists to make something out of it. Their exhibit was a fabulous tribute!

Counterclock
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

In my quest to make computer conferences more interesting, I did a cool tutorial at DemoCamp Montréal 3.

Instead of the overdone topic of “How to build a flashy, interactive ‘Web 2.0’ site that only geeks will use”, I opted for teaching people how to build a counterclock.

A counterclock, of course, runs counterclockwise. I ripped apart a clock I bought merely hours before, flipped its motion around, and got it working before the end of the conference. It went over pretty well.

Natasha Duchene
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

tashamonster and rubythirtythree held a little concert at Buddhi Lounge. That's a pretty nifty place that looks like a converted basement apartment. That's too depressing to actually live in, but makes a fun space for a club.

Whoever did their interior decoration is a genius! Colanders for lampshades and a bathtub-mounted television playing Disney movies complete the quirky atmosphere.

Peter Zion
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Because Peter threw a party for his triumphant return to Montréal, we met our really cool neighbour Jen. Apparently, madamewoo and I made such a good impression on her that she invited us to a picnic in the park.

Or perhaps it's just because we live so gosh-darned close? In any event, whipping up a little spaghetti puttanesca never hurts for a picnic that's right outside my front door. And neither does a little bit of photography.

Christine and baby
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Oooh, my friend Christine is having a baby. Doesn't she look beautiful? I got invited to their baby shower where I got to see kids running around like mad, a really happy dog, and three sane men stomping on a wasps' nest.

Good morning, London
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I'm a tad slow to write about things these days, I think I'm suffering from writer's block. But I'm finally able to sit down and write about my trip to Norway.

On 20 January, I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Dorval. Instead of the normal ridiculously early flight, I had managed to book one for the evening. This was a welcome change and I was positively cheering going through airport security. I arrived early, so I sat about in the lounge, surfing the Internet, until the sun went down and we boarded the aircraft. I fell asleep immediately. When I woke up, we were just landing in London and I groggily collected my possessions.

I tried to get my bearings and stumbled into a queue. I went through airport security again, because the English don't believe that other countries do proper checks. Then I was spit out into some concourse shopping area. Heathrow is a very busy place, with people scurrying around and looking harried.

I pulled out my cellphone and tried to call Kyle. That's when I felt someone bump into me and I sped up my pace. Then another bump and I turned around to face my assailant. Oh, hi Kyle. We found a spot and waited for video screen to announce our gate to Oslo.

Are you where you are?
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I dropped off again once we boarded the aeroplane and woke up for a snowy landing in Oslo. But it was 10°C warmer when compared to Montreal. I watched the luggage handlers unload our bags as people grabbed things from the overhead compartments. When we got out, I immediately noticed that the airport looked like a giant IKEA. We walked down a hallway with modular units, I ducked into a modular toilet, after passing a modular firehose, modular storage closet, and modular ventilation shaft. It was so modern that even the graffiti emphasized good design.

We found our way to the Flytoget, the airport expresss train, and bought some tickets using the automated teller. Then I tried to go through the turnstile but was defeated by my own stupidity. The security guard, who looked like a Valkyrie, took pity on me and waved me through. We got on the train and had just stowed our luggage when Daniel boarded our car. Hurray for chance meetings! We chatted as the train sped through the countryside and past snowy stations. I stared out the window as the bullet train made streaks out of tunnel lights.

An Ubuntu distribution sprint happens midway through the development cycle of each release. This one, for Oslo, concentrating on some last minute issues. Developers worked together on various features that required co-ordination, showed each other the bits they were working on, and had conversations about things that needed to get done. This was all done in the Scandic KNA, which is in the National Theatre district of Oslo. This was a short walk from the train station and we checked in with a minimum of fuss.

Hotel KNA
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The next day, we got up bright and early. I spoke with Henrik about his idea for getting more people involved in testing the CD images we use to distribute Ubuntu. For the past couple of releases, we stop all development for a week before we release the distribution. Everyone stops and tries to install Ubuntu on all of their machines. The big problems with this method are that we stall developers for an entire week and we don't test the installer on enough diverse machines. His plan involves working with the Ubuntu Forums. Instructions for how to help out are there in a sticky thread.

The area around the hotel is pretty and relatively new. I think there's some kind of school or university across the street, students were always going in and out at around lunchtime. They had wrapped an entire building in plastic wrap and were doing some form of renovations. Tollef informs me that this area used to be the docks, but those got shut down and now it's full of condos. That's why everything is so convenient and hip and trendy. It reminded me of Canada, specifically Montréal, and alleviated some of the homesickness.

I also talked with Robert about bug triage and how to get more volunteers. Although the BugSquad and Ubuntu QA are growing at a steady pace, we still don't have the critical mass that keeps #ubuntu-bugs busy all the time. One of the suggestions is to create an announcement-only mailing list that tells people how to participate in new QA endeavours. People on the BugSquad should expect to be signed up soon.

Monte Carlo Rally
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On Thursday, to our surprise, the Monte Carlo Car Rally started just outside the hotel's front door. Car enthusiasts invaded, classic cars were parked in the garage, and we saw them queue up to start racing. Lovely, lovely machines.

We're definitely going to do things that make triaging easier and more exciting. For instance, bughelper is something that Henrik and Daniel have been hacking on. Bughelper is designed to help sift through bugs in the Ubuntu distribution and find what you're looking for. Be they duplicates, crashes, or a particular type of bug, it can help you in your searches. It's almost like a bug-grepper actually. And it's very, very helpful.

That evening, we went to Henrik's house for dinner. Phillip, who's working on his genetics Ph.D. made us all a very lovely meal. It was my first exposure to fishpudding, which appears to be something that Norwegians like serving to foreigners. A practical joke, perhaps? After dinner, we discovered that the neighbourhood football pitch had frozen over. After locating a tennis ball, a group of us went outside and played a variant of hockey. Until we lost the puck in the snow.

Cosmic bowling
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

By now, people were starting to show signs of fatigue. Both Robert and Scott attended linux.conf.au right before they showed up. This meant they were disease vectors, which is what happens when you bring a whole bunch of people from all over the world into one big petri-dish of conference hall. Their particular plague seemed to be brutal, but not very contagious, as only some of us got violently ill. As usual, I happened to catch it.

On Friday night, we walked down to the fjords and stared out at the sea. They really are lovely, but there were a lot of people down by the docks so it was difficult to examine them properly. Tollef had made some reservations for us at a local Indian restaurant and we were treated to a lovely meal. Everything was cooked perfectly and left us happy and satiated.

Then came the bowling. Ben wanted to see just how many of us would lace up in smelly, rented shoes and embarass ourselves. I thought this was a marvellous idea. The first frame I ever threw was sort of a strange disaster. That's because I had never bowled before. So I tossed the bowling ball, which was far too heavy, backwards into my team. I managed to do reasonably well, for a beginner, by the end of the night. We stumbled back to hotel, tired but happy.

Early the next morning, Kyle and I woke up and headed to the airport. We caught the same flight to Heathrow, met Ben at the terminal, and then parted ways. I landed in Montréal feeling very tired and grumpy, but brightened up when I got out. Instead of my usual routine of catching the bus, I was swarmed by a group of friends. They had come, on my birthday, to whisk me away to a surprise party. I love you guys!

I had a very long bath and slept for a very long time.

My suitcase is packed and I'm about to head out the door to Oslo, Norway. I'll be there for a week, helping out with the hacking on the next release of Ubuntu.

So, my classic question: who wants a postcard? Leave your name and address in a comment below, which is screened for your privacy.

Sadly, my last postcard mailing was a little slow. Perhaps I'll have better luck this time? Don't fret if you don't receive your postcard right away, I won't have forgotten you..

I am heading up to Toronto on the train this afternoon.

I have yet to pack. Or get a haircut. Or pay my landlord.

These things must get done.

Still, I will be in Toronto for a week. If you're going to be there too, then perhaps we should do something together?

The possibilities are astounding.

Cathay Pacific
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Flying out to another city is sometimes a bit stressful, especially if you've been travelling a lot. Here's what happened on the 11th, when I was set to fly to San Francisco.

21:00: Laundry laundry laundry. Blacks, whites, blue-greens, red-browns. No clean clothes and not enough time. I pulled the last load from the washer, hung it up, and ran out.

01:00: I hailed a cab to the W, in the hopes of meeting dzuunmod. They had already left but I was treated to a strange scene of beating music, girls dancing on dividers in precarious heels, and expensive drinks. Everyone else was too clean and sharp to be geeky, though I managed to fit in. Until I pulled out my notebook and started writing.

02:30: Rode the bus up to St. Viateur to buy bagels for my expat friends. The bus is full of drunkards, as the bars had just let out. Some girls got off the same bus and they were weaving around trying to find the bakery. I led the way. Got a dozen sesame seed ones and consumed one greedily while it was still soft and hot. There are hundreds of newspaper clippings lining the walls, you know, and even signed photographs.

03:00: Rode the bus back home. Ironed a few shirts and packed the suitcase. Tried fitfully to stay awake.

04:30: Cleaned the kitchen.

05:30: Bagged up the bagels.

08:50: Got to Dorval airport bleary-eyed and confused. Tipped the cab driver well for driving like a madman. Then I stood in line forever at security, got through the TSA, and arrived at the gate. There I discovered that I had no seat.

No smoking
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

11:00: Kurt von Finck and Jeff Bailey showed up to keep me company. They boarded the plane before me while two other passengers waited to see if they could free up seats. One was really upset, since he had to make it for his daughter's birthday. I was remarkably calm about the whole thing, finding it even amusing. The ladies at the gate shook their heads when they realized my suitcase was on the flight.

11:20: The handlers rearranged some cargo so that we could fly. Seats were made available and we boarded. I sat in one that had been vacated three times. We got briefed about emergency procedures, where I claimed to know how to open the emergency exit. There's a lot of legroom in those spots. Kurt sat in front of me chatting with a guy the whole flight. I passed out happily.

14:45: Awoke in San Francisco. It was bright, sunny, and warm. I was still tired, even though I gained three hours of sleep. We met Jim Morrison, got our bags, and headed out the door. With our local guide, we got on the BART, then the CalTrain and were off to Sunnyvale.

Luggage
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

15:30: On the train, we shared the car with some kids from USC. They were all in football uniforms, swapping beers, and being rowdy. Their coach told me they were going to play Stanford at 16:00. The conductor, grumpy man he was, shouted at them to get out of the hallways. Kurt and I went to the second level where he chatted with some guy from Vancouver. I watched the guys below do the college football thing: talk about girls, make out with girls, and crack open cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

15:40: They got off at the Stanford Stadium stop, which was basically a hole in the fence. It's a stop solely used for football games. Isn't it odd how football is so important that the train would make a special stop? Calm returned to the train.

16:10: We got off at Lawrence and tried to walk to the hotel. We commandeered a shopping cart, one of those huge Costco numbers. That didn't work out so well with all our baggage, so we found a petrol station and got the attendant to call a taxi for us. She had trouble understanding us at first. While we waited, I bought a map. Then I juggled.

17:00: The cab brought us to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and I took a bath. Then it was dinner at a local Japanese restaurant, which looked pretty empty. They shouted irasshaimase at us as we entered, so it couldn't have been that bad. I asked for a tatami room, we sat down, and I pigged out on otoro. Mmm, it was good to be back in California.

Otoro
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

19:00: I was supposed to go to SuperHappyDevHouse, but I thought it was on the other side of the city, instead of a half-hour away. Whoops. Instead, I attended a party with Jim. We walked from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto. It was a good walk, except for the fact that I was in constant pain from my bruised foot.

19:45: We arrived to a group of people playing some form of game. I no longer recall what it was. It eventually devolved into people just sitting around talking. I met Mike, who was the host of the party. And I forgot-her-name, who was the cute girl that all the guys wanted to talk to. And Will Chan, who would show up in my later adventures. Everyone else got introduced to me, and I forgot all of their names too. But I do remember that they all worked for Google.

22:30: There was a lot of partying, which involved excessive drinking on most people's part. I'm glad that Jim has brought alcoholism to his co-workers, although slightly disturbed at their tastes. They bayed at the moon on the balcony, which ended up in the cops arriving. Nicest cops I'd ever seen. They thought the party was cool, since we were quiet by then, but had to show up because of a neighbour's call.

00:15: The Token Hot Guy at the party had hooked up with the Cute Girl, so I made people promise not to let them drive off drunk. This failed because everyone else was having a "good time" and didn't notice them putting on their shoes. This meant that I had to trail them to a parking lot, in a dark neighbourhood, and I am bad with directions. She wanted to drive herself home in her car, but the guy seemed reasonably sober, so I let him drive. I hope they didn't get into trouble.

00:25: I walked back in the warm Californian night, slightly lost, until I found Jim getting into Will's car. Will drove us to the hotel, where I collapsed instantly of exhaustion.

I'm flying to California again, this time for the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Mountain View. I'll be there for a week, and then going to San Francisco for another.

So once again, I'm offering to send you postcards if you leave your name and address. I'll be screening comments, so only yours will be visible to you.

From my previous postcard experiments, sometimes they don't arrive. So if you don't receive one, it isn't because I've forgotten you. It's because international mail is sometimes unreliable.

Julie and Desirae
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I go to Waterloo once a school term to hang out with people. It's good to walk the halls of your alma mater, after senility has had time to replace your memories with something fonder. In September, this visit often coincides with halfwitted's birthday party.

Driving to Waterloo was a tad annoying, as it was the long weekend, so I spent a good two hours queueing up for my rental car. They gave me this huge station wagon, as they had nothing smaller, and I drove for hours upon hours. When I finally got there, I met up with elliptic_curve who is back in the country.

She made a Thai curry and I made tabbouleh before we picked up butterbee. There was some confusion as to how to put on a toga, which was the mandatory attire, and then we were off.

Elsa Ratz
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The night involved lots of chatting, various tasty snacks, and a surprise engagement. Well, a surprise to me at least. As the night wore on, more and more people changed into non-toga clothing, as it's awfully difficult to wear a makeshift toga comfortably. You don't know how many times I was stabbed by safety pins.

The next morning, I lazied around the place a bit. Then I helped the lovely Elsa, who doesn't even live there, do some cleaning. She is the best party guest ever!

That evening, I crashed cypherpunk95's housewarming party with elliptic and butterbee. It just so happened that da_lj was at the previous affair, so I was happy and shocked to see him. It's a small, small world. We were shown around the house, I lounged about in a huge cast-iron bathtub, and made eyes at their new stove. Now we're cooking with gas!

I bumped into Justyna, who I chatted with for a while. And a few professors from Waterloo. Then I noticed some guy walking around with a Nikon F-series. It was only after some conversation that I realized that I just met tracer99 and Laura. I've been following their lovely photographs for a while, which made me very pleased to meet them.

We drove butterbee and her boyfriend back home, before going back to elliptic's place. I had to sleep on the floor, which was cold, but was snuggled my favourite kitty in the world. So I suppose everything turned out fine.

Elliptic and I drove to Montréal, avoiding one group of frosh to see another. We proceeded lazily, stopping at Arby's and Real's Truck Stop, making terrible time. But it didn't matter, we were going back to civilisation.

Goethe-Bar
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Flying out of Germany was a lot more pleasant than flying in.

I spent the morning writing postcards and licking stamps. The stamps in Germany are pretty cool. Deutsche Post has vending machines next to many of their postboxes that will sell them to you. You select the kind you want, put in the right money, and a dot-matrix printer starts squealing away. You then fetch them out of a chute below. I'm sure I got a million diseases by licking them, but sacrifices must be made.

Since it took me hours to write out my mail, the sun had come up by the time I was done. I had a quick shower, packed my belongings, and said goodbye to the hotel. I was much more used to Germany, so I didn't get lost when I took the bus, nor when I took the train. It let me out at the aeroport, where I cleverly remembered where the post box was. Off into the wide world went my postcards.

I checked in for my flight, which involved queuing up for the baggage scanner. They had an X-ray machine in front of the check-in counter, which was hooked up to a digital imaging system. That way, they only had to briefly scan the luggage and could examine the bag in detail without blasting it with radition. Clever! Plus, it was colour-enhanced. The lady operating the machine let me look at her display and I got to see the insides of my suitcase. I then loaded it on to the scale where it was automatically weighed and sent via a clever series of belts to the luggage area. There was even a machine to position it properly for going down the chute.

Landing
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Inside the aeroport, there are plenty of interesting things. For one, they've kept one of those old electro-mechanical timetables, which makes that characteristic clicky-click noise once heard all over the world. They also had a Goethe bar in the centre of the departures area, which I thought was a wonderful pun.

I took some photographs in the boarding area, but we were soon on the tarmac. We walked up to the back of the plane and filed inside. There, I found my seat next to Milley, a girl from Montréal who is now working in Toulouse. We had an excellent conversation before I passed out from exhaustion.

She kept on waking me up for meals, which was both nice but tiring. By the time I got back to Montréal, I was so exhausted that I was slightly delirious. I helped a nice couple from Frankfurt get into the Métro, they were visiting for three days, and got on the bus home.

My bed never felt so comfortable.

Leaving Frankfurt
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On Saturday, it was bright and sunny and brilliant. Only, I missed my flights so it not a particularly good day. So I made up for them.

So on Sunday, I showed up again at Dorval. It was dreary, raining, and cold. I showed up early to the terminal, got my boarding pass, and went through security. Then I spent three hours finishing a book. We boarded the plane and then waited for about an hour. So I started another one.

Once we were in the air, they served us a microwaved pot-roast that was flavoured mostly by MSG. What was most notable was that everything was served in these hermetically sealed plastic containers. We hurtled through the sky as I passed out, slept fitfully, and then woke up to the most beautiful dawn. I shan't mention the kind of breakfast we were served.

I arrived in Frankfurt, picked up my baggage and wandered like a lost puppy for a while until I found the following things: a bank machine, the railway ticket office, and the right platform. Once I got on the train, things went pretty smoothly. I arrived at the train station in Wiesbaden, where I noticed walls of beautiful graffiti. I made a mental note to return to take photographs and then looked about for the buses.

After going into an underpass, I found them. I managed to get on the appropriate bus and sailed along until I missed my stop. But eventually, after asking for help in some very pidgin German, I made it to the hotel. Exhausted.

Whoops! I missed my flight.

I'm sitting in the aeroport waiting for a standby. With any luck, I'll be able to make it to Wiesbaden for supper. That trip shall be interesting whether I make it or not.

I'm also using the Internet, which they will kindly charge me to use. If only it were so simple. I had a lot of trouble actually paying for the service. But eventually, I convinced things to work. (Hint to network administrators: an MTU of 64 bytes is too small.)

I'm going to Germany next week.

Who wants a postcard? Leave your address in a comment, which will be screened for your convenience and protection.