Archive for May, 2007

Digital Picture Frame with Linux

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

One of my very little side-projects – a digital picture frame out of old disused hardware – is getting really interesting. I was able to setup a complete self-contained system.. ranging from automatic gathering of pictures as soon as one inserts a CD into it .. to a very extreme powermanagement setup where i took special care of the harddisk (that is really really loud). Now i came up with a special harddisk monitoring that refreshes the caches quite intelligently and shuts the disk off again. So theres nearly no harddisk activity at all while the system is up.. its really amazing.

Hopefully i can present more on this topic soon here. Perhaps even with pictures of the finished device.

Live is change

Friday, May 18th, 2007

In the last days and weeks i realized a lot of things in my life changed or seem to do so soon. Some of those changes are extremly welcome while others are not. A very positive example is my current focus on getting a full-time kernel developer. Even though its not yet fully clear to me if or what of my set goals in this regard will actually become true, but at least i have quite some hope a transitioning towards upstream kernel development is achievable or nearer than ever before. So, please keep your fingers crossed.. :-)
On the other side a quite sad example showed up the last day. While a very nice family celebration i had to realized the “gap” between my seven years older brother and me seems to have become quite large. Don’t know why we are that totally different. I used to think thats because of our big difference in age, but comparing it e.g. to my awesome colleague “seife” – who is even a bit older and who i really look up to – i meanwhile doubt this heavily. In fact i’m feeling e.g. indescribably more comfortable being with my team colleagues than with my own brother.

I guess that’s just the way it is. So, live is change, but having so many great people i can rely and trust on .. starting from my beloved wife to my parents and in-laws to my great colleagues .. this is as right as rain.

A week in Prague

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Last week i had a fantastic business trip to Prague (capital of Czech Republic). I really got a hell of a lot out of it in so many ways this blog wouldn’t last out for. But i want to thank Lars, Greg, Jeff, Nat, Lucie and all who made this fantastic thing possible! Thank you so much for this great opportunity!

Of course i also had recreational events that were really nice. Let me tell you that Prague is a very beautiful city and always worth a visit. Beyond even the surrounding area was really awesome and very recommendable for a trip.