Happy 2015!

I wish you all an exciting 2015 in good health, with a lot of fun and big achievements in your projects! Good luck and joy to all my friends who are expecting a child this year!

Reviewing 2014

Well, 2014 was quite busy. Looking at my plans for 2014 a lot more happened than I expected : I learned Python when I started a new project, visited 7 capital cities and 3 continents, did a few climbing trips and got to visit San Francisco and Yosemite again :

• celebrated New Year in Cebu, Philipines
• visited Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Melakka, ...), Singapore and Hong Kong
• bought a Google Nexus 5
• attended FOSDEM 2014
• resigned as a phpMyAdmin team member, creating some more time for other projects
• finished a first blue route at Bleau
• coorganised an info session about Google Summer of Code at Ghent University
• started working on a tool to generate a trend graph of a build process, my first Python experience
• attended Newline 0x04 and talked about reducing iptables configuration complexity
• attended LinuxTag 2014 and talked about 'Reducing iptables configuration complexity' (presentation slides)
• Finished a 10km race (Gentse stadsloop) in less than 55 minutes
• Visited Maker Faire Paris : A lot of interesting stuff, mainly 3D printers, but some with a twist : pancake maker, an industrial welding robot mounted with an extruder, lots of hinges, bearings and other stuff printed ready to be used : no need to assemble
• First time to visit Paris, I finally got to see the Eifel tower, Avenue des Champs Elysées, Arc de triomphe, Le Louvre (outside), Notre Dame, La Seine, Musée d'Orsay, Musée Rodin, Montmartre and Sacré Coeur
• Released version 0.3 of Get Back GPS
• Participated in a climbing training in L'Argentière-La Bessée and received a certificate for lead-climbing  and multi-pitch climbing (KVB3), had a lot of fun : climbing a lot and sending several 5b's and 5c's lead-climbing, some of them on sight.
• Visited Amsterdam, the 6th capital city I went to this year
• performed a lead-climber's fall at Klimax II
• did a 55km cycling trip around Ghent
• Donated blood for the first time
• Released the first version of Buildtime Trend, a tool to create visual trends of  a software build process, written in Python and JavaScript
• GetBack GPS had more than 10 contributors during 1 month, most of them are translating the app
• Ran 16km/10mi for the first time
• Spent a weekend in Fontainebleau with Maxime, Seba and Wolf, opening some routes.
• Went to San Francisco to attend the GSoC 10th Anniversary Reunion and spent a few days in San Francisco and did a trip to Yosemite with Madhura Jayaratne. Shared a few beers with Justin and Josh of Keen.io, talking about Open Source commit streaks and Buildtime Trend.
• Released GetBack GPS 0.4, introducing 7 more languages.
• Spent a long weekend climbing in Fontainebleau with Peter, Dorinne, Cécile, Stef, Aline, Senne, Nik, Chris, Andreas, Luke and Barbara, climbing several yellow and blue routes.
• and a second blood donation
• finished a red climbing route
• traveled to Lisbon.

Things to do in 2015:

• Continue working on Buildtime Trend : offer it as a service (SaaS), add more stats, support more CI environments, ... 
• Climb as much as possible, both indoor and outdoor, with trips to France during the Easter and summer holidays, and weekend trips to Fontainebleau or one of the climbing areas in the south of Belgium.
• Visit Open Source and related conferences : FOSDEM, LinuxTag, EuroPython, DebConf and KeenCon.

I'm looking forward to where 2015 will bring me. Looking back at 2014 it is bound to be an exciting year again.

California

Waiting in the lobby of the hotel for the shuttle to take me back to the airport. And that will be the conclusion of a 2 week adventure starting at the Google campus for the GSoC Mentor Summit, a road trip visiting several places in North California and an extensive exploration of San Francisco city.

To summarize : it has been amazing. The things I've seen, the nature, the wildlife, the atmosphere, the people I've met and talked to.


So what did I learn :

• One can pay almost anything with a credit card, even drinks in a bar or a parking meter.
• Having an insurance is a good thing. If you have one, you will be helped immediately and with a smile. If you don't have one, you will still get a smile, but you are presented a bill before you are helped.
• San Francisco is a nice city, full of friendly and patient people (exception for cab drivers, but that counts for probably all cab drivers in the world) but also a city of controversy. Rich and poor live together, or more precisely, next to each other, and you can take that quite literally. One moment you're walking down a fancy shopping street, and one block further you find yourself surrounded by homeless people.
• Automatic gearboxes are nice for driving in the city and on freeways. Cruise control is also a very nice feature. But when doing some hills you just crave for a manual gearbox.
• Americans are very good at putting signs for anything, usually stating the obvious. It can be a helpful reminder, or in my case, being a tourist visiting the US for the first time, very convenient. But when you need a sign you can't find one.
• I still haven't come to grasp with traffic rules for crossroads. On crossroads without a traffic light and stop signs on all corners, I haven't figured out yet who gets to drive first. The one who came to the crossroad first, or the one coming from the right.
  On cross roads with traffic lights, it is usually allowed to drive when it's red if you are going right, but not always. So I usually stopped for red anyway, just to be safe. But this sometimes resulted in being notified by the cars behind me that I should be going.
• Driving by bike in San Francisco is a very nice experience. The challenge is to find streets that are not too steep.

It was a nice experience and I hope to return some day.