Fun at the GSoC Mentors Summit

Last weekend was the GSoC Mentors Summit. As a mentor for the Pidgin, Finch and libpurple project, I attended for the first time this year.

It was pretty interesting and a lot of fun, but I have to say I didn't really feel like much of a geek there! Everyone's either got an iPhone or a Droid, and they've all done awesome stuff. Can you say you've worked on WordPress, used by millions of websites, or Apache, serving even more websites, or RTEMS, running several space exploration instruments and other consumer products, or who knows what else?

Nevertheless, it wasn't like I was totally unknown. There were quite a few people who use Pidgin, even one or two using Finch. Oh, and some Mac users using Adium (using libpurple), too.

The flight was fine, but the weather was a bit disappointed. It would have been nicer to explore a bit more, but at least I got to eat a ton of chocolate. I'll try and write a longer re-cap later.

Nuit Blanche

I probably should have gotten around to finishing this post a while ago, but anyway...

So Nuit Blanche was this weekend. I don't think it was as fun this year as the last time. Of course, the cold was not much fun, but the other time was a bit chilly, too.

I think the main problem was that we didn't plan a route and basically went to whatever seemed close to us. Which turned out to be the more "popular" ones, i.e., those in the downtown core. And it turns out those are not necessarily the best.

Take for example, the synchronizing bug light thing. Strings of lights that supposedly sync up and can be perturbed by the audience. Except it didn't seem to do much, and I've seen it done better.

I think the biggest problem in such crowded areas is the high chance of running into smokers. Obviously, since I don't smoke, I'm not really a fan of second-hand smoke either. And there was way too much of it. That and smoke from stuff that's not a cigarette, if you know what I mean. ;)