The story continues at [[Blog/2008/November]]. == Bernie's brain backup of October 2008 == === Fri, 31st October - Ties === Met my old buddy Ties on Jabber and he pointed me at a few nice photos from his Flickr photostream: * http://flickr.com/photos/80049722@N00/2848749676/sizes/o/in/set-72157607884586577/ * http://flickr.com/photos/80049722@N00/2749741413/in/set-72157607884586577/ === Fri, 31st October - Critical Mass === {{CriticalMass.jpg | The Boston Critical Mass (stock photo)}} A few friends from 1CC invited me to this subversive event called the [[http://bostoncriticalmass.org/|Critical Mass]]. I used the complimentary Acetarium bicycle. While our group of 200+ bikes was riding on a roadway, we went into a road block. They knocked down a couple of bikers and tried to stop others. I also ran into a young cop who had the bad idea of walking to the middle of the road. It was a lot of fun :-) === Tue, 28th October - Daneel and Giskard == {{Daneel.jpg|Daneel, my faithful Apple iBook}} My old PowerPC iBook served me well for over 5 years, accompanied me around the world twice or so, carrying three Linux distros on the same hard drive. Not to mention all the stickers, which conferred it great hacker value. One month ago, the integrated ATI GPU broke beyond any possibility of repair. Such a great loss had to be compensated with something at least half as cool. I chose a lightweight Lenovo Thinkpad X200s, with a LED backlit 12" display, a low-voltage U9300 processor and **no** stupid CD reader or writer. Today my package was delivered home and I installed Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid, just one day before the official release. {{http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3061/2932872936_c7a3b17a95.jpg | Giskard, my new Lenovo Thinkpad X200s}} === Mon, 27th October - Embedded Systems Conference Boston === {{http://beagleboard.org/static/images/beagle-home-promo-left-2008-07-01.jpg | the awesome Beagle Board}} Today I gave a talk about porting Sugar to the [[http://www.digikey.com/beagleboard|Beagle Board]], a nice development system for Texas Instrument's OMAP3530 processor. Slides here: [[http://www.codewiz.org/pub/olpc/slides/SugarBeagle.odp]] Details of the talk here: [[https://www.cmpevents.com/ESCe08/a.asp?option=G&V=3&id=625476]] === Tue, 21st October - Back to Boston === {{BostonSkyline.jpg|Cambdrige (left shore) and Boston (right shore) - stock photo}} I have greatly missed this place ever since I had to leave earlier this year. My visa is still a temporary B-1, which means I'll have to leave within 3 months. During this time, I'm planning to give a talk, finally nail down the SugarLabs server infrastructure and meet with the OLPC folks to discuss common goals. I'll be staying at the [[http://www.acetarium.com/ | Acetarium]], the most exclusive hacker accomodation in Cambridge. === Fri, 10th October - ENEA research center === Me and my uber-geeky Italian friends went to visit the ENEA Research Center on the Brasimone lake in Emilia Romagna. [[http://www.brasimone.enea.it/]] {{Pictures/vacation/brasimone_2008/P1010025.JPG|A researcher showing us the test fusion reactors|maxwidth=640}} The center is located inside a dismissed nuclear plant, quite a suggestive setting for a lab researching fourth-generation fission reactors and even nuclear fusion for the [[http://www.iter.org/ | ITER]] international effort. Enjoy all the photos by asterix: [[Pictures/vacation/brasimone_2008]]