I was few times in London but always on business without time for sightseeing so decided to change it.

Day one

After few hours trip landed at London Gatwick airport. Some say that’s worst one of five but was not so bad. Why there? Because I could and I was on Stansted, Luton and Heathrow already (plan to use City one next time). Short trip to the city and hello Victoria station — long time no see…

Bought Oyster card to use public transport in easiest way and took a metro train to hotel. Nothing fancy — just cheap (65£ per night) hotel without any extras (but with working free WiFi).

Unpacked only needed things and went to city centre. Victoria monument, Buckingham Palace, the Mall etc. More or less followed the most popular trip from the “Trip Advisor” application.

Went to Thames, crossed with one bridge, looked at London Eye (and decided to skip it) and then Big Ben and Westminster Abbey were next. I considered returning to the Abbey next day but later decided against it.

Grabbed some food and went to sleep early as it was 3rd day when I woke up around 5:00.

Day two

Thursday… Skipped Westminster Abbey and went by foot to the British Museum. Met Mark Brown on a way and we had good time looking at all those things which British Empire had stolen from all around the world. We didn’t managed to find Britain sections.

After lunch I went to the Forbidden Planet store. And sunk there for quite long time. Then got back to buy two more books. This place was amazing…

They had stuff related to movies, games, tv series – figurines, key chains, t-shirts, toys, rings/jewellery, helmets, weapons and other… Some from limited editions. But when I wondered “is that’s all?” I went to the basement. And sank.

Comics, books, movies, tv series, manga, anime, photo albums and more. Books about movies, books which movies were based on (and vice versa). “Darth Vader’s princess” and “Darth Vader and his son” were there (9£ each), “Simon’s cat” books which my daughter would love (so I bought one), lot of SF and fantasy books in nice editions (Asimov for example).

“Big book of butts” looked funny. Next one was “Big book of legs” next to “pin-up girls” and other photo/erotic ones.

Nice place to go to but I warn you – you can leave a lot of cash there and have problem packing…

Lack of Britain sections in museum made me go to their website to check floor plan. And back to the building to see few more exhibitions. When I finally found what was searching for they told us to leave :-(

But no need to be sad I thought cause I was going to meet long time no see friends at a pub not so far away. Went there, ordered some “organic lager” and sat down to wait for them. Few minutes later I had a chat with some guys around 60 years old about some random stuff. Good part were their recommendations which beer to try next. As you probably guess it was not lager but rather ale or something more English.

YaaL and Pornel arrived and we had nice chat about life, work etc. Time passed too fast :-( But it was good to meet after so many years.

Day three

This had to be no museums day. First I went to visit Canonical’s office as I have never been there…

Finding building was quite easy, then discussion with security took a bit more before they finally realised that I am on a visitors list already. Got tour of the office, looked at wall full of Ubuntu Touch interface mockups, discussed few of them with someone, made some coffee and left the building.

Next step was Tete Modern Art gallery. I spent few hours there watching all those sculptures, paintings and installations which were counted as art in previous century. Did not even tried to understand those…

Due to cold I got during previous days I went back to the hotel. But why stay there when there are so many places to visit and so little time?

So I decided to make use of longer opening hours at the British Museum and went there. This time managed to see Britain sections and European Medieval times ones. It was good evening.

Day four

As this was my last day in London I decided to not go far from the hotel. Checked out, left luggage and went on foot to the Science Museum.

Lovely place. Went quickly though Space exhibition (cause most of it I saw at Cape Canaveral already) but other ones were worth seeing. Age of Steam with all those engines and descriptions, vehicles like bikes (starting with “safety bicycle” by Rover), motorcycles, cars (including JET 1 powered by gas turbine) but also planes (with replica of Wright brothers one) and helicopters.

I enjoyed the “Materials” exhibition — especially body model with some artificial addons and long list next to it informing which materials can be used for which implants and other inserted parts.

There was also special exhibition about Alan Turing and his work.

After visit I went for food, took luggage from hotel and then the Underground to King’s Cross train station and went to Cambridge. But this will be next post.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
My UK trip — London was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

I have a Kindle. Paperwhite to be precise. And 224 books on it…

When I look at a shelf behind me I see probably similar amount of paper ones. Science fiction, fantasy, sensation, computer ones and other. They are more or less in an order.

I have series next to each other — with books set in reading order (not always original one but mine). Tall separated from low ones, English ones near to those in Polish.

So when I want to read “Collectors” by Baldacci I can just go there, take a quick look, grab it and start reading. Other two parts are next to it (I just realised that I lack two books from cycle) and in Polish. Similar with “Witch World” cycle by Andre Norton (but only in Polish).

Getting such order on Kindle? Forget it.

I have 5.3.3 firmware with jailbreak and Collection Manager. I use Calibre on desktop to have my e-books in one place. But then I have some books only on Kindle cause I bought them on Amazon directly. Will unDRM them one day. For some books from Polish online stores situation looks similar.

Some e-books have the same title for both parts — like “Dziewi?ty Mag” for example. And guess which one is which on device without opening…

There is no easy way to store information where book was bought. Sure, I can create a column in Calibre and fill that data there. But have you tried to do it for more than 3 books? PAIN…

I created several collections to get a bit of order on device. But I do not like situation when I have to edit e-book title just to add information which part of cycle it is.

Maybe one day I will find solutions…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Organizing books on Kindle sucks was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Nine years ago I bought Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 as my first Linux PDA. And due to this I am where I am.

I could say that it started two years earlier when I saw PalmOS devices at local geek meetings. But it took me over year before Palm m105… Then was Sony Clie SJ30 — gorgeous device. High resolution, memory card, 16bit colour. Too bad that applications did not make use of it.

So I went for Linux. There were two options: Zaurus or iPaq. Went for former one as it had keyboard. It was good choice.

Quickly started development of packages and joined OpenEmbedded team. Then became one of OpenZaurus developers. After year or something took over release maintenance and released few last versions. 3.5.4(.1) were the best tested releases of OZ ever — I had over hundred testers for each RC image and they provided installation reports, bug reports and fixes. And it had unified installer for whole range of devices (took me several months to get it polished and few guys added own tweaks). When Ångström distribution started I was the one who officially ended OpenZaurus development.

And all that was in free time. But in mean time I created my consulting company. CELF was my first customer ;)

One nice evening I got question on irc and due to that I left dark side of IT and went from PHP programming to embedded Linux full-time. OpenedHand had interesting projects and clients with many devices. Imagine operating system + kernel + Python + GStreamer in 16 megabytes of flash… And I managed to get it done. While working for them I used proper developer boards (not only customer devices) and there were funny moments…

When we worked with ST Microelectronics on NDK-15 (later replaced by NHK-15 from ST Ericsson) I had to merge two kernel trees from two separate teams. Took me 2 days of mangling 20-30MB diffs but got it done. There are people at ST-E which reminded me this during one of Linaro Connects ;D

Also on GUADEC 2007 when we presented new interface for Openmoko phones NDK-15 had to wait for me as no one at stand was able to get it running (U-Boot config needed changes).

But then Intel acquired OpenedHand… The craziest trip of my life was return from London to my parents place. For three months I even had @linux.intel.com email but never used it due to problems with Intel corporate network and Linux (do not ask).

Next was Bug Labs and their BUG device. I cleaned their Poky trees, migrated to latest version and later to use OpenEmbedded directly. Less challenges but I also had few other customers at that time to keep me busy. Some of them were OH customers before and went to me for help.

Time passed, 2010 came. One day Canonical made another attempt to seduce me and this time I decided that it looks like good opportunity so I accepted. Sent BUG 2.0 prototype back to NYC and few weeks later I made crazy train trip to small nowhere near Brussels to meet my new coworkers from NewCore. 1-2 weeks later we got our current name: Linaro.

Total change… From embedded devices to ‘Yes, it is ARM. So what?’ kind as we support(ed) devices powerful enough to run normal desktop software. Many changes for me — from OpenEmbedded where you can (cross) build everything in few hours to Ubuntu packaging where sending package for inclusion into archive meant few hours of buildd queue and then few of build. But I learnt a lot here and met another set of hackers including grey beards ones ;)

And all that because I bought Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 nine years ago…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Nine years of embedded Linux was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

People told me many times that I complain a lot (maybe even too much sometimes). But this is who I am and you have to live with it.

When I get new device I usually blog about it — like I told during recent conferences: “give me a device and I will find something to complain about, but also will usually tell something positive as well”. Sometimes those posts even got presented by other people at management meetings as an example of what is good/wrong in described products.

But so far I never got an email with ask to remove any blog post — there were comments outside of blog sometimes but never request to take my opinion down. I edited two posts — first one was before publication because I sent it for review (it was not requested by company), second time when I got some information about product in public space but device had to be announced week later at big event during one of trade shows.

What do you think? Should I write more about devices or rather not?

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Complaining was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

I always loved to read. In 6th class in elementary school I took fourteen books from school library at once (when only 3 were allowed). In 8th class I was going there only for required readings as there were no books there which could interest me (tough timing as I read all what liked and no money for new ones).

Basically during my school life I used several libraries and at most of them has a status of ‘frequent visitor’ which meant no need to say name during books exchange. Also booking of rare books was possible.

After studies I moved to other city then to another then to another… My amount of books was slowly growing because I wanted not to have too many things. Interesting new books were also usually expensive so compared to my income was not helping. And I somehow skipped searching for new libraries — instead were checking friends’ bookshelves.

Once I settled down in Pozna? and then in Szczecin my collection was slowly growing. And then, in November 2011 I bought myself Kindle Classic. Life got changed…

First I loaded it with some documents and books which I had on hard drive — technical, science fiction etc. Reading was pleasure. Then I loaded more and more…

Recently I started making use of promotions announced on “?wiat Czytników” website which resulted in more and more books in queue. Then evenings, travels, waiting in queues transformed into reading spaces ;)

It is good to read a lot again.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Thanks to Kindle I am back to reading was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Few days ago I went to shop and bought a bike:

My third bike in entire life — previous one was recycled few years ago as I did not lived with my parents and there was no sense in restoring driving condition for it (it was ~20 years old I think).

This bike is cool — especially fitted with extra set for my 3.5y old daughter. Yesterday we (my wife, daughter and I) went for cycling in forest and it was great experience. Lost track where we are once which ended in few kilometres of really ugly road but I learnt from it and next trip will be first consulted with Open Street Maps as it has coverage of Szczecin area.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Bought a bike was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Before UDS-O I decided that it is a time to change organization of my desk. Current setup is effect of two years of using several boards/computers etc.

Today I went on desk and under it and started disconnecting all cables which are no longer in use:

• 3 null modem serial cables
• 3 USB extenders
• ATX 200W psu modded to provide 5V/12V for developer boards
• E-SATA cable used with USB/ESATA hdd enclosure which is now connected over USB to PandaBoard
• 3 Ethernet cables
• mini-USB cable used as serial console with SheevaPlug
• VGA cable which was used with second LCD — will be reconnected when there will be time for desktop

But that’s just beginning. Next days will bring disconnecting all developer boards, moving cable modem and phone base near to router, mounting two PandaBoards on piece of MDF (so they will not float), mounting some extra shelves to get rid of stuff from desk.

At the end I plan to have 2-4 LCD panels (or 2 monitors + 4-port KVM switch), two keyboards, two mouses, two laptops on one desk. Hope to finish it before end of next week.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Reorganization of desk: day 1 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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