Category: Meta

Too Many Sites

I’m trying to come up with a plan to harmonize all my sites. There are way too many installs on too many machines spread out over vendors and sites. A general clean-up is really needed.

Right now I have a couple of sites that are self-hosted (they run on a old machine in my office), a VPS at Linode and a couple of VPSes at DigitalOcean. I also have a couple of sites run via github pages.

Right now, a majority of the sites are based around WordPress which is great due to the ease of use – but static sites are easier (and cheaper) to host. In addition to this, I also have a couple of Django apps running on VPSes. Nice, but requires quite a bit of RAM in my experience.

So, the general plan is to clean up my domains, and to harmonize the environments. Perhaps a single WordPress machine, that also hosts the static sites, and the dedicated machines for the more complex Django apps. There will also be a bunch of URL rewrites to make the structure better, i.e. this blog will probably live under e8johan.se, but be available via the old URL too (thelins.se/johan/blog).

When reviewing my domains, I found the following ones that I most likely will give up. If there are any takers, please tell me what you want it for, and I’d be happy to hand it over to you (contact me at e8johan-at-gmail):

  • oppenkod.se (open source in Swedish)
  • qt6book.org (I’ve already got qmlbook.org, and I won’t write another book until Qt 8)
  • qt6book.com (see qt6book.org)

Also, I plan to pull all the machines over to DigitalOcean, as they offer a really nice interface (and APIs!) for managing VPSs, DNS and more (and I’ve gotten used to them while building Eperoto’s infrastructure).

Finally, I intend to collect all domain name registrations at a single registrar (most likely Loopia, but let’s see.

foss-north pod – a look at the stats

The foss-north pod about Licenses and Copyright has been around since May 1st, so I decided to talk a look at the stats. We gather very little statistics, but what I know is that we have 635 followers on YouTube and 108 over at conf.tube (a peertube instance). We also serve the pod directly from foss-north.se/pod, where we keep 14 days of access logs. What can we read out from them?

First of all – we decided to provide the pod as ogg or mp3, and it seems like a majority of you prefer the ogg version.

The downloads per day is a mess. From the episodes page I can see that we released the last two episodes on Nov 20, and Dec 4. I was a bit surprised not to see a spike on the 4th or 5ph, nor any apparent weekend vs workday pattern.

So, what was downloaded? Keep in mind that this is a two weeks window, and episode 26 was available for the last 3 days only. It seems like we have an even spread of listeners across many episodes, with a focus on episode 25, which was the latest during the time window.

Does this mean that we have a steady flow of new listeners? Not sure – the YouTube subscriber count raises steadily, so it might be the case.

Finally, let’s have a look at the user agent strings. I’ve tried to classify this into client OS for browsers, Apps for obvious pod listening apps, Bot for bots and other for the unidentified ones.

To my surprise, quite a few of you are listening from Windows machines. Then we have the Linux devices followed by Android, and Apps. Unless you count the bots, of course.

Another surprise is that OpenBSD is more common than OSX among our listeners.

It is possible to dig out more from the logs, but the evening is approaching. There are some surprises here, but it is good to see that we have had 800+ downloads over the past two weeks. To be honest, I was a bit worried when we shifted from YouTube to a podcasting format in August. Our views dropped quite dramatically on YouTube, but it seems that you found your way to the pod instead.

At the end of the day, the positive feedback given over social media and email is worth more than stats, so we will keep on going. Also, clocking in at almost 200 views on our episode on the definition of copyright and 250+ on the history of free and open source is quite amazing in my book, as this is a quite a narrow meta-topic inside the free and open source movement.

foss-north

It is with great regret that I have to announce that foss-north 2020 has been postponed due to the COVID-19 situation.

It will be replaced by a virtual event during the planned dates (March 30-31), and a physical event during the fall.

We regret any inconvenience that this causes our guests and sponsors. At the same time we appreciate the great support of our sponsors who unanimously support us in these difficult times.

Details will be shared at https://foss-north.se/2020/ as we learn more.

This is turning out to be a really shitty week. But we will prevail together.

I’m always positively surprised about the amount of support and love out there in difficult times. It is what makes the world go around.

New adventures – old challenges

Times pass and we all change. I’ve realized that I’ve gone from mostly coding at work, to almost not coding at all (I reflect on this in the Under utveckling pod – Swedish only). I’ve also realized that what I do in automotive has a much wider application (see my fosdem talk on this). Thus, the conclusion is that the time has come to change context.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on promoting free and open source software. I’ve spoken at conferences, gone to hackathlons, spoken at the university, and arranged meetups. All this culminated in foss-north which I’ve been organizing for the past three years.

The conclusion from all of this is that there is an opportunity to focus on this full time. How can free and open source software be leveraged in various industries? How does one actually work with this? How does licensing work? and so on. To do so, I founded my own company – koderize – a while back and from now on I’m focusing fully on it.

Before joining Pelagicore back in 2010 I was solo consulting for a year. This was a great opportunity and I finally got to spend some time working directly with the former Trolls at what later became The Qt Company. However, I also came to realize that solo consulting makes me go slightly mad. Also, my wife complained that I talked to much every afternoon when she came home ;-)

Thus, I want colleagues. That is why myself and some great people that I’ve passed by during my years in this field are founding Kuro Studio (the web page is minimalist – i.e. empty).

The team we’re setting up complement each other and the sum of our experience covers the full full-stack. We can do team building, purchasing, processes, QA, agile, development, design, licensing, devops – even some hardware. The goal is to create an end-to-end product design team that can help out during any phase of product development, as well as organizational development.

At the end of the day I’m still passionate about what I have been doing the past 8 years. Cars excite me, and combining that with Qt and Linux makes me even more excited. That means that I’ll still be around in that field. As a matter of fact, my first assignment is in that area.

So, at the end of the day, time pass, we grow, but some things still stay the same. A big thank you to everyone at Pelagicore – it was a great ride.

Berlin for a month

A month ago my family and I left our home to go to a new country and city for a month. As an experiment. As a source of variation. As something new. As an adventure.

The background to going to Berlin is that we’re starting a new office in Berlin and people need to be onboarded (we are also looking for people in Gothenburg). This requires someone on the ground. At the same time, we, as a family, have been playing with the idea to relocated for a longer or shorter period and the timing of this opportunity was nice, as the length of the trip was short enough to be manageable.

The move led to a lot of changes. We went from a city of 40000 inhabitants to Berlin with around four million. We moved from a house of 200 square meters to a two room apartment of around 50 square meters. We also moved from two working adults with kids attending school, to four weeks of home schooling and one parent taking care of the home.

From a work perspective, it has been fun to get to know a group of new colleagues from all over the world. From that perspective, Berlin is very un-german. Everyone seems happy to speak English and you always encounter people from various background. Still, I got some proper german practice, so I now master explaining that my german is bad :-)

From a family perspective, things have been better than I ever expected. The benefit of a big city is that there are a million things to do. The feeling is more that we are running out of time, rather than that we want to go back home again. Also, the sheer selection of playgrounds in Berlin is really great. We have three good playgrounds within 2-3 blocks from our apartment, so plenty of variation.

Another family related issue is the ease of commuting. I went from a 45 minutes train ride to a 3-4 minutes walk, which gives me a lot more time to spend with my family. At the same time, it does take away 90 minutes everyday of concentrated mail management, which means that my inbox currently is in a very sad state.

Another aspect in the same direction is that we spend a lot more time together as a family, partly since the kids don’t run off to their friends right after school. This also means that I get a lot less free time for taking care of hobbies such as foss-north and foss-gbg.

As you can tell, most aspects of this temporary change are double-edged. If I were to move anywhere permanently, some of this would have to be resolved. At the same time, I got a month of working in Germany combined with way more time with my kids and wife than I usually get, so I would not want to change anything. I think that this picture really sums things up. Berlin is a city of contrasts and compared to my life in Sweden, the way I lived in Berlin had a strong contrast as well.

Summary of 2016

So, 2016 has been a great year to me. Interesting in many aspects, but most has turned out to be for the better. I’ve gotten to know a bunch of awesome new people, I spoken about open source, Qt and Linux in Europe and USA, I’ve helped hosting an open source conference in Gothenburg, I’ve learned so much more professionally and as a person, and I’ve really enjoyed myself the whole time.

2016 was the year that…

  • … myself and Jürgen where Qt Champions for our work with the qmlbook. It feels really great getting recognition for this work. I really want to take QML Book further – during 2016 both myself and Jürgen have been too busy to do a good job improving and extending the text.
  • … I had to opportunity to visit the Americas (Oregon and California) for the first time in my life. Felt really nice having been on another continent. Now it is only Africa and Australia left on the list :-)

  • … I picked up running and has run every week throughout the year, averaging almost 10km per week. This is the first year since we built out house and had kids (so 11 or 12 years) that I’ve maintained a training regime over a full year.
  • … foss-gbg went from a small user group of 15-30 people meeting every month to something much larger. On May 26 the first foss-north took place. This is something some friends of mine and myself have discussed for years and when we finally dared to try it was a great success. We filled the venue with 110 guests and ten speakers and had a great day in the sunshine. In the events after foss-north, the local group, foss-gbg has attracted 40-60 people per meeting, so double the crowd.

  • … Pelagicore, the start-up I joined in 2010 when we were only 6 employees, was acquired by Luxoft. We had grown to 50+ employees in the mean time and put Qt, Linux and open source on the automotive map. It has been a great journey and I feel that we being a part of something bigger lets us reach even further, so I’m really excited about this.

2017 will be the year that…

  • … I make more time for writing – on qmlbook, this blog and more.
  • … I improve my running and increase my average distance per run as well as distance per week.
  • … foss-north will take place again. This time with double the audience and dual tracks for parts of the day. I will share more information as it develops. This time, the date to aim for is April 26. In the mean time, foss-gbg will have fewer, but larger, meetings.
  • … Qt, Linux and open source becomes the natural choice in automotive. I will do my best to help this turn out true!

Even as 2016 has been really good, I hope that 2017 will be even greater. I’m really looking forward to learning!

Vacation 2015

IMG_20150703_172538So, vacation has finally arrived in 2015. To the despair of some, and joy of others, the Swedish standard vacation is 3-5 weeks over the summer. I’ll be having five weeks of this year.

So, what do you do with five weeks? Generally, I start out ambitious and end up in reality after 3-4 weeks and then scramble to get something done. Here is my list for the summer 2015:

  • Hang out with the kids and wife and do fun stuff.
  • Do some work around the house (a shed for our bikes and some general painting are on the wish list).
  • Get the calendar for foss-gbg into place. It does look as if we will have an awesome autumn.
  • Work on a whole bunch of little Yocto projects that I’ve been planning for a while (meta-kf5 being one of the high priority ones, playing with various targets such as the Raspberry Pi 2, Beagle Bone Black and more another).
  • Getting my 3D printer back into shape and do something fun with it (if it rains a lot)

That summarizes my ambition pretty much – but first things first – lets spend a few days hanging out with the kids before they grow tired of me and think that I’m old and boring :-)