Kalimera from Hersonissos
Just saying hi from
ESWC'05, just wanted to show you guys the view from the
Royal Mare in Hersonissos, the hotel I'm staying at.
I'll try to do some easy conference blogging, the first interesting event (assuming you're not interested about stories on unfriendly taxi drivers or in yesterday night out with Stefan Decker, Dieter Fensel and the HP Galway folks) is the
"MDA Standards for Ontology Development" tutorial this afternoon. I'll try to take some pictures and wright (
I meant: write - must be their rakı!) a short report (which I'll have to anyway, I'm not on holiday after all ;-)).
YABC: Blogwatch
Just found out about yet another (swiss) blogging company being established:
blogwatch.
There's no website so far -but
business cards, of course-, go see
daysbloggers.ch for mission statement ("to enhance business relationships between bloggers and enterprises") and crew (
B. Voigt,
D. Mettler,
T. Bocek).
Let's wait and see what's coming there, maybe with their good connections to Microsoft they could even become a blog company that makes real money?(!).
Edit: Also available: a little teaser. Lots of hot air IMHO.Semantic Web Excitement
1.) I'm rather excited, because I'm indeed going to
Greece!
2.)
Stefano is really excited, because they
released Piggy Bank 2!
Lot's of other stuff going on, too much to blog about, sorry. But at least I gave
those guys something to blog about. Anyway, if you want to follow my endeavour you'd better
read my bookmarks than my blog, because blogging frequency is unlikely to increase in the weeks to come - despite all the excitement.
Wired Bern
So here's the next couple of local geek events here in Bern, would be nice to see you at one of those:
There's also a
CH-open lunch, but that'd really be one too many.
Anyway, that's the local, non-business dates only, but promised I'll tell you more about the stuff with
BxCMS at
Seco, what's going on in Heraklion at
SFSW'05 and all those things later.
ITMS Switzerland with pymusique
To use the
iTunes Music Store Switzerland on Debian GNU/Linux do:
- apt-get install pymusique
- apt-get install python-pyopenssl (won't work without, not so good packaging)
- Enable the Swiss store by adding the following line to /usr/lib/pymusique/storebase.py:
'Switzerland':'143459'
- Delete the compiled versions of storebase.py
- Run pymusique, enjoy shopping. MPlayer & Co have no problem playing the unencrypted, DRM-free M4A files.
This being a rather lazy Sunday afternoon, the test song I bought was: Antonio Carlos Jobim - "A Felicidade".
Alternatively you could try
SharpMusique, but getting that one to run seems a bit harder. If you prefer MP3 files,
ffmpeg will help.
Galway, Berlin, Bern, Fribourg.
After leaving Galway and stopping by in Berlin, I'm back home in Bern.
But first things first. On the 29th I left DERI Galway midst in the collective struggle of getting out a SWSE (say: 'swizy') paper for ISWC. Nevertheless there was a little good bye party at Busker Brownes the last night. They made me drink a bit too much, as I hardly ever drink that did not need much after all. Sebastian has a bunch of pictures(like the one above) made that night - thanks everybody for coming!
After that I flew back home, we had dinner at Schwellenmätteli and went to Berlin the next morning. We didn't do much special in Berlin (stayed at Ku`damm 101, went to see the Flick Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof, ..), but meeting Chris Bizer was great, we had quite an interesting chat about Fresnel, Simile and stuff.
It really was a pleasant stay and a good transition from DERI Galway life to life back in Bern.
Next on my schedule:
These are the most short-term plans, and there's quite some more stuff after that, so no worries about boredom.
A more in-depth review on my time in Galway is going to follow, as well as some more details about what those current projects are all about.
