Tag Archives: Berlin

Finding an office in Berlin

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I’d like to open an Openismus office in Berlin in the next couple of months, for about three of our people. I don’t have much idea where office rental is advertised in Berlin. What’s the equivalent of the Süddeutschezeitung’s small ads there?

I’d love us to have something in Kreuzberg, near Schlesiches-Tor, maybe by the river there, but it looks like Prenzlauerberg will be more convenient for Mathias to get to. I’d like to avoid being in one of the anonymous office buildings in the centre of town. It’s much nicer to have something with character in a lively residential area like Kreuzberg or Prenzlauerberg which is still close to everything by public transport.

To the GTK+ HackFest in Berlin

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Early tomorrow I’ll take a train to Berlin for the GTK+ HackFest. I’ll arrive at 14:07 at the Hauptbahnhof [1] and wait for Behdad to arrive a few minutes later, if the trains are on time. Unfortunately, I’ll miss most people because I’m leaving the next evening. But I can only be away for one day and it seems I can be most useful as a German speaker helping to get things set up.

I wouldn’t be that useful later anyway. I don’t really do communal coding. For one thing, it doesn’t work when other people try to show me something quickly and see that I don’t use either emacs or vi on my laptop. I can’t imagine using them and I believe this may be due to some fundamentally different structure in my brain.

I am quite looking forward to the six hour train ride to Berlin. When I regularly did the Munich-Berlin commute it was great for solving bugs that had stacked up and needed some dedicated concentration.

Someone asked me today if I’m a native English speaker. Yes, I am. Ask a German.

[1] I can’t get used to calling it the Haupbahnhof. It’s the Lehrter Bahnhof even if it now looks like a giant ant farm.

GNOME Events Box: Mini-PC?

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The Events Box schedule shows that it will be used next for LinuxTag in Berlin at the end of May. We need to do some restocking before then. Our donation/sponsoring hopes for this have fallen through so we’ll probably need to buy. We’ve chosen May 1st as the final decision date.

The PC has taken quite a battering and the hard drive is now dead, so now would be a good time to replace it with something smaller. It was small, but not mac-mini-small. I chose it because we needed a 3MHzGHz PC for GUADEC streaming and 3GHz mini PCs were much more expensive. But now we have dedicated PCs for streaming, and it’s obvious that something lighter could save us on shipping costs.

So what are your suggestions for a good-enough mini PC? Note that I insist on x86 to have the most chance of everything working very easily. I also guess that Intel graphics would give the best chance of working 3D effects.

We need one new flat-panel screen too.

As ever, we are very open to the idea of donations and/or sponsorship from hardware vendors or resellers. This should be a fantastic opportunity to put your product next to GNOME heroes.

Karslruhe, Berlin, Lisbon, Munich

General,

It’s the new year and I’m back in Munich. Working on the project for Web.de in Karlsruhe was great but being away from home during the week is always difficult. I’ll try extra hard to work only in Munich now.

I spent Christmas in Karlsruhe with the various parts of my girlfriend’s family there. Then we visited Berlin because our Lisbon flight included a free train ticket and my sister was visiting. I’ve never seen Berlin under so much snow. It makes everything quiet.

Lisbon was a great place to spend New Year’s, walking up and down the old streets under blue skies and winter sun. It’s old and crumbling like Venice, but younger and alive. Barrio Bairro Alto, where we had an apartment, seems to be nocturnal. The population sleeps all day and parties all night. Trust Fernando “nightlife” Herrera when visiting Lisbon – I wish that we had visited Chapito sooner.Lisbon New Year's fireworks
Lisbon, Bario Alto

Now that I’m back I’l start work again on Glom, and finish off the Maemo/Hildon C++ bindings for Nokia.

My other big project is to find a new apartment, now that my girlfriend has finally decided to move in together, to my amazement and delight. We have quite high aims – a 3 or 4 room altbau place in the Glockenbachviertel with a big kitchen and a balcony. We’ve looked at five so far, but each lacked something. Maybe someone knows an apartment to rent and wants to save the agent’s fee?

End-of-year travels

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Shortly before Christmas (Festivus), I’ll be finished with the work in Karlsruhe. I’ll spend Christmas here, then take the train to spend a few days (26th to 29th) in Berlin. Then it’s New Year’s in Lisbon from the 30th to 6th. I love Berlin and expect to love Lisbon.

Then it’s back to Munich.

Back in Munich, again

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I should mention that I am back in Munich for the long-term, yet again, since the start of the month.

It was difficult to be away from home, but I am glad I discovered Berlin. I really like Munich, and it offers a far better quality of life than anywhere in Britain, but Berlin is bigger, more diverse, lively, and less complacent. It's like a cheap London. If I live somewhere for the rest of my life, I think I'd like it to be Berlin.