One of our guidebooks claimed that while Coca-cola was ever present, Berliners drink their own local soft drinks. We haven’t found that to be the case; it seems only Coke products are here. Of course there are minor differences: regular Coke is made with sugar, Diet Coke (called “Coke light” here) has saccharine. Then there’s the stuff you can’t get back home (outside of World of Coke), such as “Mezzo Mix” which is essentially Coke with orange. I found this one, “The Spirit of Georgia” our first day here. Despite many years living in Georgia, I was not quite sure what our collective spirit was, but now I know it is yellow-tinted Sprite.
Hello from Berlin
Angeline and I arrived safely to Berlin a couple of days ago. So far it’s an interesting city. It would definitely be useful to have more than a passing familiarity with the German language, but most people understand enough English that we get by. The European style lights and bath fixtures take a bit of thought to operate. Train system is very extensive, and despite the presence of graffiti almost everywhere, the trains themselves are very clean. German television consists primarily of overdubbed US market cast-offs (“The Nanny” is inexplicably on nearly 24/7). Food so far has been hit or miss, some good stuff, some rather average; tomorrow night is our most anticipated dinner.
The wireless summit was great by the way, perhaps more on that later.
All accounted for
As a traveler through the DC Metro system in yesterday’s evening rush hour, I learned that Metro employees euphemize “horrible train wreck” as “train experiencing mechanical problems.” To what end? It just sounds callous, and all of the passengers on my unaffected route already knew of the incident.
Kernel 2.6.30
Linux kernel 2.6.30 is out, featuring the best mainline support for ath5k yet. I recommend if you do use wireless with 2.6.30 (or .29), that you also grab this patch which fixes a nasty memory corruption issue. That one haunted me for months but it was a great feeling to finally nail it down. Of course the fix turned out to be quite simple. It should be hitting stable in short order.
What to look for in 2.6.31:
- AP mode (finally!)
- better transmission power settings
- enhanced support for regulatory domains
- rfkill support
There are still a couple of bugs in AP mode and rfkill, but hopefully they’ll get ironed out in the next two weeks or so. It’s too early to make predictions for 2.6.32, but improved power saving is a possibility, and of course lots of bug fixes. I also hope to set up some automated testing now that I have more than one piece of hardware (thanks Luis!) and will be interested in seeing performance statistics since ath5k was introduced.
Next week, Ange and I will be heading off to Berlin, where I’ll be attending the Linux Wireless Mini-summit at FUDCon for a couple of days, and after that we’ll be staying a few days for vacation. I’m sure to return with a head full of ideas about 802.11 networking, and a belly full of beer and sausage.
More Recent Readings
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H. G. Wells.
*** Interesting how-to manual for teaching your pets to talk.
Dracula, Bram Stoker.
**** Classic tale of bloodlust.
Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill.
**** Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin but not quite as sad.
“I, Robot,” Cory Doctorow.
*** Cory Doctorow pretends to be Asimov, but it’s not as bad as you’d think.
“Call of Cthulu,” H. P. Lovecraft.
** Do I get kicked out of the nerd club for thinking this was dumb?
City of Thieves, David Benioff.
***** Remind me not to grow up in war-torn Russia.
Garlic And Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise, Ruth Reichl
*** Reichl reminds us that gourmet dining is a big sham.
Barnacle Love, Anthony Da Sa.
* Bored me.
World Without End, Ken Follett.
** Pillars of the Earth with different names.