https://agateau.com/tags/life/feedPosts tagged life2010-11-05T21:00:00+01:00Aurélien Gâteaupython-feedgenhttps://agateau.com/2008/movedMoved2008-09-21T22:00:00+02:00<p>In case you have been wondering why I was a bit silent these last weeks, it's because we moved to a new house. Leaving Maisons-Alfort for a nice village named La Chapelle Rablais. It's an important change in our life: going from a flat to a "real" house with a big garden!</p>
<p>Clara is delighted to have enough space to run, jump, or do whatever please her. I, for one, discover new activities, like lawn mowing or picking up dead leaves...</p>
<p>Of course, my daily commute is quite longer: going from two times half an hour to two times one hour and a half. It is not that bad however: my employer has agreed to let me spend my last hour of work in the train, so I wake up earlier but come home at approximately the same time as before. And I usually spend the morning trip working on Gwenview, which is a good news for most of you :).</p>
<p>I was left without an internet connection for a while, but it's back now, even if the status page of my ISP tells me it will be enabled in 20 days!</p>
2008-09-21T22:00:00+02:00https://agateau.com/2009/fix-the-tv-daddy"Fix the TV, daddy!"2009-02-11T21:00:00+01:00<p>Yesterday when I came back home, Clara greeted me with "Daddy, can you bring your tools and fix the TV?".</p>
<p>I stood a bit puzzled, until my wife explained Clara was watching a DVD when the DVD player decided to stop reading, probably unhappy with the state of the disc.</p>
<p>Just like Caleb believes <a href="http://www.stormyscorner.com/2009/01/mommy-do-it.html">his mommy can do it</a>, Clara seems to believe I can fix everything with my tools :-)</p>
2009-02-11T21:00:00+01:00https://agateau.com/2009/pissed-off-deeply-pissed-offPissed off. Deeply. Pissed off2009-05-21T22:00:00+02:00<p>(Sorry this is a rant)</p>
<p>I am in an amazing hotel 40 km near Barcelona right now. I arrived on tuesday evening to attend "All Hands", a Canonical event just before UDS Karmic. The weather is really nice, the tracks are challenging and stimulating, and I get to meet coworkers coming from 26 different countries.</p>
<p>So why I am pissed off? Because apparently, stupid Air France/Roissy Charles de Gaulle employees were not clever enough to put my luggage in my plane. They announced it would be in Barcelona at 12:30 on Wednesday, then delivered to the hotel in the afternoon, but this turned out to be too complicated for them and my luggage did not arrive. It was then scheduled to arrive in the evening, then maybe by night. At 2am I got to bed, tired of waiting for it. This morning it was still not there. Apparently it arrived in Barcelona at midnight, and they still need to bring it to the hotel. Right now it's 11:30, it's still not there and I feel more frustrated than ever.
In fact, it would have been more efficient for me to rent a car, drive to Paris, grab my luggage and then drive back here.</p>
<p>I wear contact lenses and my eye drops are in my luggage... if I didn't took the precaution of bringing a pair of glasses with me in the cabin, I would be essentially blind right now. Since the hotel is quite isolated, it takes quite long to get to town and buy essential stuff like toothpaste and toothbrush, underwear and clothes... and of course since they keep promising me it should arrive soon, I have not taken the time to go shopping yet. If it was not for Ken Wimer, I would be without fresh socks and tshirt at the moment. Thanks Ken!</p>
<p>So, lesson I learnt from this fiasco: try to pack as much as possible in the cabin. In particular:
</p><ul>
<li>Minimalist toilet bag</li>
<li>Some underwear to live one day or two</li>
<li>Daily doses of contact lens eyedrops</li>
<li>Anything else?</li>
</ul>
<p>And I probably need to study this site: <a href="http://www.onebag.com/">onebag.com</a>...</p>
<b>Update:</b> Got my luggage at lunch time! Hurrah!
2009-05-21T22:00:00+02:00https://agateau.com/2009/new-addition-to-my-life-antoninNew addition to my life: Antonin2009-10-02T22:00:00+02:00<p>Yesterday evening, at 21:21, Antonin realized staying inside his mother was no longer possible and decided to explore a new world, ours.</p>
<p>Everything went very well. Baby and mother are OK. Antonin's sister is eagerly waiting for them to come back home and his father better hurry up assembling his wardrobe and bed (he was expected to arrive at the end of the month, not the beginning!).</p>
<p>As a father of a new born baby, I think you can trust my words when I tell you he is the cutest baby on earth (even if I may have already <a href="http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1898" title="Clara, 8th wonder of the world">written something similar</a>, 3 and a half years ago). But should you doubt it, here is the proof:</p>
<a href="https://agateau.com/2009/new-addition-to-my-life-antonin/antonin.jpeg"><img src="https://agateau.com/2009/new-addition-to-my-life-antonin/thumb_antonin.jpeg" title="Antonin, 1 day old" height="225" width="300" alt="Antonin, 1 day old" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-265"/></a>
<em>Yes, his hat is a bit large :)</em>
2009-10-02T22:00:00+02:00https://agateau.com/2010/got-published-2Got published2010-09-21T22:00:00+02:00<p>No, I haven't written a book, but I was pleased to see articles from me published in issue 61 of Linux Pratique and issue 15 of Linux Pratique Essentiel, two French magazines from <a href="http://www.ed-diamond.com/">Diamond Editions</a>. In them you will find reports about Ubuntu Developer Summit Lucid and Akademy 2010 (yes, paper press is kind of slow :) ) as well as interviews of Jonathan Riddell (Kubuntu) and Ivanka Majic (head of Canonical design team).</p>
<a href="http://ed-diamond.com/produit.php?ref=lpe15&id_rubrique=6"><img src="https://agateau.com/2010/got-published-2/lpe15.jpg" title="Linux Pratique Essentiel #15" height="259" width="200" alt="" class="size-full wp-image-456"/></a> <a href="http://ed-diamond.com/produit.php?ref=lpra61&id_rubrique=4"><img src="https://agateau.com/2010/got-published-2/lp61.jpg" title="Linux Pratique #61" height="259" width="200" alt="" class="size-full wp-image-455"/></a>
<i>(click the covers for table of contents)</i>
2010-09-21T22:00:00+02:00https://agateau.com/2010/inflexionInflexion in my career2010-11-05T21:00:00+01:00<strong>Getting a dream job</strong>
Throughout my professional career, I strove to find a job which would let me contribute to free software I cared of. One year and a half ago, I was lucky to be hired by Canonical as a Qt and KDE developer. Back then, it felt like the best possible position for me. A few months later, however, I started to feel a bit frustrated. Sure I was working on KDE, doing some interesting work, but there was (and there still is) so many things in KDE and in Kubuntu I wanted to improve, yet my job was not to do that.
<p>It took me a bit of time (I am somewhat slow) to realize I was not really hired to improve KDE or Kubuntu, I was hired to ensure the changes my team (the Desktop Experience Team) implements on the desktop also work with Qt/KDE applications. My job is to ensure Qt/KDE applications integrate well in the Ubuntu desktop. Luckily I have not been strictly limited to working on applications though: I implemented KDE Plasma equivalents of the most important Ubuntu desktop changes such as the <a href="http://launchpad.net/plasma-widget-message-indicator">Message Indicator Plasma widget</a> and the <a href="http://launchpad.net/plasma-widget-menubar">Menubar Plasma Widget</a>.</p>
<strong>Wanting more</strong>
I could have considered myself lucky for getting this job: there aren't that many work-from-home, KDE-based job opportunities out there. Yet the amount of ideas I had in mind for KDE and other free software projects continued to grow, with no chance of ever turning them into reality. I decided to do something about it. Starting this month, I will be working for Canonical four days a week instead of five, keeping one day to work on what matters to me.
<p>Of course this comes at a cost which I am planning to partly cover through three means:
</p><ul>
<li>I created a <a href="https://agateau.com/support">Support my work on free software</a> page. If you like my work and would like to support me, head other there.</li>
<li>I wrote a few articles for the French Linux press in the past and plan to write more. If you are interested in an article from me, get in touch.</li>
<li>I have a web-based project in my mind which hopefully should bring a bit of money in when it's done. The project is going to be in French and not related to free software though.</li>
</ul>
I do not expect to cover the full salary reduction: my goal is not to trade one day of salary for one day of freelancing. If things turn out wrong, I should be able to get back to working five days a week for Canonical, so it's not too risky.
<strong>Anti-Troll material</strong>
Some may argue Canonical could do like other companies such as Google, 3M or Atlassian, which let their engineers spend a percentage of their week on personal projects. I think this is a great idea, but it probably wouldn't help in my situation: these personal projects usually must be approved by their managers and must end up benefiting the company. Like it or not, Canonical focus is on GNOME. Improving KDE would not be very useful for the company.
<p>By taking this day out for myself, I want to get the freedom to work independently from any business model, hopefully without ending up starving (this is partly up to you!).</p>
2010-11-05T21:00:00+01:00