More and more countries have decided to control the Web. We see new legislations that are created throughout the world and that will have a huge impact on how we use the web.
In France, there is Hadopi – based on “protection, information and innovation, its mission is to protect copyright by reminding the citizen’s rights and duties”.
In Spain, the Sinde Law has just been approved by the new government. “Deputy PM Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said that the aim of the law was “to safeguard intellectual property, boost our culture industries and protect the rights of owners, creators and others in the face of the lucrative plundering of illegal downloading sites.” – See Anti-internet piracy law adopted by Spanish government, published by the BBC on January 3rd. Rumour has it that the US government threatened Spain with retaliation actions if the country did not pass this law as reported in the Guardian “US pressured Spain to implement online piracy law, leaked files shows”, published on January 5th.
The Digital Economy Act (DEA) was passed in the UK in 2010. According to an article from the BBC in Whatever happened to the Digital Economy Act? By Jane Wakefield “It is currently languishing in Brussels, waiting for the European Commission to approve changes to who should pay for implementing it… Meanwhile the code drawn up by Ofcom a year ago to lay out how it will work in practice is lying in a drawer in the Department of Culture.”
We also have to contend with ACTA – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement I understand that the EU is dealing with this one. To date although the EU is agreeable it has not yet signed the agreement.
SOPA and PIPA in the US.
There are many articles being published about SOPA and PIPA – I will be looking at only a few:
- An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress sent by 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers including Vint Cerf, Paul Vixie, Tony Li etc.The
Some of the points mentioned are: “…will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.” And “…also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.”
- The threat of SOPA was brought out to me by the bricoleur – Overbroad Censorship & Users. It might be a little far fetched but how far are we from it becoming reality.
- “Hollywood’s pirate cure is worse than the disease” says Jack Shafer from Reuters.
- I like Declan McCullagh’s How SOPA would affect you: FAQ. He gives an overview of SOPA and who is opposed to it and who is behind it.
Perhaps the most important article for me is written by Tim O’Reilly who analyzes SOPA in the context of our business, points out the lessons we ought to learn from the long history of such misguided regulation, and includes the wonderful and non-obvious “here’s how to think more deeply about this” approach that’s the essence of the O’Reilly brand.
I still like some of Tim’s writing in 2002
Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution with great phrases such as:
“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”
“Piracy is progressive taxation”
“Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.”
“Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.”
“Free” is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service”
“There’s more than one way to do it.”
The more I read about SOPA, the more I feel that it is there to make a part of our society richer – I am pretty sure that the lawyers, the big guys from the entertainment industry etc. will make an even bigger fortune out of the misery of others. Also in these days of recession, how much will it cost the governments to apply the new rules. Can we afford it?
Latest News
Updated: SOPA is DYING; its evil Senate twin, PIPA, Lives on, by Cory Doctorow –
“Updated: Commenters have pointed out that I’ve jumped the gun here. SOPA is shelved, but not killed. It could be put back into play at any time.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has killed SOPA, stopping all action on it. He didn’t say why he killed it, but the overwhelming, widespread unpopularity of the bill and the threat of a presidential veto probably had something to do with it.”
It would not make any sense for me to rewrite some well-written web pages, so I will only take some snippets of information and link you to the full articles.
A good definition found on the Startup Weekend, Liverpool site –
“Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them..
Startup Weekend has been spreading from city to city – as is explained in their about page:
“Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking, unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston and DC and is expanding to 10 other cities. These cities include San Francisco, Boston, DC, Atlanta, London, Dublin, West Lafayette, Chapel Hill, Austin, Portland, and Seattle with more cities signing up weekly.”
Many cities are participating, including:
In January: 
Reykjavik, Cairo, Rabat, Krakow, Nice, Minsk, Bergen
In February:
Enschede, Athens, Valencia, Constantine, Johannesburg
and many more worldwide.
Athens is organizing its 4th event on February 10-12th wich will be held at the Microsoft Innovation Center Greece.
Dave Cross, author, tutor, and Perl guru, will be teaching two two-day courses next month –
- Intermediate Perl, Feb 21st and 22nd
This course is aimed at people who have written a little Perl and who want to add another dimension to their Perl knowledge. This will take you from being “someone who uses Perl” to a “Perl programmer”.
- Advanced Perl, Feb 23rd and 24th
Aimed at people who have a lot of experience of Perl but who might not have had the time to keep up to date with latest Perl techniques, this course teaches the latest techniques being used by the world’s best programmers. This is the knowledge that will enable you to describe yourself as a “Perl expert”.
Further information and booking form
FLOSS UK and O’Reilly UK Limited are offering one complimentatry ticket at each of these courses and four runners up will get a copy of Programming Perl 4th edition (coming out soon). Do you want to know more? Get a copy of Linux Format, issue 154, on sale today and enter the prize draw!
Hope to see you there!
I had to laugh when reading the “25 Worst Passwords” article published in ADMIN – Network & Security Magazine (issue 06). Here are the top five:
- password
- 123456
- 12345678
- qwerty
- abc123
Other lovely passwords included
- letmein
- trustno1
Do I need to tell you that I used the number one password for several years… not that long ago. I still cannot believe that I am not the only fool around! Have you done something that silly? Let us know I am sure we will all benefit from it.
The complete list of infamous passwords compiled by SplashData can be found here.
Josetteorama is working again – all problems sorted out – thanks to my colleague. Thank you Caitlin for sorting it out and giving up some of your holiday.
I am writing this short post from home between baking the Buche de Noel, the petits fours and the amuse gueule. The aroma coming out of my kitchen is wonderful – a mixture of melted cheese, ham and pastry. Delicious! All what I need now is some mulled wine… but I need to take the dog for a walk first.
Before closing the computer, I would like to thank you people who have written interesting posts for this blog and hope I can count on you next year. And to authors and readers, I wish you all a wonderful holiday and a happy, peaceful New Year!
Cheers!
Just received this email from Hakim Cassimally – Hakim is well known in the Perl community but not many people know about his other interests. Have a read about the other Hakim and DoES Liverpool.
Hi Josette,
I mentioned that I’d moved into a funky new office/workshop space in my last email, but here are some more details!
Ada Lovelace day at DoES
It turns out that having your office in a workshop isn’t such a bad idea after all. Over the last few months at DoES Liverpool (our new “co-working and maker community space”) I’ve found that the Makers of the 21st Century are more likely to be quietly soldering some components onto an Arduino board than they are to be making the occasional noise drilling.
Bubblino - as seen at Maker Faire, Newcastle
When there’s a whirring noise, we usually look up to see if Bubblino has woken up. The little blue chap listens to twitter and blows bubbles when @DoESLiverpool is mentioned. Adrian McEwen, one of the DoES founders, built him to demonstrate some ideas about the Internet of Things, and often travels with him to tech conferences around Europe.
WhereDial
These days, Bubblino has competition in the office as other Things are taking shape. John McKerrell has been building location based clocks for some time, inspired by the Weasley clock from Harry Potter. We’ve had clocks in the office that tell us where the Mersey ferries are, and one that shows the location of John and his wife. He’s now building a simpler consumer version called the WhereDial, and is crowdfunding the development – he’ll start building as soon as he’s got 50 orders.
Paul leads Werewolf session at BarCampLiverpool
It’s great having a desk in an environment with creative and technical people: I’m in the small office to the side, but regularly move into the main space to chat about projects over a coffee and cake. Depending on who’s in we might talk about solving a problem with quadratic equations or version control, running the Liverpool Marathon, or whether it’s legal to keep chickens in your office. This kind of social integration is a big part of why I moved out of my living room “office”. Many of these people bring their interests to DoES by organizing events here in the evenings, not just geeky but also artsy: Beth runs her sewing club here; I’ve set up a speculative fiction writing group; and Chris Hough has started a very popular Lean Startups session.
As well as our permanent desks, we offer hotdesking. I’ve tried to work out of a café or library before, but finding a free desk and power socket and having to buy regular coffees to justify being there can be stressful and expensive. We started out with a gimmick of “first day hotdesking free if you bring cake” but we’ve found that it’s so good for breaking the ice with new people that we’re keeping it. (Probably. It’s also bad for our waistlines…)
A+,
Hakim
In the past weeks the specialized press and a lot of bloggers have been discussing the news that Adobe are abandoning mobile Flash development. As often happens, poorly worded communications lead to misinterpretations and the end result is that Flash has been declared dead. First of all, I want to say that I totally agree with discontinuing the mobile Flash Player because it makes no sense to produce content that is not able to run on iOS devices. The data from the Net Market Share are pretty clear; 52% of the Mobile/Tablet operating systems belong to Apple OS. For this reason it makes no sense for a company like Adobe to continue to invest time and money in a player that will never be installed on iOS devices. What’s ridiculous is the reason why the Flash Player is not allowed on iOS devices. The official motivation is that it consumes too much battery! While reading the Steve Jobs’ bio I came across something interesting about the adoption of the FireWire
FireWire – Jobs’ vision that your computer could become your digital hub went back to a technology called FireWire, which Apple developed in the early 1990s. It was a high-speed serial port that moved digital files such as video from one device to another. Japanese camcorder makers adopted it, and Jobs decided to include it on the updated versions of the iMac that came out in October 1999. He began to see that FireWire could be part of a system that moved video from cameras onto a computer, where it could be edited and distributed. To make this work, the iMac needed to have great video editing software. So Jobs went to his old friends at Adobe, the digital graphics company, and asked them to make a new Mac version of Adobe Premiere, which was popular on Windows computers. Adobe’s executives stunned Jobs by flatly turning him down. The Macintosh, they said, had too few users to make it worthwhile. Jobs was furious and felt betrayed. “I put Adobe on the map, and they screwed me,” he later claimed. – Chapter 30 – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
It now seems clear to me why the Flash Player has been removed from the iOS devices, from MacBook pro, etc. It’s more a personal war than a technical issue because Apple started to blame Flash only once it started to be a leader in the mobile market. I don’t want to go deeper into this discussion though, I’ll leave readers to make their own opinion about this. I would, however, love to share my vision about the future of the Flash Platform as I see it, and even more relevant to me, the future of Flash developers.
Right now it’s clear that Adobe are focusing on:
- Mobile Applications created with Adobe AIR
- Delivery of expressive content (particularly games and video) in the browser on the desktop via the Flash Player.
- Creating a new tool for the new upcoming standard HTML5
The future of the Flex Framework is not yet well defined. The only thing that is confirmed so far is that the entire project, including compiler and close source components, will be donated to an open source foundation. Adobe will take care of Flex by donating some engineers to the project, but it will actually be the community of Flash developers who will drive its future development.
There are a couple of questions that have not been very well discussed so far:
- What is the possible marketing strategy behind this decision?
- Does it make sense to release Flex and all its components as open source?
- Where is the Flash community today?
Adobe’s future seems more about controlling what a user watches rather than delivering the content itself. The company is much more focused on the development of software that manages digital rights and no longer considers development tools as its primary business, with an exception for the industry standards (i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, etc.) Just to clarify I would like to focus your attention on what’s happening around video and other digital goods.
For streaming video, HTML 5 with open codecs is fine, but in order to control who can see that video a developer needs technology from Adobe or similar. It is happening in the same way on electronic books because most of them are delivered using the ePub format which is Adobe owned (but happily shared!). As a consequence, the major vendors rely on Adobe’s Digital Edition DRM to protect and distribute their content.
Flex has been open source for a while now, but the new upcoming distribution under an open source license of important parts like the compiler is great news for all the developers. What does not make too much sense to me is that the Flash Player and the AIR runtime are not open source. Without the runtimes released to open source, the future of the Flash Platform still depends on Adobe’s willingness to participate and not on the community’s strength. The opinion of most of the Flash developers is that Adobe’s marketing is pretty poor. I disagree because with the release of all the components around Flex under an open source license, Adobe cut the costs and keep the control of one of the most promising, and at the same time powerful, technologies of the past ten years.
Since the beginning of Flash or even better, since Macromedia owned the software and the player, the community was the strength of Flash itself.
The Flash community is still live but it’s no longer the one everyone is used to. In fact, Adobe disregarded the fact that Macromedia was not only a software house but also a community able to make the company itself beloved and respected all around the world. I don’t want to say that Adobe totally ignored the Flash community but most of the time negative feedback hasn’t had the same consideration it has had in past years. The result is that today the community is without strong and solid guidance; community members are looking around trying to jump on a new technology trend, ignoring the fact that good developers are the ones that can create a technology trend. The feeling that has spread throughout community members is that the communication was handled badly and they feel betrayed by a company that owns the platform in which they invested a lot of time and energy. In a few words the community members are angry. With such feelings it is pretty easy to see the impact all around the world:
- Conferences are changing their names and reducing Flash-related sessions
- Companies are stating themselves as HTML5 experts
- Community members are focusing on new technologies and abandoning the platform that made them developers
- Developers are worried for the future and applying for any kind of position
However, there are a lot of good reasons why Flash Platform developers can be confident of their future. Let’s explore them starting from a development point of view and ending with a practical point of view. One of the most powerful features of CSS3 is the transformations. Flash platform developers are used to this kind of thing since Flash 8, about five years ago. Practically speaking, a Flash platform developer shouldn’t be worried to learn a concept that he/she is already used to. Same for the transitions, I’m pretty sure that the Flash platform developers are very familiar with them and know better than others how to use transitions without creating performance issues. On the HTML5 side, they introduced canvas, but it’s no more than the stage of Flash when Flash MX came out with drawing API and other features pretty simple to understand for Flash Platform developers. Another important feature that comes with HTML5 is the video tag. Also in this field, Flash platform developers are some of the most expert, because the video revolution on the web started with Flash Player 7.
In the past two years, several JavaScript frameworks were developed. It seems to me that HTML5 can be compared to MXML tags and that JavaScript frameworks can be compared to the ActionScript frameworks all the Flash platform developers are used to. Actually there is not much to change in the way to develop scalable applications because it’s the same process developers are used to in Flex: keep view and business logic very well separated. Flash platform developers are used to Object Oriented Programming since Flash Player 7 and instead JavaScript is a prototype based scripting language, this can represent a great regression for a large part of the developer community, but it also represents a “back to origin” factor for a part of it. From a technical point of view, Flash platform developers can jump on the old school development without too many issues, they only have to learn to be patient with cross browser techniques.
Flash platform developers are used to changes, in the past ten years we can count at least five versions of the Flash Player and three different versions of the scripting language. On the other side, HTML can count one new version in twelve years. So there is an attitude of change that is part of the Flash platform developer’s culture.
From a practical point of view, the Flash Player is the only means developers have so far to handle DRM, to create multi user applications, to build 3D online games without any cross browser issue, and to create mobile applications very quickly (i.e. mobile RAD), etc. For this reason I strongly believe that an enterprise web project cannot be handled only with HTML5/CSS/JS and so I assume that there is still enough room for Flash platform developers. In the past years I have had more than one customer ask my company to work on a multi-screen web site. The solution we offered to the customer was not to use Flash on any device, instead we created a fully dedicated mobile web site based on HTML5/CSS/JS, a desktop web site based on Flash and native applications to enhance user interaction on both of them.
The right solution for a customer’s needs often doesn’t rely on a single technology but on the correct usage of several. The future for Flash platform developers is still very promising because when working on HTML5/CSS/JS they bring years of experience in rich content development. On the other side, Flash and its native language can still be used to make very good software.
Where to go from here
- http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=78047
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/11/adobe_flash_analysis/
- http://www.graphicmania.net/the-tale-of-two-technologies-flash-and-html5/
- http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/
- http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html
- http://gigaom.com/video/flash-tv-future/
- http://www.businessinsider.com/why-flash-is-dead-why-html-5-is-thriving-and-why-its-important-for-your-business-to-know-about-it-2011-11
- http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html
- http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/09/tech/mobile/adobe-mobile-flash-wired/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
- http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html
Giorgio Natili is an Adobe community expert, a W3C member and a Java User Group manager. He is head of his own company GNStudio , which has been operating in the web development field for the past 10 years. His area of expertise focuses on Adobe Flash, Air, Flex, ColdFusion, Flash Media Server, RED5 and their integration, as well as accessibility both in html and Flash. In the last five years his interests have broadened to include developing mobile applications and e-learning tools. For this reason he has worked a lot with Flash Lite and Symbian C++, and most recently is focusing on Android development.
From the beginning he intensively used javascript and for this reason is now coming back to his origins with HTML5/CSS/JS applications.
He has followed agile development practices for three years and has a lot of experience as a technical leader in small / medium size teams. He also works on various education initiatives to spread awareness on accessibility issues, especially to flash developers. He attended as a speaker the Adobe Max, the 360|Flex, the FITC, several Flash Camps all around the world and was recently a speaker at Flash and The City in New York.
Now in its third year, this grass roots barcamp has grown from strength to strength, and this years event was the largest ever held, with 140 people attending.
Barcamp Blackpool came into being via the “Queen of the Barcamps” Gemma Cameron (@rubygem on Twitter), and it reflects her to a tee. The event is a barcamp / unconference, where the attendees are encouraged to host a talk on any topic. The range of talks at this year’s event was astounding.
Who pays on a first date?- Error messages across the decades
- 8bit hama beads
- Stock markets
- A kinect controlled RC helicopter (using an Arduino)
- Web development
- Version Control
I love this event; it has a real informal, friendly feel. And people travel from around the UK to take part. You see new and familiar faces every year, and the after show party is the stuff of legend.
Blackpool LUG were there providing a friendly introduction to Linux, and organising networking and AV equipment. Many thanks to the team for their hard work.
O’Reilly was very generous, and provided each attendee with a free ebook voucher (Thanks Josette!) from their entire catalogue of books.
Sugru provided a box full of their wonderful product, which has since found it’s way into local
schools and Brownie groups. Thanks Sugru!
RetroGT provided lots of cool stickers to decorate our laptops, thanks!
FYCreatives a local government initiative to bring more creative industries to Blackpool provided goody bags and brochures. Thanks Fiona!
Moo.com provided every attendee with a custom name sticker, designed to get conversations started, thanks Moo.com!
Our very generous sponsors helped make this event happen, so take a look at their websites and see what they can do for you.
Microsoft Openness- Testled
- The H
- Indigo Clothing
- Magma Digital
- FTP Concepts
- JMC Web Design
Magic Missile- Sugru
- Tweetdig
- Neterix
- Mediaburst
- FYCreatives
- Our Learning
- Brookson Enterprise Freelance Fair
- Clic ‘n’ Mix
This event has grown from small beginnings, and is now the largest tech conference in Lancashire, and the support of O’Reilly is most welcome, as the core demographic of attendees are those that work in the tech and design industries, and O’Reilly’s books really do hit the mark for these industries.
During the event, we endeavoured to record as many talks as possible, as some people couldn’t make the event, or were torn between two talks at the same time.
You can listen to the talks on our website.
My thanks to Gemma Cameron, Blackpool LUG, our sponsors and supporters for making this event a massive success.
Thanks
Les Pounder
On November 12th this year’s London Perl Workshop took place. 250 Perl hackers gathered at the University of Westminster to spend the day catching up on the most recent trends in Perl programming. Over the day there were three tracks of talks and two tracks of training courses. And it was all completely free of charge. It’s the UK’s biggest and most popular Perl event.
Mark Keating
After Mark Keating’s welcome we split across the various streams. I was presenting a training course on Modern Core Perl first thing in the morning so I missed some good talks in other rooms. In particular I was sorry not to see Mike Whittaker discussing what’s wrong with the Perl jobs market. In another room Ian Norton was running a beginners’ course called Learning Perl together.
Following the morning coffee break (with lovely cupcakes courtesy of the sponsors) I saw Stevan Little explaining his plans to add a Meta-Object Protocol to the Perl core followed by Leo Lapworth’s beginners’ guide to Plack. In this slot I wanted to see Tatsuhiko Miyagawa’s training course on Deploying Perl Web Apps to the Cloud, but it was heavily oversubscribed.
For the first time this year, lunch was supplied for all the attendees, so most people trundled off to a local pub where a buffet was served. At conferences like this, the conversations that you have when you’re not watching talks are just as useful as the talks themselves, so I think it was a good idea to encourage everyone to go to the same place for lunch.
Just after 2pm things got going again. I watched Tom Hukins talking about Improving CPAN Modules followed by Mike Whittaker’s guide to Unicode in Perl 5.14. Other people have said good things to me about Mark Fowler’s Pimp Your Mac With Perl and Neil Bowers’ talk on CPAN Curation.
Matt Trout
In First Tak Wrote the World, Matt Trout explained how he approached the problem of using Perl to write a replacement for Python’s Fabric. As always with Matt’s talks, it was an interesting wander through some of Perl’s more esoteric corners.
After a final coffee break, everyone was back in the main hall for the Lightning Talks. A dozen or so speakers gave a range of different short talks about various interesting topics. Stand-outs for me were Tim Bunce on how he had used MetaCPAN to identify versions of CPAN modules and David Leadbetter’s link shortener for Git commits.
And then, following organiser Mark Keating’s closing words, we all went off to a local pub for a few drinks and a buffet (once again paid for by sponsors).
250+ attendees
The London Perl Workshop is always a great event and this year’s was no exception. Everyone I spoke to said what an interesting and useful day it had been. Many thanks to all of the sponsors, the speakers and the organisers – in particular to Mark Keating for the work he puts in running the event every year.
Hope to see you at next year’s event.
Photos –
©Mark Keating 2011, http://www.shadow.cat – @shadowcat_mdk (twitter)/Shadowcat MDK (flickr)/http://www.mdk.me
Back from Rome where the Italian Agile Day took place.
On Thursday evening I had dinner with Giorgio Natili, his wife Barbara and family. At long last I could put a face to the person behind all these emails that we have been exchanging through the years. Giorgio is the leader of the actionscript.it User Group and organiser of several events such as FlashCamp Roma which took place on 4th November in Rome. I do hope this evening solidifies the relationship between O’Reilly and the User Group and that we will work even better together.
Friday morning, I hoped to get to the Vatican to visit the Sistine Chapel but I got there too late – the queue was too long. So once again I sat on some steps in Saint Peter’s Square looking at the length of the queue and the world going by, helped by a very hot November sun. It seems that I will never make, always too late. Once again I am quite disappointed with myself, I wanted so much to see the Sistine Chapel instead I am looking at a flock of “rats with wings”. Looking at the pigeons, funny thoughts are coming into my head such as I don’t know how much it costs to get inside the Vatican but looking at the crowd I cannot help thinking that the Vatican might be able to save the Euro zone. But enough of that it is time to do some work.
Saturday 7.30 am, the books are well laid out… not for long as my first customers just arrived.
The conference was divided in 4 tracks + workshops throughout the day. Once again I did not understand the talks but some of the titles did amuse me –
The conference has been growing continuously from 100 delegates in year 2004 to over 700 this year. It is free to the delegates and is paid by donations and sponsorship. As the conference moves to a different town every year, I wonder where it will be in 2012. Lots of unanswered questions – Will Stefano Leli be my contact? Will Jacopo Romei come to PHP London? Will Ilias Bartolini come to Fosdem. One thing is certain, 2012 will certainly be an eventful year.
The Italian Agile Day was sponsored by Codemotion – it was also extremely nice to meet some of my old friends, Roberto Manicardi, Chiara Russo, Mara Marzocchi and more. I also learnt that Codemotion 2012 will be on March 23rd-24th, same place.
As my flight back home was mid afternoon on Sunday, I decided to visit the Sao Paulo Basilica which is near the venue. Apparently the remnants of Saint Paul are laid there. The building is grandiose, opulent – money was no problem when it was rebuild after the fire that almost destroyed it in 1823. The gardens are well kept and very peaceful. Why did I get grumpy? After paying a modest 4 € to see most of the basilica, the only way out was through the Souvenirs Shop. I know I am being very naive but I still cannot bear the Church being so commercial.
