Dan's Blog

I’m not really sure why I decided to try out Last.fm. I think it was something to do with being able to “scrobble” what i’m listening to from Spotify.

Anyhow – add me up: http://www.last.fm/user/dasgarner

Over the last few months I have been gradually moving all my stuff over to the cloud! The result of this is that this blog has moved to a shiney new server and to Wordpress – my blogger blog is no more!

As always I will try to update this more frequently… expect more Xibo related news in particular.

Given that we have just released a RC for Version 1.0.0 we are working on putting together a new website for Xibo.

Thus far we have decided to use WordPress and have a working site up and running. We will obviously be adding and improving the information over time.

The site can be found here: Xibo Open Source Digital Signage. We also have a twitter feed available here: http://www.twitter.com/xibosignage

For those that don’t know Xibo is an open source digital signage project which can be found in Launchpad here: https://launchpad.net/xibo

A cool picture I took this morning as I had arrived at work a whole hour early!

To celebrate another year with Harri I decided to plan a secret weekend in Paris.

Day 1

We left on the Saturday morning and headed up to St Pancras – all went very smoothly indeed.

There was a slight delay at the entrance to the tunnel, but we were soon blasting our way down to Paris to arrive there early afternoon.

With the booking I had also purchased some 2 day travel passes for the Metro and buses which we had to pick up on arrival. Unfortunately for some reason the place that issued the travel passes was in itself a fair distance away from the station!

So we Taxied to the all day travel passes and then went on to look around the Louvre and the Jardin de Tuileries – which was very impressive.

We then walked on to the Eiffel tower! After a debate we decided to walk up instead of take the lift, which proved to be damn hard work!! Windy too, but worth it for the views of Paris at the top.

Then we went to check-in to the hotel and have some dinner – which was ‘tres bon’.

Day 2

We had to fit the remainder of the sights into 4 hours today! The return train was at 6:15 – which meant a 5:30 check in.

We first went to see Notre-Dame which is an awesome building! Very impressive indeed. We then took a circular route around to the metro which would take us to ‘Arc de Triomphe’. This was so we could do a little shopping and get a coffee on route! Very nice indeed.

The ‘Arc de Triomphe’ was also an impressive building – however I preferred Notre-Dame!

We then headed down to the Louvre for some lunch and a bit more shopping.

The Pictures

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The Journey Home

Back on the UK side of the tunnel after a 40 minute delay only to find that there was a lot of snow about! Snow and the UK are never a good mix for travelling! Especially by train.

The direct tube line was shut and we had to make a detour only to find that the next train to Brighton was at 10:30 (bearing in mind we had left Paris at 6:15).

Once we were on that train it eventually stopped working at East Croydon after a few hours. There was some severe snow on the line!! So we changed to a train that got us as far as Haywards Heath by 1-ish where we were picked up by George.

The A23 on the way back was a skating rink, with many cars stuck at the side of the road with wheels spinning! We made it through though!! And arrived home at about 2am!

I was due to heading out to Sweden early the following morning! The snow didn’t look like it was going to let me!!!

All in all we had a very good trip – I would recommend Paris to anyone, just don’t go when there is a chance of snow!

Over the last few months I have been quietly working on an open source version of the Digital Signage Application I helped make with Xstreamedia.

Before Xstreamedia ceased trading it was decided that we would open source our efforts with both products so we could continue to develop and advance them.

After many months of code review and a new team member (@alexharrington) we are drawing close to a stable version 1 release of Xibo – the open source digital signage player.

More information to follow – in the mean time look at:

• Site available here: http://www.xibo.org.uk
• Project page here: https://launchpad.net/xibo

The release is targeted for March 2009!

OK, so as I recently mentioned I spent the morning with Luke at his Rally Experience Day.. Now anyone that knows my brother will know that he is a little accident prone – a rally day perhaps not ideal you might be thinking!

Anyhow the first thing that the instructors do is get all the drivers kitted out in some heat proof jump suits and sit them down for a safety briefing. They tell them what to do if they roll the car or stack it in some other fashion, etc, etc. All worrying stuff – many places for Luke to have a “moment”.

So Luke sets off in the car for his laps, with us all thinking that would be the last we ever saw of him but he came back in one piece! And so did the car.. amazing.

We decided that during the wait for the second half we would go and get a coffee from the cafe (him still in his jump suit). He is standing there with his hot coffee and he said “this steam is really irritating my eyes”. Looking down at his coffee he notices that he has set his leg on fire!

So all the danger and all the safety briefing didn’t help in the event of a gas heater in the rally school cafe… we laughed so much!!

Was up early this morning to head up to Langley rally school to watch Luke do his stuff. Funny story to follow!

On the 31st October Xstreamedia has/will cease trading.

It has been an interesting 18 months foray into the business world. A Digital Signage product for 12 months and then a “rescue” attempt with a community website for 4 months, if nothing else Xstreamedia has been a massive learning curve.

However several factors (economy, experience, development time, etc) have meant that we have had to hand in the towel.

The idea of having my own business has certainly been de-glamorised by the experience. I think instead I will look at doing little free/open source projects to keep me occupied in my spare time. As for Jim (business partner) I suspect you may see some more photography based work from him.

This blog will of course continue!

What can I say.. I was on fire!!