I am just getting settled into my flat here in Amsterdam.  It’s on the third storey, but with a lift (thank god!) and great views.  If you want to look me up on a map, it’s Alexanderstraat 27, Amsterdam, North Holland 1018 CE, Netherlands, right between two canals, with grocery shops nearby, a windmill down the street (I think it’s just an advert for a pub) and the zoo right across the way.

I had a nice few days in The Hague.  The conference wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, but much more so than any others I’ve been to in the past decade or so.  This was actually two conferences in one: OpenSuSE Conference 2015 and Kolab Summit.  The focus of the latter was on the Kolab “Groupware Suite” which has, at its heart, the Cyrus IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV server, with which I’ve been working since 1997.  This is the first time I’ve been to any sort of conference about this software, and it’s about time.  My firm makes a lot of money off of the Cyrus software, however, as several of our clients use it (as do we, and myself, personally).  A group of heavy users of this software — Carnegie Mellon, FastMail, Kolab and others — have banded together and formed the Cyrus Foundation to fund and guide its development.  This corresponds with a new resurgence of development work, and I am jumping in with both feet to help write documentation and such.

Anyhow, I was able to actually meet the main collaborators, B from Melbourne, AU, and J from here (Netherlands).  I had a really nice dinner with B, on a plaza in Den Haag, while we got to know each other, tell war stories, and talk about new directions, systems techniques, and the like.  Boring stuff to most folk, but then it was just the two of us, so it was just fine.

I probably won’t do much here tonight (it’s already 18:45, and raining) but that’s okay.  I actually got here a bit earlier than I had thought I would, so while the home owner finished cleaning I went down to the grocer’s and got myself set for the next day or so — breakfast stuff, bread, cheese, fruit — and got to know the area a little bit (the rain spattered glasses didn’t help).  I think I’ll settle in with a glass of wine and a good read, and take it from there.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be going to the new (2014) Theatre Amsterdam to see Anne, a big new play based on the Anne Frank story.  The theatre was built especially for this play, tho it will host other productions, too.  I am looking forward to it, as it may be the only theatre I see here.  It’s got simultaneous translation in 8 languages, with tablets, in text; English and Deutsch have audio, as well.  This should be interesting, if nothing else.  I’ve never read the diaries, nor seen the film(s) so I go in having only the knowledge of the story which one cannot help but have as an adult who grew up in the 20th century.

There is a performance of Strong Language, by Nederlands Dans Theater 1 which I’d like to see, but as it has already closed its Amsterdam run, I’d have to go out of town for that.  I probably will (Thursday night).

Other than that, my slate is clean.  I may just sit around and read for a week, or go out every night — Who knows?!?