Archive for September, 2008

Redpill-Linpro at Symfony Camp, Dutch Open Projects 2008

Posted September 12, 2008 * Comments(3)

Intro

Last Friday, reading Jonathan Wage’s Doctrine blog, I spotted a post in the top right hand corner which Read “Doctrine at Symfony Camp 2008″, and I thought “Symfony Camp”? Wassat? So I took a look and realised that this would be a great event to attend, as I’m currently between projects and about to move from Symfony 1.0 to Symfony 1.1/1.2.

Working for an open source company (Redpill-Linpro) has it’s benefits - it took around an hour on Monday afternoon to gather interested parties (Hannes was the only one that could join me unfortunately), check with the boss(es), book flights, hire car and register. We were booked and ready to go.

Day 0 - Polar Bears and Pizza

We made it Gardermoen airport in plenty of time, noticing that the helpful monitor on the express train was informing us that our flight was delayed by an hour, giving us chance to play a couple of games of Hedgewars while we waited :)

Once we arrived in Amsterdam, I had the amusing pleasure of watching Hannes search in desperation for a place to smoke in a non-smoking airport, we grabbed our bags and then with a newly-chilled Icelander in tow proceeded to wind up the Alamo guy and get a nicely upgraded Volvo S40 hire car.

After a slight tour of the airport, TomTom took us to Amersfoort, where we drew out some €uros and looked in vain for  a place to eat. After giving up on the search (it was around 23:30 by now), we headed off to find the camp. TomTom took us to the correct road, but from that point on we were on our own - after driving down a road with an almost cartoon-like amount of road signs informing us of bends, obstructions, rabbits, etc. we found our headlights pointing down a cycle path. The sign showed a “dead end” symbol (”T” with a red top) and a couple of pictures of bikes an mopeds. On the floor was a dotted white line, separating the “road” into two sections barely big enough for a couple of bikes each. After consulting Hannes, we decided that this was not something we should be driving down, and headed back for a search of the area.

About 15 minutes later we were back driving down the “cycle path”. Yes, to get to Dutch Open Projects you have to drive down a cycle path - which “technically” is also a road, until just after the gate to their offices when a new sign informs you that only bikes may pass.

Hungry from our trip, we were pleased when offered some sandwiches by our new hosts which we munched on the way to setting up our camp beds in the military style tents. Everybody (except Fabien) was still up, so we joined “the Italians” and the beer started flowing.

During the rest of the “evening”, random shouts of “Polar Bear!” (aimed at Hannes), “Tantra!” (aimed at the Polish beer “Tatra” that was scattered about on the table and “Pizza!” (aimed at the Italians) kept us amused until around 4am, when I gave up and went to bed with a fag-smoke induced headache the size of a beach-ball.

While I tried to sleep, I was reminded of my current location by the constant shouts (see above), phone calls to Iceland and many general beer-fuelled activities, which fortunately involved avoiding the swimming pool. Early days yet…

On Thursday night there were relatively few people - on Friday there will be 80-90, more beer and a casino (With Symfony money no less). Stay tuned.

Day 1 - Community, Casinos and Karaoke

I woke up at about 5 past 10 to a sea of empty Italian beds, which was in plenty of time for the introductory fun and games at 10… hmm… well, anyway, by about 10:15 I had joined the conference and owing to the relaxed atmosphere here it was not embarrassing at all :)

Our Dutch host recreated a form of what he described as the Large Hadron Collider, although some may argue that it was just a line of red warning tape. We then proceeded to order ourselves in various categories, like how far we’d travelled (we were down at the end behind the Americans), how many Symfony apps we’d been part of, etc. It was clear that there was a broad mix of experience levels - Fabien at one end (of course) and Symfony virgins at the other.

Hannes was restful during most of the talks, but he made a noticeable shriek when Fabien mentioned that he considered PHP 5.3 to be PHP 6 because it wasn’t backwards compatible with 5.2… He quickly dozed off again though.

I won’t detail the talks here, since they will be well covered elsewhere, but we had an interesting day - often struggling to hear over the pounding rain but generally absorbing all the necessary info. We had a few chats about how the community can get more involved in the Symfony project, and some positive vibes were evident.

I have to mention that the barbecue was top notch, I had no less than 3 different types of veggie burger! They all tasted great along with the ample side salads and dressings - a welcome treat for me.

I also had a chat with Jonathan Wage about one of our future projects and whether Doctrine could “handle” it. I appreciate his time going through it with me and showing me some code examples, and helping me to formulate some options that I could present to the project - top bloke.

The rest of the evening consisted of some nifty casino action with possibly the worlds best croupier. He was letting us “cheat” to an extent which made the game of Blackjack a whole lot more fun - and when the game was over half of the table had watches, phones, wallets, car keys and credit cards down for the final hand. Great stuff. Following that was karaoke, and yes I did sing 2 or 3 numbers after warming up with a song I can’t remember (edit: it was “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”) right now because REM is playing in the background as I write this.

By 2am the barbecues had been lit for “munchie time”… not that I’m implying anything.

Day 2 - Write a ticket, submit a patch, write the documentation

I woke up pretty late today, but I feel refreshed at least! Maybe enough to try the pool later if I can convince anyone to join me… The sun has come out but it’s still a bit chilly all the same.

The weekend has been good, not only for learning, but also for networking - now we’ll be able to put names to faces the next time we are talking to someone in #Symfony or checking the commit logs. It has also increased our understanding of the project and the people involved, which is very important when it comes to trusting it for future developments.

The night ended with “the Italians” making pasta for us, which was a real treat (including my vegetarian option - thanks guys) and lots of wine drinking until the early hours with a couple of the French guys. It was a pretty cold night, so we even sneakily moved our beds inside for a warmer night’s sleep! It’s late in the day on Sunday when I write this, so we’d better get a move on and get ourselves into the City to meet “the Italians” for lunch.

I’ll do some more updates once we’ve left, and also add a few photos at some point.

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