On Software Freedom Day 05

Maybe its just me, but I was bothered by how the event was named. Software Freedom Day 05. Day 5 of what? No, its not a poke-fun-at bit, its just that it hung on me the whole day.

It was an easy, mid-morning Saturday commute highlighted by the atmospheric and antiseptic LRT2, a place where I wish guards and security cameras weren’t as visible, since it clearly is a lovely point-and-shooter’s backdrop. So were the residential buildings around College of Engineering, in PUP Sta. Mesa, painted in strong basic colors, the day’s laundry strewn over the windows. The scenes are SLR and/or rangefinder shoot-worthy; my puny digicam can’t justify it.

I’m digressing, I know. My site, not yours.

So, unfortunately, the scheduled activities couldn’t be followed since the school needed the AVR for the morning. There were demo booths situated in classrooms for Internet Apps, Gaming, Desktop use, and one for burning Linux distro’s and other FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). I only asked for the promised free copies of Knoppix 3.9 (which doesn’t work, though), and OpenCD 3.0, but since I was getting tired of my Mandrake 10 setup, I also got myself Mandriva, pegged at 10 pesos for the media, which wasn’t a bad deal at all.

I met Clair Ching there, fellow Pinoy.Tech.Blogger, who was also the demo-person for Linux for Desktop use. There was a steady flow of students in the room, and it was almost always difficult to take a peek at Clair’s laptop for a peek. I passed by the other booths, too, where the demo’s were well-attended, but decided to just let the students take it all in, instead of my weary old self.

Nooontime and early afternoon was spent with an ex-officemate, a dude who I persuaded to come to his old college to keep me company. There wasn’t any airconditioned fastfood place around the area, and he already knows convincing me to give LAN games a try at the nearby netcafes is futile.

Around mid-afternoon, Clair introduced me to her paramour JM, someone who I talked to years ago about trying out Linux, and having to run a modem with a Motorola chipset with it. Funny thing is, that modem is dead and gone already, but I’m still in the same predicament, and its probably worse: I have a USB HSF modem now.

The awaited talk at the AVR came through around 3PM, the main topics being FOSS in Schools, The Brazil Experience: FOSS in Government, and FOSS in Advancing ICT for the People. Generally, all the discussions made perfect sense, that you’d want to convince Congress to see if they can still put that into the impeachment complaint, but frankly, I’m just thankful at that time to have lasted the sweat-drenched day, and would be finally taking in conditioned air.

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Didn’t take a lot of pictures. I suck at covering events like this: