Adventures in Ostrava

Thursday we jumped on a bus and drove 6 hours east of Prague to get to Ostrava. We are here to attend the Ostrava Rails Conference for the next two days. To those of you who dont know Rails it is a programming framework that is talked a lot about these days and it is one of our primary tools. So when we discovered that this event was on we decided to check it out.

The bus system here is amazing. We paid 1160czk for two return tickets on an air conditioned bus with leather seats, showing movies and Friends episodes and complimentary copy of the days newspaper or Maxim.

On our first venture in Ostrava we jumped on the tram to take it two stops and figured we could do that without buying a ticket. Bad idea. As soon as the tram started roling a ticket officer busted us and we had to pay a 400czk fine each – doh!

I contacted a couple of people on CouchSurfing to see if somebody had couches we could crash on and thats how we ended up meeting Petr. Or we havent actually met Petr yet. He wasnt home but he got Zeno – his flat mate and landlord – to let us in so that we could sleep on his floor.

Zeno is a photographer and cinomatographer and the flat were staying in is also his studio. The rest of the evening we spend with Zeno drinking whiskey – good times.

Sunday in Malmö

For the first time ever I went to Malmö this Sunday. It looks like a really cool city with a lot of interesting architecture, so Im definitely going back to check that out another day. The reason for this trip was that David Black, author of Ruby for Rails was in town. David was giving an eight hours workshop on the Ruby on Rails framework – and since Femi and I were in the process of starting a side project in Rails this was just what we were looking for. The seminar was held by the up and coming Polar Rose who are working on a very interesting project about facial recognition. Mikkel from Polar Rose gave me a demonstration of the magic they can do and for a flickr fan like me Im really looking forward to their beta.

The seminar was a crash course for me since I had only had very limited experience with Ruby on Rails so very educational and informative day – this is something that I will have to use more. – Thanks to David and Polar Rose for putting this together :)

Today Femi and I are on the road again this time its a hitchhiking trip to Aalborg. We will spend most of the week up there so if you are in Aalborg let us know and well see if we can meet up.

Update: After trying for two hours to get a ride we gave up hitchhiking and went with train, delays and everything.