Day2 Paris and Hivane

content/blog/wk9day5.md

@@ -1,7 +1,97 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 9, Friday:"
+title: "Week 9, Friday: FRnOG'40 in Paris"
 date: 2024-09-27T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/talyshum.png" alt="Credit: Taly Shum, YouTube" >}}
+
+I got in quite late yesterday and found my way to the WS Opera on Rue Duphot in the smack middle of
+the city. In my nano-scale apartment, I slept like a baby, until about 06:45 when the street noise
+was switched to the _On_ position. Large containers of broken glass seem to have been emptied out ~
+in front of this place, and the clanking of a few billion large metal pipes, as they were being
+dropped from great hights onto a container truck which was going to move them elsewhere. Good
+morning!
+
+It's time to pray. I brush my teeth and exit my femto-apartment and take a good look around. The
+first building I see, literally at the beginning of Rue Duphot, is the _Church of Madeleine_, after
+the titular neighborhood I'm in. It looks a bit more like a roman government or perhaps a
+courthouse, but it's legit a place of worship.
+
+My plan is to walk around until about noon, when I meet J&eacute;r&ocirc;me for lunch. About ten
+years ago, I was in Paris for a Google Maps _Streetview Special Collect_, of the inside of _Grand
+Palais_. The mission back then was to make an aerial collection of the inside of this massive
+building, in one of the few days (in the decade!) that the building was empty and between
+exhibitions. Google took a car, a set of backpacks and me with a hexacopter armed with nine cameras
+that would create a set of photospheric pictures every ten meters or so in the building. Together
+with the Cultural Institute, I spent two days in the building making this collection. Thinking back
+over the last eighteen years, the _Cantellio_ project was one of the most fun projects I worked on.
+We called it _Cantellio_ as a quirky play on our project lead who was an Italian guy with a thick
+accent, our project was a secret, so we "Can't Tell You". Get it?  For the Grand Palais collect,
+take a look at this exclusive behind the scenes
+[[gallery](https://photos.app.goo.gl/u4Q2xz1DKk91yJn78)]. By the way, I also flew this thing in the
+Guggenheim Museum in New York, would you believe it?
+[[Gallery](https://photos.app.goo.gl/gpGpghPYHkvLg4YG8)], but I digress.
+
+Back to Paris after that fun trip down Memory Lane, it is a Parisian law that foreigners MUST take a
+selfie at the Eifel Tower, so I go and do that because I wouldn't dream of breaking the law. I then
+go around to a few other buildings, such as the national assembly, the chancellery of the legion of
+honor, and the Louvre, where I counted roughly sixty trillion people. At this point, my rented
+transportation (a Dott bike), runs out of battery and it decides to abandon me near the FRnOG venue,
+so I park it and continue on foot. In case you were wondering how I visit do so many sights in only
+two or three hours: now you know!
+
+At noon, I hang out for a little bit at _Le Zinc d'Honor&eacute;_, and J&eacute;r&ocirc;me quickly
+finds me. We talk about Google, Cisco, Meraki and its use of VPP, my projects and his, and overal
+have a lovely time while enjoying a meal together. I feel so blessed having been able to meet the
+brilliant Cisco minds that tend to the VPP project (Andrew in Brussels, Ole in Oslo and now
+J&eacute;r&ocirc;me in Paris).  After lunch, we walk over to the Intercontinental where FRnOG starts
+at 14:00.
+
+I meet and greet a few of the four hundred plus people who are here - Philippe Bourcier organizes
+the event, and I know him as _MrRip_ from Undernet, more than 25 years ago we maintained the proxy
+scanner (which he wrote and I operated), and it was fun to reconnect. Maxime from Cisco is also
+here, and I chat with him about his current project. Clement of course is here, and I'll see more of
+him tomorrow as I am visiting the Hivane 20y ASniversary celebratory dinner. I briefly bump into
+Vincent who is jetlagged from returning from the DPDK summit in Montreal, Canada. My buddy Blake
+from Zayo is present, and he introduces me to a few new folks. I have a chat with Delphine of 1299
+and quiz her on the Meta/DTAG issue. Her thoughts are insightful and respectful at the same time,
+which I really appreciated.
+
+The talks are, eh, _en fran&ccedil;ais_ which is _tr&egrave;s difficiles à suivre pour moi_, but I
+totally understand the choice of language. My talk is the only one in English, but Philippe
+introduces me _en anglais_ and I crack a little joke of being Dutch, which solicits a few chuckles.
+I think my delivery was actually pretty good, and I'm looking forward to the recording.
+There were many talks in this absolutely stunning venue (a five star hotel Intercontinental in the
+middle of Paris). See the [[FRnOG website](https://www.frnog.org/?page=frnog40&lang=en)] for details
+and publications. I take my audience-selfie -- _c'est obligatoire_ -- and bounce at 1900. I am not
+going to participate in the drinks and afterparty (although thanks, Ielo, for organizing it!), and
+instead retire early. 
+
+I have a quick sushi dinner, and end up in bed at 22:30 watching a few episodes of _Lilyhammer_.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1605.JPG" caption="Church of Madeleine, in Paris, France. I like the Roman column style" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1608.JPG" caption="One of the entrances of Grand Palais in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/grandpalais.png" caption="A 2014 picture of my Mercedes ML350 inside of Grand Palais in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1611.JPG" caption="Obligatory selfie at the Eifel Tower, aka the French Noodlescooze" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1613.JPG" caption="A picture of Grand Palais with the beautiful Pont Alexandre III bridge over river Seine in the foreground" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/streetview.png" caption="A 2014 picture of me and the hexacopter photography aircraft I used at Grand Palais in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1614.JPG" caption="The national assembly called Palais Bourbon, in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1617.JPG" caption="A street view of the, wait for it: Great Chancellery of the Order of the Legion of Honor" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1622.JPG" caption="The pyramid at the Louvre museum in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1623.JPG" caption="I rented a Dott bike and rode its battery entirely empty quick-sight-seeing." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1624.JPG" caption="Lunch with Jerome - I had a Bavette Frites, and it was superb." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1625.JPG" caption="A street view of the Church of Saint-Roch in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1627.JPG" caption="Selfie of Jerome Tollet and I in Paris, France. He walked me to the venue of FRnOG!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1645.JPG" caption="My badge at FRnOG'40." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1631.JPG" caption="The Intercontinental is a five star hotel in Paris - super fancy venue, the FRnOG organizers have a pretty classy outfit here" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1633.JPG" caption="I took a customary selfie while presenting my VPP story at FRnOG'40 in Paris." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1640.JPG" caption="Even the mall is super-duper-fancy. This is looking up into the dome of Galeries Lafayette Haussmann in Paris." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-27/IMG_1643.JPG" caption="One of the street-facing arches of Palais Garnier, an italian opera house in Paris, France." >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}
+

content/blog/wk9day6.md

@@ -1,7 +1,119 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 9, Saturday:"
+title: "Week 9, Saturday: Happy Birthday, AS34019"
 date: 2024-09-28T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/soulfulliquid.png" alt="Credit: Soulful Liquid, YouTUbe" >}}
+
+It's nice that it's weekend, because on Friday the noise level went from -inf to +inf in the span of
+ten minutes, but this morning, the pipe clankers and glass crashers are not at it, it's Saturday! I
+didn't put on an alarmclock and woke up at 10:00, after a good night's rest. Since there's
+absolutely nothing in this atto-apartment, I quickly pack up and bounce. Just down the road I fetch
+a cup of coffee and plot a path for the day. I really only need to hit two places today: I want to
+go up to the _Montmartre_ church, and I'd like to see the _Place de R&eacute;publique_, and I need
+to hit Cl&eacute;ment's place at around 19:00 so I have nine hours.
+
+My day route out to be very different from how OSPF might have sent me. It's too bad that I didn't
+turn on the watch to track my motion, because I'm pretty sure it was all over the place. I rented
+one of those _Dott_ bikes and went up the hill. I got there at about 11:45 and there were twelve
+trillion people at the church. Also: lots of vending guys with miniature Eifel towers and wooden
+block trains. I am slightly annoyed by the tourists, but seeing as I am one myself, I can't really
+complain too much!
+
+The view from the terrace of Montmartre is fabulous. There's a part facing south from here called
+_Square Louise Michel_, and it's on a set of plateaus so the views are relatively unobstructed. I
+take probably ten pictures here, and also a few panoramic shots. The clouds overhead are grey and
+the sky is otherwise blue with some rays of sun breaking through. The pics really don't do it
+justice.
+
+Once I'm down at the south side of the park I hit the _Boulevard Margueritte de Rouchechouart_ (what
+a mouthful) and my buddy Tim pings me on Telegram. He's fiddling around in his optics stash and will
+be very close to Qupra later today, and asks if he should patch my server to FrysIX. There's now an
+ability for members of the [[Coloclue](https://coloclue.net/)] association to get a cross connect in
+one of the datacenters, and for running the routeserver and IXPManager and LibreNMS, it's be
+fantastic to move off of the Equinix AM3 hypervisor and into the Qupra hypervisor because the former
+has consumer level SSD (Samsung QVO 💩) and the latter has spiffy enterprise SAS-12 flash
+(Seagate ST3840FM0003 🚀).
+
+I grab the laptop and check a few things on the hypervisor. It's kind of fun to be in the middle of
+Paris on a 5G access point, taking notes on the kernel driver for `ixgbe` and allowing setting it up
+with `allow_unsupported_sfp` flag so that it doesn't require Intel branded optics. While I'm sitting
+on the bench here, I do take a look at breakfast^W lunch opportunities, it's already 13:15. I find a
+place called [[Lazu](https://lazu.fr/)] which looks quaint, and it serves lunch until 14:00. Off I
+go!
+
+The bootup sequence is with an _amuse bouche_ cracker with warm fennel and goats cheese. Then my
+starter is a (vegetarian) p&acirc;t&eacute; of potato with a chives mousse. My mains for the day is
+pork belly with artichoke hearts with a glass of _Vin de France_, and why not, my desert is a cheese
+plate with a good sip of _Muskat_ wine. At the end, I am both in food coma as well as very sleepy.
+
+I make my way down south and stop at the park under the Saint-Eustache Church. It's a bustle of
+people here, and I do notice that my phone is already running low on battery (I should really get a
+new one, it's only been running for five hours or so!), so I scope out a Starbucks to both
+caffienate and to charge some batteries. En route south to _Notre Dame_ I find one and drink the
+coffee, writing yesterday's journal entry. Achievement unlocked: I'm a critically unaclaimed
+Starbucks author now!
+
+Paris is (unsurprisingly) full of beautiful buildings. I talk past a few, take pictures of them, and
+somehow find myself all the way up north of the river Seine again. OK, new plan: go take a look at
+J&eacute;r&ocirc;me's ancestry at the _Place de la R&eacute;publique_. Here, there's an esplanade
+for Andr&eacute; Tollet, mostly occupied by skaterboys, but I also see a large statue of _Marianne_
+which is a symbol of the French Republic.
+
+I'm *still* pointing my (crappy) human GPS at _Notre Dame_ and the Seine. Somehow I make it there
+now in one go, as it's a straight boulevard down there. I have an early onset of visual migraine,
+but it lasts no longer than a few minutes, as I cafeinate and proceed eat some sugar candy. The
+coffee is kind of gross, so I bounce from the coffeeshop again pretty quickly. Before I hit the
+church, I take a selfie at _H&ocirc;tel de Ville_, again, "c'est obligatoire", and then find _Notre
+Dame_ in a perfect sunlight.
+
+My walk takes me down south-west of Paris in the _14th Arrondissement_ where Cl&eacute;ment lives.
+At around 19:00 he pings me an address and I go there to drop off my bags, finding a merry band of
+brothers ready to go out to dinner. He's booked us a table for twenty-five at Restaurant [[14
+Juillet](https://www.le14juillet.fr/)] and everybdoy arrives roughly on time! (that would NOT have
+happened in the Netherlands). Dinner in this place is laid back, my starter is an onion soup, which
+I've been craving ever since I got to France, and a veal _escalope_ with fries, finished off --
+again, why not -- by a cheese plate with Roquefort blue cheese. My table mates are mostly babbling
+in rapid-fire French and I get about one in seven or so words - and a 14% hit rate makes my CPU run
+100% utilization trying to puzzle things together. I clearly have a ways to go :)
+
+After dinner, which ends at midnight, we walk through the evening neighborhood and settle down at a
+local bar for a few beers. There's some confusion between the IPA and the Triple, so I end up just
+ordering and drinking a pint of both. It's fun out here, as the weather is pleasant, there's a kitty
+that stops by regularly to cuddle, and the stories get stronger as the alcohol intake gets more
+pronounced.
+
+Then all of the sudden it's 02:45 and people skedaddle. Some of the folks had taken off earlier
+because Friday night for them was rough (being FRnOG'40 with good celebrations&trade; well into the
+night), and I'm for once happy that I turned in early because I feel like I'm possibly the most
+awake one of the group :) I insist to drink one more, just _one more_ with Cl&eacute;ment at his
+place, before passing out on the couch.
+
+Happy ASNniversary, Hivane!
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1647.JPG" caption="A picture of Mission Catholique Polonaise in Paris, France." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1648.JPG" caption="The Dott rent-a-bike that I parked at Montmartre after depleting its battery" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1650.JPG" caption="The north (back) side of Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre in Paris, France." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1653.JPG" caption="The south (front) side of Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre in Paris, France." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1654.JPG" caption="The views over Paris from the terrace front yard called Square Louise Michel" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1658.JPG" caption="A sunny selfie on the bottom of the terrace overlooking the Basilique of Montmartre" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1660.JPG" caption="I a doing some quick kernel module maintenance for Tim who is planning to deploy an SFP+ in Qupra later today" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1666.JPG" caption="This house on Rue de la Carreaux is beautifully overgrown with green shrubbery." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1667.JPG" caption="The front face of Saint-Eustache Church as seen from the park in front of it in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1668.JPG" caption="The Pendule de Foucault of Mus&eacute;e des Arts et M&eacute;tiers in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1670.JPG" caption="The statue of Marianne, symbol of the French Republic at Place de la R&eacute;publique in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1673.JPG" caption="There is a hommage to Andr&eacute; Tollet here, that name strangely rings a bell :)" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1675.JPG" caption="A selfie in front of H&ocirc;tel de Ville in Paris, France. It's plastered full of Paris 2024 olympic signage, which I think is unfortunate." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1677.JPG" caption="The front face of the Notre Dame cathedral, a beautiful building that will hopefully re-open in December 2024, after a five year renovation" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1680.JPG" caption="Iconic building of Panth&acute;on in Paris, France." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1681.JPG" caption="The Panth&eacute;on as seen from another angle." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1682.JPG" caption="The building of Comit&eacute; Technique P&eacute;dagogique Nationale (CTPN) in Paris, France" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/IMG_1683.JPG" caption="A selfie with my buddy Cl&eacute;ment who is celebrating his ASN's 20y anniversary tonight" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-28/qupra.png" caption="Tim sends me this picture, trying to locate a fiber crossconnect (which turned out, was never there)" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}