The third and final day of YAPC::NA started off with a rushed breakfast, followed by me making some very last minute changes to my slides while I was traveling in the car on the way to the conference. All kudos to richardc for setting up my laptop to be able to do this.
I listened to Abigale's coding standards, and while I'm not sure I agree with them all, they were interesting. Peter Chine's "Dying With Honor" was interesting too, but I really would have liked to see a discussion on dieing with objects in there somewhere.
And then it was me. Onstage. With fifteen minutes of time shaved off the front of my allocated spot due to previous overruns. So I gave my talk at light speed. I think I must have been channeling Andy Wardley yesterday because I spoke so quickly I even had five minutes left over for questions at the end. I think I lost everyone at least five times, but not that anyone would say anything when I asked them. Great thanks to the person at the back who I couldn't see properly (I think it was Elizabeth Cash) who actually stopped me occasional.
With that over I nearly collapsed, but instead went to see Kevin Falcone's talk on Axkit. This was a really interesting talk and gave me an excellent overview in how to create tag libs and providers, and so I have no excuse not to get round to this now. Then james gave his talk, which was very good and james demonstrated how he's one of the best speakers I've met, never losing the audience and dealing with piers commenting from the back of the room on almost all he said.
Lunch. Module::Builder BOF. I spoke about the problem of installing things that you require in Build.PL. Good advice received - I shall have to look at the problem some more.
Damian's two an a half hour talk on his twenty-four hour 'I haven't slept for 36 hours' attempt to come up with a topic for the talk. He used strange sources for inspiration (Fear Factor, The National Graphic Swimsuit Edition.) But all in all there were some cool perl bits, and Damian's such an entertaining speaker that he could almost talk about anything (even physics) and it'd be fun.
After the town hall meeting, we headed back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool, and a chance to enjoy happy hour at the bar (happy hour here means that drinks are free not half price - but it's terrible mercan beer.) It was Uri's birthday and he'd arranged a BBQ for all the speakers at his boss's house. This was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip. Sitting on the dock (yes, the house had a private dock) discussing football (note to mercans: I mean soccer.) swimming in the pool. Sitting in the hot-tub (how many perl geeks can you fit in a hot-tub? About ten.) Watching ingy paddle around on a lilo clutching a bottle of whisky and Uri cooking vast slabs of meat. Finding out about the concept of a Keg. The only shame is we didn't get to turn on the TV that is wider than my bathroom is long.
Hmm. I should probably think about going for brunch now, if only because typing while dangling your legs in the pool is a terribly silly thing to do.
