Woohoo, another social meet! At The Cittie Of Yourke. But this time with the whole downstairs bar. London.pm meets are getting bigger. Lots of drinking. ICSF seem to be increasing their presence in London.pm and helped with the consumption of booze. Note to the pubs: starting new bar staff on a 'quiet' evening with London.pm may not be such a good idea.
I started off the evening talking to natalief and aef about the need for coworkers to talk to. My boss was away for most of yesterday, and when he got back I sat him down and explained the problem I was having, and he spotted the mistake (I was releasing the parent object which had in it's DESTROY method a close of the database handle it created, even though I was still using it.) Often enough it's just good enough to explain the problem to someone else and you spot it yourself. My mother (an accountant) used to do this with me when I was young - and even though I didn't understand any of it it always helped her.
I brought along the review copy of Learning CGI and Perl for the World Wide Web that I'm reviewing. Showed it to many people, reactions were mixed. I should be done reviewing that sometime this week. I've got a good idea what I want to say, but I'm reading it all to make sure I haven't missed anything.
I'm also working on some other reviews. I've got a review copy of Instant Messaging in Java (The Jabber Protocol) which I'm going to do a comparison against Programming Jabber. That should be fun but it's a lot of material to cover. Alex turned up and handed me some fiction to review as well.
Alex gave dumrats a XML book for him to review and dumrats and I ended up in a conversation about what we like and dislike from our textbooks. To give an example, did we prefer the simplicity of Instant Messaging with its focus on just Java or did we prefer Programming Jabber with it's broader range of languages?
Nigel and I talked about what we'd been up to. I bored him on the latest changes to Test::Builder::Tester. It now supports all versions of Perl since 5.004 inclusive (with help from richardc's machine with many many perls installed on it.) It also has vastly more readable pod (with thanks to my editor Kake, who send me major patches)
Ranguard and I attacked blech and demanded to know plans for the technical meeting. He said he'd sort them out today and then mumbled something about more booze. We probably should have cornered him before that late stage in the evening.
grue, shortly to depart to Australia, ran around taking photos with richardc's digital camera, natalie took some shots with a real camera, and blech managed to get some rather intesting photos of his own (including some evidence that Beth should not be let anywhere near Phil ever again.)
Nik and I talked about his company, what he's up to, and why we shouldn't ever let him drink as many redbulls as he did the meeting at Doggetts after last year's linux expo. Sounds like fun. essuu reminded us that it's his last day at work today, and we talked about his plans to take over the world, or at least get up later next week.
Various people had been involved or effected one way or another in the mayday protests, though most of them just because they worked in the local area and had a hard job getting lunch. Some humorous stories, and media inaccuracies were told and exposed.
In other news; space in a skirt (faint); chrisc and Imran in a conversation about the Dreamcast and PS2 (which muttley wasn't involved in, faint); The pros and cons of triple gin and tonics; Dropping keys; Drinking in Earls Court; There's a Very Big Wall on That There Prison; Here kitty kitty kitty....
