Last year when I got back from YAPC::E I found that my laptop hard drive has died and gone to the big bit bucket in the sky. Boy, was I glad I backed up (side note: rdist-backup++.) This year my laptop screen has started to die. It looks a bit like a analogue TV that's just so slightly out of tune. Oh and james spilt coke on my keyboard so it's all sticky now. Bad Monger. Bad! Am I fated each year for this thing to die?
Laptops rock, as does wireless. Apart from the obvious use of heckling the speakers behind their back, I've found that they're really good for looking up module documentation, previous presentations and other things that you can do to research into what people are talking about. I have my mozilla set up to do "cpan Foo::Bar" to search for the Foo::Bar module on search cpan....and with the cool new documentation and view source options this is really powerful. Now if only I could see my screen properly.
Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the POE talk (which was really good) and it was really excellent to be able to go to the web resources during the talk. I haven't used POE in ages and I don't remember their being such good documentation and examples...and now I know. Learning is good. Oh, and Co-Kane has some really silly war stories. Ask him about it some time.
I've decided that lightening talks are good (or more accurately I've had my previous opinion confirmed.) I'm of the MTV generation and I get bored quickly. It doesn't happen so much in lightening talks as, well, they're over before they've begun. Lots of cool talks - We're not building a f***ing house, lazy loading objects (oooh, coool!), web spidering war stories, xs war stories, DNA searching, Mac computer games (blame greg), etc, etc, etc. I'm looking forward to the next London.pm tech meet where we're all doing all lightening talks.
Some of the other talks I've been in have gone on way too long (but at least that gives me a chance to play with Perl on the laptop doing things that I've learned about.) I think MJD's talk talk should be a prerequisite for everyone that ever speaks at these things.
Other things I've been excited about: Perl 5.8 threads. Threads are something that I used to use a lot in Java (back in the day) and I haven't really had a chance to play with them in Perl. The shortened talk (to give more time for lightening talks) was really good and just showed how to use the syntax and a couple of pitfalls. I like talks that are essentially someone quickly talking though what something is. You do this, you do this, and then you can do this. Simple!
noidd and I got to see more of Munich last night. After hanging around in the bar under the hotel (where London.pm were ordering rounds of twenty beers a go every ten minutes) we headed out and looked for a restaurant to eat in. This took forever as we kept walking past italians, vietmanise, porterican, and the local equivalent of the All Bar One. Eventually we found a really nice upmarket restaurant that served us great food. I'll never be able to find that place again.
I got back to the hotel and managed to walk by the bar (Greg and sphyg gave us really bad looks though the window.) I played with my slides for a bit, but decided I liked the original version better. And the important thing...I got an early night. So I feel really good this morning (especially as I didn't eat breakfast - I don't normally eat it and it makes me ill.) Since my talk is last thing today I thought I'd better not be semi-conscious the entire day.
Eeek...talk this afternoon. At least no-one will come (the other two talks I'm up against look really interesting.) It seems like I've been waiting forever to do this thing. For three years now I've been giving talks on the last day last thing. And I've had enough. So next year I'm either going to give a tutorial or demand that I speak on the first day when I submit. Anyone think there'd be much interest in a "learning the template toolkit" tutorial?
