On Sunday I walked venice with a group of Norwegians that were going to the Geek Cruise. This was fun until the rain started. We got soaked very badly. Sunday was also the day to get on the ship. At the terminal the process is fairly simple to board the ship. There was some waiting, so I was able to meet up with a couple friends and enjoy the time.
On the ship I found the room and put my things away. I fumbled around till it was time for the evening reception. The conference has a pretty packed schedule. Neil did a great job of organizing.
On Monday I was in Robert's Optimizing Perl talk. It was a good talk where I learned about some techniques for judging the speed a program will run at for a given data set.
My talk on Filtering Email with Perl was in the afternoon. I had a decent turn out, about 15 people. They seemed to really enjoy the time, especially my subversion of Microsoft products. The Question & Answer time was very useful and lively. Greylisting got a lot of attention in the QA section.
On Tuesday morning we were in Greece. I didn't book the excursion to Olympia. Those things are really expensive. When I did get off the boat I just expected to walk around the tourist trap, smell the air, and get back on the ship. Instead, one of my new Norwegian friends and I got a couple scooters and drove 40km to Olympia. This was a great time. It took about an hour each way and Greece is generally much prettier than where I'm from, so it was worth it.
Then, and back to Venice, I learned that a bidet is not for relieving yourself. Useful info for parts of Europe where a sweaty arse is always possible. Thanks to Karen and Marty I learned this lesson, albiet late, and everyone else learned it too.
Tuesday afternoon I spent some time in Marty's Writing Better Perl, which suggested the best Perl is the most maintainable.
Wednesday morning we were in Ismul Turkey, but I didn't get off the boat. I decided to take this chance to sleep in and take a break for the evening. This was largely due to me speaking in the afternoon. Speaking of speaking, my talk seems to be going very well. I got through part one Wednesday afternoon, developing a web application live, and it is going well. One quote was "I learned something useful every three minutes." I can't ask for better." Part two is on Saturday, and I expect it will be just as good.
Thursday, today, was a full day in Istanbul. Marty, Barbie, Allison, Robert, Dave, and Dan. We walked all over Istanbul, to the Grand Bazaar and all over. It was fun, but the number people is overwhelming.
Right now I'm pretty exhausted, but I'm having an okay time. More later.
Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.
