Friday had three rooms of long talks (Dominus' great "Red Flags", for example). I videod most of the Inline session, but I don't know how it came out. I'm wondering how best to make the recordings available--the 6m lightning movie is 25M in Quicktime. I guess I need divx or something, or I should buy a DVD writer. Wow, a DVD of Larry's keynote would be awesome ...
Anyway, I was late getting to the sessions. I decided to sleep in and rest, because I knew that Friday (the last day) would be long. I was right.
We went to lunch at Blueberry Hill. I rode in the Car of Pudge (Pudge, Mrs Pudge, and the Pudgelet) with everyone's bags. (No point in them walking in great heat and humidity across campus carrying much poundage of tech accessories) They arrived before we did, thanks to the lack of parking miracles. We ate, and drove Larry back after everyone split. I got some video footage of everyone (Chip, Larry, Damian, me, Allison, Pudge, Jarkko, etc.) at maximum geekage, also talking about most embarrassing languages they've coded in.
Yeah, Chip. Chip Salzenberg arrived Wednesday night, and was at YAPC all Thursday and Friday. It was good to see him again. He's looking for a job, so if you need a top-notch Perl and C hacker then chip AT pobox.com is your man. I caught some amazing footage of Dan, Chip, Larry, and Jarkko geeking out about Vax chipsets and architectures. I'll use it if I ever make "American's Feebiest YAPC Videos".
Damian and the auction switched places to let Damian put the finishing touches on his talk. The auction went well, and it was very eye-opening to see how much books went for and which were interesting to people. Despite there being a heap of bio people attending, nobody wanted our two bio books. Perl & LWP was a mob scene. Very cool. Most books went below cost, of course, with $20 being the preferred price for people. The main exception was the Camel signed by all three authors--$60.
Robert Spier brought three Stitch dolls from the new movie. Plushies. Every Dad in the audience went "must ... have ... for ... child". Eventually they went for $60 each, to me and Scott Meyers, the editor from Sams. I loved the parallels. I ran into Scott in the hotel bar that night, and we had a good half hour of war story swapping. He's a real nice guy.
That night we went to a Welsh pub, accidentally abandoning Elaine and Jarkko in the process. Elaine gave me about fifteen pounds of shit about this when we met up in the hotel bar. (Busy place, that hotel bar). In fact, she called me in my room and used such foul language that the hotel clerk asked her to step outside. I love that I can make a profanity-filled movie but Elaine gets busted for swearing at me.
The Welsh pub was loud and fun. We had the craziest waitress. I think I captured her on video explaining to Sarah that "you don't look like the kind of girl who gives blowjobs, so we got you a shot of this instead." The camera did the rounds of the table, and I might be able to get some good footage from it.
When we split up after the pub kicked us out so they could have a live band, the camera went with the downtown drinking and whoring group. I still haven't looked at that tape, so I don't know whether it's boobies, babble, or blank.
Orwant and I drank 40-year old port until the wee hours (4:30). I'm sure we started off with sparkling intellectual conversation but what little I recall tends to imply that the more we drank (SLURP so good) the less sense we made. The evening wound down when Ann and Jos turned up--they were staying in my room that last night.
A big long fun day.
--Nat
Actually, the signed camel went for $100. I forget who won the bidding, but he got a big ovation as he was signing the check.The main exception was the Camel signed by all three authors--$60.
