"Comments cannot be disabled once enabled" proved to be backwards. Once I published with it disabled, I couldn't enable them and add this to the previous article, so it's a different one. Sorry.
More than anything else, YAPC seems to be one huge retreat for hard core and aspring Perl goons, with technical meetings all day long and social meeting
into the night. Calling it a con underemphasizes the closeness of the community.
Okay, here's a riddle for you. What did scrottie have in his pocket that's 7 inches long, slightly bent, stiff, and carrying a miniture copy of the camel book? Why, it's kung-fu Larry Wall!
Okay, enough of that. Things got a lot better after the last blog entry. I was awake till 3am for a long double day but I was drinking, so it was okay. I maintain that Perl people are shy in general. It took some walking into groups and demanding to know what was going on, but I got out to dinner Monday night. Tuesday was Randal's party and that was widely announced and quite fun. Everyone was in one place and had nothing to do but be social. It went from 5pm until midnight and still there wasn't enough time.
Here's a video-ish thing I shot during opening stuff trying to capture the mass of laptops:
http://slowass.net/user/scott/larry_at_yapc.gif
Note the $10-ness of the camera. And a pic:
http://slowass.net/user/scott/larry_talks_people_listen.jpg
Here are some links to highlights. The rest of this post is cut and paste from emails to the phoenix.pm list.
http://yapcchicago.org/wiki/index.cgi?HighLowGoalCrushBane
More media... here's a lightning talky thingie where a bunch of people get convicted. It's following in the joke that the SSV (Something Student Village) dorm looks like a prison, with all of it's stainless steel and concrete, not to mention metal mesh and grating. Mostly the talk is pictures of well known Perl people guissed up as criminals:
http://rjbs.manxome.org/tmp/yapc2006.mov
It's a lot funnier when it's being ready with the correct inflection etc.
Knowing about the irc.perl.org #yapc channel helped a lot too. People were loathe to broadcase dinner events for various reasons -- didn't want to be that formal, or over promise on a simple dinner outing, etc, but through that I was able to get myself into the Beer BOF, a dinner, a lunch, etc. On the flip side, with everyone trading info on IRC, physical appearances were a bunch of nerds on their computers not talking to each other or walking around and not talking to each other.
Wow. Okay, I knew Randal threw a big party every year. I didn't know everyone was invited.
I'm just back from that, about 1:30 am local time. I blogged whining about not meeting
people and the talks being boring. Well, I met a bunch of people and saw some cool
talks. Everyone loosens up in the evening but the concentration of 400 programmers in
one place is intense during the day. They did an auction and I got a limited edition
Larry Wall action figure. Got to ride the train back with Larry Wall. At one point,
we were switching trains and were standing on the platform. He pulled out a small
compass of the sphere variety, looked at it, and commented to those in earshot that every
memory of his is tagged with a direction he was facing, right or wrong. Met a bunch
of other interesting people and a bunch of other people of fame, but I'm going to not
list them because that's silly. Everyone is extremely easy going. Have a small clip
of video I'll try to rip (camcorder, not $10 camera) of Larry Wall being auctioned off
(for lunch). Talks are starting to appear on line. Here are some links to slides
and such:
http://pugs.blogs.com/talks/yapcna-deploy-perl6.swf
http://www.pmichaud.com/2006/pres/yapc-perl6/slide.html
http://perlcabal.org/user/gaal/peek/index.html
http://www.pmichaud.com/2006/pres/yapc-parsers/slide.html (to become valid some point tomorrow)
http://blog.bulknews.net/mt/archives/iTunesHacks-YAPCNA.pdf
http://wgz.org/chromatic/talks/perl_hacks.tar.gz
http://pugscode.org/talks/oscon05/movies.html
More are at http://yapcchicago.org/wiki/index.cgi?YAPCSlides but those were my
favorites (in no particular order).
The campus is beautiful. I've had apartments smaller -- and not as nice -- as the SSV
double dorms. I could write an essay on just that: the wrap-around floor to ceiling
windows, the furniture, large bathroom with shower and toilet a room off of the
bathroom, curved aircraft like "hull", patios on the top floor for parties that don't
disturb your neighbors, etc, etc. IIT is largely an architecture school and they
walk the walk. Some people complain about the bare cement and metal, but I think
it fits nicely with the idea of "postmodernism" with the exposed ducts and all that
that Larry described as a Perlish philosphy in one of his early State of the Onion
addresses. And while it lacks some superficial comforts such as carpet (ick), it
has others, such as breaks in the building with mini gardens so that the rooms on the
end have a view too, and the top floor patios and commons areas. The architect
also eliminated the long-dark-hall syndome. The main halls house the commons areas,
main desk on the first floor, elevator landings, etc, and are glass on both sides.
The halves of the building connected by this hall have an internal, non-day-lit
hall, but the tunnel effect is offset by the main hall being daylit and open.
Check out the v6 module on CPAN. Perl 5 programs can use p6-pugs;, which is the
same thing as saying use p6 '-pugs';. p6 runs the rest of the program through
Pugs and then tells Pugs to dump the code to Perl 5 using its P5 backend, and
then P5 runs it. Craziness. And the resulting code has no unusual dependencies --
just a few P5 modules.
The lightning talks, and the conclusion:
You MUST view the video of Takesako's YAPC::Asia presentation as performed
by Audrey.
http://www.archive.org/download/YAPCAsia2006TokyoLightningTalkppencodeforPerllover/yapc_060330_ppencode_for_perl_lover.mov
Think that's Japanese.
Ingy shuffled his slives before giving his talk (actually, as he started his talk) --
on purpose. Half of them are on topic. Half of them are funny. All of them are
strange.
Everyone is on the irc.perl.org #yapc channel talking about the presentations as they happen/conclude. Still laptops everywhere. Someone just got gonged off stage when they hit their time limit.
Jose sublet out his lightning talk and is giving his friends all 30 seconds to read their proffered up half arsed technology predictions and it's funny as heck.
Oh, and now it's theater, involving Damian. And Randal.
And now rushing to catch my flight...
As a final note, Kung-Fu Larry is traveling.
-scott
but none are the waterfall one. There is a partial clip on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZw9k4H6IJo
but its a really small part (you do get the new "NOT REILLY" camel)
