Advogato blog for Skud

4 Aug 2001

Sat, 4 Aug 2001 11:32:47 GMT

Amsterdam. The weather's much nicer than Ottawa -- not too hot, not too humid -- though it has been raining a bit.

YAPC::Europe has been really good so far. I've attended heaps of talks, some of which were great and some of which I more or less slept through. Mornings aren't treating me well... jetlag, I guess... so I haven't really been awake in many of the morning sessions.

I've been spending a lot of time with, uh, Special Agent Fishpants, which has been extremely pleasant, but I suppose might also go towards explaining the sleep deprivation. Most amusing side effect: being asked "Do you program Perl, or are you just here with your boyfriend?" at the speaker's dinner the other night.

Got good responses to both my talks (e-smith yesterday and Reefknot today) but I have to admit I'm sick of both of them. I'll have to shelve the Reefknot one until we've got a heap more to show, and I think I want to do a big rewrite on the e-smith one.

Amsterdam itself is a nicish city, but I'm not sure whether I'd actually like to live here. It's a bit dirty, for one thing. But it was fun walking around all of central Amsterdam looking for bars and restaurants and stuff. The overall impression is of canals and mad bicyclists. Traffic here is crazy. Must be the drugs.

One of the things I notice as I travel is that every place has its own local quasi-monopoly on toilet door locks. There's usually a certain type of lock which is used almost exclusively in institutions. In Australia it's got a wingnut-type handle that you turn about 180 degrees, which flips a little sign outside from "vacant" to "occupied". In Canada it's similar but a) has no little sign outside, and b) only turns about 30 degrees. The smaller turn freaked me out at first because it didn't seem *closed* to me. Here in Amsterdam the common type of handle/lock is a really serious lever-style handle and a quarter-turn lock.

And on that note, I should probably continue my old "airport ratings" thing:

Heathrow: 4/10 (good shopping and facilities, but horribly overcrowded and too many widely dispersed terminals)
Schipol: 9/10 (clean, good facilities, fast customs, good public transportation)

Today's annoyance is that I appear not to have a PIN for my Visa card, so I can't get any more cash out. It wouldn't be a problem except that I'm reliably informed that I *really* want to buy a t-shirt at the auction this afternoon. The t-shirts are from the "Bondage and Discipline: stricter than strict.pm" talk, so chances are that I will want one :)

29 Jul 2001

Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:00:37 GMT

I'm back from San Diego and mostly recovered after 14 hours' sleep. The best thing about the trip, I think, was that having a party in our penthouse suite every night was immensely sanity-restoring. I've spent the last few years involved in Serious Pursuits[tm] and I thought for a while there that perhaps I'd grown up. Waking up each morning to find empty bottles and unconscious norwegians all over my hotel room made me remember that I can still have fun. Yay.

Who *was* that Norwegian, anyway? He passed out in one of our chairs, so we just put a "do not disturb" sign on him and left him there overnight. He was gone by the time we were heading out for that morning's sessions. Someone said it was Ask Bjoern Hansen, but Ask's not that blonde.

I was thinking about this diary this morning. I've realised that I'm avoiding writing personal stuff in it, and that means that when I have a lot of personal stuff going on I just don't write in it at all. So I'm wondering whether I should start publishing some of that stuff.

There are two issues I have to consider here. The first is that some people who read this diary might not want to hear about this stuff. I know that my Dad and some other family members read this, or might read it. I also know that most of the people on Advogato are probably reading it for the open source perspective rather than the Days-Of-Our-Lives details. The second issue is the privacy of other people who figure in my personal life.

So here's what I think I'll do:

I'll start talking about what's happening on the personal side of my life
I'll remove Advogato from my default recipients, but specifically choose it from the list when I write stuff that's more related to software. If anyone over there wants to read the personal stuff, they can get it from my webpage or subscribe to the mailing list
Dad and any other family etc who read this can just get used to hearing about those parts of my life. It's probably a good thing for them to know who I really am anyway, and if they can't deal with it then I guess they're lucky that they're on the other side of the world and don't have to read it :)
Anyone who gets a mentioned on a personal level will be slightly obfuscated by just using their initials or referring to them as "a friend" or something. That means that if a reader happens to know who they are anyway, they'll be able to figure it out, but complete strangers won't hear all about them, and a random web search isn't going to show them up.

If anyone has any opinions on this, please let me know. This especially applies to friends who might have issues with me mentioning them in my diary.

27 Jul 2001

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:37:10 GMT

Oh yeah. Dad wanted the URL to the article about the e-smith acquisition that mentions my name. Here it is: <a href="http://e-smith.com/article.php3?sid=51

27 Jul 2001

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:33:58 GMT

San Diego. The Perl Conference 5.0. Highlights:

The weather's great... kind of like Melbourne, warm and dry.
We managed to get this amazing penthouse suite, completely by chance. We've been having parties every night.
Caught up with a bunch of friends (and got to know some of them lots better, yay)
Met a few new friends
Met some "big names" who said nice things about me when we were introduced. It's great when you're all paranoid about going up to someone important, then as you approach they're all "Skud! Wonderful to meet you!" Ego-affirming.
Presented yesterday. Got good reviews.
Got wireless working on my laptop. I'm sitting in a session right now, and doing email and IRC and stuff. It's great.
Had my photo taken by supersnail. I've posted some of the good ones on my site. Here they are.
I've also posted the #perl photos

Lowlights:

The Microsoft vs Open Source debate/panel/etc yesterday. Dull as hell. Should have slept through it. I had hoped that it would either be nasty or funny, but it was neither.
The hotel's a long way from anywhere, and we have to find our own lunch today.
The water tastes crappy

Home to Ottawa tomorrow morning, then off to Amsterdam for YAPC::Europe, then off to Pennsic the week after.

15 Jul 2001

Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:52:11 GMT

Pennsic sewing frenzy is peaking. Eeek. Gotta get it mostly done in the next week.

Went to a yoga class today. I need to be more flexible.

Reading: Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose".

Eating: Ma Po Tofu. Yum.

1 Jul 2001

Sun, 1 Jul 2001 02:15:38 GMT

Long time no diary. *shrug*

Sitting at home watching '80s teen rebellion movies ("Pump up the volume", "Heathers") and eating chinese takeaway.

I bought a tent today, for Pennsic and other such camping events. It was a bit of a saga, but eventually we found the right poles and stuff.

I read "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" last night. Almost didn't make it past the first chapter or so. That abusive family he was staying with freaked me out. And this is meant to be a *kids* book?

It's Canada Day Weekend this weekend. Everyone has their flags out and stuff. Looks like being a bigger event than Australia Day, but then I guess Canada has the whole ultra-defensive "We're not the US!" thing much harder than Australia does, and perhaps doesn't have quite such a strong "Invasion Day" thing going on this particular day. On many levels, Aboriginal affairs in Canada and Australia seem quite similar, but I don't *think* the general population of Canada feel that little tug of guilt on July 1st as Australians do on January 26th.

23 May 2001

Wed, 23 May 2001 22:28:44 GMT

More rain.

Spent most of the day in bed today. I woke up fine, then as I was reading email and stuff and getting ready to head into work, a humungous headache hit. I ended up crawling into bed and sleeping for most of the afternoon. It seems to have sorted itself out now, which is a Good Thing. Checking an online health site seems to indicate that this headache (and last night's near-identical one) may in fact be migraines. I've never suffered from migraines before.

I really need to do dishes. *sigh*

22 May 2001

Tue, 22 May 2001 18:11:40 GMT

Just returned (well, OK, a day or so back) from New York City, where I was giving some presentations about e-smith to NYLUG and NY.pm. Stayed with Tori (a friend from Usenet) and spent most of my time shopping and looking around at stuff. The shopping gets 10/10, the Cloisters museum (medieval part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) gets 10/10, but NYC overall gets the thumbs down. It was smelly and dirty and just icky. I would never want to live there, and I don't even have any urgent wish to visit again, though I'm sure I will sometime.

Realised over the weekend that Pennsic is sneaking up on me. I need to start sewing. Argh.

It's raining today, which is a good thing. We really need it.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk down by the river and discovered a beach. It's not much of a beach, but it's at least as good as the beach at Warneet, where I spent most of my holidays as a kid. I should find out if there's anywhere nearby that I can hire a canoe to paddle round in.

Reading: "The Book on the Bookshelf" by Henry Petroski. It's about the history of bookshelves. Really.

23 Mar 2001

Fri, 23 Mar 2001 05:04:50 GMT

Mmmm, vegetables. Made a thai vegie stir fry with all kinds of good stuff in it. I can feel my arteries unclogging.

Spring is in the air. It rained today, and it wasn't the freezing kind. And nature is blooming in glorious shades of... well, brown, actually. Apparently the green starts happening in about a month.

Work today was mostly meetings. Did some docco in the morning, then into the office, and had a loooooong meeting about the status of the next version. It was pretty good actually. One of my assigned tasks was essentially "ponder and brainstorm" and I had some useful suggestions to make, so that was good. Some of the docco I'm doing is stalled waiting for the developers to actually write the stuff, so in my stalled periods I'm working on a bunch of HOWTO documents and also some more theoretical/descriptive papers for the .org site. I drew a little map of what docco relies on what other docco being updated, and it turns out that I have to update just about *everything*.

I also had to figure out how to work my health insurance. I need to visit a doc for my shoulder. Since I'm on an interim insurance plan until I qualify for OHIP (that takes 3 months) it seems that all I do is go to the doctor, keep the receipts, and claim it afterwards. Easy. I'll go see the doc tomorrow. Any money s/he tells me to stop typing :-/

After the round of meetings there was a happy-maternity-leave thingy for one of the finance people who's going to have twins. I grabbed a slice of chocolate cake then dashed off, because I had an Irish dancing class to attend.

I've done some Irish set dancing before, but it's been run by people from a folk dance background, not from a competitive Irish dance background. This class is run by the latter type, so we spent most of the session learning how to do certain footwork, then just 15 minutes at the end putting it together into (part of) a dance. Coming from an SCA dance background, with a bit of random folk dancing thrown in, I'm used to dances being described like this:

Double up and back, set and turn left, repeat with S&T left, mirror hey, sidings etc in the same format as the doubles, hey holding hands, armings etc, crossover hey.

(that's an entire dance -- Grimstock, from Playford, which we used to dance lots in Stormhold). Everyone groks it, and you can dance it pretty much in its entirety with maybe 3 minutes preparation explaining the heys to those who haven't done that dance before.

On the contrary, this Irish dance class took FIFTEEN MINUTES to get everyone understanding the following:

Advance and retire, sevens and threes right, advance and retire, sevens and threes left.

And that's gotta be just the first figure of a dance that should be *at least* three times that length. *sigh*. I'm used to doing up to six full dances an hour, or maybe only two or three if there are newbies, so this was INCREDIBLY SLOW. On the other hand, I got plenty of opportunity to improve my footwork.

And in tonight's review of strange Canadian television: "Yvon of the Yukon". It's a half hour cartoon, ostensibly about a French explorer in the 17th century who discovers the north-west passage then accidentally gets frozen. Sometime later (like, now-ish), he's defrosted when a huskie pisses on him. And that's all explained in the opening credits. Then it gets *really* strange. It's kind of like Northern Exposure meets Les Visiteurs meets The Simpsons.

Coming up next: Are You Being Served. Wow, I haven't seen this since before I was old enough to understand most of the jokes. I saw that To The Manor Born was going to be on earlier tonight, so I watched it, and found that it was the first ep. I saw that just recently in .au when it was on the ABC, but I didn't see more than a couple of eps beyond that. I thought I was going to see something new, but oh well. Haven't seen TTMB since I was a kid, really. It's quite good. Unlike AYBS (she says as she watches the opening scenes) which, to be honest, is BLOODY AWFUL.

22 Mar 2001

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 05:09:18 GMT

Things I hate: websites where you have to uncheck their "spam me" checkbox to avoid them sending you email all the time, then when you make an error on your details (like, say, a postal code that doesn't conform to the US format) they present you with the same form again, with your details filled in as you had them, EXCEPT they've rechecked the damn "spam me" checkbox.

Other things I hate: ex-co-habitants who can't manage to contact the real estate agents and say "Yup, take out money for carpet cleaning etc from our bond, that's cool" for SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS. Apparently, in my absence, the agents failed to receive thorfy's OK to charge us for the cleaning etc, and escalated it to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal. Dad got a Nasty Letter about it and contacted thorfy a few weeks ago. Now Dad's just got another letter saying that since "we" failed to show up at the tribunal, they found against us and our agents are allowed to take $X out of our bond. They could have done that weeks ago, without me ending up with "failing to show up at the tribunal" on my tenancy record, if only thorfy had contacted them. And on another note, it's a complete PITA for Dad to keep getting these increasingly nasty letters and have to deal with them, and it's somewhat annoying for me to keep being told about it long-distance and not be able to give thorfy a smacking.

Other, other things I hate: "Angela Anaconda". I don't get this show. I don't even know why I've got it on, except that it was what was showing after the Simpsons.

Tonight: no SCA dance practice (the church hall was being used for a (late) St Patricks thing) so we went round to one of the guys' places and ate lots of food, talked about random crap, and watched bits of the _Galaxy Quest_ DVD. In particular, we watched it dubbed into, um, I forget the name of the language. That alien language. OUCH.

Work: more docco. Ergh.

Health: last week I slippped when disembarking from a bus and landed on my right hand and left elbow. The elbow was just a little bruised, but my right wrist and shoulder just haven't been the same since. I've been trying to use xwrits as much as I can and make sure I take breaks, but I'm finding that I'm waking up sore and getting much more cramped and tight than usual even when just curled up on the couch watching television, or in bed reading a book, or carrying my backpack walking to the bus. I should probably go visit a masseur or something and get pummelled. Also, in a more long-term way, I should find a form of upper body exercise that I enjoy and which doesn't trigger flashbacks to my adolescent-body-image-nightmare days. Kayaking might be a possibility when it gets warmer.