Looks like the ILUG AGM should be fun. David Owens, with RedHat Ireland (mainly sales/finance part outfit of RedHat, no techies), has said he'll likely give a talk. Got more freebies to give away too - O'Reilly Associates sent me four t-shirts. No books, but it's not a bad start

I'm glad I'm not a hardware engineer. With software, if it doesn't work, you can recompile it. Hardware....well, I bought me a Vellmann Kit - a Metronome to be exact. Painting by numbers, only you get resistors, little pots, a transistor etc. And it's supposed to all make a variable rate/tone/speed metronome. I spent ages putting it together (never good at soldering), and stuck a battery in it. What happened ? Nothing. No tone, no lighting LED, no Magic Blue Smoke. Nada. Mutter. I keep telling myself "Ah, the battery is dead", but I'm not confident enough to go buy a new battery for it...