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 :)

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:

1. I'll start talking about what's happening on the personal side of my life
2. 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
3. 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 :)
4. 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.

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

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.

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.