Ok, so no one’s actually checked, but I’m pretty sure I’m still alive. If not, I’ve probably ended up in Limbo - the last couple of weeks have been hellish in parts, but also a lot of fun

It was good fun to have Helen and Eimear staying, but sharing 15sqm between three girls, and all their possessions soon gets crowded! I was also meant to be getting my 3rd Year Project for TCD finished - so once they left, I got the head down, and started procrastinating like mad There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind, and the initial deadline had already passed (although I’d gotten a month’s extension before it passed, I knew I was working on at least partially borrowed time).

Structured Procrastination and other essays on that website kept me going, as did much encouragement from the few friends who were being subjected to daily wordcounts

Packing was my other main project, and by the time Colm arrived over, on the Friday before I was due to leave, I had sent 20kg home via DHL, and packed up a host of other bits and pieces. We shipped three boxes of stuff straight to Leiden, and managed to cram everything else into a Woolworths’ suitcase, his rucksack, and various bits of hand luggage.

On 13th August, I handed back my keys, and we arrived at Munich Airport about three hours before the flight. We had to hang around a bit before checkin opened, and we were first to check in. The woman checking us in must have been having a fantastic day, because although my suitcase weighed 36kg (4kg more than the max for any one bag), and the rucksack weighed 16kg (making a grand total of 52kg, somewhat over the 40kg allowance), she didn’t blink an eyelid - and put a HEAVY tag on the suitcase, with 30kg written on it!

We finally made it back home after a fairly uneventful flight, and only minor killage while trying to find our way out to the long-term car park/find Colm’s car. I had a brilliant year in Germany, but I’m so, so glad it’s done now.

The next few days were spent recovering, mostly Looked up some things in the TCD library, and persuaded dad to borrow a book for me (certain books can’t be borrowed by undergrads - luckily, dad’s a TCD staff member, and he’s been wanting to look around the Berkely/Lecky/Ussher library complex for a while, so was amenable to my request for his assistance :))… Spent a fantastic weekend down in Limerick - many thanks to Laura, for organising the talk that was my excuse for going down, and for offering hospitality. Martin Krafft gave a talk about Debian etch, which was interesting and well received. We adjourned to the Sports Bar afterwards, for a lively and interesting discussion.

Unfortunately, it had been rather a while since I’d had to deal with any kind of large group of people, and so it was all a bit much for me after a while. Stephen kindly rescued me, and we went back to his new, teeny apartment, where the only people I had to interact with were himself and Mario (via the new, shiny, DS Lite. Me wantee!)

Ewan gave me a lift home the next day, and it was time to frantically re-pack, for going up to Blackhead, Antrim, where my folks were staying. Mum tells me she’s now stayed in all of the Irish Landmark Trust properties outside of Dublin - good going mum!

I had a nice few days up there, finished off the guts of my essay (the 3rd Year Project above), and got home in time to take photos at Colm’s going-away party. I finished off the very last bits of my essay, and Colm was a superstar in printing, binding and delivering it for me. Saw Stephen again, Ewan dropped over to return the hoodie I’d left in his car (he calls it my knacker hoodie - I actually rather like it), and things were mostly quiet and relaxing til Saturday, when everyone got home, and Colm and I had to start packing again, to come to Leiden.

We made it over to Leiden eventually, everything went pretty smoothly, except the train from Schiphol to Leiden, which was delayed by a full 14 minutes (we never did figure out why…). Everyone at the new office seems lovely - the two admin-types were no end of help to us, and Colm’s office-mates were super-friendly (They’re both guys he knows, and I’d met one of them at ApacheCon.)

He managed to open a bank account yesterday, so it’s house-viewing today. I desperately need to catch up on sleep, but will hopefully manage that over the course of the next few days

And so, as promised, I’m alive, not dead, drowned or beheaded. Phew, that took a while to explain!

The speaker notifications have gone out, the schedule is on the website, and registration is open. ApacheCon US 2006 is getting closer, and although I won’t be able to be there (it’s the very first week of college, and I’m hoping to be starting my final year… Aargh!), I’ve once again gone and turned out some iCal files for those of you who will make it (yes, I ought to be packing to move back to Ireland, or writing that darn essay. Mneh, I tell you!).

It’s the same deal as last time, and if you’re bringing an iPod to the conference, I’ve also got instructions for importing the schedules to the iPod, and viewing them thereon.

The whole schedule - warning, this is big, full, and slightly scary looking! There’s an awful lot of stuff going on at the con!

The plenaries schedule includes plenary sessions, lunches, coffee breaks - anything that’s good for everyone, no ‘tracks’.

The tutorials schedule will let you know what’s going on for the first two days, although don’t forget the hackathon, your chance to get some really good work done in real time, with the people you usually have to play cross-timezone email-tag with

Like I’ve said before, this is going to be bigger and better than any other con going, so the ‘conference’ days are jam-packed. There’ll be five tracks all week long, and an extra all-Cliff, all-day special on the Friday.

The schedules for these are:

Room 1
Room 2
Room 3
Room 4
Room 5
Room 6

As usual, I’ll try and keep these as up-to-date as possible… If you’re subscribed to the iCal, you’ll get those updates automatically - if you’ve just downloaded it for offline viewing, or your iPod, you may have to resync closer to the con.

Remember to keep an eye on the wiki for things like BoF sessions, and if you’re planning a party, make sure to add it there, so everyone can join in the fun! Enjoy!

A comment from a friend started me thinking last week about what my Desert Island Discs would be. It’s something I’ve wondered a bit about before, but never actually sat down and decided - I suppose I always figured I was too young to have such interesting stories about my choices!

I decided to pick the music, and let the stories come after - and they did. I’m not going to tell them here or now, but they’re there, if only half-formed, and maybe some day I’ll write them down.

Stranded on the desert island, you’re allowed to bring eight records (although on the show, they actually pick eight pieces of music, so I’ve done that below), a book, and one luxury item, which must be inanimate and non-practical. The Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare, are already on the island

My music choices, in roughly the order they occurred to me:

Bolero - Ravel
Castles in the Air - Don McLean
One Moment in Time - Whitney Houston
Abide with Me - Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Shout to the North - Delirious?
High & Dry - Radiohead
Caide Sin Don Te Sin - Altan
Ave Maria - Bach/Gounod

My book would be “Favourite Poems We Learned in School” - whether it would be the original, the “More” or the “as Gaeilge”, I’ve not yet decided…

My luxury was the hardest thing to pick, but I think I’d go for a Budda Bag - as big and as fuzzy as possible please!

Helen and Eimear are temporarily homeless, so they’re crashing in my apartment. We had a really nice dinner in a nearby restaurant, and then returned to my place to prepare for a night out…

At some point, Helen decided it would be a good idea to play a drinking game. Steve was on Skype, so he was persuaded to join in. The game in question involved everyone sitting in a circle (Steve was given corporeal form via the iBook and a fantastic photo), taking turns to say consecutive numbers from one to twenty one. Saying two numbers in a row reversed the direction of play, and an error (wrong number, speaking out of turn, or failing to speak on one’s turn) resulted in a drink, and starting again from one.

We made it to twenty-one the first time with only a small amount of difficulty, mainly due to the fact that neither Steve nor I realised that play resumed in the original order if the counter was reset (because of an error).

Then the fun began. The person who said twenty one was given the opportunity to replace a number of their choice with any other word. I was first, replacing two with ‘yes’ - Steve’s classic answer to ‘or’ questions. This caused much hilarity later, as I was often the one saying ‘one’, and Steve was after me

The final state of the numbers was one, yes, three, seven, five, lemon, seven, eight, nine, ten, aubergine, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, six, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Replacing numbers with other numbers was a particularly inspired idea

Overall, a fantastic game! I don’t think I’ve laughed that much in a very long time

I have no hot water in my apartment. Not even lukewarm. Haven’t had since Sunday. The weather has turned, it’s grey, wet, and kinda chilly (at least compared to the last few weeks). I’m somewhat less than impressed. Many thanks to Emer, who came to the rescue by letting me use her shower - it’s much appreciated hon!

Colm sent me a link to a review of his ApacheCon talk on a French developers’ website… I was delighted to notice that the article was accompanied by a photo I’d taken. I was even more delighted to notice a further six photos on the same page taken by me. I know I was snap-happy during ApacheCon, but I really do think I got some good photos, and I uploaded the decent ones to flickr so that other people could see them. I even CC licensed them, so that other people could use them without having to check with me first. I licensed them under what some may regard as fairly stringent criteria (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs), on the grounds that the CC license is just the default license, and anyone who’s actually bothered is entirely free to ask and arrange something different. Unfortunately, the author neglected to comply with the license terms, and there was no attribution that I could find, anywhere on the page - the author had simply copied my photos to his server, renamed them, and gone on his merry way. The editors have passed on my complaint to the author, and hopefully it’ll be sorted soon, it’s now fixed - yay! - but it’s somewhat unpleasant all the same

There’s plenty other news, but I’ll save it for a more cheerful post I expect