GUADEC / Birmingham
Last Sunday I got back from Birmingham. I'd been in England for a week or so attending the GUADEC conference. It was pretty awesome. I'm not as active in the GNOME community as I was 6 years ago, but I'd like to be more involved. I got to meet people I've known online for ten years which was pretty cool.
I gave a presentation about XUL and GNOME which didn't totally suck. It kind of sucked but I felt confident. The computer I was reading my notes off of died half-way through my presentation (I'd accidentally plugged it - sorry lathiat) so I had to wing it, but went well nonetheless. I think I'm getting to the point where I can deliver presentations if I'm feeling confident about what I'm presenting.
While in England I caught up with my friends Richelle and James. I hadn't seen Richelle in about eight years and it was great to see her doing so well with her life and career and having so much fun in London. I see James every year or two, typically for a few hours where we manage to have fairly serious conversations about the nature of our lives. That's the great thing about old friends you never see - when you finally catch up you can cut the crap and actually catch up.
Birmingham was actually pretty damn awesome. We arrived at the train station and walked through a shitty part of town to our hotel in a shitty part of town. The next day we walked down the side of a motorway, under urine-smelling underpasses, through the rain. But that night I went to Broad St which is a nice pub/restaurant area a couple of blocks from where we'd been. It was beautiful. Lovely old pubs. There was a jazz festival going on so we followed the music from bar to bar. Later that week we ended in a tiny old bar next to the canal drinking talking with the locals. I left with the feeling that I could live in Birmingham if it wasn't for the godawful weather.
I gave a presentation about XUL and GNOME which didn't totally suck. It kind of sucked but I felt confident. The computer I was reading my notes off of died half-way through my presentation (I'd accidentally plugged it - sorry lathiat) so I had to wing it, but went well nonetheless. I think I'm getting to the point where I can deliver presentations if I'm feeling confident about what I'm presenting.
While in England I caught up with my friends Richelle and James. I hadn't seen Richelle in about eight years and it was great to see her doing so well with her life and career and having so much fun in London. I see James every year or two, typically for a few hours where we manage to have fairly serious conversations about the nature of our lives. That's the great thing about old friends you never see - when you finally catch up you can cut the crap and actually catch up.
Birmingham was actually pretty damn awesome. We arrived at the train station and walked through a shitty part of town to our hotel in a shitty part of town. The next day we walked down the side of a motorway, under urine-smelling underpasses, through the rain. But that night I went to Broad St which is a nice pub/restaurant area a couple of blocks from where we'd been. It was beautiful. Lovely old pubs. There was a jazz festival going on so we followed the music from bar to bar. Later that week we ended in a tiny old bar next to the canal drinking talking with the locals. I left with the feeling that I could live in Birmingham if it wasn't for the godawful weather.