Knackered
This weekend, we tidied the garden a little. This involved some gardening and throwing away rubbish.
Thirteen large bin bags of garden waste, and a skip full of doors, concrete and metal tubing later, we've finished the easy tasks. Next week the new door and paving slabs arrive, so the hard work can begin. I haven't been sleeping too well recently so bought a herbal sleep remedy today, but I don't think I'll need any help tonight.
In other news, Jekyll finished last night. An excellent series with some interesting twists and a good mix of horror and comedy, I highly recommend it to anyone who can watch it (I believe it's being aired on BBC America next Saturday, and I'm sure its all over the interwebs).
GUADEC Roundup
This is probably the last GUADEC roundup to hit the Planets, considering that it finished a week ago. But, hey, I've been busy.
GUADEC was, as usual, a blast. Less sun, sea, and beach parties than last year; more rain, clouds, and parties in fake-Australian bars with too-loud music. If the weather was better we could have hijacked the landlocked beach, which would have been fun.
As an educational conference I totally failed at GUADEC, out of an entire week of talks I managed to attend a grand total of seven talks. Between the GNOME Mobile meeting sprawling across two afternoons, a few meetings with clients, occasional attending our stand and having to leave Thursday afternoon meant that there just wasn't enough time.
As a photographic experience I mostly failed. I took more photos at Matthew's excellent Clutter Foo talk than the rest of GUADEC itself, and more photos at the ping pong tournament than the others combined. From playing with my camera at the tournament I now know that the Sigma 17-70 lens is no way up to the challenge of sports photography: too slow and too short. My next lens however will be Sigma's new 30mm f/1.4, I've been eyeing it for a while now and Daf had given in to temptation so I could have a play with it. Sports photography will have to wait.
As a member of the organising team however, I don't think I totally failed. There were a few last minute snafus in the schedule but on the whole it appeared to hold together, the main problem being there being just too many good talks on at the same time. Congratulations of course are due to Paul, Thomas, Bastien and Rob, who kept the conference running on track all week.
Next year, Istanbul. That will be interesting.
NP: F♯ A♯ ∞, Godspeed You! Black Emperor
