KiwiFoo, StixCamp, Minifest, Sydney.pm, and more
I have 9,000 unread messages in p5p. I'm months behind on my blogging. Some rapid catch-up is needed, so here it is for my blog... in executive bullet point style.

Rotorua
In February as part of my New Zealand adventure I made it to KiwiFoo (aka BaaCamp). The trip to KiwiFoo was an adventure in itself, with Jacinta and myself giving talks at Wellington Perl Mongers and Waikato LUG, and spending a short time in Rotorua (our "tourist day").

Rotorua was unfortunately heavily touristified, and I noticed a few of the locals calling it "RotorVegas". It wasn't hard to see why; there were lots of ways to separate the tourists from their cash, and many of the local attractions felt very artificial as a result. It didn't help that I knew the local geysers were so "reliable" due to an ample addition of soap powder at the times they're supposed to blow.

Somewhat repulsed by the highly commercial offerings, we went looking for some more authentic experiences off the beaten track. Some time walking around one of the geothermal areas revealed a brightly coloured steaming pool behind a "No Entry" sign. I wondered just how hot the water could be, and my scalded finger assured me it was almost at boiling point. Pipes from a nearby hotel snaked their way into the pool, obviously making use of the ample heat it provided.

After a much longer walk, Jacinta and myself found our way to the Redwoods, which made for an excellent few hours hiking. With sore feet, and a Conan the Detective drink bottle we discovered along the walk, we returned to the hotel.

Our hotel had the rather tacky name of "GeyserLand", but true to its name we had an excellent view of a mud pool and geyser directly outside our hotel window. The heat in Rotorua was oppressive; the air was humid, we were experiencing a "heat wave", and the local geothermal activity naturally added to both. The hotel room didn't have air conditioning, so staying in didn't appeal.

The hotel had a swimming pool for guests, which seemed attractive, but it didn't remain open particularly late. It also had "spout pools" which could be hired for a modest fee, but the hotel services guide contained no information about these might be. I figured they were some sort of geothermally heated bath.

Jacinta and I went to the desk to find out a little more and potentially hire a pool, and were told we couldn't hire one, because they were just about to close. "Oh no," I cried with my best pout, "We've travelled all the way from Australia, and this is our only night in Rotorua... I had so hoped to enjoy a thermal pool before I left."

A few minutes later we had access to a "spout pool", free of charge, because the hotel couldn't monitor our usage after they'd closed up reception for the night. Consequently, we also had access to the pool for as long as we wanted.

The pool ended up being the highlight of the entire day. Rather than a tiny thing that would only fit two people, this would have comfortably fit six unfriendly people, or almost twice that in friendly people. Hot water (presumably heated underground) falls from a spout into the pool, which would be waist-deep if you stood up, but which contains seats at just the right level to bring the water to neck height. It was clear that the water wasn't being recycled, it was just pumped in fresh 24 hours a day. I felt rather jealous of New Zealand's ample water supplies; in Melbourne it hadn't rained for two months, and water usage came with tight restrictions.

My dive computer (which I routinely wear instead of a wristwatch) told me the water was about 36'C, which made it lovely to relax in. If I ever return to the hotel, I'll be sure to bring a number of friends and a bottle of sake.

The next day we were off to Waikato (Cambridge and Hamilton) en route to Auckland and then Warkworth. We went and visited a local nature park (with an obligatory kiwi tour) and had a nice lunch in town. Everything looked pretty good until we got onto the bus, where I had discovered we'd booked our tickets for the wrong week. After a little pleading and cajoling with the bus driver and assurances that we wouldn't even be in the country the next week, we were allowed on anyway, despite our tickets being invalid.

Waikato was another adventure again, and one I hope to discuss in my next journal entry.

Wellington Adventures
I'm currently sitting in Wellington airport, New Zealand. It's the most civilised airport I've ever seen. Rather than standing in a queue forever with tickets, there are kiosks which weigh one's bag and prints baggage and boarding passes. One then places the bags on a conveyor belt, and walks to the departure gate. It's wonderfully laid back, with no screening for weapons, sharp objects, or dangerous liquids like toothpaste and coffee. At the departure lounge there are plenty of power points, and a completely open access point (albeit with the odd SSID of router). In about 15 minutes I'll be on my plane to I'm on my way to Rotorua, where I'll be a tourist for a whole 24 hours.

For those who haven't been following my dents or trips on dopplr, I'm ostensibly in New Zealand for Baa Camp, but that's not until the weekend. Until then, I'm travelling, and mostly staying with geeks while doing so.

For the last two nights, I've been staying with Grant and Anna McLean, who have a beautiful house and the nicest and best behaved kids I've ever met. Grant runs the local Wellington Perl Mongers, where both Jacinta and myself had the honour of speaking last night.

As I discovered, Wellington also has the most civilised Perl Mongers group I've ever seen. They provide beer and munchies during the meeting. I was very glad to see both Brenda, Andrew, and Sam at the meeting; Wellington is certainly spoilt when it comes to having distinguished people. It's also spoilt for cafes; I could hardly walk five steps in the city centre without encountering a barista.

My next public appearance will be at Waikato LUG on Thursday. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you there.

Linux.conf.au 2009
I'm sitting on a pristine beach. Nearby, a bee that's almost the size of my thumb lazily makes its way between the fragrant violet flowers on the tree that provides my shade. The sun is warm, but not too hot, and a few small sailing craft are out on the water, enjoying the mild weather and light winds. Beyond the water a breathtaking range of mountains rise. In the water, a wetsuited man swims to a nearby moored boat, while nesting gulls swoop him from overhead, and a flotilla of ducks cautiously follow, hopeful for an easy meal.

You'd be excused to think that I was on holidays, but actually I'm at Linux.conf.au (LCA), which this year is being held in Hobart, Tasmania. Tasmania has always been known for its breathtaking landscapes, pristine wilderness, and excellent beer. Having spent the last week here, I can assure you that Tasmania has all these things in abundance.

Like most conferences, one has to make a choice at LCA: talks, social, sleep; pick two. Since I fell into my usual bad habit of working on my slides and presentations during the conference period, I was really only able to pick one; in this case, I picked social.

This year I seem to be a lot more trendy than I'm used to, and this was even before I gave my talks. I've been invited to the exclusive dinners, I was readily included in conversations with authors of famous books and software, and there was a most touching moment where one of the local University of Tasmania students told me that he managed to get a number of registrations based purely upon my lightning talk from last year.

Jacinta had the first talks for the conference, both of which occurred on the Monday LinuxChix mini-conf. Her talk On Speaking had the audience in rapture and easily rates as one of the best talks, if not the best talk I saw at the entire conference.

For my talks, I had one scheduled presentation, and three unscheduled ones, one of which was a lightning talk. The other two talks were due to a speaker giving notice of a late cancellation, and I happened to have a few talks that were ready to go.

For my fill-in talks, I gave my talk on The Art of Klingon Programming and What's New in Perl 5.10 (heavily revised from the talk I gave before 5.10 was released). Some vanity searching revealed some excellent feedback with regards to these talk, which I'm really happy with, because they weren't as polished as I would have liked them to be.

My main talk was Awesome Things You've Missed in Perl, discussed a range of new Perl technologies, many of which have only been written in the last two years. My lightning talk was a small mention of ack, a better grep, which ended up winning one of the (three) awards for best lightning talk. Next year I'm going to have to give a lightning talk on how to give good lightning talks.

The most newsworthy event (at least by local media standards) was the Penguin Dinner. As is the custom, we had a charity auction at dinner, in this case to raise money for the Save The Tasmanian Devil foundation. Part-way through the bidding process, Bdale Garbee made a commitment to shave his beard if the money raised was more than a certain amount. While I wasn't able to keep track of all the pledges and contributions, the result was a final amount of money raised that approached the $40,000 AUD mark, and Bdale lost his beard.

Memoirs of an OSCON Rockstar, Day 5
This entry is about six months late. The other entries I had written on my flight back to Australia, whereas this one is being written back on the ground. It seems that the ground provides a great many distractions and demands.

Friday was by far the most memorable day of OSCON 2008. Firstly, I managed to complete one of my lifetime goals of giving a plenary at OSCON. Not only did I have the entire OSCON audience to myself (which was thousands of people), I was also giving the last talk for the entire conference, and (at least for the conferences I go to), everyone expects the last talk to be really good.

At this point I'm going to reveal one of the strange paradoxes of public speaking. The bigger your audience, and the higher their expectations, the easier it is. There's a whole bunch of mental mechanic reasons why this is the case, but they're so long they deserve a blog post of their own.

Before the talk I remember Edd being wonderful and finding me some food. While I had spent lots of time on talk preparations, I'd forgotten to find anything to eat during that time. Thanks Edd!

The whole talk went smashingly well. Everyone laughed at my jokes, even the really cheesy ones. I think it's sufficient to say it was my most successful presentation ever.

After the talk I found the Perl crowd I'd been spending time with, and went out for some very nice (and very cheap!) Vietnamese. Skud suggested I get a basil-seed drink, which was amazing, and I really need to put my photo on-line to show it off properly. Tim Bunce, hero of DBI and NYTProf, passed his iPhone around the tables and collected everyone's contact details. If you need to contact anyone in the Perl world, there's a good chance you can do so using Tim's phone.

Having finished our meal, there Perl crowd seemed to disperse. Some went home, I think some went to the Portland Beer Festival, and I joined the group that went off to Powell's book store. After a fun time looking at books, I returned to Powell's cafe, where we generally decided was our centrla meeting point. I'd picked up a book on the cultivation of wild fungi, and immediately made friends with Stacy, a friend of Schwern's and a local to Portland, who was also a mushroom hunter. Apparently Portland has big crops of Chanterelles each year, of which I'm intensely jealous.

At some point I get invited to a BBQ, and I secretly cheer inside, because it would have been rather sad if I gave a massively successful talk in front of thousands of people and didn't get invited to anything. I heartily accept.

There are some street-car (tram) trips, and Schwern offers me the loan of a bike to get to the BBQ. Having not had a chance to cycle anywhere all week, I think this sounds like a fantastic way to get around. Stacy was kind enough to volunteer as a guide to get me to the BBQ. I'm very happy for this, because every time I turn a corner by myself I drift onto the left hand side of the road, which is a great place for cyclists to be in Australia, but definitely not a good place in America.

On the way to the BBQ we drop off at a store to buy some provisions to take along. Stacy introduces me to some delicious local cherries, and then hits me with one of the most awkward moments of my entire trip: "We should bring some wine to the party. Since you're Australian, can you pick out a nice Australian wine?"

As the cool international speaker, I don't know how to admit that I actually know nothing about Australian wines. Yes, I'm a great consumer of them, but I have a huge circle of Australian friends who know their wines much better than me, and I usually just take their advice. Of the good wines that I do know, none of them are at the store, so I kind of pick something at random.

With cherries and wine acquired, we continue onto the BBQ, where I experience what is the singularly greatest moment I have ever had as a conference speaker. When I arrive, the host of the party, Lindsey (who I previously hadn't met), is actively reciting part of my talk. I remember just standing there with a huge grin on my face until I'm eventually introduced, when I discover that Lindsey is an awesomely cool person, and one of the reasons for the BBQ is because Lindsey is leaving Portland to continue her studies of Computer Science (to the doctorate level, IIRC). And then the best part of the night happens, which fulfils a second lifetime goal...

I get to play Rock Band. In a real basement. On a huge projection screen. For bonus points, we even have Adam Kennedy on drums.

As strange as it sounds, playing Rock Band was one of my goals for the trip, and I'd previously been mourning the fact that I didn't have the luggage space to bring a copy home with me. (The full game includes two guitars and a drum set, and my suitcase was rather full.)

Lindsey's party was fantastic, and special shout-outs go to Kate and Jeff, both of whom I spent much time talking to. The saddest part was it coming to a close, and me having heard the (now confirmed) rumours that OSCON will be moving to San Jose for 2009. It sucks having made so many wonderful friends in Portland and not being able to come back to Portland next year for OSCON, although I hope to find other excuses to return.

At the end of the party Schwern is kind enough to give me a lift back to my hotel. The next day I sleep in, spend a little time sight-seeing, and fly back to Australia. My feet are sore, but I really don't want to leave.

Lindsey, Kate, Stacy, Skud, Eric, Ricardo, Allison, Edd, Gina, Tim, Jos, Andy, Matt, Perigrin, Jeff, r0ml, (and anyone I've missed), and especially Shirley (our fantastic OSCON speaker liason), and Schwern (who showed me around, let me borrow his bike, and generally allowed me crash into his social circle), thank-you all for a wonderful time, and an unforgettable trip. I hope to see you all again at OSCON 2009!