Wilhelm's still alive :-) This being a guy I met two years ago and spent all night talking to. The first night in Amsterdam, we did exactly the same thing. Result: I spent the PHP-GTK 2 talk hanging around the womens' room at the RAI trying to either vomit or sleep... and most of the rest of the conference simply trying to sleep. But thanks anyway to Sander for trying to make things feel better with a couple of lagers and a plate of chips, and no I probably would've taken those medications even if I'd known I'd be sitting next to non-drinker Zeev half an hour later (trying not to breathe out) for a pertinent-to-the-DevZone meeting.
The apartment I booked for the conference was fantastic, no two ways about it. The only thing between it and perfection was the lack of WIFI, but I'm told that this will be in place by next year's bash. Coolth * 1000, and no I'm not publishing their address before I have the chance to book us in again! Most of the time it was just me, sniper, Christian Weiske and Carsten Lucke in residence, but on the final night there we had visitors, and it proved itself capable of allowing the people in the bedrooms to sleep through our loud talking in the lounge. It's very central - close to Dam Square - and also close to a number 4 tram line, meaning it took a maximum of 15 minutes to reach the RAI. We'll be back, for sure!
The most interesting item in the whole of the conference was Andrei's talk about the pending support for internationalisation in PHP. He's spent the last few months writing support for ICU, the IBM i18n library, into the Zend engine - I believe he's been doing this during paid Yahoo time - but, as with most major development efforts in PHP these days, the actual development process has been confined to a pretty small group of core developers, and several of the rest of us had a lot of questions to ask about the implementation. The chief discussion was in the Novotel bar at the end of that day, mainly because it's the kind of 'exciting' that makes you think subliminally about it for the next several hours even when you're pretending to think about something else (e.g. not being sick in the womens' toilets). Then we all went out for beers and etc, predictably enough. You have to understand that the vast majority of these guys are still under 30, and that includes Andrei.
Apart from that it wasn't a good PHP conference for me - there seemed to be a lot of Zend-related meetings in there one way or another, and I missed the careless free-for-all of yesteryear. I haven't had time to do a lot for php.net recently, not being the fastest of coders and/or thinkers (no really, people that know me at home need to understand this - the php.net core devs are way ahead of me most of the time), and I felt very much like a hanger-on rather than central to it all. This is frustrating - there are three projects currently that I'd really like to have some involvement in, and I can't see a way clear to do it. Two of them are headed by Andrei; it's almost like he's taken Sterling's place as innovator.
I spoke with Sterling tonight, nothing to do with development, just gossing. Amongst other things, I wanted to know if it's ok to blog embarrassing stuff. He felt that it was ok to think about it twice and then do it anyway. So here goes:
The final night in Amsterdam, and Jerome (conference speaker), Philippe (the guy sleeping below my bunk in the mixed dorm at the hostel that night) and myself went out for a few beers and etc. The 'and etc' took effect pretty quickly, and the lads wanted to go somewhere 'more Amsterdam-ish' - we were in fact in a pretty good bar in the middle of the redlight, but I'm 20 years older than either of them so who'm I to judge? I figured that the places they wanted to be weren't the places I'd want to be, so I stayed where I was, alone, at a table, by a window. It's the 'by a window' part that you need to hang onto here.
This was the only window in the entire street that didn't have a naked woman behind it.
Got to there?
OK, so I'm flashing my breasts at the window every now and again, because it amuses me and I'm stoned. This went on for around 20 minutes, and then I just as suddenly lost interest in the joke and went to sleep, I've no idea how long for.
The barman woke me and asked me to leave, and the bar at this point was empty of customers, apart from one Syrian guy who was sitting opposite me and wearing a funny smile. He asked for a cigarette, which I - unusually - refused because I thought he was creepy. I was right. 400 metres down the street I took a back-alley to check - sure enough, his footsteps were still echoing behind mine. I led him around the block and then went to a hotel on the street I was staying in. It had a night bell, which I rang. The night porter came out, all smiles: "And what can I do for you, madame?" "Actually, I'm not staying here," I apologised. "But I'm hoping the guy behind me is, because he's been following me for the last half hour, so he's probably lost." The Syrian loomed up out of the shadows with a big smile on his face. "Yesssss?" growled the night porter to him. That's when the Syrian recognised that he wasn't on home territory, and he'd have done well in a Charlie Chaplin film for the facial expression he had.
I left them to sort it out and went home.
Didn't occur to me until the next morning that the poor Syrian probably saw me displaying my breasts earlier and assumed I was an unusual act...
Scuse me while I go to investigate the sound of breaking glass - it's Saturday night in Baldock again already.
