Breaking Radio Silence

It’s been a bit quiet round here for the last week or so. Sorry about that. I was busy in other areas.

I spent the last week in Copenhagen, speaking at YAPC::Europe. Over four days I gave three short talks and a full day training session. It good to catch up with a number of old friends. I’d never been to Copenhagen before, so there will be some photos appearing on Flickr before too long.

As always at these conferences, I get fired up about interesting projects in the Perl world. I think there were three things I really want to get involved in this year. The first is my Proud To Use Perl blog which is already up and running. The other two I’ll talk more about as they become more concrete.

Like a number of the conference attendees I was staying in a cheap hotel near the central railway station. There are a number of similar hotels in that area. But it turns out that it’s also a slightly dodgy area to stay in. There were a few sex shops on the same street as my hotel and usually as I was returning to the hotel there was someone on the street who was happy to offer me either sex or drugs.

We were also very close to the Tivoli Gardens. So on Friday evening, after the conference was over, After a couple of hours I found myself in the middle of a free rock concert (Fredag Rocks! apparently). There was a huge crowd watching an incredibly dodgy Danish band. They sounded to me a bit like a Danish version of INXS – which is, in my opinion, a really terrible thing to sound like. I left after a few numbers. Later investigation revealed that they were called Gnags and that they are “frequently referred to as one of the best live band in Danish rock history”. I couldn’t see it myself.

p.s. Oh, and I’ve upgraded the software running this blog to the latest version of Movable Type. There seem to be a few glitches. Please bear with me as I try to sort them out.