The Rodent's Burrow

I would have entered more and in more detail if the network situation hadn't been exhibiting some of the characteristics of an F3 tornado much of the time. :-(

Wednesday I met with the people from S&S Verlag and pounded flat most of the remaining issues about having them produce ApacheCon 2005 Europe. It's not completely official yet, since there's still paperwork to be signed, but as of this moment it appears that there will be an ApacheCon in Stuttgart, Germany, in June of 2005. If all goes well.

And I mailed out the call-for-participation for ApacheCon 2004 U.S., so now's the time to submit, folks. The deadline is Friday, 23 July 2003, and no late submissions will be accepted!

Of course, I forgot to mention either of these in my talk on Friday, which was about using PHP to reactively deal with malbots in real time.

Thursday was a fairly normal day; I spent it mostly perched on this really uncomfortable stool and swearing at the slowness of the network. The day ended with a march on Karlsruhe centre, in a protest against software patents. Dinner Thursday night was at a tavern in Erbprinz, roughly half-way between Karlsruhe and Bad Herrenalb. (The number of places I've had to go that aren't "handicapped-accessible" is dismaying; this tavern was one of 'em. There are people in chairs here at LinuxTag; I have no idea how they make it to the WCs, since they're up some stairs and then down some others.)

After dinner, some people from 100Days offered to give us a ride in their cars back to Bad Herrenalb. I agreed readily, since it meant I wouldn't have to climb that bloody hill with my really sore knees. I was in the second car, and we followed the others. Of course, the first thing they did was head back in the direction of Karlsruhe, for some reason. The driver called up the driver of the other car on his mobile, and said, "Ken says you're going the wrong way!" Apparently they had discovered it too by that time, but nevertheless we followed them through at least three roundabouts before they turned around. (I think the explanation given later was that they were obeying the navigation system in the car. Go figure.)

Finally heading in the right direction, a couple of nature-related things occurred. First, a deer bounded across the road in front of the other car, meeting with no accident. Second, we passed — at speed — a sign I glimpsed which looked something like this ("Warning: frogs ahead. Car may skid."). That made me grin.

One thing I'd forgotten about Germany is the ingredients in a typical buffet breakfast: among other things, a large selection of what Yanks would probably call "luncheon meat." Bologna, ham, salami, liverwurst, beef, et cetera. It's actually a pretty good way to start the day once you get used to it — and if you don't have to run half a klick to catch a tram immediately afterward.

The weather has been much nicer than last year; nice and cool. It seems to energise the swallows that swoop in vast herds outside my hotel room window; it sounds like a bat convention much of the time.

And tomorrow morning I have to get up early in order to catch the tram to Karlsruhe in order to catch the train to Frankfurt to catch the plane back to the States.

And now back to the conference..