Unfortunate Knitting Content

I am having a great time here at YAPC. I'm learning quite a bit (that I don't have anyplace to implement, of course) and I'm getting insights to ways to solve problems - mostly because my brain is in neutral with regards to my work, so answers to existing problems are just presenting themselves as people show models that solve vaguely similar but totally unrelated problems.

But I'm falling asleep.

This is, of course, because I got a cold. I'm not sure if I picked it up last week-end in DC, or if I got it from my sweetheart, who seems to have blown through a very similar cold in two days just before I started displaying symptoms. But between the after-lunch sleepiness and the cold, I've been nodding off in the middle of sessions.

Except when I've been knitting.

Which is unfortunate, because when I knit enough to stay awake, I pay attention enough to the presenters to screw up my knitting. I have managed so far to knit my two socks together once, and have had to tink back several rows three times so far.

And I got to lunch with a knitter today. One of the things we discussed was Rails vs Catalyst. Why would I mention that here? She explained to me that Rails is behind Ravelry. Catalyst is marketed as an alternative to Rails, and I'm here to learn about Catalyst.

Not that I'll probably have any use for it. Right now I'm trying to learn Zope and Plone in my spare time. But instead of learning, I seem to be sleeping. When I'm not knitting.

Very unfortunate.

Notes To Self

In case I manage to lose both copies of the pattern, the sock I'm making is using pattern #154 from the 250 Knitting Patterns book.

I need to find an open source or free SmallTalk distro. One is called GemStone? Also investigate SeaSide.

We could always use perl2exe to free up our perl distro for upgrades. On the other hand, it's not like they do anything that's going to stop working ... until we hit perl6. I think.

My programming instincts were just identified as good practices. Great. And all the places where I didn't pay attention to my instincts in practice are predictably causing exactly the problems the gurus say they will. Whoopee.

Investigate mechanize.com.

Investigate donor.com.

Go through notes for other stuff to investigate.

Most importantly: In the future, if we're going to bother to check one bag, we might as just check anything we don't need to carry on. Leaving a sweater home (because it wouldn't fit in my carry-on) has led me to be the person in the conference wearing my towel around my shoulders. What's really scary are the ones who don't realize I got the idea from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, actually it was a combination of that and having nothing but a towel to huddle under on a freezing Connecticut Limo ride once several years ago.

Yeah - so now I'm the one wearing a towel and knitting a sock. Oddly enough, I fit right in.