Some years ago, I was asked by a guy from Spain through my then boss/professor whether I would participate in a book project about infrared technology. I agreed, but then was unexpectedly getting the opportunity for my current job, and simply could no longer find the time for serious scientific writing. So I had to disappoint the guy by telling him I had to resign from the project.
Today I noticed his name on the list of speakers, and I had the opportunity for some small talk, including a personal apology and his reassuring I was not the only one on his authors list who could not make it, and that the book was never finished. At least I'm not the only culprit! phew
These fifteen minutes perhaps were worth the whole journey already, so
please take yesterday's rant and bad mood with a lighter note! ^-^
What I don't like that much is the missing punctuality of the conference. Already the opening notes started with about 10 min delay, which was a bad sign IMHO. You never make up lost time during big events like these! Perhaps that's just my (Swiss) German punctuality fetish, though.
On the programme, "Lunch" was marked as such. Now at a conference, people assume lunch is included, if it's noted — at least that's what I did, as well as half a dozen of guys I was talking to. I was not very hungry and decided to let them pay dearly by skipping lunch and later attacking the buffet during coffee break, mhwahaha! Actually, I did not eat much more than I would normally, just some sandwich and two cookies... However, I noticed one girl skipping from one "island of tables" to the next several times, leaving and returning to repeat. Well, I don't blame it on her, because the food was really delicious!
Anyway, I don't feel bad about my little freeloading, because now I have paid for my sin by not attending to the conference dinner this evening. I just felt too tired and not in the mood for a lot of socializing and food. In addition, "standard food intake slots" in Spain are slightly dephased from my clock, i.e lunch is towards 2 pm and dinner at 9 pm, and so I would certainly not get to bed before 11 pm.
There's ongoing discussion in the SDF phlogosphere about "insourcing" of gopherholes, i.e running one's own server to become independent from SDF. I do like SDF, but OTOH I can well understand this, especially with respect to improved redundancy and resilience. Therefore I'm not thinking about moving, but mirroring.
And we all should have local redundant bookmarks, so that we can easily look for stuff at a secondary place, when one site or host goes down.
Still thinking about having some local bookmark update script, like a local Bongusta or Moku Pona.
Man, the internet access in this hotel really sucks! I hate login pages, where you have to input the access data every two hours or so, because the router simply assumes you're gone unless if you only work with HTTP or whatever Joe Sixpack is assumed to use. In addition, speed feels lower than 2k4, but that's perhaps due to the over 20k (!) hosts in this subnet my tablet discovered — before I stopped it due to lack of patience.
Still feeling fine and unin-flu-enced, yay!
.:.