stuff you may have missed at yapc::austin

Uri Guttman uri at stemsystems.com
Mon Jun 10 01:09:03 PDT 2013


hi all,

i hope you all had a (heat) blast in austin last week. i used 
weatherspark.com to see pretty charts of the daily sinusoidal temp 
curve. from 65F at about 3am to 95F at 2pm. mornings and later evenings 
were ok but only mad dogs and perlers were out in the midday sun.

since my boss was with me and we had 2.5 days to explore, we saw a bunch 
of things that many of you may have missed. i know i missed a lot but 
you can't be in more than 2.7 places at a time.

we learned about magnolia cafe in the south congress shopping area. they 
have two mottos: '24/8' and 'sorry, we're open'. ended up there three 
times for great diner stuff with tex/mex and more. always busy and worth 
a wait. lots of indoor and outdoor seating and their own parking (a big 
+ there). must be the peak season but everywhere we kept getting very 
good strawberries.

i had a grilled cheese from burro on south congress. what seems to be a 
food truck or similar is actually made from a cargo container. the 
corrugated steel sides and heavy duty frame are painted a bright yellow. 
they make all kinds of grilled cheese with a variety of add-ins and 
sauces. i wasn't able to stay long but i heard that at 5pm that friday 
they were giving out free beer. they had a pony keg ready to go.

we had a nice and QUIET meal at the old pecan street cafe.

a couple of times we went to the whole foods mothership. having been to 
many WF stores all over the country, all i can say is beam me up!

this was the most interesting thing we did. we drove out to the hamilton 
pool, about 30 miles west of austin. it is a very large round grotto 
with a massive overhanging cliff. a 50 waterfall drops over the cliff 
and into a large green (not healthy to swim in) pool. we were told in 
some years the waterfall dries up but it was flowing well. the pool has 
been used for swimming for over 8k years. the hike was 1/4 mile across 
and 80 ft down. it felt much harder as the path was uneven in spots. 
lots of stone and log steps with roots and rocks everywhere. worth the 
walk for the beauty of it.

i wiki'ed about esther's follies but no one joined us. it was an 
hysterical musical satire/comedy and magic show. they ripped on rick 
perry, austin liberals, how hot it is, politics, scandals and more. the 
magic was very good and funny too. the wierdest thing (remember, keep 
austin wierd!) was that the back of the stage is a pair of large windows 
so outsiders can look in and participate! many times some cast people 
and props were put out there for a bizarre affect.

the double feature at the alamo draft house had about 50 ticket buyers 
but maybe 35 showed up. the president's analyst was the first flick and 
both dha and i got lots of kudos for picking that one. a bunch of early 
sleepers left after that and only a select few enjoyed the danny kaye 
antics in the court jester. let's just leave at that it has one of the 
funniest and magnetic verbal jousting scenes in film history. just 
beware of the drink and its container!

the perl jobs bof was a raving success as everyone said i was raving 
mad! 24 intrepid souls dropped by. the agenda on the wiki was covered in 
the strictest of fashion. there were even some practice conversations to 
show how to do interviews. many of the attendees contributed ideas, 
stories, do's and don'ts, etc. my goal is to expand it next year to a 
symposium with other related topics like the telecommuting talk held 
this year. several of the yapc royalty liked this idea so look for 
something coming down your tubes.

the lbj library was a big hit. several yapc'ers went and told me it was 
worth it so we went on thursday. i was a boy during his day and remember 
it vaguely. i knew he was a powerful president but seeing how much he 
got done, his struggles with viet nam, the amazing major bills and acts 
he got passed was a great education. among all the multimedia stuff were 
displays of very nostalgic 60's culture. i saw the game operation(!), 
magazine covers, movie posters, clothing, albums (surrealistic pillow 
and the first grateful dead vinyl!!), etc. it was a momentous decade and 
lbj was as much a part as anything and larger than most.

on a more personal side, i converted many new and some older tcp based 
entities into carbon based life forms. some will even get stored in my 
bit dropping memory banks. others will need refreshing or they will be 
garbage collected. perhaps i will make some good business connections as 
that seemed to go well.

anyhow, glad to be home with daytime temps around 75F and nice breezes. 
ahhhhhhh!

thanx,

uri

-- 
Uri Guttman - The Perl Hunter
The Best Perl Jobs, The Best Perl Hackers
http://PerlHunter.com


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