so day two was a bit of a blur.
the morning was spent in a tutorial about 'programming the apache lifecycle', which gave a good overview of all the various places one can hook into apache via mod_perl. i don't do a whole lot of that sort of coding, but it was quite interesting to see all the little tricks one can do if one is so inclined. it's definately some technology i'll have to investigate further, especially going forward as mod_perl2 becomes more prevalant.
then i had lunch with my editor from apress, which was nice. it's yet another good example of now being able to put a face with the email address, which is honestly one of the best things about conferences like this.
then the afternoon was spent in mark jason dominus' talk 'tricks of the wizards', which explains how some of the more magical parts of perl really work. it was quite informative, and even if i never use most of the things i learned from it, i'm certain it will make me a better perl programmer just because i'll know how more of it is working under the hood, which is always a good thing. also, he's just a fantastic speaker, so any talk he's giving is bound to be interesting.
after mjd's talk, i wandered off and had dinner with justin and rich, which was interesting. it's always cool to hear about how the various people working on open source projects actually got involved. apparently rich got involved with apache because someone asked him to write a book about it. personally, i'd think if one was looking for an author for a book about apache, it would make more sense to find someone who was already involved, but hey, it seems to have worked out in his case.
then we went to the state of the union talks, and heard various different 'leaders' of open source projects talking about what's currently going on in their world. larry wall was interesting as always, and greg stein gave a good overview of the apache project, which seems like it never really gets the recognition it deserves.
after the state of the unions, justin and i hooked up with greg (who i had never actually met in person), and went over to the activestate party. got to meet a few more people i'd only known by reputation, and had a few drinks. the party was cool, but it was a bit hot and crowded, which is par for the course when you offer an open bar to a group of programmers i imagine.
