Day three of YAPC, and I'm attending Ingy's talk on YAML. The hecklers in the crowd just received one of the two microphones - they've received official status.

The evening of day two was fun, except for the minor issue of my room key not working. The professional and friendly staff at CMU sorted that out quickly. The conference dinner was at the Heinz field, with the usual TPF auction. The privilege of taking Larry Wall out for lunch was auctioned off for a thousand dollars, very impressive.

Today's sessions end at three, and then it's back to NYC. It'll be hard to go back to work on mostly closed-source stuff - YAPC is always motivating, and I always want to get more involved in the Open Source community when I return; but little tends to come of it.

Day two of YAPC is starting. I'm currently enjoying Matt Trout talking about DBIx::Class, and today looks like a full schedule of interesting talks.

Yesterday's eye opener was David Fetter's talk on recursive SQL - solving the Traveling Salesman Problem and doing a Mandelbrot set in ISO standard SQL. But the best part is talking to all the many perl experts here.

I think I just flubbed my YAPC lightning talk. Too much to say, too little time, and my materials were by no means as good as all the other speakers. Ah well - better luck next year.

Am attending the workshop on Catalyst all afternoon. I am not using it right now, but since all the really smart kids are using it, I might as well learn :-)

Update: Matt is a great speaker, but his examples could be a little better. He knows his stuff though - he's clearly seen (or lived through) all the mistakes that can be made, and gives practical advice. I'm not fully convinced I need Catalyst for my apps.

Michael Schwern is doing a fun talk about how perl isn't dead, but is so in public perception - largely because of increased competition from and mindshare of Python, PHP and Ruby. Let's see what he has to say about how to address the situation.

Larry Wall is still an awful speaker. He either doesn't prepare in enough detail or doesn't rehearse. Combined with shyness and not-so-good jokes, it makes attending his keynotes a mixture of interest in his technical genius and boredom.