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View from the window next to the door of the hotel room - the building is the Flares, obviously a disco as I quickly discovered during the first (quite sleepless) night... |
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Looking out of a window on the other side of the room shows some large building sites. |
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The hotel room was really nice, although quite noisy since the elevators were directly behind my room's wall. |
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When Thomas and I left our rooms to get some food, it started to rain instantly - not a smooth rain, no - a nasty, windy, wet, just plain horrible rain... :-) We found shelter in an Australian burger place. |
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Birmingham is really nice and has some interesting building as the one shown on the left which we found during our first day in Birmingham (we were one day early so we had plenty of time looking around). |
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There even is a church downhill - we could not figure out why it was not built on top of the hill as we would have expected. |
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Next to the church are some really great fountains. |
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A nice building... |
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Something which looks like a model for the larger church shown above - I do not know that this represents. |
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Not far from the hotel was a large observation wheel (of course I did not take a ride on this - I am really (!) afraid of height - the flight was horrible enough for me :-) ). |
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Back in the hotel lobby we spotted some conference attendees - programmers are mostly quite easily detected. :-) |
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...and on the right you can see Larry Wall himself! |
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Our next walk brought us to the canal where some really pretty boats were floating. As far as I understood these are in fact house boats. |
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In a near by restaurant the early arrivers party took place - we got our badges (Thomas can be seen on the far left - he looks a bit angry, why?). |
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Another view of the canal. |
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Back in the hotel the Flares had opened its doors (and, by the way, switched on its PA...) - the illumination is quite nice. |
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The next morning began with the opening lecture delivered by Larry Wall. |
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This is what I call a conference - not a single seat without power for the notebooks within reach! |
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Between the talks people tend to flock together - here Martin Vorländer can be seen on the left, he is a real OpenVMS guru and as it seems one of the last people using Perl on OpenVMS VAX (as I do). |
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The following pictures were taken during some talks - notably nobody is taking any notes on paper, notebooks are ubiquitous. |
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This is Allison Randal's talk about the Parrot compiler toolchain (she was quite ill with fever this day, yet delivered a very good talk!). |
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Back in the hotel, another view from one of the windows over the city of Birmingham. |
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A typical scene from a pause between talks - everybody is hacking along... :-) |
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This is Marty's "Lithp" talk (which inspired my APL talk). |
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This is Larry Wall again, he came too late to get a chair. |
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Allison Randal during the Parrot-BOF which took place in the hotel lobby this evening. |
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Yet another view from my hotel room window. |
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The next day - I was looking for a place to settle down to finish my APL talk. |
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Have you ever seen such a phone? Read the description carefully: Which combination of coins would you use to get maximum time? :-) |
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Just before the APL talk. |
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This evening we all (i.e. more than 200 Perl programmers :-) ) walked to the location where the come together should take place! Some people from Birmingham even took photos from our trek - the view really must have been quite amusing. Over 200 people talking about Perl and computers and walking like ducks in line for some kilometers. :-) |
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While the Mailbox was on the left on the picture above, I had a look to the right, too... |
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The trek... |
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An interesting building (where are the windows?). |
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Something which might have been an interesting building once upon a time. |
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Until now nobody was lost! |
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Somehow I liked this building! |
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...unfortunately one can not quite see why I took this picture. What puzzled me was the fact that all of the waste water tubing of this industrial building was done on the outside walls! I have never seen anything like this. |
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Dancing Perl programmers... What a view! :-) |
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While walking home after the event, destiny struck! I saw a car with the letters VAX in its number plate! I am sure it was waiting there for me to make my day! :-) |
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The last day of the conference - I am sad that it is over - it sure was very interesting and much fun. |
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A nice globe in a park where I took a walk. |
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And three pictures of a wonderful bush! I really like its geometrical form! |
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Here, again, is the pretty building I photographed during the first day - the fountain is very nice, I think. |
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A view of the ceiling of one of the bookstores we visited in Birmingham. |
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The very same bookstore but looking down from the third floor where I stood. |
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I am quite glad we did not stay in this hotel - some areas are quite spooky - especially at night... |
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Some things are strange in the UK - "Open by Hand" - what do they expect me to do else? Use gaspipe pliers? |
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...and the door can be opened by pushing as Thomas does on this picture - despite the fact that there is a sign reading "PULL" mounted on the door. |
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Any vampires there? "Give a drop while you shop"! |
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Some rules are not too simple - why the delta-t of three years here? |
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When we arrived, this was a small and abandoned construction site - it degraded day by day. First people stole some of the signs, then they started to demolish the whole thing until it looked like this three days later (it is a pity that I did not take photos on every day to show the decline). |
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Two pictures of the fountain (again). |
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On our very last day we went to the cinema ("Cars") - the letters could need some work... |
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We even went to a museum where I found this clock controlled coffee brewer which could wake you up with the odor of fresh coffee in the morning (1920s!). |
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No way to escape - a German Vine Fest... |
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Two last pictures of the observation wheel... |
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This photo was taken out of the right read window of the taxi which brought us back to the airport. |
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In fact, it was this taxi. |
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And we crossed many roundabouts - without any markings on the lanes - this would lead to a complete catastrophe in Germany! :-) |
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Oh dear - here I am - sitting in an airplane again... I really, really hate flying, so I decided to take some photos in case something really wents wrong and we would all be going to die... (Fortunately we did not die!) |
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Heading for the runway... |
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...ARGL... We are airborne by now! I HATE FLYING! |
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Frankfurt below - I am nearly home! :-) |
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