Finally got around to booking travel and accomodation for FOSDEM 2010; I've left it late again, possibly even later that last year, so it's a little more expensive than I'd like (also, I didn't particularly want to share a room in a hostel with stangers again, so my accomodation isn't as cheap as it could be). On the other hand, I've money saved from my placement, so what the hell.

One thing that did puzzle me, incidentally, was the booking form for the hotel, which offered a choice of rooms: “Standard Room +£0.00” (no additional cost, as the default selection) and “Standard Room (breakfast included) +£41.46”. That's per night.

I cannot quite grasp just how wonderful a breakfast would have to be to justify spending that much on it. To put it in perspective, that's approximately what the room costs per night (I think; it's bundled with the Eurostar cost, so hard to tell). It's also not much less than a return ticket to London. I could quite easily get breakfast in a hundred other places on my way from the hotel to the conference for less than a tenth of that. What the hell are they thinking?

The date for FOSDEM X has been announced: 6+7 February 2010.

I’m hoping to get myself organised to go well in advance this time, unlike this year’s somewhat rushed attempt (avoiding the sleeper service and getting there on the Friday evening would be bonuses, too).

More details once I know my timetable for next year; any Plymouth geeks who’re interested, let me know and we can try to organise getting there as a group.

So, not all that much has been happening recently. Spent New Year coding, eating curry, watching Monty Python, then watching the countdown with Jools Holland and drinking, for some reason, amaretto.

I bought myself an Eee PC 1000 so that I can have a laptop that I can actually carry around, and I’m generally very happy with it — I’ve put a stock version of Debian on there, and it works pretty much perfectly. (The only issue is that when it comes out of hibernation after more than 10 minutes it immediately thinks "oh, I’ve been inactive for ages, time to go to sleep" and suspends, but that’s probably my fault…)

I had hoped to go to FOSDEM this year, but due to university stuff on the Friday I’d pretty much ruled it out. However, somebody pointed out I could get the sleeper to London then the first train to Brussels in the morning, so after some rushed booking I’m going after all. :)

And I’m still not dead, in case that wasn’t obvious. Though hills seem to have gotten steeper over Christmas.