Oh, travel. I don't mind air travel, in general, but there are always road bumps.
The catch this time was, as usual, power. I was flying to Hungary via JFK airport in New York. The good news is that New York, unlike my home town of Chicago, has discovered this amazing new invention called a power outlet. The bad news is that they haven't figured out that there will be more than four people who need power at any given time. Oh well. At least on Malev (the Hungarian national airline) they feed you. Several times. Quite well.
Budapest airport was rather quick to get through customs. Also, unsurprisingly, almost everything was in English, too. (That helps, since I don't speak a word of Hungarian.) That includes the advertising. I am not quite sure what killer bunnies have to do with telephone service, though.
I met up with George and Tiffany at their hotel so that we could head off to Szeged, but first George had to get their laundry. Unfortunately the hotel's laundry room likes to take its dear sweet time and it wasn't done yet. So after meeting up with Ken Rickard and his wife we headed off toward the train station with a suitcase full of sopping wet clothing, dripping along the way.
After struggling with our collective lack of Hungarian skills we were able to buy tickets to Szeged. On the train we ran into Kieran Lal and Wim Leers, and as we passed the airport we picked up Jay Batson. The Drupal Train grows...
Szeged is a nice small town, but we still managed to get lost. Go Americans, eh? After getting settled we met up with several other Drupalers at the same hotel and headed out for dinner at a local outdoor cafe. The food was pretty good (although my first meal in Hungary was Weiner Schnitzel, just to be ironic), but the highlight was the floor show. As we were eating the Hungarian Olympic Team was returning home right next to us. They had pulled several gold medals and were in Szeged for a celebration in their honor... in the same plaza where we were eating. Nicely done, guys!
While we were out eating, though, some of our colleagues weren't so lucky. Sam Boyer and Matt Butcher were sitll on their way in from Budapest, but made a slight detour. Where that detour was we have yet to figure out. Apparently they asked someone at the airport to send them to Szeged and they ended up in Cegled, or something. At least it was in the same general direction within Hungary. :-) They were able to make it to Szeged, finally, so we picked them up (after the figured out which of the various plazas we were in, anyway) and headed out to the pre-party.
By this point I had been awake and traveling for, um, 2 days? With the time zone shift I am really not sure. I had maybe an hour's sleep on the plane so by 9 pm Hungary time I was past the point of being exhausted to simply running on momentum. Of course, meeting up with Drupalers I only get to see every six months or a year is exciting enough to keep me awake even longer. The party started in a 3rd floor bar and eventually spilled out into an outdoor cafe where even more people started to show up. Of course, as soon as chx showed up the first words out of his mouth were "I have an SQLite driver working. Check your email." Yes! Expect SQLite support in Drupal 7 soon...
Despite having no alcohol I was behaving as if I was drunk by this point. Lack of sleep will do that. When I started to see colleagues growing flowers out of their head, though, I figured it was past time for me to sleep so I said my good byes and go finally pass... zzzzzzzzzz....
Drupalcon was great
Wow, that seemed to be quite a long and confusing way to travel, glad you made it.
Your presentations were great, alright - let's ignore the evil evil blue font. What I've noticed though was this great general opinion of everyone using Drupal that OOP is bad and procedural coding is Jesus himself. Any thought on that?
Personally, I don't see any reason not to go fully OOP, especially considering how cluttered the global 'namespace' gets with all the function includes loaded, and now that the new DB builder is on its way into the core, why not?
OOP is a tool
A lot of that is just inertia. We're used to doing everything procedurally, so we've attracted people comfortable with procedural code and have gotten used to doing things procedurally.
There are many advantages to OOP, but it is not the end-all-be-all either. There are places where procedural code is far simpler and easier than OOP. There are places where OOP makes life a lot easier, too. Right tool for the job and all that.
There are lots of ways to do OOP wrong, too. Module == Class is probably the biggest mistake we could make, which is why I bite someone's head off every time they suggest it. :-) For an idea of where I'd like to see OOP used in Drupal, see my Handlers presentation from Szeged, which is a follow-on to this earlier article and this contrib module.
lots of fun
I had an absolutely hilarious time the last night in Szeged. Thanks for the lessons. You are a brilliant dancer! Mind youI had a horrible pop song stuck in my head for the next three days- and a funny cramp in my leg. But that was excellent fun.
I look forward to seeing you at another Drupalcon :) Maybe you can do an evening BOF on swing dancing?
I'd need to learn it first
Seriously, I don't actually know how to dance; I just pretend really really well. That night was a blast, though, even with the wacky musical selection.
If you come to the next DrupalCon, save me a dance at whatever nightclub we end up at this time. Let's hope it has more room to move than the one in Szeged. ;-)