packing and other prep work

i usually pack my bag the day i leave for akademy. this time, however, i'm packing the day before. i don't have a particularly good reason for doing so, but there it is: i'm ahead of my usual schedule by a day.

i discovered that, sadly, i'm going to have to bring a larger suitcase than usual with me. usually i have my little guy that fits in the overhead compartments. i can get nearly 10 days of clothes into it, including underwear and socks for each day, with my ninja packing skills. (i am so good at rolling clothes into little cylinders now that i'm thinking of turning out for the canadian olympic clothes rolling team... that is an olympic sport these days, right? the 50 item pack; the overnighter dash; etc..)

but this time i'm bringing some gifts with me (some of which kevin bought while he was here) and a bunch of stuff for the aKademy awards that was kindly donated by Kitware. that and it's forecast to rain for the entire time aKademy is on so i figure bringing a sweater and a jacket might not be the worst of ideas. combined with the fact that 10 days is really at the limit of my trusty companion-on-wheels, i've had to rethink my strategy and have had to bump up to the next biggest size. damn.

i could bring two smaller cases, but that would suck in other ways.

i'm still working on my presentations, though i'm ahead there too as i usually do those on the airplane or even on the ground. i'm really trying to be proactive this time around ;) i'm doing a presentation called "beautiful features" this year where i'll be looking at some techniques to make applications look decent and try and set some goals for what our kde4 application should strive for. some of the stuff will focus on fairly traditional interface elements like toolbars but there will also be discussion of the use of animations and some cute painting techniques. don't expect zack level kung-fu moves for the latter; for that you'll want to go to his talk on graphics =)

looking at my aKademy schedule it's already fairly daunting. between the stuff i want to hack on (all plasma related; i'm going to ignore my other hacking interests as much as possible this week) and the various BoFs and meetings .. i'm already feeling tired ;)

i have a bit of an e.V. board get together on the friday; then the dev conf; then the agm happens; there are GetHotNewStuff, application add-on data packaging (and sharing) and plasma BoFs all on wednesday. and i've got meetings planned with a handful of people already about various development issues.

i don't forsee much sleep over the next week. and then there's lug radio right after that. zoinks.

to preserve myself i've basically decided to limit my drinking and night adventures pretty radically this year. we'll see how well i do with that.

i'm meeting up with people in the airport on friday at around 17:00 or so at the cafe nero just outside the customs area. you can see it on this map as stall #9. if you arrive around that time, come invade the caffeine hut with us =)