Blackwell's Bookshop at Mappin Street
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April turned out to be the meeting of the year. About
thirty or forty people turned up for what promised to be something really
incredible and it was. We saw WYlugers and ManLUG folk around us
and even Baz Bremner came here from Wiltshire. Other people came
in from all over the country.
Turned out on the day that Rusty was stuck up the motorway somewhere when Gareth Bowker's car did the all so predictable engine overheat that always happens when a large crowd is waiting around for a public lecture. Fortunately they had a mobile phone and they called us at Blackwell's so that we knew what was going on. Almost an hour and a half after the official start time Gareth and Rusty arrived to the sound of applause from the waiting crowd. While we waited we handed around a box of goodies that included CDs, t-shirts bumper stickers and mugs. Along with these we also handed out the latest Ximian CDs. Time spent in idle chat over Linux and BSD is usually the most productive thing that Linux users can be involved in. When he did get started it was everything we had hoped it would be. He gave us chapter and verse on the 2.4 kernel, netfilter and all else. One of the most brilliant explanations of the subject that most of us have seen. The crowd gave a warm and friendly round of applause to thank him for his efforts. At the end of the talk we held a draw for some books that Wrox Press had sent to us. Titles like Professional Perl Programming and Beginning Perl went down well with the assembled crowd. Also Professional Linux Programming. At the end of a great lecture by someone who really knows his stuff we jumped into taxis and went over to the Hillsborough Hotel which opened just for us. Rusty was surrounded by people who wanted to ask lots of questions and he was able to answer them all in the time he had left before he went to Heathrow to catch a plane back to Oz and home. We do hope that he had a good trip in to the office. The final site of him wandering along a Sheffield street to go to work on the tram was quite a thing to see. Looks as though May will be a quiet month. Probably just as well considering the amount of beer that was consumed after the April meeting. This particular author is still holding his head :) If you want to view the announcement for the meeting you can get hold of one by clicking on the link below...... PDF version...............................................
DOWNLOAD
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Rusty
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