Palfrey's life

I'm at FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend (as previously mentioned), and it's turning out to be an interesting experience. The "day 0" was people meeting up for a 'little' pre-conference drinkies, which basically means about 100 geeks taking over the top half of a large bar. I didn't know anyone in there to start with, but that rapidly changed. Talking to various others - an Australian who's living in Den Haag, various clusters of germans, more random PhD students than I care to count, including a bunch of fairly excitable Cambridge people. One of which now seems to want me to do a talk on my work to their group at some point. I thought I'd have to become a Professor at least before a woman got as interested (as in bouncing, "oh my god! that's so cool" repeated multiply, etc) in my work, but hey I ain't complaining. There's a certain amount of irony in this, because Cambridge wouldn't have looked at me twice 5 years ago, and now I'm being invited to tell them things. A bunch of us eventually ended up in this weird arty bar with a bunch of people musically collaborating (random instruments being produced and played, various singers, etc) in the front of it. This appeared to be just a random group of people who felt like doing something fun. That was day 0.