Day trip. Six buses full of Debian developers, maintainers, and supporters toured the area around Oaxtepec today. We clambered over several Mexican pyramids and a ruined mountain-top city. Walking in the main entrance I immediately felt that it was very familiar. I identified the pool where they purified themselves before entering the complex, and several altars. Some of the things the archaelogists called "altars" looked more like bed platforms. I told the guide maybe they were both; ancient religions were known for their homosexual sex rites. Then we saw the palace of Cortes in the city of Cuernavaca. It is a very swank city, fun to walk around and shop. We got back at 10pm, tired but satisfied. Bought a t-shirt that says "100% GUAPO". The Hispanic contingent at Debconf went wild. They may give me some photos to post soon.
Lisp redux. Kevin Mark read my summary of Peter van Eyndes presentation yesterday, and sent in this email:
Hi Ted,
you seem to be having fun at Debconf! Saw your post about a book by Peter Seibel. Strangely enough I attended a meeting at lispnyc with him this week. They shot video which hopefully you can see. Checkout http://www.lispnyc.org/home.clp
cheers,
Kev
Well, thanks Kev! At lunch yesterday, a fellow developer, whose name I forget, told me that OCAML is far superior to Haskell in terms of performance because it is "statically typed at compile time" or something. I thought that was a characteristic of Haskell as well. I mentioned the benchmarks that Haskell is currently winning, and he brushed this aside. Which may be appropriate; optimizing for benchmarks isn't the same as optimizing for the general case.
Food. We had lunch yesterday at a restaurant. I hate zucchini, but their zuchini stuffed with quesa (cheese) was delicious. I haven't found birria (shredded goat meat) in the market here yet, but the restaurant had some. At the end of the meal a vendor came into the restaurant with some crisp, deep fried confection called "churros", coiled like a big hose. Its cross section looks like a five point star. For P10 the vendor broke off four pieces, 5 inches long. Knut shared his with me; it was like a donut, only crunchy.
John Sokol. John Sokol, part of the original 386BSD team, arrived late Tuesday night. Carrying 80 pounds of luggage, he not only took the Metro, but he walked up the mile long hill from the resort entrance to the conference. The Metro is nice, but it has a lot of stairs. I was tired after traversing it; I could not have walked up the hill if I tried afterward. He brought a VOIP phone with him, but it gives an error saying his account has been compromised. It is probably looking at his Mexican IP address and blocking it. So John and I have no way of phoning the outside world.