Christmas is nearly upon us. For me it feels like it's pretty much here, for several reasons:

• With levels of forward planning hirtherto unseen in my approach to Christmas shopping... I'm pretty much done! I've been forced to buy all the pressies for my family in advance and have them taken up to Yorkshire, because I'm heading away to Brazil tomorrow for Christmas in Sao Paulo with the girlfriend. This includes the super-exciting OpenStreetMap jigsaw. Check it out!
• I've already "opened" my first Christmas present. I have been given the gift of flickr. Thanks Sarah! Now I am a pro, and you know what this means.... Millions of photos of the insides of pubs can now be published in all their high-res tagged-up glory. Not to mention all the other crap I like to take pictures of. I shall have to spend a few hours on the uploadr and organisr some time soon, and bombard flickr with my collection. I hope the internet is ready for it.
• And lastly, it's clearly Christmas now because we've had our...

OpenStreetMap Christmas Party

The plan was to drink and be merry all around the world, but especially in London. So that's what we did, starting with a just a few punctual people, and swelling in numbers until my booking of a table for ten turned into a dramatic underestimate.

Good to meet Ed Avis, a familiar name in the community. Also great to have along John McKerrell, who travelled all the way from Liverpool with his wife, just to be there last night. (not really. It was an important party, but not that important)

Fellow ex-CloudMade-team-mates were all there, as was Cragg, who was saying the London office is a bit lonely now. Matt and Emma discussed a plan to re-enact the lunchtime team trip to the burrito shop next week, just to cheer him up. Shaun was celebrating his first week at his new job. Congratulations to him on that! Andy's been taking advantage of the jobless situation do some long-awaited fun things on opencyclemap.org (e.g. adding search) and work with aerial imagery.

So lots of talk of hunting for jobs/work (Dan Karran is also looking). We joked that maybe Jon Burgess, Tom Hughes and Grant Slater shouldn't be allowed to gather like this. We should keep them at least a mile apart at all times, so that OpenStreetMap can withstand a nuclear attack. We talked about lots of other stuff too, but it's all a bit of a haze now. Judging by my headache, I think I know why.

The next pub meet-up is Tue 22nd Dec, just before Christmas. I think Matt was volunteering himself to organise this one. I will be away sunning myself in São Paulo (or maybe out mapping with Claudomiro)