I went to today's Seattle Lunch 2.0 at Whitepages.com. Great food spread, +1 to Whitepages. There were at least 200 people there. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch moderated a panel of Urbanspoon, Jott, and WhitePages founders & VPE's, who talked about their companies' iPhone applications. I may have accidentally snubbed John Cook. I didn't recognize him. But then again, maybe … Continue reading Seattle Lunch 2.0
I haven’t accomplished anything in my job yet
I've been at my current job for about 3.5 months. I'm involved in a lot of things, and I think I have a good rep at work. But, I haven't actually shipped anything yet! I can't point to anything visible outside of the company and say, "I did that." I am indeed working on some … Continue reading I haven’t accomplished anything in my job yet
OSCON postscript
Two memorable postscripts to OSCON 2008. I got to Portland's Union Station about 1 1/4 hours before I had to board. Joe said its restaurant was decent, so I opted to allow some time to eat lunch there. But... The restaurant's name is Wilf's Restaurant. Good food, decent prices, nice atmosphere. No complaints. But that … Continue reading OSCON postscript
OSCON, day 3
The day starts off with a Windows blue screen of death on the system that drives the main hall's projection screens. Hmm. But, relax, it was just a visual prop for the first keynote address. Yay! I have to take a taxi to the train station. Radio Cab advertises reservations over the web. But their … Continue reading OSCON, day 3
OSCON, day 2
The first keynote started with an REM music video. Bang!, wake up! The Open Invention Network — great concept. Then, a "historian" talk, which I found self-indulgent, but which had a hilarious comment stream in the #oscon channel. It remains to be seen how effective the Open Web Foundation will be — I don't understand how it … Continue reading OSCON, day 2
OSCON, day 1
The keynotes were mostly good. Thinking about cloud computing as a centralization movement that's counter to recent computing trends was thought-provoking. "We should always have full control." Chris Peterson had extremely perceptive observations on trends in security and privacy. The database normalization talk was very good, but I wish it had been a little deeper. … Continue reading OSCON, day 1
OSCON travel, registration
Taking Amtrak to Portland was great! Business Class, at $82 round-trip, was a total win. But the conditions at King Street Station was sub-par. The check-in procedure was silly: I first went to the ticketing kiosks to pick up my ticket, then I went to the other side of the room to check my baggage, and then I … Continue reading OSCON travel, registration
OSCON 2008
I'll be at OSCON Tuesday – Friday of this week. I've reviewed the program and tentatively selected the formal sessions I want to attend. I'm especially looking forward to the talks about PostgreSQL, SCM, and Python. I'm also looking forward to hooking up with Joe, and attending the Django drinkup at Jax Bar.
Buildbot and py.test exit status
Buildbot is a great continuous integration tool, and PyTest, aka py.test, is a great unit testing tool. But there's an impedance mismatch between them. In Buildbot, a ShellCommand is deemed to have failed if it returns a non-zero exit status, and succeeded if it returns a zero exit status. Py.test always returns a zero status. I … Continue reading Buildbot and py.test exit status
Ghostly Apple logo on my MacBook Pro screen
I've noticed something about my MacBook that's mildly cool. When I put it to sleep, the LCD screen appears to be completely off when viewed in a normally-lit room. But if I turn out the lights, I can see a faint, ghostly Apple logo displayed in the middle of the screen. It's fuzzy, has a … Continue reading Ghostly Apple logo on my MacBook Pro screen
Seek Nuance 