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Seth-Tech
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Last Call
They just issued the Last Call for the Wi-Fi network here at Gnomedex, so I'll be signing off now. I've had a good time, and if you were wondering whether or not you'd enjoy it, I can say without a doubt that you would have. I'm not one of the LockerGnome fanboys, I'd never met anyone here before, though I'd chatted with Gretchen some, and Howard and I have e-mailed each other before. I still had a good time, and I'm surely going to come back next year. At $99, it's a bargain in terms of the quality of speakers we got to hear, all of which were gracious to anyone who wanted to chat them up elsewhere. I never saw any of them trying to get away from a fellow geek wanting to talk tech with them.
If you live in Iowa, and are a tech person, it's a no brainer, you should come to this conference. If you're farther away, pay a visit to our fair state, things are pretty cheap here, and you can have a great time here at Gnomedex on a very limited budget. Everyone has been friendly, and the LockerGnome people have worked their ass off to pull this whole thing together. Kudos for them on pulling it off with nary a hitch, (other than the rogue wi-fi networks that caused havoc the first day).
So, when can I register for next year?!?!?!
O'Reilly PowerPoint
Ray has Tim O'Reilly's PowerPoint presentation from today. Not sure how it'll seem without him to accompany it, but it's there if you'd like it.
Dvorak Quotes
Jason managed to jot down some of Dvorak's better quotes in a couple of entries. I think some people were pissed at him for such a non-serious and somewhat inflammatory speech towards Mac users, Cat Lovers, and Bloggers, but he was still sort of funny, though not really insightful or informative.
Tom Bridge
Tom Bridge has more coverage of Gnomedex speakers, and since he believes in capitalization, it's a little easier to read than Beth's stuff. :)
Google Party
I'm at the Google Party, wrapping up Gnomedex. A band called Soul Mind is playing, Google is providing good food, beer, and free hats! I grabbed an extra one for my dad, he likes hats.
Just because you're among fellow geeks doesn't mean you should let your hair down TOO far, earlier I saw an older geek in the 45-55 age range looking at porn on his laptop, and while he was nearly in the corner table, it was pretty obvious to anyone within 35 feet what he was looking at. Ick.
I had a good conversation out in the hallway with Rob Malda of Slashdot earlier, I mentioned the RSS block to him, and he said they'd already caught it and added the IP to their list of firewalls, so that the RSS ban wouldn't kick in again. I also talked to him about the time he Slashdotted one of our servers at work. I didn't hold a grudge. :)
We talked for probably 10 minutes or so, he's a smart guy, but talks at an almost manic pace that's even hard for me to keep up with. We talked a bit about weblog software, and other things which I won't mention here. Someone said on their blog that Rob has no filter between his brain and his mouth, talking with him is total stream-of-consciousness, which is fun.
Slashdot
Hmm, I don't see Rob Malda anywhere around, but Slashdot won't let me access the RSS feed, it says I'm abusing the feed by requesting it too often. What's really happening is about 150 people are online from one IP address, using NAT, so it just LOOKS like I'm abusing it.
Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is talking now, he's another smart guy, who really GETS weblogs, after Dvorak made it painfully obvious that he did not. They're not all about people's cats. I don't even own a cat.
Gillmor is right about the need to verify things they post, and even has the Kaycee debacle mentioned in his slides.
Better gnomedex coverage
Beth is a blogging machine, I can see her about 8 feet from me, typing quickly on her tablet PC. She's got some great live coverage of Gnomedex, so if you're wondering what's going on here, check out her site.
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly is speaking now, too bad I didn't win a free O'Reilly book earlier, I love their stuff. I can't wait to see the new TiVo Hacks book that they're coming out with.
Tim: "How many of you here use Google? You're all Linux users!!!"
RSS fixed
Unbeknownst to me, my RSS feed hasn't been working for like a month! For some reason, when this blog was upgraded to the newer version of Blogger, the RSS publisching option was disabled! My apologies to anyone who wanted to use RSS, I didn't realize it was broken!
Louderback
Jim Louderback from ExtremeTech.com is presenting now, showing us how to build Home Theater PCs. They're nice boxes, and I'm happy to learn that SnapStream can change the channel on Satellite and Digital cable boxes. I'd always figured that wouldn't work, so I've never tried their stuff. Time to give it a look now!
ZoneLabs
Corey Bridges: "The source code for Windows is out there [on the internet]. If you want it, you can get it."
Even more Gnomedex
I'm in the ZoneLabs breakout session now, with Corey Bridges. I caught the tail end of Chris Pirillo's demo of RSS, enough to say that he drank the Kool-Aid on RSS. I think RSS is great, I use it every day, but I don't think it's going to change the world, just because I don't know any Users who have really adopted it yet. Geeks get it, but I don't think my mom does.
Just to show you how strange downtown Des Moines is, I attempted to return to Burger King again today for breakfast, and found it CLOSED! What Burger King isn't open on the weekends?!?! I got milk and donuts from a Pakistani guy who runs a bizarre little convenience store on the Skywalk. His store even sells beer, which is weird. Though there was a customer walking out with a 40 of Bud Light as I walked in...
Gnomedex: Day 2
I'm well rested, and ready for another day at Gnomedex. I'd blog more, if the wi-fi would cooperate, it's still flaky.
Yesterday, Howard Butler spotted me wandering around looking for a place to eat lunch, so I wound up sitting with him, and some geeks from Minnesota. We swapped information about the various campus environments we work in, while eating tasty cake. After lunch, Rob Malda from Slashdot gave an interesting, if somewhat rambling, talk. I asked him who he saw as Slashdot's biggest competitor. He said he didn't think they had any competitors. I couldn't think of one either, which is why I asked the question. :)
Malda also said, when asked about Linux on the desktop, that he's doesn't think it's going to materialize anytime soon, and that Apple beat Linux to it with Mac OS X.
Kevin Ugangst from Microsoft's Media division gave an interesting speech, and showed off Halo, which is coming out soon for the PC and Macintosh. I already have Halo for my Xbox, but damn it looks great on the PC, with more weapons, vehicles, etc. thrown in. I hope it doesn't come out for a while though, as I have plenty of games to play right now.
I skipped out on the movie night to go eat at Spaghettiworks (thanks to alert reader Emily McMahon) with my wife, then we drove over to Clive to visit with some friends and see their new baby. According to Mike, I missed out on free beer, but I can handle that, as long as they didn't call my name for any prizes that I wasn't there to win, such as the Windows Media PC. I'll freely admit now that I'm picky about these sorts of things, but I really didn't want to watch movies projected onto a screen with a projector that wasn't quite bright enough, with mono sound. No thanks, I've got a 53" widescreen HDTV at home with 5.1 surround sound, and my living room isn't filled with fellow geeks tapping away at their keyboards. :)
