P-meter, day 8

BARcamp, juggling and Java

It's been two busy weeks, but I'm finally organizing my notes from BARcamp Chicago.

I met Erik Costlow because he saw me juggling and, after we did a couple of partner juggling tricks (he's much better than I am), we got to talking and discovered that we were both alumni of Gamma Phi Circus.

Erik recommended several Eclipse plug-ins that sound pretty good:

Project	URL(s)
Format On Save	autoupdate
Groovy IDE	autoupdate
Spring IDE	autoupdate
Subclipse 1.2.x (Eclipse 3.2+)	autoupdate
Eclipse WTP (the eclipse plugin manager will resolve your dependencies)	???
Ivy - Java dependency manager - resolved the jars in your project through ibiblio	info
Eclipse IvyDE	autoupdate
JodaTime jars	info

Erik also recommends the Java Posse podcast and the Crypto-Gram Security Podcast.

OpenMoko

I almost hate to point this out to people because it looks like a great product with a shoddy website, but I really like the looks of OpenMoko.

Perhaps the site is just getting hammered because of the OpenMoko's mentions on Boing Boing and on Slashdot.

P-meter vs. errands

The errands are winning.

P-meter slips!

Time is gaining ground on my reading.

P-meter, day 4

10 pages ahead of schedule. Wooo!

P-meter, day 3

Happy 4^th of July, all. Spent the day doing household things and advancing the P-meter.



Only 62 pages behind schedule.

P-meter, day 2

I've decided to reread the first six Harry Potter books before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out on July 21st.

Charting my progress:



I've got a lot of reading to do.

The Flight of Daedelus and Icarus

I've been wondering for years about the huge mural above the outside doors of 120 N. LaSalle Street in Chicago. I see it every time I pay a dog- or car-related fee across the street at the City and County Building, as I did today.

I'm not the only one to wonder about this mural, which is planted in a business- and government-heavy part of Chicago and is obviously a reference to the Icarus myth. (Think: imprisonment, freedom, invention, joy, danger, loss and hubris.) Some ideas that I Googled up:

• "Maybe it's a metaphor for a high-risk loan?" (Artamnesia)
• "[A]n illustration of a tale about greed in Chicago's corporate epicenter" (Joanne Hinkel)

That was my first guess about its meaning, too: the perils of business (or government or architecture or something) run amok.

But -- one long line and a lot of Treo-based browsing later -- I now think that the mural's message is a little less obvious and more personal.

Read the following passage from Bulfinch's The Age of Fable and you'll see what I mean. As you read it, keep in mind a few things about the mural's creator, Roger Brown. He'd come from a very conservative religious family in Alabama and had become a significant Chicago artist. He was a well-respected member of Chicago's gay community. He'd installed the mural in 1991, a few years after he discovered that he had AIDS and about six years before that disease killed him.

"Daedalus built the labrynth for King Minos, but afterwards lost the favour of the king, and was shut up in a tower. He contrived to make his escape from his prison, but could not leave the island by sea, as the king kept strict watch on all the vessels, and permitted none to sail without being carefully searched. “Minos may control the land and sea,” said Daedalus, “but not the regions of the air. I will try that way.” So he set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son Icarus. He wrought feathers together, beginning with the smallest and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. Icarus, the boy, stood and looked on, sometimes running to gather up the feathers which the wind had blown away, and then handling the wax and working it over with his fingers, by his play impeding his father in his labours. When at last the work was done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed upward, and hung suspended, poising himself on the beaten air. He next equipped his son in the same manner and taught him how to fly, as a bird tempts her young ones from the lofty nest into the air. When all was prepared for flight he said, “Icarus, my son, I charge you to keep at a moderate height, for if you fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too high the heat will melt them. Keep near me and you will be safe.” While he gave him these instructions and fitted the wings to his shoulders, the face of the father was wet with tears, and his hands trembled. He kissed the boy, not knowing that it was for the last time. Then rising on his wings, he flew off, encouraging him to follow, and looked back from his own flight to see how his son managed his wings. As they flew the ploughman stopped his work to gaze, and the shepherd leaned on his staff and watched them, astonished at the sight, and thinking they were gods who could thus cleave the air.

They passed Samos and Delos on the left and Lebynthos on the right, when the boy, exulting in his career, began to leave the guidance of his companion and soar upward as if to reach heaven. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together, and they came off. He fluttered with his arms, but no feathers remained to hold the air. While his mouth uttered cries to his father it was submerged in the blue waters of the sea which thenceforth was called by his name. His father cried, “Icarus, Icarus, where are you?” At last he saw the feathers floating on the water, and bitterly lamenting his own arts, he buried the body and called the land Icaria in memory of his child. Daedalus arrived safe in Sicily, where he built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering to the god."

The mural's full title is Arts and Sciences of the Ancient World: the Flight of Daedalus and Icarus.

Trash bag accident after BARcamp Chicago 2007

My fellow BARcamp Chicago organizers decide the best way to get the trash bags down six flights of stairs is with a ropeline.

Welcome, friends around the world

I know where you are.

BARcamp Chicago this weekend

I'm one of the organizers for...

What? BARcamp Chicago
Web? http://barcampchicago.com
When? 12:00 noon Saturday June 23 - 20:00 (8:00pm) Sunday June 24
Where? 1464 N Milwaukee, Chicago (Wicker Park) (http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=WherePage)
Who? You and an expected 200 others (http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=AttendeeList)
Why? http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=WhyPage

Amongst our topics are such elements as:

• Advanced Photography On Linux
• Mass Customization: The Next Revolution in Software is Hardware (Ziad Hussain)
• Old Technology: Not a formal talk, but a discussion of all things Low Tech, from steam engines to dripping water clocks. I just want to see how many other people are fascinated by this. Look for the guy with the Ballista. (TimSaylor)
• Kirix: Strata Code Sprint -- building dynamic web mash-ups with RSS and a data browser (Aaron Williams)
• Cleversafe, Inc.: Global Data Dispersal (John Quigley)
• Chicago Linux: Brewing Beer at Home (Tristan Sloughter)
• Chicago Lisp: Anatomy of Lisp (John Quigley)
• Developing cross-platform applications using wxWidgets (Dave Williams)
• Ruby on rails deep dive (ActiveRecord internals) (Mike Mangino)
• Rich applications with Groovy and Swing (James Williams)
• A.I.: Learning coding libraries through operator learning and representation. Practical methods of extending complex systems (FRDCSA).
• Getting started in bug work in F/OSS software projects. (Freddy Martinez)
• Mobile Web 2.0 ideas and brainstorming session
• Mobile Web 2.0 MobHackaThon (go live by the end of the day)
• Entrepreneur's Circle Of Progress - what are you getting done?
• Web App Security analytics for session management - Jason Rexilius
• Foresight Linux, don't you want your desktop to be cool and intro to Conary packaging Ken VanDine
• Domainer's Swap Meet. Buy/sell/trade with other domainers. One man's trash is another man's $100/day AdSense play. Michael Carruth
• Conary packaging and a demo of a MythTV Appliance Ken VanDine
• Chicago Gnome User Group Meeting
• Jason Jacobsohn - Discussion of Business Resources for Entrepreneurs: Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, 12A Investment Fund, and The Big Idea Forum
• Humanized - Tales from developing Enso
• Gizmometer: Keeping Tabs On Your System When You've Got Other Things To Do (Conrad Albrecht Buehler)

And that's just the planned stuff. Lots of unplanned stuff is also planned.

Banjo!

Life is good because I got a banjo for my birthday.



Lessons to follow. Then? Fame and glory!

Hitting the canvas

I ran across the <canvas> tag today (while reading about iPhone's lack of support for 3^rd party apps).

Basically, <canvas> allows you to do 2D drawing inside a browser. It's supported by Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Here's what Mozilla Development Center says about <canvas>:

<canvas> is a new HTML element which can be used to draw graphics using scripting (usually JavaScript). It can for instance be used to draw graphs, make photo compositions or do simple (and not so simple) animations.

<canvas> was first introduced by Apple for the Mac OS X Dashboard and later implemented in Safari. Gecko-based applications support this new element starting with Gecko 1.8 (i.e. Firefox 1.5 and later). Opera 9 supports <canvas> as well.

The <canvas> element is part of the WhatWG Web applications 1.0 specification also known as HTML 5.

Some <canvas> links:

• Google has created ExplorerCanvas, a script tag that allows <canvas> to work in Internet Explorer.
• Google wasn't the first.
• Benjamin Joffe has a demo of <canvas> called "Canvascape", also available in texture.
• Canvas tutorial
• Drawing Graphics with Canvas
• Wikipedia entry "Canvas (HTML element)"

BARcamp Chicago - Mark your calendar

BARcamp Chicago is the local 32-hour-long BarCamp that will be held from noon on Saturday June 23^rd through 8pm on Sunday June 24^th in Wicker Park.

Obligatory definition from BarCamp.org:

A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. The name BarCamp was inspired as a complement to FooCamp.

Two videos capture the essence of BarCamp. Take a look at video summaries from BarCamp SF, What is a BarCamp and BarCamp Austin.

I'll be there, along with some other AgileTek folks. You should be there, too.

Virtual machine performance checklist

When my life slows down a little and I get back to my Subversion-on-a-virtual-machine stuff I'm going to want to remember this link:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VMPerformanceChecklistBeforeYouComplainThatYourVirtualMachineIsSlow.aspx

The article has some very good advice. And its URL is a good (though rather long) example of a meaningful URL

(Thanks, Andrew, for the link.)

Surfing with J.R.

Check out the Speed Demon Photography contest at Cre:source (via Chaos Digest). To the left is a bursting water balloon. To the right is a racing dog that you've just got to zoom in on.

"Security Now!" is one of my must-listen podcasts. Their latest series on authentication (#90: "Multifactor Authentication", #94: "The Fourth Factor" and #95: "OpenID") is especially good. I listen to the weekly episodes in the car, but if you like text better you can read the transcripts at http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm. The show is one of several TWiT shows produced by Leo Laporte for his TWiT.tv network. I like "Security Now!" so much that I figured I'd love Leo's other shows, but after a few weeks of listening I've found "Windows Weekly" to be too slow-moving for my tastes. Perhaps I should try "net@nite" or "FLOSS Weekly".

I followed a 43Folders link and I think I've found a new favorite blog: Marc Andreessen's blog.pmarca.com. (Yes, that Marc Andreessen.) Some of the posts that won me over:

• Why there's no such thing as Web 2.0
• The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity
• The truth about venture capitalists, Part 1
• The truth about venture capitalists, Part 2
• The truth about venture capitalists, Part 3
• How to hire the best people you've ever worked with

Of course, Marc's blog is only eight days old so it (and my opinion) may change. But right now, I'm lovin' it.

Good to know I'm not the only person who perennially suffers from Windows rot. I'm a little disappointed to find that I'm not the first person to use the term, though.

Bluegrass screen of death

I was just listening to Sirius bluegrass and I caught Tim O'Brien's Runnin' Out Of Memory. It's a great mixup of Windows, bluegrass and love. Some of the lyrics:

I opened up my PC casing
I thought I knew just what I'd do
But it was all for naught
There were no expansion slots
And I'm a runnin out of memory for you

My color screen won't even function
It's one big solid field of blue
My hard drive it went soft
My application coughed
And I'm a runnin out of memory for you

You can hear a sample at Amazon; track 8 of the Cornbread Nation album.

On a related note: The Top 10 Reasons Why Tim O'Brien Hasn't Won a Grammy Until Now (from 2006).

Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer!

Ever had one of those days where Speed Racer follows you everywhere?

First I learn, via Boing Boing, that Andy and Larry Wachowski (yes, the The Matrix guys) will be directing a live-action Speed Racer film. USA Today has an article with a pic of the movie's Mach-5 in all its awesomeness.

Second, I was driving past a currency exchange and I saw a woman dressed as the Mach-5.



I stopped to ask her about the costume. She'd gotten it from the main office as part of their promote for renewing Chicago city stickers. So I spoke with people until someone tracked down the box that the costume came in. (Obsess much, J.R.?) It's part of costume #4100 by Rasta Imposta. #4104 is Racer X and #4106 is Trixey. Not sure what the missing numbers in the sequence are. Discontinued Spritle, maybe?

Third, I've been sorting through DVDs and I found the Speed Racer volume 2 - Episodes 12-23 (1967) DVD that my brother's family gave me for Christmas. (Hint to family: I still need volumes 1, 3, 4 and 5.) The box makes noise! Listen:



I'm really looking forward to the Speed Racer film. The acting line-up, so far:

1960s Original	2008 Film
Trixie	Christina Ricci
Racer X	Matthew Fox
Speed Racer	Emile Hirsch
Mom Racer	Susan Sarandon
Pops Racer	John Goodman
Sparkie	Kick Gurry
Spritle and Chim Chim	?
Mach-5	Mach-5

Linus hates all SCM except Git

Linus Torvald's recent comments on SCM (Source Control Management) kicked off an interesting discussion at Slashdot comparing different SCM packages. Linus trashes every SCM tool I've ever used (CVS, Subversion [SVN], ClearCase, Perforce and Visual Source Safe [VSS]) and presents Git as the be-all and end-all of SCM software.

Some points (and some of my own comments) from the ensuing Slashdot discussion:

• Internally, Microsoft has used Source Depot, their own specially-modified version of Perforce. (I understand that Microsoft is now pushing its internal developers to eat their own dog food and use Hatteras, which is the SCM portion of Team Foundation Server. AgileTek is about to kick off a project that uses Hatteras and I'm eager to see how well it works.)
• General agreement that CVS sux. (I use it heavily and can heartily agree. We've in the process of moving from CVS to Subversion. I've personally been using Subversion for some time and I really like it.)
• Mixed agreement on whether Subversion sux. (Heh.)
• Total agreement that Visual SourceSafe sux. (In other news: water is wet.)

As I was searching for more information on the above issues I ran across a 2005 controversy surrounding Microsoft's implementation of test-driven development in their tools. Curious? Several relevant links have been lost to time, but you can find the story here, thanks to the Internet Archive WayBackMachine.