Cafe Bucky

Whatcha readin? Whatcha listen’n to? You see that!?

There’s a lot more than just tech stuff in my day. I haven’t really
mentioned much about books, films, and music, have I?
Until I work in some sidebar here with little nods to media (readin’,
hearin’, watchin’) here be a roundup. It’s a mini-trilogy, one
part per day. Warning: Spoilers.

I just saw a censored (TV) version of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which
reminded me of how great a film it is. Guess who makes her first
appearance in this one? None other than a sassy head-shakin’
Brooklynite Rosie Perez, showing lots of Attitude in her first role.
I want the DVD, just to get the full-on, over-the-top dialog. It’s Hot!
And that’s the truth, Ruth.

L’Auberge Espagnole was
a lot of fun, being a look at 20-something students from all over
Europe, sharing a large apartment in Barcelona. Maybe the plot is idealized:
living with a bunch of people from different European countries, cramming all
of your food into the refrigerator shelf with your name tag, but it’s
an enjoyable popcorn travelogue. No explosions or superheros, just
real, and very funny. Clever editing too. Go to Europe for a couple of hours.

Speaking of editing; if you want to see a technically interesting 90
minute show (yeah, one take, one continuous shot!), and if you like
Russian history, go see Russian Ark. Not for
everyone.

For the next week, before heading off to Portland OR, the low priority thread in my mind will be working on some sort of wordplay on “open”, “portland”, “source”, and “convention”. Another one is “packing list”.

I’m really looking forward to the OSCON. It’s going to be a week of drinking from a firehose of topics! (speaking of drinking, I hear Portland knows a thing or two about BEER. 20 brewpubs!) For me, Etech was a foray into covering an event. This time I’m focusing more on a few themes (one of which is PHP), and am building breaks into my week-long schedule to try to get some writing done while things are fresh.

One task for this “week before”: get my mitts on an iBook or Powerbook! I think that Hydra (Mac OS X collaborative editor) is so important in a conference setting, that I would rather have access to that, than cruise along solo in Windows or Linux. I am surprised that we still don’t have something like Hydra in the Linux neck of the woods.

I’ve never been to Portland for more than 15 minutes, so it’ll be fun to learn about the city. It looks like a beautiful place! I’m beginning to wonder if I should delay coming back by a day or so, and I’m not even there yet…

Equipment: For the conference, and for the joy of city photography, I’m lugging along a few cameras… I just got a Holga, and will bring a couple of Nikons (a D1, and the more incognito 950). Packing equipment for a trip is always fun: I usually end up with a 40+ pound duffel bag of computer peripherals, cameras and 3-5 lenses, and all manner of cables. I always seem to use a dozen Zip-Loc bags to keep the cables, power adapters, CF cards, etc. from getting into a massive Scrum, and I always bring a power strip. I simply deal with the weight in the airports, and enjoy having access to various doodads on the trip.

btw, If you are going to OSCON, you may want to visit the Wiki.

Well well well, my first quarter.

This blog is 3 months old. In that time, I think I’ve started to get into a groove. I’m a bit curious as to what I could do better…

I will say this: I look at other blogs and observe what seems to work, and what’s a turnoff. I’ve (mostly) stayed away from the at-times-tempting Rant, I don’t get too personal, and I’m always aware that a blog is Permanent, no matter what I personally do to my server. Something that I am aware of is that a blog is quite different from a newsgroup - in a newsgroup, you know you have a focused readership. In a blog, I could be getting hits from Aunt Bessie in Boring, Nebraska, Ultra Hipster in the East Village, or Raging Punk Anarchist in a Squat, somewhere in Berlin. I just don’t know.

There are some obvious ways I could get readers. One way is to start trading links with a bunch of people that I don’t really read, but who are into the “popularity contest” aspect of blogdom. That’s just not my style. I think I’d rather continue to improve my writing, and figure out what works best. I do post comments on other people’s sites here and there, where it’s relevant, and have a hope that they will meander over to mine. If they don’t, fine.

Yep, the site design needs an overhaul. I may drop back to an MT default template, and tweak from there, as opposed to backing my current set of templates out of a CSS cul-de-sac. I do have a list of links I want to put on the site, but I think I’ll do it on a separate page - I just don’t believe in the “50 names running down the side” idea. Some links need more context than that.

So it’s my 1st quarter quiz …

Any favorite post? (or one that was galling?)

Want more of a certain subject?

Get more racy, more controversial, and assure myself that I’ll never be able to get a job anywhere? (or become excessively corporate, so that every entry reads like a financial report, press release, or, horror of horrors, a Mission Statement?)

Want to IM me? SonomaDaniel

If you read JavaJoint, thanks. If you’d like me to drop by your site, tell me.

To another Three Months! Cheers!

I thought of the 1960s today.

For lunch, my daughter and I plodded in the hot sun down to Quinley’s, a walk-up burger joint from 1946. Quinley’s takes you back. Stainless steel counters. Red spinning stools. Pull-up straw dispensers. Best milkshakes in town. Onion Rings done right (for that occasional craving, or is it “nostalgia food”?)

Of course, they add to the ambience with an oldies station blaring over the PA. “Leader Of The Pack”. Various Beach Boys, Beatles, and some groovy tunes from the 70s…

Across the street, a fireworks stand awaits its colorful inventory. They haven’t changed the design of fireworks stands as long as I can remember. They looked the exact same in the 60’s. It was my boyhood ambition that someday, somehow, I would get my hands on the “Block Party” package! Safe and Sane.

I could close my eyes for a moment, and be back in that time. Transistor radios had one speaker, and ran off of a 9 volt battery (careful how you change ‘em). Jacked up cars. Being a wet kid at the beach on a scorching day, sand climbing my legs, ordering a burger from a place just like Quinley’s. Salt air and Suntan Oil. All of the Mom & Pop places started right after WWII still in full swing…

It was like an echo from the past. Momentary. Faded too quickly.

Spotted on an O’Grady’s PowerPage story, a new service from the fine Wall Street Journal folks …

Got AOL Instant Messenger? If so, send WSJOnline a message. You can get news and stock quotes within AIM. It looks to still be in beta (I don’t know, I haven’t been a WSJ website subscriber for a while). Nonetheless, it is cool to be able to do this via instant messaging, and you can see where this is going.

Another AIM-bot (this one Jabber-based) is detailed at MudLondon, which is up sporadically. That one allows you navigate The Capital by Tube. Real World URLs (shops, pubs, etc.) crop up by proximity. MudLondon is done by jo walsh (jo doesn’t do Capitalization :-)

Since AIM is so prevalent [1], I expect that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of AIMlets are going to start cropping up. It’s not a stretch at all for me to put it into FlexiPhoto (give a keyword, I will kick back a thumbnail you can click on for a larger version in a browser). I love the idea of instant messaging taking off in new directions (such as iChat AV, and these new services).

[1] did you know you can just run a Java version, which doesn’t require an explicit download and installation?

Yeehah! I am stoked to see Apple make a couple of key big steps: Panther and G5. No more Motorola incompetence! (MOT: we’ll get around to bumping up the speed, uh, eventually)

(more…)

I have started reading William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition”, and have been transported back to London, to Portobello Road. It is a twin joy to be given a
new Gibson (I’ve read all of them), and to be reminded of some favorite parts of London, the focus of the first chapter. I found myself wondering if Cayce was going to breeze through Harrods, which is
a sure-fire way to achieve brand-name sensory overload.

We have some silverware and Irish linens from PR. Great deal. High Thread Count.
If you go to London, get your derriere out of bed very early Saturday morning, get to the Tube, and emerge at Knotting Hill Gate. Find some decent coffee,
and start your stroll. Hint: always leave space in your suitcase at the beginning of your trip!

Like his other books, this one is dense with references, which for me is
part of the fun. Consistent Gibsonian fetishes from one book to the
next: clothes and watches. Oh, and we mustn’t forget coffee! A reference to
Victorian medical instruments on Portobello Road brought back the
whole feel of that place (antiques, surprises, commerce)

Choppy, this. Time for my brewed elixer.

It feels great to be programming again!

As I had mentioned here and there, I managed to go on a bit of detour lately with some projects that took me away from programming. I wrote an article for ONLamp.com, started the ThereThen website, went to the week-long Etech conference, and reviewed an XML book for Addison-Wesley.

All of which were great fun to do, and it’s nice to get paid to write, or to read and comment …

When I got back to my FlexiPhoto code (Apache/MySQL/PHP, with a Perl install script), it was like seeing an old familiar friend, but there was some catching up to do.

If you’re not a programmer, perhaps a writing analogy will do. Let’s say you’re in the middle of writing a book, and then you stop for a month or two. Can you just pick up where you left off? Nope! You pretty much need to look back, review, and answer the “now where was I?” question. Takes a little bit to get back in the flow. Same with programming something non-trivial. There’s still that “front and center in the mind, all details are fresh” aspect.

I’d be curious to hear from others: what is the longest amount of time you have spent away from a project, where you came back to it and were able to really get into it again? How long did it take? Did you have the urge to change things, because you were coming at it fresh (and did you fight that urge, in the interest of getting to a certain plateau first?)

I’ve got a project to get back to!