His Noodly Appendage
August 2, 2006 – 5:04 pm
Like shaved Parmesan over a spicy meat sauce, I stay on top of the antics of non-believers at FSM HateMail. And although I am but a midget in the FSM’s grand plans, Pastafarian know that we are all His creatures, and that He touches us with His Noodly Appendage.
And lo, today I saw proof! While reading this entry at FSM HateMail, I discovered a hidden sign in the ranting of that unbeliever. Can you see it? (See screenshot at right.) Or maybe the message is intended only for devotees who use Safari. In any event, a clear sign of His Noodly Appendage at work.
For those needing further explanation of this wondrous sight, perhaps it is made clearer in the image below.
Gartner: equal opportunity employer
July 10, 2006 – 1:26 pm
While reading the computer section of today’s Canberra Times (10 July 2006, page 14), I spotted this little gem. The talent pool in Canberra must be drying up and we are now importing aliens. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Hopefully they will turn up the the next CJUG meeting. Lets all welcome @^qebdafkb G^hqj ^k and MefiifmMfmbo
Cafe web-two-oh/lame nerds/I’m blogging this
May 20, 2006 – 7:58 am
It’s our last day in San Fran, and Terence took us for a nice little tour of the city. If nothing else it was noteworthy because we were finally showed were we could get some good coffee.
We are now sitting in Ritual Coffee Roasters (or “Cafe Web two dot oh” as Terence calls it). Great coffee, lots of couches, and every single punter has a laptop on their knees (about 80% Macs, too).
Spying a soft-bearded man-child on the next table, Brendan and I — sitting 2 feet from each other — had this IM conversation:
bph: note the "Ruby" book stage right. so cool, and yet at the same
time, so lame... if you have to buy a book on the subject...
spud: indeed
spud: just had the same thought
spud: and on a related note, can't belive we are having this converstaion
over IM
spud: and I'm blogging this
bph: and I've got a photo for ya
Yep, something very lame going on somewhere there. And so very web two dot oh.
Update: Photo from Pete’s camera phone (Brendan left his usb cable in his luggage so his snap is stuck in his camera)
JavaOne day 2 and 3: the booth and me
May 19, 2006 – 4:21 pm
The last two days at JavaOne have been hectic.
Tech Sessions
I managed to get to two Technical Sessions this year (up from one last year).
The first was a talk about scaling applications using a shared heap, by Ari Zilka of Terracotta. There were some interesting ideas in there, so afterwards I went to talk to some of the Terracotta engineers at their booth. Wow, they sure have a compelling product. It makes me want to write an app requiring huge scalability just to try it out.
The second talk was Gilad Bracha’s talk on invokedynamic and “hot-swappable” classes (two of the ideas for better supporting dynamic language in Java). It’s clear Gilad is one smart cookie.
Night life
There are plenty of parties (if you can find them) after hours at JavaOne. But after 8 non-stop hours each day standing on your feet at the booth, you don’t last long past midnight.
Last night we took our Guardian Angel out to dinner at Kuletos, a “shi shi” Italian restaurant. Great food, and the conversation was… interesting. We were welcomed by the hostess with “ah, you must be the four loud Australians”, and we didn’t disappoint. The more left unsaid, the better.
Tonight was the “After Dark” event at JavaOne. It was much better than last year, and it was a great idea to do the t-shirt hurling then as opposed to spread-out during the week. The party was much better than last year, and the quality of the beer much much better. The beer-quality must be proportional to the length of the beer-queues.
The Booth (photos)
Staffing the booth is a lot of hard work, but it can be rewarding, and it can also be a little fun. And we certainly aren’t above making our own fun. This PDF is what is on the back of our pamphlet (and also on one of the big banners you can see in the images below).
We gave away some of our SCI t-shirts this year, but they weren’t as popular as last year’s t-shirt. One of the punters we gave a t-shirt to last year returned wearing it this year, which was worth a happy-snap (Conor on left, punter on right):
This is Conor and myself giving our best attempt at snaring unwary nerds (yes, very sad). Its also a good shot of the booth. A lot of money for very little space (we got in trouble for putting the banners outside our allocated “space”, but managed to sweet-talk our way out of trouble).
This is Pete, the smooze master, giving our shpeal to some of the local wildlife. Pete is exuding so much charisma the punters are actually glowing.
The End
After some shopping and sight-seeing tomorrow, we are off home. Phew because this is what it feels like at the end of JavaOne (also as a 2s AVI).
JavaOne day one: spilt beer
May 17, 2006 – 5:44 pm
So considering the last two days, I began today with much trepidation. But luckily the day in the booth went very well (our monitors turned up earlier this morning). Okay, it went well until Pete spilt beer over one of our keyboards; but that was at the end of the day, so I don’t count that as a total disaster.
But after spending all morning setting up the booth and all day in the booth leaves little time for seeing any of the technical sessions. Conor and I are planning to catch one tomorrow.
We managed to crash the Tangosol party tonight, where Brendan took this happy snap of Pete (our html monkey) telling Ed Burns (JSF spec lead) how much the web sucks.
JavaOne day zero: baggage
May 16, 2006 – 11:49 am
48 hours after the last aborted attempt at reaching JavaOne, we are in SF and have our conference passes.
But oh no, it could not be that simple. We get to our hotel by about 4pm, and we need to have the booth ready by 11am tomorrow. And UA lost our fucking Apple Cinema Displays somewhere between LAX and SFO. You have to be fucking kidding me!
But our Guardian Angle saved us, and lent us two monitors. I really don’t know what we would do without her!
With trepedation we await tomorrow: JavaOne Day One.
JavaOne day -1 : Bird Strike
May 14, 2006 – 5:49 pm
The plan was to fly out from Sydney to San Francisco today. The plane was fueled, the travelers boarded. The aircraft taxied out to the runway, takeoff speed was reached, and the front wheel may have even left the tarmac.
Then some bloody bird flew straight into engine two, the pilots hit the breaks, and we came to a halt just before tasting the salty brine in Botany Bay.
Fucking wildlife!
Oh well, we can try again tomorrow.
Heading to JavaOne again
May 10, 2006 – 3:16 pm
I’m off to San Francisco this weekend, we be at JavaOne again this year. Remember to come say “hi”, especially if you want a peek at Crucible.
Unlike last year, we won’t be in the t-shirt hurling competition. Which is a shame considering that the Myth Buster boys will be doing some commentary this year. Last year we managed to bust the myth that LED sensors are a good mix with flash photography.
At least the weather next week in SF is forecast to be warmer than here. The forecast is for about 20 Celsius; with flurries of geeks and extended periods of nerding-it-up.
Another quiet moment of project-size zen.
May 9, 2006 – 10:55 pm
Slightly more worrying than the previous moment, here is another quiet moment of project-size zen.
[javac] Compiling 666 source files to /home/matt/work/crucible/trunk/output/classes
