OSCON Day 1
You can find my photos from the second day of OSCON here.
Woke up early and headed in to catch Tim O’Reilly’s keynote where he made some awesome points on data-lockdown, loss of data-portability freedom, and the programmable web which pretty much made my point for me for my Songbird talk the next day. 
After that, we headed down to the booth (which Jay Patel had freaking awesomely setup the night before for us - thanks Jay!) I spent most of my day here at the booth answering questions, talking about Songbird, and of course selling our t-shirts (proceeds went to the Mozilla Foundation). The booth was fantastic, it was great talking to a ton of people about Songbird. We heard a bunch of great feedback and talked to a lot of people who were familiar with it, had run it in the past, and were just waiting for it to get to 1.0. I also had a lot of great discussion with Moz, MailCo, and Miro guys. I’ll post a separate blog of some of the issues and topics we talked about.
I got to see a ton of familiar friends on the floor… Intel Dave, and Intel Max, my many friends and fellow OGB members from Sun, all the folks from MindTouch Deki, and of course a ton of folks from Mozilla & Mozdev.
That evening I went to the Mozdev BOF where we chatted about extension development, and some tricks and tools for building extensions. Following that I attended the Mindtouch party for a bit to say hi and chat with Deki folks, and then ended my night at the Sun party.
Highlights from the Sun party were the copious gin & tonics, just barely losing to gman in air hockey (10-9! damnit!), watching plocher and joerg schilling sumo wrestle (it was close, but I think plocher won), and watching Postgres (Josh) & MySQL (Monty) sumo wrestle (MySQL schooled Postgres).
[tags: OpenSolaris, OpenSource, Songbird]
Add comment 2008 July 24, 17:23
OSCON Day 0
You can find photos from the first day here
To recap, on the first day I attended John Resig’s talk on “Secrets of JS Libraries” (I saved a local copy of the slides, but forgot where he put the PDF online) which was great. I think it was probably tough for him given the disparity of skill sets in the audience… I’m glad I didn’t have to do a 4 hour preso 
After jeresig’s talk, I was coerced was happy to be involved in an OpenSolaris podcast with David Comay, Glynn Foster, and Barton George. We discussed contribution and governance issues, as well as package contributions and maintenance.
After my podcast and some time spent working on my slides, we ended up at Jax with a bunch of other Mozilla & Python dudes where I finally got a chance to meet with Justin Erenkrantz (who ran for the OGB this term) where we chatted about OpenSolaris amongst other stuff.
After dinner, I headed out to Teardrop, a brilliant cocktail lounge with a couple of Moz folks, Mikeal Rogers & Jay Patel. Mikeal & Clint’s work on a UI automation test framework for Mozilla/XUL apps sounds really promising, and I’m looking forward to checking it out (obviously for our own QA automation, but I’m also wondering if it’d be a cheap easy way to do external scripting of Songbird’s UI with it)
[tags: OpenSolaris, OpenSource, Songbird]
Add comment 2008 July 24, 17:08
really need a 4th
went down to Castle Rock State Park this afternoon with Jaime & Zac again. we went back to a place i haven’t been in almost 6 years: The Underworld. spooky sounding name for a great secluded bit of rock.
i’ve decided i want to make one more trip back up to Shasta to climb at Castle Crags (yes confusing, Castle Crags & Castle Rock are two very different places - but i love them both). there is this fantastic (3 out of 3 stars on rock quality) 5.8ish 8-pitch 1000 foot climb that i’m dying to do.
minor problem: we have 3 climbers. we need a 4th, and more specifically - we need a 4th who can comfortably lead 5.8/5.9 trad (sorry no bolts). anyone around in september sometime and fancy a weekend trip up to Mt. Shasta?
Billy Goat’s Tavern in Shasta (a short 10 minute drive away after the climb) is a fantastic post-climb brew+burger.
1 comment 2008 July 19, 20:29
SHOUTcast add-on, now more international friendly
I just pushed version 0.5.0 of the SHOUTcast Directory add-on for Songbird which adds a preference feature for allowing users to type in a comma-delimited list of genres. Interestingly, I knew this would be a requested feature when we pushed 0.4.8 in conjunction with Songbird 0.6, but I didn’t know how much. Turns out a lot of international folks wanted to be able to list different language genres, and that this missing feature was a lot more popular than I expected.
Anyway, version 0.5.0 supports this now. Time to get back to my OSCON prep…
[tags: Songbird]
Add comment 2008 July 18, 22:53
you say goodbye, i say hello
or rather, i guess i should be saying “good to see you again”.
the OpenSolaris fan inside of me is sad to see my good friend Patrick Finch leave Sun. having seen his expertise and impact from both inside Sun and outside Sun, he will be missed greatly. Patrick has always been one of the most well-thought-out and eloquent supporters of OpenSolaris (as much as it pains me to admit that a Liverpool FC fan can be eloquent, I’ll concede that he is indeed eloquent). he’s had a huge impact on open source strategy at Sun, and i’m bummed that Sun and OpenSolaris shall no longer have his services (hopefully we’ll always have his support though).
the Songbird and Mozilla fan inside of me is super-psyched and happy to say that Patrick is joining Mozilla though! he’ll be joining as their European marketing manager, and i have no doubt that he will totally rock at his new gig. i’m looking forward to seeing Patrick at many more conferences and get-togethers in the future, chatting about how Songbird and Mozilla can do more and collaborate more to build our Mozilla posse, and, of course, continually discussing EPL, UEFA, and all things football (though preferably English).
so to all my friends @ Mozilla & Songbird - give a warm welcome and shout-out to Patrick.
[tags: OpenSolaris, OpenSource, Songbird]
1 comment 2008 July 14, 21:11
yay for scm-migration
The scm-migration-dev team (in charge of getting ON moved to Mercurial) did its tools putback today. Congratulations to the entire team. That’s a huge huge huge step to the upcoming migration to Mercurial.
Wish I coulda been there for the celebratory drinks.
[tags: OpenSolaris]
Add comment 2008 July 10, 19:18
Shasta Soreness
I headed up to Mt. Shasta for the July 4th weekend with Jaime & Zac, and after two days there, I think I’m about as sore as I’ve ever been in my life.
On Friday, we ran 5 miles in the Mt. Shasta 4th of July Fun Run. Jaime and I kept pace with each other and came in at 51 minutes (10:12/mile). I’ve no idea whether that’s a good pace or not (Zac came in at 38 minutes, so I suspect not :-P) but that was the first time I’ve ever done a timed race past P.E. class in high school, so I was pretty happy. That was also the first time I’ve run any distance more than a mile or two, and I felt it…
The rest of Friday was spent stretching groaning calves and quads.
A sane person probably would have taken Saturday off to rest and recover. Instead, we chose to hike 2 miles in (with a 1200 foot elevation gain) in Castle Crags State Park to the base of Six Toe Rock, where we climbed Six Toe Crack, an absolutely gorgeous 5.7-5.8 3 pitch crack. The weather was beautiful… sunny (but the route was in the shade) with a cool breeze. The first pitch had a tough start, and a tough second crack - but was definitely doable and within the 5.7/5.8 rating. The second pitch was where things got tough. I took my longest trad leaderfall yet, falling about 20 feet. I placed a #7 Trango Flexcam, got about 5 feet above it, and was stuck in an off-width 5.9 shoulder jam. I worked it for a minute or two, thought I was making progress and ended up pitching off, and falling my total 20 feet.
It was strange, it happened so quickly - I don’t even remember the fall. All I recall is my left hand losing grip, me pitching backwards, screaming (yes - my first scream of my climbing career too… this weekend was full of firsts), and coming to a stop looking down at the sky and my feet. Yup, I’d managed to completely invert myself. I righted myself, took a few seconds to catch my breath (some combination of the fall and the harness tightening had knocked the wind out of me), and checked myself out for injuries. I ended up hitting my left calf against an outcropping getting some road rash (all superficial, so it should heal fine - though showers will be a bitch for the next few days), and getting a nasty nasty rope burn on my right bicep (which strangely doesn’t hurt - but is making for a real pretty bruise).
Anyway, I took a 5.7 variation off to the right hand side after that, finished the pitch and brought Jaime & Zac up. After some route-finding (the guidebook was vague as to the finish for this climb), we ended up on the summit, rewarded with a fairly large summit top, and a gorgeous 360 degree view of the rest of Castle Crags, and Mt. Shasta in the distance.
This was definitely the most challenging lead of my life so far… this whole day I’ve been thinking “What if that #7 cam hadn’t held?” I would have ended up pitching down about 40 feet - almost certainly injuring myself seriously. I’m thankful I sank that cam, and I’m really thankful it held. Taking a leaderfall occasionally is a good reminder not to get lazy and run things out unnecessarily.
Some thoughts and notes for anyone looking to climb this rock: The guidebook is good, but gives no sense of scale. I went in thinking this would be like Castle Rock in Saratoga… a meandering trail with rocks scattered here and there to climb. WRONG. The hike isn’t easy (though the trail is fantastic), and the rocks are MASSIVE. Purportedly there is a 8 pitch 1000′ climb (which I’m dying to do next time I can get up there). The rock quality is great (not as good as Tuolumne/Yosemite, but definitely better than the sandstone we get here in the Bay Area). I highly recommend Six Toe Crack - it’s one of the most beautiful cracks I’ve done, and is a great rewarding climb with solid anchors. (3 pitches, the first belay station is 2 old bolts backed up with a new bolt, new chains, and new webbing. Second belay station is a solid outcropping/flake slung with at least 6 pieces of webbing and rap rings. Contrary to what the guidebook says, the summit is topped with one old sketchy bolt (the one it says to rap off of), with two brand new bolts and two shiny shiny chains). We ended up rapping the three pitches back down the crack instead of doing the sketchy looking descent gully.
[tags: Climbing, PlacesToGo]
3 comments 2008 July 6, 22:52
Cathedral Summit, deux.
This past weekend, Zac and I successfully climbed and summited Cathedral Peak. This was the 4th time I’ve tried Cathedral, the 2nd time I’ve been successful, and the 1st time I’ve pulled it off without any disaster. (hmm..power of 2 pattern emerging there)
The trip went perfectly… Zac, Jaime, and I left SF @ noon, got up to Tuolumne and despite only having a reserved permit for 2 people for Saturday night, we were able to change it to a permit for both Friday & Saturday night for 3 people.
We hiked in along the climber’s trail, and ended up camping virtually at the base of the Southeast Buttress. It was warm enough that I decided to ditch the tent and save some weight by just bringing the sleeping bag and tarp. This would have worked out perfectly if there weren’t a million mosquitoes around… at 9700 feet, no less! After slathering on the Jungle Juice, we finished consuming our gigantic Safeway $5 sub for dinner, and went to sleep. My only thoughts for that night were that the moon is insanely bright at that high an elevation. I thought there was someone shining a flashlight in my face.
I woke up at 5am to the mosquitoes, and slathered on more Jungle Juice and started arranging the rack. Jaime & Zac made breakfast (bacon!!) and we racked up and got started. The plan was for Zac and I to climb, me leading the whole route up, Zac following and cleaning gear while Jaime hiked up the backside to meet us up top. We ended up doing the Supertopo C variation (mostly 5.6 with one section of 5.7), and according to our EXIF data, summited at 11:14am PDT.
Throughout the climb, we noticed clouds far off in the horizon. By the time we summited, they’d gotten significantly closer… from all 360 degrees. Given my last experience climbing Cathedral, I was wary of the famous Tuolumne afternoon showers, so we spent about 5-10 minutes on the summit debating between the sketchy downclimb descent versus leaving a nut and sling to rappel off of. I took one more look at the clouds, left a nut and sling and we rapped off the backside.
We met up with Jaime who led us down the backside scramble around the eastern side of Cathedral where we stopped for a quick one-pitch lead (for me) and top-rope (for Jaime) so she could get some climbing in, and then headed back to camp to pack up. We hiked out, noticing the overcast clouds the entire time, and about 10 minutes from our car thunder clapped and the storm broke. Hopefully that nut and sling I left up at the summit was useful for anyone up there needing to escape in a hurry.
Our climb victorious, we drove to the Evergreen Lodge for the most well-deserved blue cheese and pancetta burger before driving back home.
I’m psyched we climbed Cathedral without incident, I was really happy with Zac as a climbing partner - he kicked ass and climbed great. We’re looking to go to Castle Crags up by Shasta for July 4th weekend now where they have a ton of climbing - up to 6 pitch 1000′ climbs!
[tags: Climbing]
3 comments 2008 June 25, 21:02
best firefox 3 launch press article ever
seriously. i love firefox as much as the next guy… but this article cracked me up.
i love the accompanying photo - but is that really the best accompanying photo they found to run it with?
screenshot here in case the article changes:
5 comments 2008 June 18, 21:56
overstuffage
i’m packing for this weekend’s camping/climbing trip and my pack is exploding - and i’m not even bringing a tent. i’m trying to go light… minimal food, no tent (just a tarp + pad + sleeping bag). fortunately the weather looks good (all sun, no Tuolumne™ showers in store, and lows in the 40’s, possibly 30’s depending on elevation)… and yet my pack is stuffed.
it’s hard to go minimal when you’re packing climbing pro. i’m sitting here staring at a 2.5″ piece thinking “hrm, i can probably skip this” while the other voice in my head is picturing me pumped staring at a 2.5″ crack thinking “darn, that extra 2.5″ piece sure would be handy right about now”. i tend to err on the side of caution (okay okay fine, i probably don’t need 10 slings), but… well… it’s my life, right? 
the “luxuries” i intend on packing: toothbrush and cards
cards are awesome. they’re fun… by yourself you’ve got solitaire, with groups you’ve got other games, they make a decent fire starter, and if worse comes to worse, you’ve got a place to scribble down your dying man’s last thoughts. (wonder what card i would choose to right on? probably ace of spades… how unimaginative)
[tags: Musings]
Add comment 2008 June 18, 21:09
| Previous Posts |
