Punctuating The Silence

I just got word that I got a couple of photos published on a nifty travel site called Schmap. Taken when we had gone to Moshulu for dinner last February, they were used as part of the Penn’s Landing section of Schmap’s Philadelphia guide. I had put them up on my Flickr page, and they not only found them there, they published the photos with a credit, and a link back to the originals on Flickr.

You can find the photos here – just click on the arrows under the photo on the top right until you get to mine.

In a few minutes, I’ll be heading to the airport to fly to Portland, OR, for this year’s O’Reilly Open Source Conference. I’m really looking forward to this year, and I hope to be blogging about it regularly. For those not going, but wish they were, check YouTube – the organizers have resolved to post as much video of the sessions as possible.

More Later!

In a few minutes, I’ll be off to Portland, OR, for this year’s O’Reilly Open Source Conference. I was there last year, and it was a great time. I hadn’t been in a few years, so it was interesting to see the changes, and now that I know some of what to expect, I’m really looking forward to this year. I also have the added bonus of travelling with a friend and colleague who hasn’t been to OSCON or Portland before, so I get to do a bit of tour guide. Promises to be a great week! Stay tuned, more here as the week progresses!

Well, I really wanted to post entries last weekend, during the gig, but the place we were at had only spotty cellular signal. Oh, well. We had an amazing weekend: we were happy with the way the music went (a couple of minor glitches, but hey, that’s live music, right?), the speaker was great, a bunch of kids were really impacted by the whole weekend, the location was beautiful, and we had a blast. What more could you want?

Oh, yeah, my new keyboard worked wonderfully. More on that next.

Back in April, Michelle and I were in Amsterdam (and other parts of the Netherlands) for 10 days (mostly for a conference Michelle was attending, but I have family there so it was also part vacation). Back in August, I was at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland, and I had a blast.

I really miss Amsterdam – it was probably the first city I thought I could feel at home living in (not a city person), but on top of that, the Euro version of OSCON just started, and it’s being held in Amsterdam…

Really wish I was there right now…

This was my second O’Reilly Open Source Conference (the first one was 2001 in San Diego), and it has come a long way in 4 years. This was an amazing experience: great speakers, lots of stuff to see and so, a great location, and information overload. You (well, OK, I – I guess I can’t speak for anyone else) come away with so many great ideas and so many new things you want to try, the problem is finding the time.

I would definitely reccommend this conference, and I’ll be going back next year for sure.

If you want more info, check out the website – they have links to everything that went on, a wiki that had lots of attendees contributing, and you can find most of the presentation there as well. Not to mention all of the blogs that can do the conference so much more justice that I could here…enjoy!

Last week, Michelle and I were travelling by plane on a domestic flight. En route to the airport, I had checked our flight status, and found out that it was cancelled. We got to the airport and found out that we were on a flight that was leaving just an hour later. We checked in and proceeded to security. We were both singled out for additional checks (shoes, belts, luggage, you name it. It turns out that one of the criteria that wins you automatic extra screening is any change in your itererary, even, as we found out, when you had no control over the change in the first place. You can tell if this is going to happen to you by looking on your bording pass: if you see an “s” by your name, you are about to be the lucky recipient of extra screening! Now you know.

As an addendum, I was flying a week or so earlier, and during the trip, I had been reading Bruce Schneier‘s book “Beyond Fear” (an excellent read, by the way). In it, he was talking about how to read the security screening lines at airports to never encounter extra attention. First, I guess he’s never had his itererary changed, and two, if there are no crowds, it’s difficult to do. I was flying home from Portland, OR, and while there was a large crowd of people at the ticketing counter, there was no-one at security (I waltzed through by using a self-serve kiosk – I highly reccommend them!). And I mean this literally – I was the only one there. These people must have been bored, because they had the metal scanner turned up to max sensetivity…I’m sure it was detecting the fillings in my teeth! I don’t fly a lot (7 or 8 times a year, including return trips), and I have never had my watch set off the detector (and it’s a decent-sized metal one), let alone the rivits in my jeans. I tried a few times, removing things (shoes and watch, anyway, I wasn’t going for the pants, don’t worry), but for naught – I had my first extra screening. Fortunately, the guy was really good and very friendly, and we ended up chatting for a bit. Made me feel a little better that my first experience with this didn’t fall into the horror-story category I’ve read about now and then.