We're back from France, jetlagged and unpacked. I've got a ton of email to catch up on, including lots of SimpleLog feedback (always a good idea to release an app right before leaving for nearly two weeks!), and I'll get to everything tomorrow. Also, we over a thousand photos to go through and post. More soon, sleep now.
I'm currently sitting in on the wrap-up panel here at @media 2006, so now is as good a time as any to give an overall impression of the conference:
- The panels and presentations were, on a whole, a little light. I knew coming in to this that the general target audience for the conference was a little lower-level than I would generally be interested in, but I was surprised by some of the presentations (the accessibility one, for instance, the Dave Shea typography presentation for another) and their lack of useful information. It's interesting hear Dave tell you which fonts he likes, but I'm not sure anything he presented helped us. (Everyone at the conference had heard of sIFR, so how does talking about it being available help anyone?)
- The Javascript Libraries session was interesting, if only to hear about all the different libraries people are using and hearing a panel talk about the pros and cons. Simon Willison (who looks about twelve years old and works at Yahoo!) seems like a genuinely smart guy who had some interesting thoughts on the whole JS library movement.
- Tantek Çelik's presentation on microformats was the most interesting to me, since I've been following the whole microformats thing but haven't implemented any. His presentation definitely got me thinking about all the places that I should be and could be using microformats and I think I'm going to start doing it in the very near future (one might see microformats in the next version of SimpleLog, perhaps...).
If anything, it was worth the trip just to meet some of the people I've been wanting to meet in person for a long time. When there's someone who you genuinely like and agree with, it's fantastic to meet them in person and be able to have a conversation in thirty seconds that would take days via email.
Finally met Reid Philpot in person (he used to run explodingfist.com), as well as Dan Cederholm (whose second-day keynote was quite good), and had a few beers and good conversation with Jon Hicks last night. Jon's a great guy and it was nice to finally meet him in person.
On a whole, I've had a good time these past few days. The conference was a little lacking information-wise, but I think I knew that might be the case going in. I'm off to France tomorrow to meet up with Katia and to start our vacation.
The wifi connection here at the conference center is crummy. I feel like technology conferences should never have that problem. Ever. Especially a web-based conference.
I just got out of the accessibility session, and I have to say it was one of the most boring and useless bits of information I've ever heard. I'm interested in accessibility, but, in general, I don't practice making sites I create accessible because I don't tend to create sites specific to disabled peoples. Nearly everything I create is text-based and I code to XHTML standards, so it's a reasonable assumption that my site will be accessible to most people. I am still, however, interested in the technology and standards, and so I was interested in the session. I was hoping they would fill me in on how current accessibility technology works and some best practices. Instead, it was simply forty minutes of talking about the current status of the documentation. The entire session was about the quality of the documentation. Yuck.
If you want more accessible sites, you should convince more people like me to get into making our sites accessible. But you're not going to do that by complaining about the verbosity of documentation.
Consider this the official announcement—SimpleLog has been released. Many thanks to Shawn, the lead tester of this app (he also lead tested xPad), and the private beta testers who worked over the past few weeks to help me finalize version 1.0. A little about the app:
SimpleLog is a simple Ruby on Rails weblog application with support for tagging, archiving and quick-search. It features a simple admin section with authentication and a focus on writing over all else.
SimpleLog started out with the work I'd done on my CMS here at Maniacal Rage, but I started over with smarter code and a release plan in mind. I moved this site over to SimpleLog a while back, so everything you see here is what you can do with the package.
The application is free, but donations are accepted and encouraged.
Update: I forgot to mention that 50% of all donations will be going to The National MS Society, an important detail. Also, I've uploaded some screenshots of the admin interface to Flickr. In the near future, I plan to do a screencast showing how to install SimpleLog and some example usage.
Also, if you use SimpleLog on your site, please send me an email. I'm going to compile a list of people using the app for the website. You may also post screenshots of your site in the SimpleLog Users group on Flickr.
"It's the last of its kind," she tells him. She's always spouting facts as if they're impressive. "They haven't made any since."
"I know what the word last means, Mandy," he says, emphasizing "last" just a bit too much. Mandy pauses and tears begin to well in her eyes. "Oh, Jesus, please, don't do that," he says, lowering his voice and pulling her closer to him. "Not here. Please. I'm sorry for what I said."
"It's just—"
"I know, I get it, it's valuable. It's the last one."
"And I thought you would like that it was unique," Mandy says and then sniffs and wipes her eyes. They were already a decent shade of red from the impending cry.
"It's not unique," he says, "It's the last one. Unique and last don't mean the same thing." Mandy starts bawling like an orphan. "Christ, Mandy, please!"
"I—I can't help it! You're so mean to me!" Mandy yells out, in between bouts of coughing and crying and sniffing and shaking her hands in the air. "I was just trying to help and now you've got me all worked up and I can't breathe!"
"Just calm down, okay? Look, I'll buy the damned thing. Will that make you stop?"
"You—you'd buy it?"
"Yes, fine, I'll buy it. Just stop crying, please."
"Okay. Okay. I'm stopping. I'm sorry, Mr. Hanson, I just—"
"Look, I said I'd buy it. Stop crying and ring it up," Hanson says, pulling out his over-sized wallet. His wife had taken his American Express card. He only had the Discover. "Do you guys take Discover?" Mandy throws her hands in the air and starts crying violently once again. "What the hell is the matter with you?" Hanson yells out.
"You said you'd buy it, and now you don't have any money? This is just my luck! They're going to fire me, you know that?"
"I'll still buy it, I can go get cash."
"Oh, what's the use? I might as well just go to the nearest brothel and fill out an application! Let's face it, I need the money!"
"Could you keep it down? You're embarrassing me!" Hanson yells as he looks around frantically.
"You think this is embarrassing? Just wait until you see me naked, picking up quarters off the floor of the public bathroom in Macy's!"
"What—what are you talking about?"
"Oh god, my mother was right! I'm doomed to die alone and poor!"
"Christ, Mandy, just—I'll pay by check, okay? Just fucking wrap it up and give it to me. You're really starting to scare the hell out of me," Hanson says, while he fills out a check. "How much is it?"
"A billion dollars!" Mandy yells, then she rips off her shirt and throws it into the ceiling fan. It gets caught on the fan for a moment and spins around rapidly, making a whooshing sound, before it flies off onto a potted plant. The woman standing next to the plant screams and drops her purse.
"What the hell is the matter with you!" Hanson yells.
"I ate poison, okay! Fine, I said it!"
"What?"
"Oh god, she was right!" Mandy screams as she hops the counter and runs out of the store.
If you're reading this in a newsreader, you won't notice but I've just changed the color scheme. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but didn't get a chance until today.
I loved the previous scheme, but it was time for a change. Feedback is, of course, welcome and appreciated.
I'm not saying I agree with breaking street dates, but I'm also not saying I won't buy it if I see it early. So, yes, I have my DS Lite a few days before it is supposed to be released.
What a difference this is compared to the original DS design. Smaller, lighter, better, brighter screens... it's nearly one hundred percent better design-wise.
I had the original DS for a short period of time before I sold it because of the lack of games and how big and clunky it was. Now those two problems have been answered and the DS Lite is a fantastic product. New Super Mario Bros., here I come!
I'm going to be at @media 2006 this year, in jolly old London. Should be a lot of fun. I was planning on attending SXSW back in March, but it didn't work out due to some huge projects that needed to be finished. Luckily, @media 2006 worked-out schedule-wise.
I'll be in London from June 14 to June 17, then I'm heading to Paris where Katia's meeting me for a well deserved vacation in France. We'll be driving to places like Mont-Saint-Michel, the beaches and Chartres, after spending a few days in Paris. Should be loads of fun.
If you've got any suggestions for things to see in Paris, please do tell (garrett at maniacalrage dot net), and if you're going to be at @media2006, please let me know—I'd love to meet up!
One of the toys I ordered after the sale of my Quad arrived this week, but, unfortunately, it arrived broken.
The white 2GHz MacBook, customized with a 100GB hard drive, is a replacement for our older PowerBook, which we sold to a friend. The MB will be our living-room machine and Katia's primary computer. With my luck, it showed up early but broken. Well, not "broken," really, but not flawless.
The machine vibrates like crazy. Like, not good, what the hell, it's hurting my hands vibrating. All the time, non-stop, fun, fun, fun. Oh, and there's a dead pixel in the center of the display. Not good. I've had plenty of Apple portables, and none of them vibrated so, after a call to Apple, it's being replaced. The only problem is, of course, I have to send this one back. So now we're waiting again, without a computer at home.
Aside from the issues with the computer, I will say that the MacBook is truly impressive—I instantly fell in love with it. I'm excited for it to return.
Now, hopefully, the other toys will all be flawless when they arrive next week.