Tag Archives: apache

San Diego, tomorrow, and other random catching up

I’m leaving for San Diego tomorrow for ApacheCon. There are so many other things going on, that it really seems to have snuck up on me. I don’t feel very ready. I’m not packed, for starters.

Apache 2.2 just released, rendering my authentication talk almost completely wrong, so I’ll have a brand shiny new authentication talk. Fortunately, that’s not until Tuesday, so I still have a couple days to get that in presentable order. I’ll probably take that opportunity to move the talk from Perlpoint/HTML format to Keynote.

The only downside to using Keynote is that it’s a lot harder to keep it in revision control, so I’ve ended up with all of my presentations in binary format, and not backed up on the server anywhere. So it’s really the fact that there are no backups, not that it’s not in revision control, that is the big problem. I suppose I should start rsync’ing my home directory to the server, or something. But I digress.

If you’re not registered for ApacheCon yet, there’s still time. You really should come. It’s a lot of fun. And there are some really great talks scheduled this year. And I’m speaking a few times, in addition to those great talks. 😉

I’m doing final (I hope) copy edits on my book. I’m at that stage in the book where I just want to get it done with. It would be so much faster if I didn’t care whether my examples worked …

Done writing

As of just a few minutes ago, I’m done writing the book. Yay. Now, just the edits remain. I’m so very glad to be done. Now you should rush out and pre-order, because it’s going to be a really great book. I hope.

The week in review

It’s been a whirlwind of a week in the last 4 days. Two conferences and about 600 miles.

On Wednesday evening, we (Paul, Bert, Brett, Rick and me) drove up to Cincy for the Kentucky Higher Education Computing Conference. Good stuff there, as recorded on the KHECC blog.

On Friday afternoon, we drove back home. I got home, unpacked, packed, and left for Ohio LinuxFest. It’s the third year they’ve done it, and it was twice the size of last year. There were just over 700 people there, and some fantastic presentations. My talk on mod_rewrite was very well attended and well received. I was pleased with how it went, and now have yet more incentive to finally finish writing my book.

I stayed with Skippy, which was in itself a great experience. His kids are delightful, his house charming, and his wife wonderful and hospitable. Thank you so much for opening your home to me. I especially enjoyed jumping on the trampoline with the girls, and Skippy has promised to post photos somewhere. 🙂

On Saturday morning, we loaded up some PCs and monitors, and took them to the conference facility. These were from FreeGeek Columbus, which recycles used PCs and other hardware.

Novell had a big presence, giving a significant number of the talks, and were also a major sponsor. Thanks, Novell.

At lunch, we went to Bucco di Beppo. I’ll post photos later today or tomorrow, once I get some other stuff dune. There were perhaps 16 people there, and it was a lot of fun, although not as rowdy as last year. We had the pope room, which is quite an experience.

I stayed another night at Skippy’s house and had breakfast with the family in the morning at a area restaurant, which was positively wonderful, although their pancakes were the size of garbage can lids, and I wasn’t able to finish the second one.

We just arrived back home a little while ago, and I haven’t yet unpacked. I have a lot of writing I need to catch up on, but I’d really much rather take a nap.

Another amusing IRC conversation

<rik> i thought you were writing a generic Apache2 book!
<DrBacchus> rik: Oh. No. Just mod_rewrite.
<rik> well then.
<DrBacchus> I’ve done the generic apache books. they’re not fun any more.
<DrBacchus> So I’m writing books that a much smaller number of people will care about. 😉
<DrBacchus> Paring down my market, you might say.
<DrBacchus> My next book will be of interest to me and like 2 other people.
<DrBacchus> The next one, even I won’t care about.

And no end of stilton cheese

Far and few, far and few
are the lands where the jumblies live
their heads are green, and their hands are blue
and they went to sea in a sieve

ApacheCon Europe, 2000, in London. I was there with my little person. At that time, (and again now,) our favorite book was (is) a collection of Edward Lear poems, one of which is “The Jumblies“, about a tribe of strange beings who went to sea in a sieve. And their heads are green and their hands are blue. In case you missed that bit.

Some of you may know Sander van Zoest. I actually don’t know him particular well. I’ve met him on a couple occasions, but never told him this story. You may remember that in past years he tended to have colorful hair.

Well, we were sitting in the main registration area of the conference, and Sander walked in the door. Sarah, who was 3 at the time, stood up in her chair, pointed, gape-jawed, and shouted “Look! It’s a jumbly!”

Yep, that’s the whole story. 🙂

Signed books

A while back, O’Reilly gave me a large stack of book plates.

In case you don’t know, a book plate is a sticker that you put in the front of a book. The idea is that I sign one, send it to you, and you stick it in your book. Then, you have a signed copy of that book. Serious book collectors, I’m sure, value book plates far less than a book that was actually signed by the author. But I don’t know how much that affects actual value.

Anyways, I still have this large stack of book plates, and they aren’t doing anybody much good. Someone mentioned on IRC the other day that they wanted a signed copy of my book, and so I sent them a signed book plate. It cost me $0.37 and made someone a tiny bit happier.

So, all of this is just to say, if you want a signed copy of my book, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address in my whois record, and I’ll send you a signed book plate. Or ask me on IRC.

Oh, and, somewhere, there are a bunch of them that are signed by both Ken and myself, but I’ve never actually seen any of those, so I’m not sure if there are any left.

Slashdot comments

I don’t know why I read the comments on Slashdot. It just depresses me. How can people *be* so stupid?

Yes, most of the time I read slashdot at +5, so that I only get the top-level idiocy. But when the article is about me, I want to see what people had to say. I really should save myself the trouble.

Something like 75% of the comments were complaints about the fact that it was in PDF, or misinformed remarks about the font that I used. It’s not Comic Sans, by the way, but I fail to see why it makes so much difference even if it was. Folks need to get over themselves a little bit. Your font preferences are preferences. They are not scripture.

Of the few comments that actually had to do with the presentation itself, probably 2/3 of them completely missed the point. This was a lightning talk. That means that I had 5 minutes to convey a point. The fact that I left out technical details, glossed over some points, made tongue-in-cheek remarks, and told a few half-truths are a side-effect of the presentation medium. The more detailed version of the presentation will come over the next few weeks.

And for the morons who felt the need to make the “then go fix it” remark, if you had paid attention you would have noticed that I have fixed several of the things, and other folks are working on some of the others. And of course if you had been there, you would have heard that as part of the presentation itself.

You are not obliged to make comments on things that you don’t understand. It’s best to keep your ignorance to yourself.

Slashdotted

It appears that I was Slashdotted for my “Why I Hate Apache” talk. Fortunately, I put it on an apache.org server, not on my own, which appears to have suffered quite a bit of heartburn over the weekend. Unfortunately, that means that everyone blogging about it doesn’t trackback or pingback to here, so I don’t know about them.

There will be a series of articles (probably in OnLamp.com, in the “Day In The Life Of #apache” article series, that discusses each of the points that I raised in that presentation. It was, of course, more than just a little tongue-in-cheek, and I’m doing more than just complaining. Several of the problems have been fixed (a couple of them at the conference) and it was more about raising awareness (as well as making a room full of inebriated geeks laugh) than about just complaining. I really do hope to see if we can get most of these issues fixed in the relatively near future, and that those that I am able to, I’ll fix myself.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to bed.