We’re here in New York. “We” is Ken Coar, Lars Eilebrecht, Frank (from the conference producer company) and me. Adam Trachtenberg and Chris Shiflett dropped by to help us with the PHP talks. Choosing talks is hard. One has to be rather brutal, and axe talks that are good, in favor of others that are better, or which will perhaps have a larger audience.

Some of the talks are awesome, but have such a tiny narrow focus that one wonders if more than 2 or 3 people would attend. Which is a great shame.

On the bright side, at least one person submitted more talks that I did this year. 🙂

What is it that makes people submit their conference talk proposals at the very last minute? Presumably it’s related to the mystical force that ensures that the system will malfunction at nearly the last minute, making dozens of people submit their talks via email, and making us extend the deadline another day or two, so that the process can repeat.

Oy.

Deadline is *today*, folks.

(ApacheCon 2005 Eu)

Tuesday – ApacheCon 2005
Rescued from my Palm …

And there was evening, and morning, the second day. Or fourth. Depending on how you count.

Last night, I went to see The Incredibles with about 30 Apache guys. The movie was brilliant, and very very funny. We got back in around midnight, although some of the folks went to some casino or other after that, I think. I had a talk at 8:30 this morning, so I really needed to get some sleep. It was hard enough to get up this morning.

I had my mod_perl talk first thing this morning, and something went very weird with my slides. I think what happened was that I regenerated my slides right before the talk, but I had the older version still in my browser cache. So about halfway through, when I switched to the new version, or perhaps the browser cache expired – I don’t know – I suddenly got about 6 of the slides over again. I don’t know if that means I missed some material, or what it meant. But it was very flustering. I could tell I was speaking way too fast, and I couldn’t seem to do much about it. I finished about 10 minutes early. But there were good questions, so that was ok.

After that I had my URL Mapping talk, which is an easy talk and one of my favorites. This went very well, although I ran slightly over. Lots of very good questions. I might think about rewriting this talk for next time. If there is a next time.

After and during lunch I was in a discussion/meeting/debate of HTTPd developers, discussing what the release schedule should be, and, much more significantly, what the plan and goals should be. It was very cool to be involved in that, and to be able to contribute to what seems to be a very significant decision.

I attended most of the mod_proxy talk, but spent most of the rest of the afternoon in conference committee meetings. There should be an announcement later in the week, but that will have already happened before I get this on my webisite, so I can tell you that we have tentatively agreed to to ApacheCon Europe in Stuttgart the next-to-last week of July 2005.

Tonight, a bunch of us are going to the new Star Trek ride at the Hilton. Should be very cool.

Apache 2.0 talk done. When I started the talk, apparently the audio output from my mic was going into Theo van Dinter’s Spam Assassin talk, and vice versa. That same thing happened to me at Ohio LinuxFest, and so I figured I was statistically immune from that ever happening again. So I lost nearly 10 minutes at the beginning of the session, which I really needed at the end of the session. I ended up skipping some stuff, and cramming everything onto the end.

Strangely, this was the very same talk that I had crossed wires on at Ohio Linux Fest. So perhaps the talk itself is cursed. If this happens the next time, I’ll be sure to never give the talk again.

I just got done with my Auth talk and wolfed down my lunch, and now I’m in a talk about Beehive. I’m afraid I have to admit I don’t have the foggiest idea of what Beehive is, and I’m hoping to get a glimpse. Unfortunately, I’m already losing sight of where he’s going. I don’t relate to the problems that he’s trying to solve, and this is augmented by the fact that he’s using smatterings of terminology that is completely furrin to me. I’m trying, though.

Talking with, and listening to, all these really smart people, continues to point out to me that my current employment is, unfortunately, making me dumb. I’m not working on anything that really makes me think, or solve interesting problems, or, much less, write code.

Auth talk ran a little short, which is not a problem I usually have any more. But I had a good audience, and they asked really good questions. Plus Jim Jagielski was there, and helped me out of a couple tight spots.

Random notes from the keynote.

Monday morning keynote, Wil Wheaton. Speaking about blogging, and how it is the fulfillment of what the Internet was supposed to be. Facilitating communication between widespread populations, but also giving the power of the press to the folks that usually don’t have that power.

He made a remark that any pictures or recordings must be released under a Creative Commons license.

I waited at the front door of the hotel for him for about 20 minutes, and then realized that they had spelled his name incorrectly on his speaker tag. D’oh! While I was getting that reprinted, he arrived, so I’m afraid he didn’t get a very good reception. But he was very gracious anyway.

Blogs are changing the way that people interact with each other, and the way that Big Media interact with those of us who they used to stand over and control our opinions.

And, yay, he referenced Thomas Payne as the original blogger. Rock on.

When we listen to the media, we tend to hear a lot of things that we don’t agree with. Blogs show us that there are indeed people around the country who hold the same opinions that we do.

Wil was kinda nervous at first, but he’s warming up as he gets passionate about his topic. His passion about how we, as bloggers, have the power to influence the Big Media, is very catching.

There’s an implicit agreement between the audience and the author that the author will tell the truth, and check their facts.

I believe there’s a bias in the media, but I don’t believe it’s a conservative or liberal bias, but a profit-oriented bias.

The Internet lets people get their message out to an audience, who would otherwise face only rejection from risk-averse organizations.

To finish up he’s reading “Where’s my burrito?” from Just a Geek. He’s a great reader, and it’s a great story.

At some point yesterday, my electricity at home appears to have gone
off. My various servers went down, and were down for an hour or so. When
they came back up, not all of them came back up. Specifically, shiraz,
my internal network services machine (dns, and some other things,
including database) didn’t come up. And, it happens that this journal
points at that server for database services.

So, it’s all very well to not put your eggs all in one basket, but the
fact is that when you drop a basket, you still lose all *those* eggs.

Ok, so this is my offline blog. Real high tech.

I wanted to note some things before my crummy memory loses them forever.

Saturday night, I had dinner at the Mirage. With us were myself, Charel,
Ken and Cathy, Sanjiva, Paul Querna and his father Paul Querna, and
Mads. I had the shrimp scampi and pasta, which was pretty good. The
restaurant was the third one that we attempted to go to. The others had
a 45 minute, and 2 hour, wait for a table. These seemed a little
extreme.

Last night, I had dinner at Simon, in the Hard Rock casino, with Gozer,
Mads, and Garret. That was really good, although it was pretty pricey. I had a chicken curry, which, I think, is what I had there last year.

The members’ meeting was good last night, with all the nominated members being elected. Also the omnibus resolution passed unanimously, which is always encouraging.

This morning, Wil Wheaton is giving the keynote. Apparently it will be webcast, but I am not sure where, and by the time I get this on my journal, it will of course be long over. Not very useful as an announcement, I suppose. But hopefully people will learn about it on IRC anyways.

It looks like I’m not going to get out to do much in Vegas this time around, but I’m going to try to go to the Star Trek thing this evening if I can. Should be pretty cool.

On Sunday evening, while I was at ApacheCon, the power went out in my apartment, taking down all my servers. Turns out that they all came back up ok, but that all of them came up before the DHCP server started, and so none of them came up on the network. Thus, the whole time I was at ApacheCon, my database server was non-functional, and, thus, my journal was non-functional. Which was very irritating, because I had a *LOT* to write about. So, I’m going to post some of it this evening, and the rest tomorrow, when I can get it off of my Palm.