A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Attended the wake, with classicaljunkie. I spent most of the time talking with another O'Reilly person there.

Through a MacBook that was cycling through a photo gallery of the last decade of Erik's life, I learned something new about him: apparently he had an ambition to visit famous artifacts around the world, and lick them. I suggested to my former colleague that if one truly felt compelled by this, one could find all the places and things he had not yet licked and then take up a life's task to carry on where he could not.

Also hugged Erik's widow, signed the guestbook, and then left for having nothing else to do there - I didn't know any of his family, who were there in great number, and didn't feel like making introductions right then. And I feel no drive to attend the funeral this evening, so here ends all of that.

For Volity, it was a win. The audience was quite large (given the venue of a pub's second-floor function room) and I'm pretty sure I succeeded in keeping its attention for the whole four-and-some minutes of my talk. There was much enthusiastic cheering, and I got some nice compliments about it, chatting with lots of folks afterward. These included total strangers, friends of friends, and two people from O'Reilly I hadn't seen in several years.

The major take-away was an invitation from the director of the O'Reilly Network to help create an article about Volity. I am not sure if he's thinking more an interview or a technical article, but I emailed him a little while ago saying I'm willing to do anything up to and including writing the whole article myself, noting that I wrote several articles for ORN before I started Volity in 2003 (and when it had a different director). Dunno what their editorial policy is on technology inventors writing about their own stuff. We'll see.

I credit the Ignite organizers for posting video from previous events on blip.tv. I watched several before I started putting together our bit on Tuesday. I applied my observation that, with only five minutes to work with, big grabby visuals worked much better on slides than lots of text bullets. The result was a fine success and I really gotta post a version online for y'all to see. Bug me about it if I don't!

Unfortunately, the venue for this event wasn't so hot. The room was a long and somewhat skinny rectangle with the stage at one end and the bar at the other. It quickly fell into a use-pattern where people who wanted to watch the presentations sat or stood in the stage half, while people who didn't really care hung out in the bar half, talking in the shouty voice one uses in a crowded pub.

Sadly, sound travels. One of the organizers repeatedly took the mic between presentations to ask for quiet from the back, which worked for about 2.5 minutes each time. And it got worse as the evening wore on; a colleague and I agreed that we were fortunate to have our talks scheduled among the earlier block.

Also the assembled geeks apparently failed to drink enough, since the same organizer asked people to enjoy another drink if they were thinking of it, since if they didnt O'Reilly would be stuck with a your-event's-attendees-didn't-cover-our-costs bill. I had three pints all told, which was about two and a half too many given my medication. But, you know: business. It's a write-off.

Oh, also the keynote was actually kind of interesting content-wise but the guy stumbled weirdly a couple of times. He was met with grumbling at a throw-away comment that the number of women in the audience was in the single digits - a strange thing to say since this was visibly untrue to anyone there. Then he responded to this grumbling by making a sarcastic jab at "feminists". WTF? It got things started on odd footing. Fortunately, most of my fellow lightning-talkers were smoother. (And if some weren't, they were yanked off after five minutes anyway...)

I (and between 0 and 2 Andys) will be attending Ignite Boston at Tommy Doyle's pub in Harvard Square on the evening of May 31. It's an O'Reilly-sponsored, somewhat FOO/MAKE-y flavored gathering of local techies for networking and lightning talks. I just submitted a proposal for a super-short Volity talk.

Are yooooou coming?

I had a nice chat yesterday with Andy Oram, a longtime editor at O'Reilly, about Volity. It resulted in him writing this entry in his own blog: http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/volity_opensource_interactive.html

I am pleased that our websites are in such a state that even hardened veterans of the open source scene like Andy take one look at it and immediately get intensely interested.

Not to say that I didn't have to make the effort to point it out to him. I got the idea to write him the night before last, when I remembered having a chat about games and gaming culture at a party two Decembers ago. This reinforces the fact that I really gotta keep pushing to get the message out there... the influx of developers I wrote about a couple of weeks ago hit a plateau shortly after that.

Things are better then they were a year ago, when I was. Then Zarf got involved, and much more recently than that we've had a low but constant level of outside developer interest. It's the last that I really need to ratchet up, and now.

I had forgotten until rifling through some email that eray made me into a superhero a few months ago. I'm about halfway down the page.

I only now realized that "repetitive sounds make him fly into a rage" might be a reference to static I threw at him when we worked in the same office. And did I once get sick after eating a seafood sandwich from the cafe adjoining the building? I have a distinct memory of one day looking at a sandwich and thinking "bluuh", but it may have been general job dissatisfaction at that point.

Backed by unanimous opinion of friends and family, I verbally agreed to take on the book today. Here we go. Chuck lent me a couple of other books to read as homework, along with my assignment to spruce up the outline draft he's already made.

I asked for the story leading up to his tapping me for this, and heard lots of fun history and politics about this corner of the ORA machine. Beyond being unseemly of me to describe it in a public venue, it would probably bore you. (And if you're a close friend you're doomed to hear me bring it up at some point anyway.) As to why he chose me in particular, he knew I was a Mac user and a blathersome hacker and had some free time on my hands, but more interestingly, I seem to be the second choice -- the first prospective author didn't want to go into any of the underlying Unix stuff at all, which is, really, the Wrong Answer. Curiously, this particular author had written the O'Reilly book that got me back into programming, many years ago. So turns the wheel, la la.

I have been in Waterville a week now. Insert pointed drumming of fingers, just once, here. Near as I can tell, there has been no motion on the Cambridgeport front. I have been tentatively sniffing at other opportunities, just in case. Several phone calls to make today. I wonder how much more line I should let out for Chez Charla... while I really want to live there, my confidence will be seriously eroded if I find out today that we're right where we were two weeks ago. The clock is ticking on the prime immediate backup location, just to make things more interesting.

Interesting, yes, ah yes indeedy.

I'm sorry I am so grumpy. Here, look at pictures of a bunny with a succession of leaves on its head.

Other stuff from a letter to a friend:

I have been kept sane during my stay by hanging out all day at the offices of Arcus Digital. They have a wirless network, and I have a laptop. And they have couches and lots of snacks and soda. (And a tip jar.) Mmmm. It's a pretty good environment, but for that it's in the cultural wasteland of central Maine, and that it's all-male. Then again, there are none of the loutish males that appeared increasingly during MINT's decline, so that's nice, but working in a crossgendered environment is still preferable, to me. Then again again, it's not like I'm actually working here. Or even plan on staying too much longer.

I will, however, be doing some work. This evening Andy talked to me about my first piece of contract work Arcus'd like me to do... an easy task, good teeth-cutting, not just with here but with the whole freelance thing. Naturally, Jim & co is all about telecommuting, so I'm very much not tying myself to this geographic spot by accepting the offer (though I do expect to visit semi-oftenly).

At least undef is back in business, more or less... the machine has a fresh new copy of Debian Linux on it, installed under the supervision of Arcus people, who didn't let me set up any security holes this time, and had me install software to help keep the thing hardened. To which I say: good. I'd say that this will absolutely positively be the last Bad Move this box has had to make, but with three such events in 2001 alone, I really wouldn't trust myself with such statements anymore. Then again, the situation is totally different... it used to be an insecure junkpile running either on my apartment floor or in a company machine room, and now it's a very secure box maintained by paid professionals in a dedicated hosting facility. We'll see what happens.

That letter was writ two days ago. Since then, my domain has become fully world-visible once again, though I've yet to properly crawl through the whole site and see what's broken and fix it all, again. It's worth it. I say to the l33t h4><0rs: Come on in. And burn! Yesh.

The cafe upstairs, Jorgenson's, is for sale. Everyone at Arcus will be very very sad if it turns into something other than a cafe, because, mm boy, good coffee right upstairs, available through the afternoon? Friend, that's half the reason I took the job at O'Reilly last year, with the promise that it'd be moving to Davis Square and its three late-nite coffee shops. (Ed note: I took the job, and it didn't move. And then I got laid off anyway.) According to this news story, the owners are selling all their inventory and equipment along with the space, so that's a hopeful sign.

A photographer came in to shoot John and myself playing Lost Cities at lunch yesterday for that story, but they used a photo of a college student instead. Foo! Doesn't two hairy guys taunting each other over a bizarre-looking card game have far more visual appeal than some waifish bookworm? Bah.

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The shower in my parents' house is from the seventh and a half floor. I have to kneel in order to wash my face.

Strange fact: three people in the last three days, two of them friends who are not prone to make such random outbursts, have independently exclaimed how very tall I suddenly seem lately. MaryMary and my Mom offer no hypothoses why this is so. Andy thinks that I used to slouch by default, and have stopped. I am totally unaware of any of this.

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I've started writing again, pretending that I'm settled. Ellie has been sketching rough drafts of book covers. First there was a neat cover featuring two Arabian birds, kites, which editor Linda thought was wicked cool, except that they seemed to be about to kill each other. After Linda asked if she could tone it down, Ellie made one with some sort of fru-fru bird, which Linda labeled "milquetoast". Sadly, Ellie snuck me the URL to it, and just seeing a possible book cover with my name on it made me fall in love with the thing. Since I just finished Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, I emailed the URL to a friend: "Want to see my daemon?"

Ellie has since moved away from birds and now favors monkeys. Green monkeys. Monkeys reflect both the subject matter and the projected sales figures, she notes. ???