tecosystems

links for 2008-05-13

2008-05-13T00:31:34-05:00

Kittens on a Treadmill | Laughing Squid

absolute comedy

(tags: funny video cats treadmill humor kitten via:sarad)

JavaOne: Past, Present, and a Potential Future

2008-05-08T06:48:18-05:00

sunrise over ny

Originally uploaded by sogrady

Reviews, frankly, were mixed, but I enjoyed the past few days at CommunityOne and JavaOne. Critics highlighted a distinct lack of real news at the event, at least of the Java flavor, and there was the usual grumbling about the scheduling tool, the event staff, and so on. But regardless, JavaOne is a massive event, and a center of gravity for developer communities.

Note that I said developer communities, not Java communities. It is the latter, obviously. But the introduction of CommunityOne two years ago has done much to make the event more heterogeneous than in years past. To the tune of 5,000 registered attendees. All of which is a good thing, in my humble opinion.

What will be interesting, from my perspective as a long term attendee of the show, will be how the fate of JavaOne may be influenced by the rise of the aforementioned CommunityOne. As a systems vendor, it has always been in Sun’s best interests to encourage deployments beyond Java, even if they haven’t always realized it. CommunityOne, increasingly, is the embodiment of that idea, and with MySQL now in the fold the diversity of the event is ever greater.

So the question on many minds, including mine, is this: at what point does CommunityOne eat JavaOne? Such a combination, while logical on paper from where I sit, would nonetheless pose some complexity and scope problems: the conference is already enormous. Still, as the O’Reilly folks point out regularly, the trajectories for non-Java languages are fairly unambiguous. While Java remains an enormous community full of developers and jobs for said developers, the world is - more than ever - bigger than Java. As folks like Senor Bray have helped to drive home.

Whatever CommunityOne and JavaOne end up being called, I know that I’ll be in attendance. It’s rare, after all, that I get the opportunity to collect an audience of this caliber in one place, ply them with booze, and just listen.

That’s worth a couple of days of my time, easily.

Disclosure: Sun, the primary organizer of JavaOne, is a RedMonk client and comped hotel expenses for the trip.

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links for 2008-05-08

2008-05-08T00:31:04-05:00

hackety org » Sneaking Ruby Through Google App Engine (and Other Strictly Python Places)

just…wow

(tags: ruby python google appengine bytecode compiler via:rafe)

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The Story of RedMonkTwo

2008-05-06T16:51:25-05:00

redmonkone

Originally uploaded by sogrady

Things were dire. Perhaps not quite as dire as The Contrarian might argue, but suboptimal. Intending to lower the barriers to participation in a series of CommunityOne events, all of the tracks were housed under a single roof. A single roof over a cavernous, uncarpeted space mottled with round tables, plastic chairs and thin, futile sound barriers.

But you know what? RedMonkOne was - again - a success, in spite of some long odds. At least as I judge such things. Thunderous easy listening last year, air raid sirens and bullhorns this year, you just can’t keep the RedMonk community down.

Because the day really was about the community, not us. Whether it’s Ian Murdock, Mårten Mickos, and Neelan Choksi stopping by to talk about open source business models, Ted Leung leading a discussion on dynamic languages (yes, Python came up), Mike Pittaro building RESTful web services, Mik Kersten talking Eclipse and Mylyn, Danese Cooper on what it’s like working for big cos, James and others leading a session on corporate Twittering, we had an excellent slate of content and sessions - venue be damned (seriously).

If you don’t buy that, just look at the scene for the 5 PM RIA discussion, which featured representatives from Adobe, Sun, Google, and pretty much everyone else that has ever contemplated offering (or killing) an RIA platform.

A couple of the sessions have notes which, when the dust settles from the show, will be posted online, but for those that missed the day, well, you missed something solid. You also missed a couple of hundred dollars worth of free beers and vodka sodas here. (For the folks that got there right at 9 as originally requested, my apologies for being late: herding people is time consuming).

Given the success of the day, some thanks are in order. First, we’d like to thank Sun for the opportunity and the venue - problematic though it may have been. It speaks well of the firm, I think, that they afford us this venue to meet with all of you. Second, I’d like to thank our sponsors Atlassian, who not only made up a t-shirt that I would actually wear, they kicked in cash to cover said beers and vodka sodas. Third, I’d like to thank everyone who came in to speak at the conference; I know many of the folks involved had literally a 45 minute window to spare durating the day, and the fact that they’d take advantage of that to speak at our track is both flattering and humbling. Hugely appreciated.

But last, and most trite, we at RedMonk would like to thank each and every one of the folks that took the time to attend a session, participate in a discussion, and make the day a success irrespective of the numerous distractions of sound and people. It would have been easy to get discouraged by the setting and abandon the effort straight out of the gate, but all of you chose to make the best of it, and did you ever. I can’t speak for any of you, but that was, to me, a day well spent. Would that I had more of those.

So thanks to everyone involved, and we hope to be back next year to see you (and we’ll get a better venue, we promise).

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links for 2008-05-06

2008-05-06T00:34:08-05:00

Final reward - The Boston Globe

yes, i’d like this

(tags: ashes fenway park redsox baseball)
ESPN.com - Rockies sinking fast

“Matt Cain has allowed two earned runs or less in nine of his last 12 starts, and has two victories to show for it.” - wow, poor Cain. he lost a 2 hit game against us last summer, i believe. same day i got shut out over on the Back River.

(tags: mattcain pitcher sanfrancisco giants)

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links for 2008-05-05

2008-05-05T00:30:49-05:00

Getting the most out of your computer system(s): Verizon DSL “Doesn’t Support Linux!!” It works just fine if you can connect to the modem.

yet another reason to dislike Verizon. no one’s asking for Linux help - we can do that ourselves - but why should the installation process be so complicated and require an installer? took me 90 seconds to get set up on Comcast.

(tags: verizon dsl linux setup broadband support via:marcia)

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links for 2008-05-04

2008-05-04T00:31:25-05:00

Twitter / Tara missrogue Hunt: OH: Baby, sometimes I think…

amen

(tags: continuous-partial-attention disconnectionanxiety internet addiction)
soundamus - new and upcoming music releases from the artists you listen to

it’s amazing that it takes third parties to come up with this kind of hugely useful service, but perhaps it shouldn’t be: there are few industries less innovative and creative than the music industry.

(tags: music mashup last.fm personal releases discovery riaa via:gfmorris)
Michael Schur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

i had no idea that Ken Tremendous of FireJoeMorgan.com fame was actually Michael Schur, a writer for the Office. though i don’t watch the show, i hear good things, so it shouldn’t surprise me that FJM is as good as it is.

(tags: firejoemorgan fjm theoffice kentremendous michaelschur writer)
Lauren Cooney’s Blog: New Changes, New Places, New Faces

congrats to Lauren on the new gig; we’ll miss working with her over at IBM’s IM division, but i’m sure we’ll hear from her in the new role.

(tags: microsoft hiring ibm developers laurencooney)
Vin Scully clarifies remarks on retirement - Los Angeles Times

though i’m not a Dodgers fan and thus get to hear him but rarely, Scully is a pure joy to listen to. here’s hoping he doesn’t call it quits.

(tags: vinscully baseball la dodgers)
rc3.org — Why food is becoming more expensive

“There are plenty of problems with large scale farming, in terms of quality of food, threats to the environment, badly implemented government subsidies, and so on. At the same time, it’s the only way to feed everyone cheaply and efficiently.”

(tags: farming sustainability industrial scale government subsidies agriculture)

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Maine Landing

2008-05-03T04:58:48-05:00

View Larger Map

For the curious, I made it. To Maine.

The journey wasn’t so fun, and I was unable to escape some minor claw damage, but Az and I made it. As the Twitter followers may already be aware, the experiment cooked up my highly recommended Denver vet, Dr. Cassie Todd, and myself to try Valium as a superior alternative to the mild sedative Az uses for long distance travel was unsuccessful. Like an adult on Ritalin, she became more powerful and more angry, rather than less. To the point that I was being actively stalked.

So back to the Acepromazine we went, which makes the transit maybe five or ten percent less miserable by inducing symptoms in felines that would be familiar to anyone who’s spent a long night at the House of Shields. Or had one too many Dark ‘N Stormies.

Once here, however, all is forgiven. Az and I may love Maine for different reasons, but we’re both fans of Vacationland. Where I enjoy being on the water and near the Sox, the cottages here are paradise for a city-dwelling cat deprived of squirrels, birds and field mice to visually hunt through the window.

In other news, my storms follow, as usual. The day I left Denver, it snowed. Hard. Yesterday, with me gone? Beautiful. The weather here in Maine has shown a greater resistance, but none can stand for long: Sunday’s forecast includes the always enjoyable rain/fog combo along with highs in the 40’s. My apologies to everyone involved.

Speaking of Sunday, I’ll be here in Maine until then, at which point I’ll be en route out to San Francisco for the RedMonk Unconference @ CommunityOne (which you all are hereby ordered to attend) and JavaOne. Arriving late night Sunday, I’ll be departing Wednesday back to Maine. Unlike last year, I had my car shipped out to Maine via truck transport, so I don’t have to stop back in Denver to drive it out. For which I’m truly thankful.

Just as I’m thankful for the opportunity to be live in two geographies, as I do. While I’ll miss my Denver friends and the ability to walk to virtually anything of any consequence - town is 9 miles away from Georgetown - it’s great to be here. Any of you that were already here should get in touch, incidentally; let’s grab lunch or a beer or something. Preferably over a Sox game.

Couple of logistical notes:

Bandwidth

It’s unlikely to be an issue because I’m away the early part of next week anyhow, but there may be a day or two where I’m here yet stuck with EDGE bandwidth rather than DSL. Part of this is Verizon’s fault, because they butchered the provisioning process and hung up my order for 10 days or so. But most of it is a simple lack of intelligence on my part. The keys to the cottage that actually has the phone line in it are, of course, on my keychain. The one that’s with my car, currently being shipped across the country and thus unavailable to me. I told you I was sharp.

Anyway, until the car gets here DSL will remain offline.

Mailing Address

In preparation for the transition out here, and after some reassurance from their staff, I did in fact decide to engage the Earth Class Mail forwarding service so please direct all your correspondence - regular, package or otherwise - to the following address:

Stephen O’Grady [or RedMonk]
ECM #6075
93 S. Jackson St
Seattle, WA 98104-2818

If you’re sending anything, in fact, to our Denver address in an effort to get it to one of my colleagues, please redirect it instead to that address or contact them for direct shipping.

Phone Numbers

As always, I’m always reachable via my cell or, better, Grand Central. The toll-free, in theory, is in the process of being repointed to a Grand Central like equivalent (if only because Grand Central doesn’t offer the ability to port in toll-free numbers), but at the current time it still rings my Denver number so expect some latency if you leave voicemail there.

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links for 2008-05-02

2008-05-02T00:31:00-05:00

delicious blog » Firefox 3, del.icio.us, and you

nice to have this bookmark back, finally

(tags: firefox 3 del.icio.us extensions extension plugin beta addon)

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links for 2008-05-01

2008-05-01T00:30:30-05:00

The Perfect Laptop - Unboxing the X300 - All Things Distributed

Werner digs his X300. much like i do.

(tags: wernervogels x300 lenovo thinkpad laptop)
How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory

“The best programming team is a “telephone call,” which is two people, you and I, programming together. The second-best programming team is, everybody fits into a single room. All other variants are bad.”

(tags: ericschmidt google innovation management development)
Would you like a usb hub with that Air, Sir? « Getting Technical

the ad’s not hilarious, but is amusing

(tags: usb macbook air lenovo x300 form function)

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