Tag Archives: Portland

OSCON 2011: Wednesday

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Today marks my first day of the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, since I chose to only attend the sessions this year. I will also depart with my tradition of writing a post for every session I attend. I enjoyed it in the past, but it adds more stress and distraction than I’d like this year. Instead, I plan to relax and enjoy each session I attend. I’ll still take a few notes, but I’ll limit myself to recapping an entire day in a single post.

I had breakfast in my hotel’s restaurant this morning, a mistake I won’t make again —over half the plate was composed of potatoes and toast, leaving little room for the eggs and sausage—. It was an easy walk to the Cascades MAX station, until I saw the train arriving before me. I likely could have made it onto the train had I sprinted, but I also had to buy a ticket, so I let it go. Fortunately, it was the beginning of the morning commute, so another train was not far behind.

This morning’s keynotes were dry. At least, I didn’t find them at all interesting. Well, except for one. I enjoyed Ariel Waldman’s brief talk about Hacking Space Exploration. It reminded me that I don’t spend nearly enough time on Galaxy Zoo.

The final keynote was a so-called surprise announcement. We were first treated to a video in which a bunch of big names in technology—Bill Joy, Tim O’Reilly, and Al Gore to name a few—gushed over the possibilities of commodity cloud computing. All that build up ended up being nothing more then a lead-in to an overblown advertisement for something called Nebula. While the idea of open and commodity elastic compute is cool, I have difficulty taking something seriously when it’s surrounded by as much hype as I saw during the keynote. Maybe I’m alone in this, but OSCON doesn’t really seem like the right venue to go heavy on marketing and light on technical detail. Maybe those of us sitting in the ballroom weren’t the real audience for the announcement. Perhaps they were just using the large and popular conference as a way of getting media attention.

So, what sessions did I attend?

About half way through OSCON last year, I realized that attending Perl sessions was mostly a waste of my time. They tended to fall into two categories: stuff I already knew and web development (which I don’t do). Where do I end up for the first session of this conference? In Perl 5.14 for Pragmatists, presented by Ricardo Signes. For anyone who has read the Perl release notes (perl*delta), very little of what was presented will be novel. However, it was very useful to see the relative emphasis placed on different features by someone as familiar with Perl as Ricardo. In particular, fully half of the session was dedicated to Perl’s improved Unicode support. As Ricardo stated, Unicode isn’t going away, so we need to get better at working with it.

After attending a session of some relevance to my profession, I wanted to take advantage of a series of back-to-back sessions of a more personal interest. My passions of late have leaned towards health, fitness, and, in particular, a more so-called primal lifestyle. So I was excited to see the session Geeking in a Cabin in the Woods, presented by Ryo Chijiiwa on the schedule. Previously employed as a software engineer at Yahoo! and then Google, Ryo took us through the history and motivation behind quitting his job, buying 60 acres of barren land in northern California, and simplifying his life by living on it. It was a fascinating tale of overcoming challenges. Part of me would love to do exactly what he did. Ryo has a blog (with a really cool domain name) where he writes about his experiences.

Following in the same basic genre, I next attended Sarah Sharp’s talk on Growing Food with Open Source. Sarah is a Linux kernel hacker who also enjoys gardening. Being a lazy hacker (I can relate), she wants to automate all of the mundane, tedious work that comes with a hobby like gardening. She’s written code to manage planting calendars, hoping to eventually integrate it with a service like Remember the Milk, and an Android app to alert her of impending weather conditions that could affect her garden. The most impressive piece was the work she’s done to create an automatic watering system, using home-made moisture sensors and Arduinos. More information can be found on a site I will soon be spending a lot of time on, Garden Geek.

My earliest computer-related memory is playing text adventures on our Apple Macintosh, circa 1984. For that reason, I was excited to attend Ben Collins-Sussman’s talk on The Unexpected Resurgence of Interactive Fiction. So excited, in fact, that I passed up a session r0ml was presenting. Ben took us through a brief history of interactive fiction, from Adventure to present day. He talked about both the science and the art of the genre as both have evolved over the years. He focused primarily on the Inform language and the Glulx virtual machine (not to mention current efforts to produce a web browser-based player), which leads me to think that there isn’t much point in putting any more effort into playing with TADS. He also mentioned the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which I love and have participated as a judge in for the last several years. This session has gotten me excited about interactive fiction again, after mostly ignoring it as a hobby for the last few years. I have a couple of ideas for games that I’d like to enter into the competition, which I should finally get started on.

For the final two sessions of the day, I decided to return to my core competency, and arguably the whole reason I’m here, and sat down in the Perl room. Damian Conway talked about (Re)Developing in Perl 6. I’ve previously attended his six hour class on this topic, but it was a nice refresher, since I don’t use Perl 6 regularly. He guided us through porting a handful of his modules—Acme::Don't, IO::Insitu, IO::Prompter, and Smart::Comments—from Perl 5 to Perl 6. Each of these modules was selected as a representative of a given method used to port the code. In the simplest case, a basic transliteration can be used. For some modules, new features of Perl 6 can be used to replace long pieces of code; argument lists are a great example. Finally, the ability to extend the grammar removes the need for source filters and allows the programmer to seamlessly add language features.

I ended my day with a session on improving code performance: Sooner, Cheaper, Better — Optimization on a Budget, presented by Eric Wilhelm. I didn’t find it very well organized or delivered, which is a shame, because I’ve seen him present before and he was rather good. After introducing us to the Rules of Optimization Club, Eric took us through a number of real world examples in which optimization might prove to be a waste of time. Old hat for a lot of people, I know. In fact, many people just wait for computers to get faster. However, he then switched gears into a more interesting problem. With today’s advances coming in the form of more cores rather than more speed, optimization was replaced with parallelization. The same rules apply and it’s good to remember that.

Following the last session of the day, a booth crawl was held in the expo hall. This involved setting up food and drink tables at the booths of various vendors, the idea being to bribe attendees to approach them. There was beer, possibly wine, and the food leaned heavily towards cookies and grain-wrapped items. I wandered around, played a Mario Kart-like Pac-Man multi-player racing game on an Android tablet at the QuIC booth, ate a bunch of cheese, and left at 7:00 PM …

To attend the .vimrc birds of a feather (BOF) session. A .vimrc, oft pronounced vim-wreck, is the name of the configuration file Vim uses. It’s more than a configuration file, though; it’s a full scripting engine, which provides quite a bit of potential for customization of one’s editor. Damian Conway, famed teacher of Vim, Perl, and myriad other topics, was in attendance. As expected, the entirety of the session was spent learning about some of the neat, as yet unreleased, scripts Damian has been working on for Vim.

I didn’t have it in me to attend any of the evening events. I was aware of two parties, but I neither wanted to drink nor stay out late. Unlike years past, I haven’t been very social this year, either. Instead, I made the relatively long trip back to my hotel, where I wrote this post (well, just the first draft; I finished it on Thursday morning over the lousy coffee provided by the Oregon Convention Center) and turned in early.

OSCON 2011: Tuesday

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This marks the fourth time in five years I’ve attended the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). I skipped it in 2009, when it took place in San Jose. This year the convention is back in Portland, Oregon, as it was last year. So I’m here, too.

Unlike in previous years, I didn’t show up on Sunday to explore Portland and attend the Monday tutorials. I didn’t want to spend an entire week away from home, but at the same time, nothing I saw on the tutorial schedule interested me. So I flew up Tuesday afternoon and plan to return on Friday night.

Most of the hotels near the Oregon Convention Center (OCC) were booked up, and I left my itinerary planning to someone else (who is unfamiliar with Portland), so I’m staying at the Courtyard Marriott by the airport. This wouldn’t be so bad, but, according to Google Maps, it’s a 1.2 mile walk to the Cascades MAX station.

Anyway, after getting settled in my hotel room, I headed to the OCC to meet up with my friend, Jonathan. I made it in time to register, pick up my swag, and grab some cheese and beer on the expo floor. I wandered over to the QuIC booth to chat and saw a nice demo of Android and HTML 5 applications running on Qualcomm demonstration hardware. It really showed off the power of the platform.

We decided not to stick around for the so-called OSCON Carnival, so hopped across the river on the MAX and looked around for dinner. In our wanderings, we dropped into Bailey’s Taproom to use the bathroom and have a beer. The bartender recommended the Davis Street Tavern for a good burger paired with a good tap list. I ended up having seared scallops, which were quite good. After dinner, we wandered over to the Puppet Labs party, where I got a souvenir Open Source Lab beer mug.

Bailing fairly early on the party, I caught the MAX red line back over the river and on to the Cascades station. The hotel’s shuttle driver had warned me against the walk, pointing out that there are no sidewalks. However, Google directed me away from the main road and through a business park. I don’t know why people are so averse to walking more than a couple of blocks. I found the walk to be quite pleasant, and there are blackberry brambles growing wild along the streets, providing snacking opportunities. It takes me back to childhood trips to the Pacific Northwest, when I would pick wild blackberries with my grandfather.

Back at the hotel, I grimaced at what they call a fitness center, swam a bit in the poor excuse for a pool, and soaked in the hot tub. Then it was off to bed, because, unlike the lucky folks staying near the OCC, I have to wake up in time for a 20 minute walk followed by a 25 minute MAX ride.

OSCON 2010: Tuesday

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I returned from the O’Reilly Open Source Convention three weeks ago, and I’ve had drafts for my Tuesday through Friday travel posts sitting around since then. I’ve finally found a moment on a lazy Sunday afternoon to enjoy a pint of ale while writing. Although, it is a beautiful day, which I’d be spending outdoors if my family weren’t sick (and I’m not convinced I’m altogether healthy).

Tuesday was the second and final day of the tutorial sessions. In the morning I attended a tutorial on PostgreSQL’s new hot stand-by and streaming replication features; and, in the afternoon I attended part of a tutorial on Cassandra. Why only part? I’ll get to that.

I didn’t feel like going across the river to the food trucks for lunch, so I joined Debbie for lunch at Burgerville. Aside from the delicious food made from local ingredients, there are two things that struck me about Burgerville. The first I noticed when I walked in the door: for the first time, disposing of my trash would require me to read instructions. Burgerville uses three bins for trash: one for recyclable materials, one for compost, and finally one for trash that can neither be recycled nor composted. I thought this was neat, though I did get a kick out of the soft drink cup. It’s from the Coca-Cola company and advertises itself as something that can be composted; with the footnote that this was only possible in a large facility capable of composting such cups. Not something one can throw into their garden compost pile, I guess. The second thing I noticed caused me immediate regret: the receipt lists the calorie count of the foods ordered, along with carbohydrate and fiber content. Looking over the details of the burger, onion rings, and raspberry milkshake I ordered, I decided that it would not be a very paleo day for me. Oh well, the milkshake was very good.

While enjoying our carb-loaded, calorie-filled lunch, Debbie noticed someone wearing a pair of Vibram FiveFingers that we hadn’t seen before. From a distance, they looked almost like normal shoes and appeared to be made with a dark brown suede. With both of us deciding that a post-lunch, calorie-burning walk was called for, and sharing a desire to buy a new pair of FiveFingers, we set out for Portland’s REI store. A trip on the MAX, a walk, a few blocks on the trolley, and another walk brought us to the store.

The shoes turned out to be the KSO Trek. They’re very nice and I’m considering purchasing a pair for hiking. Unfortunately, I struck out on the trip. REI has been having a hard time keeping FiveFingers in stock, so I wasn’t able to find or buy a pair of the Classic version. Fortunately, I’m still satisfied with my KSOs, which I was wearing at the time.

Our impromptu quest for footwear took us well beyond the alloted time for lunch. Fortunately, this time was not wasted. While walking, we had received a call from our coworker back in the expo hall, who needed help setting up the QuIC booth. For some reason, it was fun being allowed into the expo hall while booths were still being constructed. Not sure why, other than that I enjoy seeing things taken apart and (sometimes) being put back together. After getting the booth set up, I made it to the second half of the Cassandra tutorial. I’m told by those who attended the first half that I didn’t miss much.

We had some time to kill between the end of the day’s sessions and the evening’s Ignite talks. So we walked a few blocks to a place called rontoms. Had I not been looking for the specific address, I would have walked right past, not noticing that this was either a restaurant or a bar. The cavernous interior was devoid of anyone save the bartender and a waitress, who would disappear as quickly as she appeared. The photographs on the wall, ost of which featured a man in an animal costume, ranged from strange to disturbing. After a moment’s hesitation, we ventured out back to find a patio crowded with patrons enjoying food, beer, and spirits. With what appeared to be only a single waitress working and not having particularly strong appetites, we went back inside, obtained pints directly from the bartender, and found a comfortable area to sit and chat. Twice we encountered people entering the restaurant, looking for people they didn’t know by sight. Both times my colleagues convinced them that we were those people; one girl even sat down with us for a few minutes before we let her in on the joke. After a while, I received a page from Jonathan that there was beer, salami, and cheese being served outside the ballroom at the convention center. This sounded like an excellent and delicious dinner to me, so I made my way back.

I hadn’t been to an Ignite session before, so I was looking forward to this one. Right off the bat we were warned that we would likely enjoy some talks and dislike others. Fortunately, each talk would only last five minutes, so we were free to use the time to retrieve another beer. By the time we returned, the talk would be over. I don’t believe I took advantage of this, instead waiting for the break, during which some awards were being presented.

Two talks stand out in my memory. The first, perhaps appropriately, was the first in the lineup: Paul Fenwick talking about Maximum XP: Optimising life for adventure (which he gave again, at a much better pace, at the Perl Lightning Talks). Presented in song, Paul’s message seemed to be to enjoy travel and to take advantage of opportunities to meet people and have fun. Based on what I’ve read on his Twitter stream, I’d say he’s been successful.

The other talk, Your Infinite Do-Loop Exercises Bores Me, struck a chord with me. John Scott and Jim Stogdill paired up for this talk, one would perform exercises while the other would speak, switching places at the halfway mark. Not only was it refreshing to see a talk about fitness at a convention populated by a class of people not known for their physical exertion, but it was about a method of fitness I’ve recently become interested in. While I don’t practice CrossFit myself, I frequently look at the exercises on the site and prefer it to the typical, repetitive gym workout. They also mentioned the paleo diet, which, along with the primal lifestyle, I’ve become a big fan of.

My coworkers all turned in early, so I hopped back on the MAX and headed downtown to have drinks with Kevin at Bailey’s Tap Room. I had a wonderful sour beer, which I no longer remember the name or origin of, and had the pleasure of meeting Steve, Jeff, and Michael Schwern. Jeff and Schwern were discussing the use of the Log4perl module in the latter’s gitpan project.

After last call at Bailey’s, I caught the last yellow line across the river and turned in myself.

OSCON 2010: Monday

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Beer Samples at Rogue I awoke early on this first day of theO’Reilly Open Source Convention so I could have breakfast with Juan at his hotel. At first I thought fresh-made omelettes, bacon, and sausage were simply a better choice than the fruit and pastries offered at the Oregon Convention Center. As it turns out, no breakfast was offered at all. After breakfast, a short ride on the MAX delivered us to OSCON. I’ve already written about the tutorials, so I won’t mention them here.

For lunch, I met up with some coworkers and some friends to head across the river for lunch at Old Town Pizza. I had a small sausage and mushroom pizza, and washed that down with a pale ale.

After the Arduino tutorial, having sat down for much of the day, I grew restless. I really wanted to take a walk. More importantly, I really wanted to make my way over to Rogue Ales Public House for some beer. So I called Jonathan and we made our way over there. We each started with a four beer sampler.

I started with the Chatoe Oregasmic, finding it to be a pleasant, light pale ale with moderate hoppiness. Upon tasting it, one of my coworkers commented that it was what he expected the pale ale, which he had ordered to be.

Second in line was the Double Mocha Porter. It had a faint mocha aroma, but very little of this made its way to my pallette. I could detect a hint of smokiness, if I concentrated on it.  For something advertised as a double mocha, I was disappointed.

Having enjoyed Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale in the past, I chose for my third beer the Double Dead Guy Ale.  I don’t think I was fair to this beer. The name made me think of Stone’s Double Bastard and the Double Dead Guy Ale is nothing like that. Even so, I found it smooth with a pleasant maltiness and light hop flavors.

Saving what I expected to be the best for last, I finished with the Brutal IPA While nicely hopped, I was left disappointed after building my expectations on what I consider to be its undeserved moniker. Once I got over that, I still found it to be a perfectly enjoyabl beer. It had mild malty notes and, like the other Rogue ales I sampled, it too was smooth.  I found it to be an all around decent IPA.  Since Juan wasn’t able to join us for dinner, I bought a bottle of the Brutal IPA to share with him later.

After I had finished my samples, it was the decision of those in my party that I was criminally without beer and that, to pay penance, I was to order the Issaquah Menage A Frog.  When the bartender told me it was only available in a 12 ounce glass, I suspected that an imperial style ale.  The aroma and taste soon confirmed this.  Coming in at 9% ABV, it was not as strong as some of the ales I occasionally drink back home in San Diego, but it went very well with the beer and cheese stew I had for dinner.

And now it’s late, just a few minutes until two o’clock in the morning. I should have closed my computer and gone to bed hours ago, but I refused to do so knowing that my first day of OSCON blog entries were unfinished. Hopefully, I will have more food and beer to write about tomorrow.

OSCON 2010: Travel Day

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It’s late Sunday night.  Actually, it’s early Monday morning.  I’m in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON).  For the weeks leading up to this trip, I’ve felt some trepedation.  This is the first time I’ve been away from my daughter for more than a couple of days.  Now that I’m here, though, I’m beginning to enjoy myself.

At the beginning of the trip, I ran into a coworker, Juan, at the airport in San Diego, who was on his way to OSCON, too.  We weren’t able to sit together on the flight, but that worked out in the end.  A man was traveling with his son of around five years.  The son had the seat next to mine, while the father was several rows back.  I offered to trade seats with the father, so he could sit with his son.  One of the flight attendants bought me a beer for my trouble.  On top of all that, the we arrived in Portland earlier than expected.

After checking into our respective hotels, we swung by the Oregon Convention Center to register for OSCON and pick up our badges and associated crap.  Actually, a mug was included in the bag o’ stuff, which I can actually use.  Plus, the bag can be kept in the trunk of my car for use at farmers markets.

Finally, it was time for dinner.  Juan and I met up with a friend of mine from the San Diego Perl Mongers and hopped on the MAX to head downtown.  After wandering around aimlessly for a bit, I searched for Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub on my phone and we found it in short order, taking a seat out back in their new beer garden.  I washed a corned beef and turkey sandwich down with three pints of Mt. Hood Ice Axe IPA and one pint of Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale.  Shortly after we finished our food, we were joined by two more coworkers, who ordered some food of their own.  We spent some time doing what one does in an Irish pub, namely drinking and talking, then we made a failed attempt to find coffee.

That brings an end to OSCON travel day.  Tomorrow morning I will head to the convention center for breakfast and will hopefully run into more people I know (or will meet new friends).  I have two tutorials scheduled for tomorrow: Introduction to 3D Animation with Blender and Get Started with the Arduino – A Hands-On Introductory Workshop. I know these tutorials don’t appear obviously relevent to my job, but I’m looking at them as useful for relaxing and enriching.  One of the reasons I like to attend OSCON is because I return to work refreshed and with a state of mind more prone to imagining creative solutions.  So, tutorials outside of my immediate area of expertise are exactly what I need when I come here.

Belly Up to the Bar, We’re Geniuses

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During the morning tutorial at OSCON, Dan’s MacBook Pro refused to boot. We tried a few tricks, but gave up fairly quickly, since we didn’t want to miss any of Damian Conway’s Perl Worst Practices tutorial. Fortunately, there’s an Apple Store across the river at Pioneer Place. So we met up with Alice as Dan, Al, Brad, and I headed over to the mall for our lunch break.

Unfortunately, the first appointment Dan could get at the Genius Bar is for 8:00 AM Wednesday morning. The girl who entered his appointment asked about the problem and, while he was describing it, I noticed that the computer wasn’t turning off. I flipped it over, took out the battery, replaced the battery, flipped it right, and turned it on. We were hopeful at first, as the login screen came up, but the screen went dark again.

Or did it?

Upon closer inspection, the display was on, but the back light wasn’t. Al stepped up to squint at the display and attempt to reboot the machine so he could reset the NVRAM. In what I expected was a futile move, I pulled out a flash light and aimed it at the Apple logo behind the screen. It illuminated just enough for Al to locate the cursor and get the system to reboot.

After the reset and the reboot, Dan’s computer is working again. I asked for a genius badge, but they didn’t seem interested in letting me have one.

OSCON 2008: Day 2

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It’s Tuesday morning in Portland and, after last night’s festivities, I’m glad there is fruit and coffee available for breakfast at the Oregon Convention Center. The coffee is Starbucks and the fruit isn’t ripe, but it’s a welcome sustenance this morning. With approximately an hour before the morning tutorials, people are slowly beginning to filter into the expo hall in search of food.

I have a fun day lined up. This morning I will attend Perl Worst Practices in Portland 252. I’m looking forward to this tutorial, particularly because it’s being taught by Damian Conway. I—as well as my boss, I’m sure—am excited about the prospect of putting these practices to work when I return to my job next week.

After the lunch break, which will probably be spent across the river again, I am signed up for Real Time 3D on the Web with Open Source in E143/144, being taught by Matthew Edwards. I’m not sure what to expect from this session. A week prior to the conference, I received an e-mail instructing me to download a set of programs, including Blender and Inkscape. This is well out of the ordinary for me, so I’m not sure what to expect. I hope it will be fun, but if not, I may duck out and into the Practical Erlang Programming in Portland 256, which Al is attending.

A half hour now until my first tutorial. Time enough for more coffee.

Monday Night Entertainment

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After the tutorials on Monday, talk on the #oscon IRC channel turned to dinner. Brad, Al, and I decided we should go in search of beer, regardless of what people wanted to do for dinner. After dropping our conference crap off in our respective hotel rooms, we met up at the conference center MAX station. Joining our party was Jonathan, from my San Diego Perl Mongers group, and Alice, Brad’s wife.

We started the night at Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub on the other side of the Willamette. The hostess there was extremely attractive, even if some in our party made note of how young she appeared. As it’s rude to ask a woman her age, I refrained from doing so. After a few beers and sweet potato fries, we needed to find food. So we decided on Italian, and Mama Mia Trattoria fit the bill. Near the end of dinner, I received a text message from Dan. He and his fellow Tierranet attendees were at Paddy’s Bar and Grill. So we made our way over there for a few more pints.

We called it a night before the MAX stopped running, and made our ways back to our respective hotels. Dan and I happen to both be staying at the Marriott and, as we passed by the bar, we saw his fellow coworkers. Not only that, but the barmaid, at that very moment, announced last call. Not wanting to pass up such a coincidence, Dan and I sat down for another pint.

Not satisfied with the early hour, Dan and I decided to walk down to American Cowgirls, a bar across the street from the Oregon Convention Center. Unfortunately, the bar is closed on Sunday and Monday, so we ended up calling it a night and heading back to our rooms.

Ah, but it’s only Monday night, and OSCON runs through Friday. It will be a good week.

OSCON 2008: Monday Lunch

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Rather than settle for the box lunches in the expo hall, a handful of us decided to hop on the MAX for a quick trip across the river for food. We ended up at the back of a truck ordering Mexican food. I had a carnitas burrito and a guava soda. It was quite a lot better than the box lunch (I will safely assume). Actually, one of our number had grabbed a box lunch before heading out. He thoughtfully passed it on to a hungry young woman playing guitar on a street corner.

Bound for OSCON

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In a few short hours, I will pack for my trip to Portland, Ore. for the 10th annual O’Reilly Open Source Conference. This will be my third time attending, and I’m looking forward to seeing friends from past years, as well as meeting new ones.

Though I don’t do it very often, I really do enjoy visiting places away from home. Unfortunately, I don’t often enjoy the act of getting there. It seems that the sole purpose of the US airline industry is to make things as inconvenient as possible for travelers. They’re not alone, however. When they’re not up to the task, the US government, in the form of the TSA, steps in to take up the slack.

Most of the time, my trips are uneventful and I end up getting worked up for nothing. Last year, though, my checked luggage ended up on a different flight than I did. Fortunately, both of those flights were bound for Portland, so my suitcase was delivered to the hotel later that same evening. Here’s hoping my trip tomorrow is uneventful.