Koozie Notes

Lone Star Ruby Conference

I attended the annual Lone Star Ruby Conference (27-28 AUG 2010) in Austin, and needed a place to keep some of my notes.  To of my goals after attending the conference:

1. Give the VIM text editor another shot.  Currently use UltraEdit on windows and Textmate on Mac.
2. Learn Git, a popular DVCS

Videos were taken at the Lone Star Ruby Conference.

--Chris

Airfare to Gnomedex Price Drop

Today, I noticed that American Airlines reduced their airfare listing on a few Austin/Seattle routes I kept tabs on, so I went ahead and purchased my AA tickets to fly up to Seattle to attend Gnomedex 7.0.  I haven't attended Chris Pirillo's conference since version 4, which was held in Tahoe I believe, but I'm definitely looking forward to attending this one in Seattle.

Now, I still need to decide on my hotel options.  Any recommendations?

-Chris

SXSW: AJAX

AJAX
11 MAR 2006 @ 11:30

Jesse James Garret started off this session by telling the story of how he came up with the term AJAX.  He basically needed a hook so that business people would understand his presentation without having to listen to a bunch of geeky tech talk.

Dylan Schiemann presented information on the available libraries and tool kits which support AJAX development.  I was surprised with the amount of choices.

Dori Smith played devil advocate by listing some of the pitfalls to poor AJAX design.  She also mentioned she authored a few books, including Java and Javascript.

SXSW: Podcasting

Podcasting 2.0
11 MAR 2006 @ 10:00

Chris Pirillo setup this presentation as a general Q&A session on Podcasting.  Some interesting and lively discussion followed.

• Print media wanted to know how to convert their in house talent into a new media of drive time podcasting.  How should they go about recruiting talent to product the show.  In house vs. outside contract work.

• Another attendee brought up the problem of trying to search for a US senator name in all podcasts.  Sounded like he needed a news clipping service that catered to indexing podcasts.
• Advertising metric for measuring the audience of podcasts was brought up by numerous times.  A clear solution like CPM didn't appear.  Most of the panelists pushed Branding.

SXSW Interactive

Today, I'm heading to downtown Austin.  SXSW Interactive begins this morning at 10:00 am and I'm looking forward to the presentations.

-Chris

Linucon 2.0: History of the Internet

History of the Internet
John Quarterman  [Blog]
7:00PM on 1 OCT 2005

I took hardly any notes during this session because the lights were off during the slide show presentation.  John did post all the books he mentioned during his talk on his blog.

I generated the same list with links to Amazon.

1. The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide
2. Casting the Net
3. Where Wizards Stay Up Late
4. The Victorian Internet
5. Neuromancer

Linucon 2.0: Running a Small Online Business

Running a Small Online Business
Howard Tayler & Giles Schildt
11:00 AM on 1 OCT 2005

I must admit that I never read Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary prior to attending this session on running an online business. 

Howard gave a wonderful presentation on how he made the transition from getting a paycheck to running your own online business.

First, He covered some basics like coming up with a business plan.   His strip generates revenue from online advertising, merchandising (with superior help from Warehouse 23), and pay-pal donations.

Howard is leveraging the power of Google Adsense to increase his revenue from online advertising.  He did mentioned that you need to have a backup plan just in case your ad provider decides to terminate your account.  As an example, he told the story of how Google shut down his adsense account in their third month.  He did get his account re-instated with the help of some Google employee that happened to be Schlock Mercenary fans.

Focus on your strengths.  Howard can do three things really well and he wanted two of them to be his drawing and writing. He knew that trying to maintain and move inventory can be huge pain so he partnered up with Warehouse 23 to handle all of his merchandising for his strip.

Overall I really enjoyed this session.  Howard posted his own short review on this session as well.

Linucon 2.0: Linux Security & Optimization

Optimizing Linux
Stu Green
10:00 PM on 30 SEP 2005

I have to admit that most of the material presented here was over my head.  I just not that familiar with tools used to optimize Linux programs.  I have used top before to see what is sucking up my computer performance.

Stu did ask the attendees if anyone had investigated extended attributes on their systems.  He mentioned that people are working on interesting applications by using these attributes as means of associated files with their applications.

Computer Security
Stu Green
11:00 pm on 30 SEP 2005

Most of the discussion during this session center around Stu presenting the Six Dumbest Things in Computer Security by Marcus Ranum. 

Using a Uninterrupted Power Supply "UPS" to clean the incoming power was also mentioned.  Someone also added that they track down a problem a network problem that was caused by power fluctuations in their router.

Linucon 2.0

I'm finally getting around to posting some of the notes I took during Linucon 2.0 held in Austin, Texas on 30 SEP - 2 OCT 2005.

Early History of Computers
9:00pm on 30 SEP 2005
Tom Morin & Bill Allen

I arrived a little late to this one hour session.  Bill and Tom took turns telling their tales.  Bill Allen told some funny stories about his time he spent working at MIT, including the time he crased their system by switching to radix 7. 

The first computer game they remember playing was called Space War. Bill devised a clever technique that would allow him to beat his opponent each time he played.

Other Notes:
- triode, 2 tubes to make a flip-flop
- Cray Supercomputer, cooling system
- Data Point, in San Antonio, VTL

Attending Linucon

I made plans this year to attend Linucon, which is being held in Austin, Texas (SEP 30 - OCT 2).  Hopefully I get to spend more time at the convention than I did last year.

-Chris

[Photos from last Year]