More OSCON Brilliance

Today's keynotes:

The analyst, Nick Gall, showed us how the Internet models what long term investors look for in an infrastructure: an hourglass shape that makes innovation easy on top of a minimal structure: address, format, protocol. Containerized shipping represents the success of this approach as well.

David Heinemeier Hansson: Ruby on Rails trades flexibility for liberating constraints; learn the conventions of the framework, and you'll find Ruby has taken a lot of the responsibility for making your life as a web developer a lot easier.

The HP guy, Kartik Subbarao, explained how Venice models the ideal IT ecosystem, vs. quadrants Desert (closed source), Swamp (roll your own, maybe starting with open source, but failing to collaborate with the open source community), Ocean (completely open, all possibilities, no land). Case study: HP buys commercial support from Symas to coauthor OpenLDAP, an open source project, in support of its internal economy, thereby netting the benefits of commercial support and the participation of a global expert community.

Geeks sit around with with laptops like musicians with their instruments. One of our sponsors this year: Gibson, the guitar company (I snapped a photo of Gibson's bizmo, parked out front).

Next keynote by Robert Lang: a lecture on the history of origami (well developed by 1734). Akira Yoshizawa invented an instructional language for communicating origami (the http of the origami world). The speaker's Black Forest Cuckoo Clock was amazing (as were many of his others).

Today's computational origami is not like the old stuff. Check out the insects! Applications: unfolding space lenses, solar sails, auto air bags, heart implants (e.g. stents). I went to the follow-up presentation, which got into a lot more detail about the mathematics involved (trisecting angles is easy with origami).

And let me not forget the Identity 2.0 guy, who lives in Canada.BC, is over 21, and drives this fancy car -- or so he alleges (he provided no credential I could authenticate other than his obviously considerable talents as a presenter -- good enough for me in this case, plus I've run web audits since).

OSU is FireFox central (bouncer load balances global distribution). The Mozilla Foundation embodies the open source model where organizations are concerned (there's also a subsidiary corporation). Aside: I think the Python Foundation might do more to emulate this model. Expect FireFox to keep getting better (check my post about XUL). Mitchell Baker is one cool geek.

Nathan Torkington is doing a wonderful job of emceeing this O'Reilly event, per usual. We're lucky to have him in our community.

Interlude:

Dawn picked me up out front in the Subaru (Razz) and we drove to Providence Medical Center, where she had a 5 mm mass removed for biopsy using a needle vacuum. I charged my laptop in the waiting room, and read some of that New Yorker article about the new Pope.

We came back after the procedure and I showed her around, starting with the Google booth (good global data), and moving on through ice tea and ice cream stops, sometimes in the company of our old friend since CUE days, Jeff Zucker, a Perl saint and author of an upcoming book on the Perl DBI package. I also introduced her to Guido, Python's big benefactor, with whom I last conversed at that Thai food kiosk near the ferry stop in Gothenberg.

IronPython:

Now I'm in Jim's talk (Miguel is in the row behind me). IronPython is promisingly fast. The Pie-Thon challenge (trying to get Python to run on Parrot, Perl's evolving engine) helped IronPython evolve, as Guido's benchmark tests for Parrot gave IronPython something to chew on. IronPython 0.6 was only 4% slower than Python-2.3 implemented in C. IronPython 0.9 is now out, and allows subclassing of .NET classes within the language, much better COM support.

Jim demoed Avalon running from within a Python interactive shell. Miguel wanted to see the xaml-defined calculator buttons rotated by 45 degrees, using a list comprehension. Hey, it worked! Then he showed a GTK# GUI talking to the Microsoft Word dictionary. Finally, he showed us embedding a Python engine inside C#. I asked him to demo __add__ binding to the underlying overload of C#'s + operator (that worked too). The Visual Studio debugger transitions smoothly between Python and C# stacks (per my question: any debugger would have access to the same hooks in the .NET or Mono framework).

Open Technology in Oregon:

This presentation by the Open Technology Business Center was about bringing O'Reilly's OSCON back to Portland, based on Oregon's strong commitment to open technology, including increasingly in hardware realms. We got a rundown on some of the relevant businesses here, plus looked at a roadmap for going forward (a commercialization funnel).

We need to also focus on the education, nonprofit and government sectors, for which open technology is vitally important, not just as end users, but as contributing innovators and field testers (Project Renaissance model). OSCON should not become exclusively captive to business interests. Apropos of this, the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) is coming to Portland in October, sponsored by OSU's Open Source Lab. A questioner (not me) brought up exactly what I was thinking: Paul Nelson's K12LTSP and Free Geek are currently among the most important open source projects in Oregon.

And After:

Party @ Bar 71, deputized a member of the Posse. Chatted with an OSL guy who was big in the rose business (as in delivery of flowers) because he needed to test some software he was developing for a company, and it actually worked. The company itself went bankrupt, but he wound up with a running business. Then some letter in the mail threatened to sue because he had illegal copies of stuff. Upon audit, he discovered no transgressions, then realized this was a bulk mailing. But he was scared enough to think open source must be the way to go, and he's not looking back.

Technical Difficulties

It's easy to see how the economy is falling apart.

When Chuck put in a claim to Allstate for storm damage, allowing for the deductible, they go "sure sir, but the only reason your premiums are this low is you've never put in a claim."

That's the standard protection racket: we'll take your money as long as nothing happens to you where we have to protect you for real, and if something actually happens, then we'll want more money still (all that other stuff was just for "peace of mind" in case you ever do need to file -- we hope not though).

When I search on "Gibson" in this blog, using the search slot at the upper left, I don't get back any blog post but this one, and yet using the outside Google search engine, I get another one right away. That means the internal blog searcher is weak and anemic, gives up too easily. Or if that's not what it means, then you tell me? I'll keep running those tests, posting my results. Oh wait, I just tried it again and it worked great this time. Let's see if that lasts. Could be a traffic thing.

Oh yeah, the iTunes podcaster is way behind with the CBS News, ending around February 6 even when I hit refresh. Is it Apple I should blame? The voice and picture aren't synced for Doll House, Tara blames "the dish" (DirectTV).

I have a longer list, but I'm more into "beefs" than "concerns" i.e. I should stick to reporting bugs I might be able to help fix. When you file a beef, there's this implied "and I'm on it", which is what we in the Open Source world like to keep hearing.

Don't just be a whiny end user, be a part of the solution.

Of course reporting bugs (concerns) is a public service sometimes, even if you have no clue how to address them. But if your entire demographic is end users, no coders, then consider this a sinking ship. For every bug you report, make it your practice to fix two? Stay in shape, pull your weight.

Like so what if kernel code is world readable if you can't code in C? And so what if medical supplies are available, if you don't know anything about medicine. And so what if the airplane is yours, yet all you know how to do is crash it? Get lessons, practice, don't expect cheap short cuts will work.

There's maybe this belief that if I pay enough money, then I won't need to study. That's just "stairway to heaven" talk and as any investment banker well knows, there's really no alternative to doing your own homework. Like no one will do it for you, at the end of the day. Kafka wrote as much.

Bridge Pedal 2005

Train crossing
(photo by K. Urner, Olympus Stylus 500)

I was among the first to start this year (6:30 AM). Mayor Tom Potter, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, and Dick Gibson of Providence (whom I know from meetings) gave short speeches. The organizers expressed their fond hope that we'd have no broken bones this year.

Gayle had a bike accident involving a ped and broke her collar bone last year, fortunately very close to the ER at Legacy Emanuel. With something like 18K riders and walkers doing complicated criss-crossing routes, such accidents are always a possibility.

My chain came off two seconds into the course (not propitious) but the rest of the ride was fairly stress free. The bridges were beautiful. We crossed them in the following order: Morrison, Sellwood, Hawthorne, Ross Island, Marquam, Burnside, Broadway, Fremont, St. John's, Steel.

I met up with Larry and Chris and their son Greg (visiting from Russia) atop the Marquam, and just by chance with Sam and LaJean, who'll be giving the Wanderers presentation this coming Tuesday. Sam accompanied Bucky on a trip to the Philippines in the early 1970s, which would've been when I was there, still a high school student (Imelda Marcos made sure Sam and Bucky got some better shoes).

Congressman Blumenauer promised the new transportation bill will be good for cyclists, and that Portland serves as a national model for a bike friendly town. Gothenberg was even friendlier though, with all those wide divided sidewalks (peds and bikes each get a lane, so there's less contending with buses and cars for a slice of asphalt).

Total miles on my odometer (including the distance to/from the event): 38.4.

Gibson BizMo

Dawn w/ OSCON sponsor's business mobile
(photo by K. Urner, Olympus Stylus 500)

At some point in all this OSCON business, I attented a Ruby for Java Programmers session, which was very well done. Having studied Java enroute from FoxPro to Python, and being these days a student of Ruby (albiet a very beginning one), I found this bridge useful/meaningful. Check the OSCON 2005 schedule for the name of the presenter, room number, and so on.