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Geolocation

Loose notes from SXSW 2008 panel on geolocation. Focus was on geo-gaming but other geo-topics also involved.

Great to see Jeremy Irish on the panel – Jeremy is the mastermind behind geocaching.com – the most sophisticated and original database-backed web site I know of – despite it being built in ASP (forgive us, Lord). Jeremy opened the session by showing the placard for the original geocache, and the OCB (Original Can of Beans) (food is no longer allowed in geocaches; ammunition and drugs are also barred).
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Expression Engine 2.0

Loose notes from SXSW 2008. Panel session on upcoming massive update to CMS Expression Engine 2.o:

Now powered by code igniter — fully objeect-oriented OSS PHP framework. The ingredients of EE left uncooked. So now EE is built on a framework. This is a big deal. Code has merged, communities are merging. Faster, easier development for Ellis Lab and for 3rd party devs. Instant increase in capabilities of both systems.
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Twitter: I Succumb

A year ago at SXSW2007, I made a conscious decision not to do the Twitter thing. Can’t take another distraction/interruption, no matter how fun it sounds. This year I succumbed and decided to go for it. Couldn’t get shacker (thanks to always being about a year late to any given party), so I’m waxwing (a backup login I’ve left underutilized for long enough).

There’s something perniciously sticky about Twitter… what is it? Hard to stop looking. Like blogging without the pressure to write anything truly substantial. Blogging mashed up with IM. Feels like it should be its own internet protocol or something — a new form of communication altogether. People using Twitter at SXSW as part notepad on panels, part, “Where y’at?” Still finding my way with it.

Follow me. I’ll follow you.

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The Corny Crow Show

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes cornycrow.com, home of Corny the Crow and his ventriloquist friend Steve Cheney:

For 20 years Steve and his partner, “Corny Crow,” have presented their unique show for children and adults throughout Canada, from the east to west coast in the U.S. for fairs, festivals, schools and libraries. Either performing his hilarious show on stage or presenting his humor with a message to schools, Steve’s warmth and humor comes through in all his performances.

Music: Tortoise :: Tin Cans & Twine
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Oscars Preview

A bit post-facto, but when am I not late to the party? For n+1 mag, old friend A.S. Hamrah offers his typically surly, dryly hilarious Oscar preview. Excerpt:

I can’t say anything about Juno because I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it because I hated Little Miss Sunshine so much. After I saw Little Miss Sunshine I really wished I hadn’t. I refuse to make that mistake again. If that’s what a feel good movie is, I can’t stand to feel that good. It’s physically painful for me to feel that good.

Music: Herbie Hancock :: Sweet Bird
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Hummers

Hummingbirds A few weeks ago, a hummingbird built a nest in a bamboo tree in our backyard. Over the next week, we watched it hauling in tiny twigs and wrapping them tightly around the tiniest of branches. When the “big storm” rolled in last week, we were sure the nest – no bigger than a tennis ball – would be toast. Such a small cluster of lightness on such a bendy branch, so exposed. Amazingly, the nest survived.

Today, playing soccer with Miles in the back yard, stepping through bamboo to retrieve the ball, a small motion caught my eye. Got a chair and peeked down in. Two tiny beaks sticking up from pinky-sized babies. When I returned with the camera and hoisted it up, the baby hummers lifted their beaks and opened their gullets wide, expecting me to feed them – they must have perceived the shadow of the camera as their mother. Suddenly, I felt the hum of the mother’s wings just a foot from my head, trying to scare me away. We left them alone.

Music: Culture :: Hand and Bowl
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Play Continuously

When Miles gets sick he wants to revert to the books and videos he was into at age three. Popped in a Bob the Builder video today, selected “Play Movie” and it took us to a sub-screen with these choices:

PLAY ONCE

PLAY CONTINUOUSLY

Play continuously? That cuts right to the heart of the Hit Entertainment empire. Got a doctor’s office? Store? Play Bob all day long! Need a six-hour break from the kids? Play continuously! Creepy.

Music: Terry Callier :: Promenade In Green
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The BeOS Tip Server Is Back

Back in the BeOS days, I created a public database of tips and how-to information for BeOS users, called the BeOS Tip Server (betips.net). The site had grown to around 700 tips when Be, Inc. finally went under and I went looking for another career. At that time, I handed ownership of the Tip Server over to a still-avid BeOS user, and didn’t think about it much again.

Late last year, I discovered that links to betips.net were dead. I contacted the owner, only to learn that the database and the site templates had been lost in a data disaster. I combed through my backups and archives and couldn’t find any sign of the templates. However, amazingly, I still had a copy of the mysql database. Dug my old x86 laptop out of the closet, booted BeOS for the first time in eons, and found the original site templates tucked away in a buried folder. Eureka! But ewww… all table-based and mid-90s looking… just fugly.

Even though I have almost no interest in BeOS these days, I was once proud of the site, both for the content it had amassed and for the method I had used to serve it (TrackerBase).

Trackerbasethumb

Couldn’t stand the thought of the whole thing being lost to history, so decided to resurrect the site. Took a fair bit of grunt work to clean up the data and get the tables into shape as a WordPress back-end, but the work is finally done, I’ve got control of the domain again, and intend to leave the site up for posterity. There’s a standing offer for any current BeOS/Haiku users to help clean up old content and start adding new.

BeOS has an open source descendant called Haiku. I’ve never run Haiku, but expect that most of the content on the site will apply for that OS as well. I’m also interested in having new Haiku-specific content added to the repository.

Happy endings.

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ARD Lite

The screen sharing feature in Leopard and in the new version of iChat already partially mitigates the need for Apple Remote Desktop in some environments, but this hack turns screen sharing into something very close to ARD by adding a bunch of additional features and controls. In other words, the screen sharing feature apparently is ARD with features stripped out – this hack lets you pop ’em back in. I can imagine this hack being disabled in the next software update….

Music: Henry Threadgill :: Grief
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Dr. Zira

Drzira What to do on a rainy weekend? Hey, I haven’t built a model for 30 years! None to be found at the local five and dime (OK, Target, Longs, etc.) Models just aren’t a “thing” anymore. Made some phone calls and found one of Berkeley’s well-kept secrets – the Ace Hardware on University has an entire huge basement downstairs packed to the gills with models and hobbyist stuff. Dusty boxes stacked floor to ceiling, some of them dating back to when I remember building models as a boy (though I couldn’t find the lunar lander or Banana Splits Banana Buggy models I remember building). But we did find Dr. Zira of Planet of the Apes. No, Miles has never seen Planet of the Apes, but it did give us a good opp. to talk about reverse evolution. Model glue is hard to come by these days, but we did find a box of the incredibly stinky enamel paints. Ooooo oooo, that smell! Came out pretty well, but I think he thinks Legos are more challenging.