[Edit: Link down due to technical problems.]

Pictures from a backyard party I was at in PDX.

[Link]

Can you find me?

I’m back from the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland. The conference was great but surprisingly tiring. There were a huge number of people there. The exhibit hall was pretty small, and there were many (about 10) sessions going on at a time. Contrast this with say the Unicode Conference, which had a much larger exhibit hall, but only three sessions at a time (and a much lower attendance). Or compare to SCALE, which had a small attendance, but a small exhibit hall and many sessions, like OSCon.

I prefer the Unicode Conference model; with the way OSCon is set up, you always feel like you have to give up something you want to attend when you go to another session. With just three sessions at once, you only occasionally have that feeling. But I guess the big problem is that Open Source is such a wide audience that you need a ton of sessions to capture the appeal of enough people.

As my employer paid my way, I’m going to be talking about some of the more interesting sessions on its blog (link forthcoming) instead of here. Some good sessions, good conversations, good people make for good times. And it was very nice to be back visiting the Portland area again. The MAX system has grown and is impressive — too bad Angelinos are so dismissive of public transit, they don’t know what they’re missing (whereas I do, ugh). I finished up with a nice short hike in the Gorge to McCord Creek Falls; I was worried about the heat, but under the forest canopy it was nice and comfortable.

The airhook and liboop sites are now at http://airhook.ofb.net and http://liboop.ofb.net.
They used to be under .org, but when they expired (and they were set to auto-renew), Dotster transfered them to “DSTR Holdings”. Dotster didn’t update the whois, which still shows Dan Egnor as the domains’ owner, but otherwise are not recognizing his claim to them.

The old airhook site is now a generic parked domain page, with Google Adsense for Domains links. The old liboop is a copy of the old liboop grabbed from archive.org, with some Playboy links thrown in.

Want to register your domains with a company which is using a subsidiary to jack your domains as they expire? I didn’t think so.

Panang!

The famous President Thai restraunt is back in operation.
Still have cheap lunch specials. Dining area is about 2½ times its old size, and lots of parking. No bicycle parking, still. (In the kitchen: Employee: “Do you think we should get a bike rack?”
Manager: “We have time, it’s too hot to bike in the summer.”
Employee: “Well, someone has locked their bike to the gate.”
Waiter enters, to refill his water pitcher, “That guy on table 17 has drunk 8 glasses of water!”
Manager: “Probably just some westerner who ordered ‘spicy’.”
Cook: “Curry for table 17 up!”)

 
If you don’t know where it is, take San Pasqual west. After you cross Rosemead, you’ll crash into a building because San Pasqual ends at Rosemead. That building is President Thai.

[link redacted] – This is the best site that you will ever find with all the best online Forex news, the lates quotes, and the highest currencies

I feel so special. It’s a real grown up blog now. Not.

“How it Should Have Ended” has a great parody on how Star Wars should have ended. Had me laughing out loud. The other movies there are pretty mediocre.

So, this guy pulls out his wallet.

I say, “Hey, that looks just like my wallet.”

He goes “Uhhh…”

I take out my wallet, and it looks just like his.

“Oh, I thought you were going to accuse me of taking your wallet.”

Which Aliens Colonial Marine are you?

I’m “Pvt. Vasquez”.

> Spunky token ethnic type.

Ummm…

> Kicked alien butt and didn’t take any crop off of no one.

Yeah!

> Dies in the end.

Well, don’t we all?

So, there’s been this spider hanging around lately. On Thursday, it made a web across the pathway leading to the storage room. The building is to the south, so the path is usually shadowed, making the web nigh invisible. I stopped just before it when I saw this spider levitating at forehead height. I found the anchor lines of the web and cut a couple, sending the spider and web into the bushes, and went on to fetch my bike.

Next day, the spider had reconstructed its web, but this time I walked right through it. As I was brushing the silk off of me, I caught the spider’s dragline and pulled it from where it’d been hiding by the tree onto my head. Some more brushing, and I got it onto the ground and it crawled away, and I got my bike.

On Saturday, it’d made its web in front of my door. This didn’t last long, and soon it was crawling away along the wall. Yesterday it’d gotten into the storage room, and was using my bike as a web anchor. It must be getting pretty tired of me destroying its webs. Let’s see what it spins today…

A friend of mine’s girlfriend recently decided to take Eleftherios’ advice and get her name off the roles of the Catholic Church, which she hadn’t considered herself a part of in a long time. She was raised Catholic, and this was mostly a cathartic action — while most people leaving the church can just quietly stop going to services, for some people this stuff can really get to them and need purging.

She showed me the letter she wrote detailing her dispute with the ways of the church. It was well-written, harsh, and from the heart. A few of her points:

• The church resists truth-seeking, preferring dogma.
• It’s supported oppressive regimes, so long as their policies were favorable to the church.
• It’s sexist.

The first point is ubiquitous across religions. Disbelief is as much about faith as belief is — it is critical inquiry, skepticism, which is its true opposite. I think it was pretty brave of her to send her censure to the church.

 
In other news, I took the short ride to Venice again today. Less people around than yesterday, as it was overcast. Still some people trying to surf. I got going pretty well on the bike path and was feeling good, until I hit a tight outside turn and almost slid out. After that I rode much easier. On the way back I heard a biker was telling his partner “watch out for the sand” and felt better about it, that curve must have a rep.

 
On the omphaloskepsis front, I’ve been messing around with the blog’s “theme” (skin/chrome) to bring it in line with my preferences. Kudos to wordpress for making this nice with their CSS. Though they used pixel measures way too much, optimizing to a certain browser size. I’ve stomped the worst of these out.