Advogato: Personal info for wsanchez

20 Jan 2004 »

Diary moved to my web log…

22 Jan 2002 »

I recently set up my own IMAP server at home so I don't end up with all of my mail on my laptop, the loss of which would make me rather sad.

In the process, I started using junkfilter. I enjoy using junkfilter. It's spiffy. Thank you, Mr. Sutter.

20 Jan 2002 (updated 20 Jan 2002 at 20:41 UTC) »

Well, I haven't posted since Burning Man, which is pretty lame. Quick summary of whassup since then:

Burning Man was awesome. Unlike the prior year, this year featured fairly warm nights, which made for a far more comfortable atmosphere. They days were bloody hot, but that's normal, I guess. If you go next year, I strongly suggest volunteering; it's absolutely worthwhile. I worked as a Ranger, which was great, and with Playa Information, where you spend the hot day sitting in a shady place when you still get to meet and talk with people because they come to you. It's a good deal.

ApacheCon Dublin didn't happen, which was a major bummer.

I finally got an electric pump for the big ball. We're starting a Silicon Valley Pushball league. We've had two games so far. We've learned that with four people per team, it's really pretty painful; like arm-wrestling, but with your whole body. Six per team worked better, but I'm thinking eight or more.

MacWorld was this month. New iMac is cool. I was looking forward to iPhoto; I'm a fan of iTunes, and I have a bunch of pictures. A program that will help me manage them simply would be cool. I was highly dissapointed. Unlike iTunes, when you drag images to iPhoto, it copies them somewhere else on your disk, to a place when really only iPhoto is meant to look. If iPhoto is the only app you want to open files directly with, fine, but in my case, that's absurd. Actually, iTunes can probably get away with that, but I use several apps to view and edit photos. Plus it doesn't generate web photo albums; what is does do it upload to iTools, which generates an album. But with the wimpy disk quota of iTools, my images won't all fit, plus I don't really want to use iTools anyway. The photo book feature rocks; it's the only feature that does, that I saw.

Hopefullly, you'll be hearing more from KnowNow soon. I'm starting with a talk on what we do at the Bay Area NeXT Group this week. Drop by if you're curious.

22 Aug 2001 »

I bought a ball. It's pretty large... six feet tall. I call it a man ball, as I recall having heard that once, but it's also known as a push ball or earth ball. I've been looking to get one of these for a long time, and it turns out that one of the pastors from my church had ordered a couple, so I got a catalog from him, and scored a ball. Dave (my housemate) and I spent a hour blowing into it (we knew it was stupid, but we couldn't help it), and after nearly passing out, we got it maybe half a centimeter high. So I went to REI and got a bike pump, and after four hours of pump pump pump pump pump, it got to about a foot before I had to take a shower and go to bed. So I went back to REI and got a good foot pump (for matresses), and that only takes an hour or so to get it all the way full. Phew.

You might think that's tiring. But then try playing a game of man ball. I invited a few folks over and we played a game with four to a team. Two minutes into it, we had to take an eight minute break. It's like arm wrestling with your whole body. Nuts. We need a lot more people, I think. Also: don't eat burgers right before playing.

Kevin Smith's latest movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back will be out soon. I caught the preview at the local AMC and it was pretty cool. Gotta go watch all the other Askew films first though, if you haven't already. It's an insider's movie.

Burning Man is next week. Last year, I went fairly unprepared (first time, went on a week's notice). This year, I'm all set. Dave is coming along, and we're bringing a trampoline to lounge on and a blender and fruit for making smoothies. Yum. And I'll bring a man ball just in case. :-) If you're there, look me up with Play Information... might even bump into me there; I'll be working at Checkpoint Salon Wed afternoon and I'll be working with the Black Rock Rangers early in the week and again during the burn. Should be a hoot.

27 Jun 2001 »

Sadly, I missed MacHack this year. I supposed that's what I get for not working at a Mac shop. Reports from those who did go is that it was the usual blast. The keynote had a bunch of the original Mac team there, and the hack contest ran as long as last year.

I'm thinking next year that a bunch of Unix weenies should go, just to see what can be done with Mac OS 9 and prior, before the Classic OS starts fading into the past. While it's easy to criticize the Mac OS design in today's computing world, the things you can do specifically because it has a single address space for all programs can be truly remarkable. As a Unix guy, it's hard to even think of these things. So one might consider going next year just to learn something different, before it's too late. Plus Mac Hack is an event unlike any other, and worth a visit.

I learned to fly a new kind of airplane this weekend. I've so far been a Cessna pilot (well, with a 10-hour stint in a Beech Barron). Now I've been introduced to the Piper Arrow, which is a low wing with retractable gear and a variable pitch prop. It was interesting... it's a fair bit more work to fly, and as my instructor put it, it "flies like a desk". But it goes 120 knots to the C-172's 90 knotts, so that's appealing.

I'm thinking of flying out to Burning Man this year. That could be pretty cool, though I need to find someone who is driving up and is willing to take a few things for me, since I don't think everything I need will fit in the back of a little plane.

People who've been curious about what it is that KnowNow is working on and what "2 way web" means--no, it's not web pages on the back of your monitor--it's all up on our web site... www.knownow.com. The short answer I give is that we provide asyncronous event delivery over HTTP. It so happens that it works rather well with web browsers, but clients can be written in any environment, and they can all share the same information.

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