http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp Mac OS X, iPhone, Tech, and daily life in Seattle Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:40:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've spent this past week in LA - Burbank I think most specifically, but I get confused on what's burbank, glendale, the "greater LA area" and all that stuff. I think of it all pretty much as "North Hollywood", which apparently annoys some of the locals who have finer grained ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/07/03/spent-the-week-in-burbank/ My family is from Burlington, IA. I grew up in St. Louis, but there were a lot of summers and weekends up in Burlington, which is basically farm country next to the Mississippi. Every year, the Mississippi would flood to the levee's - my family had a cabin on the ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/29/pictures-of-the-flood-burlington-ia/ I signed up with Launchpad today - don't know why I hadn't really done it earlier, other than I just didn't think to or have any projects that drove me there. The project du jour that lured me in was Graphite - a distributed high-performance monitoring solution written in python ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/27/launchpad/ They work, oh yeah... well, sometimes. View Larger Map I suppose that I should say that my bias is reflected from spending a lot of time growing up near the Mississippi, and doubting that we could really effectively control the whole flow of that massive body of water with a few levee's. ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/27/yep-them-levees-on-the-mississippi-were-a-good-idea/ I bought a first generation MacBook Pro a few years ago. I've been very happy with it, but there's a little quirk of that system that's really starting to bug me. That quirk is the almost anything ported with the transgaming engine won't run on it. For whatever reason, the transgaming ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/27/1st-generation-macbook-pro/ I got back from Velocity 2008 last night - an "first stab" conference focusing on Performance and Scaling for web applications and operations. For a first stab at the conference, it went really well. They reported that more than 600 folks attended the two-day event, and while many of ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/25/velocity-2008/ Ned Batchelder noted something I found really interesting - that Spore Creature Creator uses Steganography. The super-succinct summary is that with this nifty trick, when you export a PNG of one of your creatures and give that to someone else, they can load the PNG into the creator program ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/25/ned-batchelder-spore-creature-creator-and-steganography/ I've still got an original Apple Airport Graphite in the basement, serving up 802.11b goodness for house. Only it's starting to not serve up so much goodness. I've carefully checked against the neighbor's wifi - and we're on different channels, but the WIFI is dropping out around the house periodically, ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/21/my-wireless-is-dying/ I can't help but think that this next week is going to be like switching from high octane to diesel mechanics - technically speaking. Or maybe it's a more appropriate metaphor to say I'm moving from the edge to the core. I've finished up with WWDC 2008, where I spent the ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/17/switching-from-high-octane-to-diesel-mechanics/ It's the end of the week and I'm bushed. I suspect there's a few folks even more "bushed" than me - it's been an intense week of talking, learning, and "socializing". I ran across a bunch of folks I've seen before, and I think I was introduced to an equally ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/13/end-of-the-week-wwdc/ Apple's definitely getting prepped up this year. The WWDC keynote link on iTunes is available (found at iLounge). I expect that sometime around Monday Noon, that subscription list will include the WWDC keynote and whatever details they're announcing. In this morning's "waiting for the next load of laundry so I'll check ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/07/wwdc-keynote-coming-on-itunes/ With WWDC 2008 right around the corner, I'm mentally already on the plane. Aside from a few niggling details (like thinking I need to get laundry done tomorrow...) I'm focused on next week. Coordinating with a few folks - exchanging cell #'s, coordinating some times to head to the keynote, ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/06/mentally-im-already-on-the-plane/ I was poking around at the weather today - trying to get a sense of what WWDC might be like next week. Nothing like planning ahead, eh? While I was doing so, I found a really nifty new view on the weather at Weather Underground - what they're calling their "WunderMap". ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/06/03/weather/ The start of WWDC is nine days away... Some folks say it starts on Monday morning with the keynotes that have, without a doubt, become a marketing splash message time for Apple, but the reality is that it'll be kicking up on Sunday evening with the inevitable dinner chats and ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/30/t-minus-9-days/ Gus has already mentioned something about this (I figure anyone interested in Mac programming that reads this blog has definitely read Gus')... but Jens released his BLIP code today which looks really, really interesting. It's exactly the kind of library I don't think I'd tend to tackle at all, and for ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/27/blip/ I spent a little time this morning getting some of the photo's I uploaded into Flickr geotagged... This is one of the few that I'm pretty confident of the location. I'm less sure about the name, but since this is really, really close to "graves creek road", I'm betting that ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/27/geotagd/ I declare it's officially summer now... at least for me. We're back from spending Memorial Day in Oregon, lurking about near Merlin, OR and visiting Speckles and Casper - the doggie owner's of Karen's Aunt Pat and Uncle Bill. They have a truly amazing piece of property and get-away down there, ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/26/its-summer-now/ I blew the day playing video games - well, a video game, to be precise. Haven't done that in quite a while. I rented a copy of the (current) ultimate bad-boy game: Grand Theft Auto IV. The funny thing about the game is that it reminds me of a completely up-to-date ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/18/gta4/ Okay - I'm a PACNW whining git. But it's hot today. Everyone's talking about how "lovely it is", but it's freakin' 88 degrees when I'm far more used to 50 and 60. Shoot - it was warmer here in Seattle than Orlando, Florida for crissakes. And Columbia, MO only peaked ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/17/oh-dear-lord-its-hot/ CJ was one of my college dorm mates - one of the first people I met when I moved to Columbia and got settled in as a freshman at MU. I don't think I've seen him in nearly 7 years now. It doesn't surprise me at all that he got himself ... http://www.rhonabwy.com/wp/2008/05/14/bronze-star/