I’ve been hearing people’s opinions on the new Milwaukee Admirals logo since it came out. My opinion, it looks like it’s meant to appeal to kids, and in doing so, does not appeal to adults. So I thought I should fix that.

Here is the original version.

Here is my version.

Ok, five minutes in Photoshop might not cut it, but you get the idea. It’s all in the eyes. In the first version the eyes just make it all look too cartoony. Skulls aren’t all happy and shiny, they are mean and scary. Or at least they should be.

(I wonder if I can find work doing logo re-design…)

BarCampMilwaukee is in 3 days… No, really… That’s what Upcoming tells me. It also says there is a Pre-BarCampMilwaukee Dinner, and that during BarCampMilwaukee there will be a Mini-Mash Pit (which may consist of only me at this point!)

Since we last reviewed things we’ve gone up to almost 90 campers and gotten a lot more sponsorship. Right now we’ve got commitments from: C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions, MailLaunder.com, Digital Bootcamp, Inc., CA, MakaluMedia Group, MIT Club of Wisconsin, Microsoft, Z2 Marketing + Design, Rochambo Coffee & Tea House, and Time Warner Cable. These are the organizations who will help make BarCampMilwaukee rock!

There are also a ton of session ideas some which you might expect (Drupal, Microformats, Ruby on Rails) and some which sound just crazy (Remote Controlled Go Carts; if you’re not in control, you’re out of control, Democracy in Ancient Athens: Organization and Technology, Thermonuclear Fusion; a possible reactor design). Hmmm, I guess all the crazy ones have long titles.

One idea I got from a previous BarCamp was name/tags… Which is like your old fashioned “Hello, my name is” badge, but with room to write in some “Web 2.0″ style tags…

For BarCampMilwaukee, our hosts at Bucketworks also plans on providing a crazy/creative “Make your own badge” table with various art supplies for those looking for a bit more expressiveness in their name tags…

I got teh most awesum error in iTunes…

At first I thought this was some subliminal form of DRM, but it worked fine on the second attempt.

I noticed that Firefox seemed slow (hold the comments!) when downloading files. Not the downloads themselves, but the starting of the download. I would click on a link, and then wait like 10 seconds, and then the little download window would appear, and the download would start. I finally figured out the delay…

See that little button labelled “Clean Up”? Use it! Once I cleared out the list of files built up in there, it fixed the delay. I think I just let it build up for months without thinking about it, and it got gradually slower and slower.

Even though I’ve been using Mozilla since the early days, there is always something new to learn, or something old to not forget. Or something…

Last weekend we were headed to Milwaukee and saw some Stormtroopers on the sidewalk in front of Best Buy… It seemed like a good time to test the new camera…

Check out the Star Wars Best Buy set on Flickr…

Like Bob, I feel like Milwaukee’s first BarCamp is coming to soon… There still seems to be a million little things to do and take care of. It’s a bit stressful, but we’ll make it happen, no matter what.

In fact, with just over a week before BarCampMilwaukee, we are planning to meet up next Friday, September 29th, 2006 for a pre-BarCamp dinner, combined with last minute prep at Bucketworks. Sort of a last minute “relax” before the insanity begins.

Remember, this is Milwaukee, so in the tradition of our fine city, we are planning on a Fish Fry and Brewery tour at the Lakefront Brewery. The (tentative) plan is to show up around 5PM for the tour, sit down to dinner, sample the wares, and then head over to Bucketworks for a few hours of clean-up and set-up.

If you want to join us, just let me know, or you can bug Justin since he will probably be making the arrangements.

For BarCampMilwaukee, someone mentioned those big pads of paper on the three-legged stands… An easel! That’s it…

Pictured here is my DIY Easel, which was built out of scrap material in my garage… A few 1×2’s, old hinges, and a handful of screws. It’s at Bucketworks now, where it will live, and be used for BarCampMilwaukee.

I like building things without plans (but don’t tell my Dad.) I tend to just start hacking with wood, just like I would hack with code when programming for fun, and improvise as I go. For this thing, I didn’t even break out a tape measure. I think it turned out ok though.

Even thought it’s slightly portable (the hinges let it fold almost flat, I had to get it in the car somehow!) I told James at Bucketworks they could just have it after BarCampMilwaukee. I don’t think I’ll have enough need (or space) for it. I’m sure they’ll put it to good use.

At the June Milwaukee Web Design Meetup I did a presentation on Microformats, and I ended it asking who would be willing to present next time. Well, Jordan Arentsen stepped up, but due to problems with the meetup in July, and his missing the August meetup, we finally got to see it in September.

You can find his presentation on his site if you’re interested. (I believe he will also present it at a BarCampMilwaukee session.)

He also showed a lot of code from an application he wrote. Yes, he wrote his own blog software. It’s running at blissdev.net. We followed up with a lot of good talk about the good/bad of Rails and other frameworks. RoR seems a little young, but it’s growing, and there are definitely a lot of large sites making it work.

(Speaking of the Web Design Meetup, I’m contemplating taking over as organizer if the need arises, because, you know, I don’t have enough projects going on…)

The Bay View Bash is Saturday, September 16th, 2006. If you happen to be there, look for me. (Or just call me… or locate me via Bluetooth…)

Last year I took this photo, which I titled Old guys, Kid drummer…

I can’t wait to see who will be rocking this year’s Bay View Bash…

What exactly qualifies someone as an “expert?”

Here are a few definitions I found:

• A person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully…
• An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge…
• One who knows no more than you about a given subject, but has his information arranged more neatly and uses slides…

Personally I like that last one. ;)

The question comes up due to BarCampMilwaukee. As I’ve been trying to get people to pick something they are passionate about, people often get excited, mention something, and then say something like “Well, I’m not the expert on that!”

But the whole point is, you are an expert at your own experiences! At one of our meetings, someone talked about learning Linux, but thought that since others knew more about Linux, that someone else should lead session. This is somewhat backwards. If this person had 1 month of experience using Linux, then that 1 month of experience is their expertise. Sure, they may not have installed Linux 100 times, but maybe someone else in the session has, and has forgotten what it is like to be a newbie, and can share what they know, and hear the frustrations of a newbie. That’s my idea anyway…

I see this happen again and again. People think they aren’t experts, but I think that’s just because of how people define what an “expert” is. The whole idea of BarCamp is that you don’t go to see some “expert” lecture for an hour, you come to share what you know, learn from others, and all walk away knowing a bit more that we did when we got there.

I found an unopened Farallon iPrint in a junkbox at the office… (It’s a LocalTalk-ethernet bridge.) I’m thinking I’ll be able to do something wacky, like put a really old Mac online. Now I just need to dig through the basement junkpile and find a pre-ethernet PowerBook and see what I can come up with.

See? I knew saving almost every Mac part I’ve come across in the last 10 years would pay off!

(Hmmm, come to think of it, I used to have a LocalTalk-ethernet bridge somewhere… I think it might be in the garage…)

Bob said something like this in an email:

At or after BarCampMilwaukee, we should plot the number of Campers registered vs time to see what the signup curve looks like.

As soon as I read this I thought - we got people coming from various parts of Wisconsin, probably some folks from Illinois, and even a bunch of hardcore geeks from Iowa - we should map this stuff out using the Yahoo! or Google maps API, and see what it looks like. But wait, we also have Scott from Iowa proposing a session called “Online Maps, Mapping Tools & Geohacking” and a Mini-Mash Pit planned. Maybe we can even combine what we learn in the Microformats and Online Photo Sharing sessions…

Revolutionary idea? Not really, just a neat idea, but it’s one of those things where you take the bits and pieces and see what a group of creative people can come up with. Bob’s comment helps illustrate what we hope to have happen at BarCampMilwaukee, smart people thrown together, and neat things happening as a result.

And then there were 50… We are up to 50 campers signed-up on the wiki page, and we’ve got 4 sponsors so far: C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions, MailLaunderer, Digital Bootcamp, and CA.

Activity has really picked up since the newspaper article hit, and we’ve got just three weeks left to finalize all plans and make BarCampMilwaukee a reality.

The Yahoo! Group has been key in planning all of this, and I’m sure many of the members look forward to finally meeting face to face at BarCamp. One of the more interesting things to come out of it, is that Saturday’s lunch will be a potluck meal, with people supplying the food. We felt this would help enhance the community aspect of the whole thing, and allow for socializing early on. It should also help keep costs down, so sponsorship isn’t as much of a concern.

We’ve come a long way since my original BarCampMilwaukee post which helped get the whole thing started. I thought for sure we’d get some folks from the Ruby and Java communites interested, but so far there has been almost no interest from them. Luckily, the Drupal community will be there, and even Jeremie Miller (of Jabber/XMPP fame) will be coming… all the way from Iowa!

So if you haven’t yet signed-up, go to BarCampMilwaukee.com and do it today. (Or just keep reading this blog, where you’ll see about 100 more posts on the subject…)

I heard about Senuti long ago, and even copied the .dmg to my iPod, but I never used it until recently.

The explanation I heard/read was that it lets you copy files from your iPod to your iTunes library, the reverse of the normal process. (Hence, the name: “senuti” is “itunes” backwards.)

I don’t have much use for moving the songs from iPod to iTunes, but what Senuti actually does, that is very useful to me, is act as a remote control, allowing you to connect an iPod to a Mac, and use Senuti to contol what is played, without having to copy it to the host Mac. This is perfect! I can take my iPod to the office, and plug it into the iMac and listen to my music and podcasts without having to deal with one more iTunes library.

Once I figured this remote control thing out, I emailed the author a big thanks for the work he’s done, and made a small donation. Hooray for Senuti!