“I fell through” is what I said when I broke through the ice and fell into Fowler Lake over the weekend…

I was pretty damn matter of fact. I didn’t panic, or freak out, I just sort of had the ice give way under me, and then I was all wet, and in the water up to my waist.

It wasn’t really a matter of thin ice, but I’ll say this: If you are on the lake, and decide to stand next to a raft, don’t stand there too long, because there is a good chance the water under the raft is not really frozen, or frozen very well.

Unlike every movie you’ve seen, I did not go under the ice, or lose hearing in one of my ears. Basically, my legs got all wet, and then I climbed out of the water and onto the raft. Everyone else was freaked out, but I was just instantly wet and cold, so I wanted to go home. I was wearing a pair of dungarees and snowpants. My dungarees didn’t even get that wet, but my snowpants did, as did my Chilkats, which are still drying out 4 days later.

By the time we got home and I got out of the wet clothes, we were laughing about the whole thing. (Remember, tragedy + time = comedy.) I even came up with a headline in case the local paper wanted to mention it “Local man falls through ice” and I considered printing up a shirt that said “Fowler Lake Polar Bear Club” for myself…

The folks over at the Oconomowoc Focus got in touch with me to ask a few questions about the popularity of stories on the interweb, all in relation to the crazy man threatens neighbor with sword after watching porn movie story…

The follow-up story, Nine-hour gap from ’sounds’ to sword has a few bits from me mentioning page views and how news travels around the net.

I managed to mention Technorati, Boing Boing, and my old pal James Romenesko.

Ok, with less than two weeks to go before BarCampMadison, I think we’re really on a roll.

As of my posting this, we’ve got 99 people signed up (I’m sure this will break 100 shortly) and 39 sessions planned.

Some of the interesting topics: Drupal - Intro, Development, Bootstrap your site; How To Burn Your Business Into The Ground - Lessons in Entrepreneurship; How to get Angel and VC funding for my new venture?; Cyberpunk Philosophy.

It’s not all heavy lifting, there are also things like: Nintendo DS Meetup, a possible LAN party, and (if all goes well) Wii Fight Midwest!

If you haven’t signed up for BarCampMadison yet, do so now!

More appropriately, I’m back using Linux on the desktop. (A subject that was written about in many posts, many years ago…)

So today was my first full day using Debian as a desktop OS and it went pretty well. I still prefer Mac OS X for the desktop, but Linux still beats the hell out of Windows. My editor (yes, I am still using jEdit) worked quite well. In fact, it probably works better on Linux than on Mac OS X. Firefox (er, Iceweasel) is my browser of choice, and Gaim is, um, not Adium but it will work. And terminal is tabbed, like iTerm, so that’s good.

I don’t have to worry about audio/video stuff since I’m just doing development (and my iBook is always handy) but I’m guessing I may have to fire up The Gimp at some point…

Luckily, for my main tools (web, email, editor, terminal, etc.) I’ve typically stuck with things that are open-source and cross-platform. Firefox over Safari, jEdit over TextMate, and so on. This has allowed me to be put in front of a Windows machine, a Mac, or even a Linux box, and been able to use familiar tools. It also helps since I typically use 3 or 4 different Macs, so licensing isn’t a big concern.

Don’t get me wrong… If I had a choice, I would have chose to have a machine running OS X. Not because of the eye-candy or the (supposed) sex appeal, but because my productivity would be so much higher. I’m just an OS X user, having used it daily for the last 6 years or so…

I will miss Interarchy for file transfers though! Any recommended clients for Linux?

WhereCamp is the unconference for geohackers. Think of it as the open-source version of the Where 2.0 conference.

It’s happening in London, but we are hoping to also have it happen in the US at the same time.

It’s all still very early, but if it interests you, check out wherecamp.pbwiki.com

And if you have an idea for a logo, see the Logo page. Below is my contribution…

I’m still convinced that geolocative services are on the verge of getting huge. It’s just a matter of time…

Emma wanted to use the gift card she got for Xmas to buy a GameCube game, and she just randomly picked Animal Crossing… We had no idea what we were in for.

Since Animal Crossing is pretty much a one player (at a time) game, her and Maddy take turns, and sometimes play each other’s character, so it’s building cooperation skills, +1 for that.

I’ve mainly been watching, and not playing much, but the game fascinates me, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I read the Wikipedia Animal Crossing (GameCube) article and told the kids what I found there. Now they are shaking every tree and trying to avoid being stung by bees. Last night Emma asked if she could get up at 5AM and start playing. I told her 6AM would be early enough, sadly she discovered that Nook’s Cranny was not open that early.

I keep asking the kids if they can jump off the cliff or hit other characters in the head with the shovel, but so far neither has happened.

There is an Animal Crossing Community site, and it looks like the original game site is still around, but there is a new version for the Nintendo DS called Wild World. (Both Schlomo and Phil Wilson seem to be DS Animal Crossing fans.)

I had mentioned Krugle last November when Ken Krugler gave a demo at the Chicago Perl Hackathon. (Krugle is a search engine for code.) Well, it looks like the Yahoo! Developer Network is now using Krugle to power it’s code search at ydn.krugle.com, which is very cool.

Ken was really open to ideas and suggestions when he demoed krugle, and it looks like it’ll be a good match for both parties. Congrats to Ken and his team and the folks at Yahoo!

I guess we (who me?) are not supposed to blog about Wii Fight but come on, after this underground video came out revealing what happened, I thought we might want to hold a fight at BarCampMadison.

So plan on it. Wii Fight at BarCampMadison. In Madison, Wiisconsin. March 3rd & 4th, 2007.

Here’s the scenario… you don’t have ssh access, but you do have ftp access, and need all the files…


wget -r ftp://username:password@domain.com/directory/


Let wget do it’s thing for a bit, and you should have all the files you need.

(Of course you really shouldn’t be running plain old insecure ftp when sftp is available…)

Ok, I played with Apple’s Dashcode for about 5 minutes. In that time I was able to create 2 widgets, one that displayed a text RSS feed, and one that displayed a “Photocast” feed (an RSS feed with image enclosures.)

This thing is powerful… I’ve built widgets before, but it always involved mucking around with a lot of code. Dashcode is seriously drag ‘n drop simple. Any novice computer user could create a widget.

I can’t wait to start building some little custom apps with it. (It’s a shame it’s OSX only… well, there’s always Yahoo! Widgets, right?)

I’m sending out a big Thank You to Noodles & Company, and Joe Bath specifically…

You see, my story starts last year, when I started throwing my business card into the “Win a Free Lunch!” bowls I would see at local restaurants. To my surprise I actually won a few free lunches. Most of these were “sponsored” by financial advisers who were looking for clients. (Of course, if you’re trying to win a free lunch, what is the chance you actually have any money!) I went to one free lunch which involved myself and two friends listening to someone tell us about their services, and then filling out a form, and then they bought us lunch. Nice.

But this one… it was different. I got an email from Joe telling me I had won a free “tasting experience” and that I should tell him when I wanted to do it. I figured Saturday would be good, and it would feed Dana, myself, and the kids. When we got there, Joe had a table all set up for us, and we were treated like guests of honor! He then walked through what would happen, and quickly brought out some salads and bread. (The kids asked me if there would be more than just salad, and I told them to be patient.)

Joe then brought our about 4 different dishes (one being Mac & Cheese for the kids.) We samples the dishes and refilled out drinks, and it was all pretty good. I really liked the Penne Rosa, and Dana liked the Whole Grain Tuscan Fettucine. After that the kids said they were full, but Joe said we should pick something from the menu, I choose the Pasta Fresca and Dana had the Mushroom Stroganoff. Neither of us could finish it, as we were both full. Of course there was dessert, which Joe even boxed up for us after the kids tried their best to dispose of it.

So to get to the point, there issuch a thing as a free lunch. Joe and the folks at the Delafield Noodles & Company really showed that they love what they do. (We were so stuffed, we didn’t even eat dinner that night!)

So once again, thanks Joe, and the staff of Noodles & Company for a great lunch.

(As I was telling this story to a co-worker, he mentioned that he too was impressed by Joe in previous visits to Noodles & Company. Joe gets it – people really appreciate good service, and remember you for it.)

A while ago I hinted that I might be coming back to Milwaukee, at least to work, and it looks like if all goes well, that will be the case, at least for the next three months…

So it’ll be back to the Third Ward for me, with “regular” work hours. (That in itself should prove interesting!) It’ll be a nice change from running all over the Lake Country to get my work done.

I’m still keeping it hush-hush, but it looks like I may be doing some really interesting work with a local company that has a great vision of how the web should work.

Who knows? I might be able to make some great connections to further Web414 while I’m at it. I’m also really looking forward to spending more time in Milwaukee. Maybe I’ll do that guest appearance on WMSE now. ;)

I worked up a flyer for BarCampMadison….

It is my belief that every BarCamp should have robots…

I was approached by someone in Milwaukee about helping out with a “Web 2.0″ style conference, and the first thought I had was, what would we call it?

I mean, it would be about “Web 2.0″ style technology and applications, but can we use the term “Web 2.0″? Do we have to ask Tim or CMP or a lawyer?

I think having a “Web 2.0″ conference in Milwaukee is a great idea, and has amazing potential, but being able to promote it and talk about it may be difficult if we have to avoid actually using the term “Web 2.0″

We are still looking for a few sponsors for BarCampMadison…

If you can help, please check out the Sponsorship Opportunities page and get in touch with us…

BarCampMilwaukee probably got the majority of the sponsors signed up in the last few weeks before the event, so the time is right now for BarCampMadison, which is set for March 3rd & 4th, 2007 - just under a month away.

(So far we’ve got 70 people signed up, and I expect that to break 100 before the end of February.)