It happened innocently enough. I had some index cards, and I started writing things on them. They were better than scraps of paper because they were more sturdy, and when I tossed them in my backpack, they didn’t get all crumpled up.

I kept putting these loose index cards into the front pocket of my backpack, and every now and then I’d take them out, look through them, rearrange them, and put them back. No problem.

Then I thought, maybe if I put a binder clip on them, they’d all stay together, and I could even put them in order. Wham! That was it. Before I even knew it, I was a Hipster Doofus with an index card/binder clip PDA…

Of course mine does have 1GB of flash memory, which I find quite handy…

We’re in the planning stages of BarCampMilwaukee2 and I’m trying to come up with a few session ideas. We don’t want to do all the same things we did last year in Milwaukee, or earlier this year in Madison. I like fresh ideas.

So what should we do? What should we talk about, present about, have a workshop on? OpenID? I’d like to give an overview and maybe have people set up OpenID on their own sites, or at least sign up with an OpenID provider. I’m still really interested in Drupal, but I’d like to go deeper into it, and maybe look at how to improve your existing Drupal site. I see some weaknesses in Drupal which might be easily remedied if I just knew what to do. LED throwies? I’m hoping I can convince someone I know in Milwaukee to come show us how to make them.

I’m also really interested in doing something like a mini-One Minute Film & Video Festival, where we’d either determine a theme at the beginning of the event (and do a workshop during the day to help aspiring makers) and then do a showing at 10PM Saturday night, or maybe we’d just ask people to put together short videos we could show at night. I think it could be similar to the Wii Fight Midwest at BarCampMadison, in that it was something happening on the big screen, and gave everyone a break from talking and thinking. Some people participated by just being the audience, and that’s actually fine once in a while…

So what ideas do you have?

Starting in March of 2008, Indoor Football will be back in Milwaukee… The new team is the Milwaukee Bonecrushers.

I worked on the build of their web site mkebonecrushers.com, which had to be completed in just a few days to be ready for their first press conference. I think I prefer sites that have to be built quickly with short deadlines as opposed to projects that go on and on and on. (There’s a site I’m working on now that has been in progress for 11 months. We’re hoping it launches before a full year is up.)

Oh yeah, back to the football. Honestly, I am not much of a football fan (saying this in Wisconsin could get me strung up, but it’s true) but I’ve got to know some of the Bonecrushers, and these guys are passionate about what they are doing: having their own team, and having it in Milwaukee, has been a dream of theirs, and it’s exciting to see it come true.

If you want to see this crazy brand of indoor football, where it’s up close, on a small field, with 7-on-7, and narrow goal posts, they’ll be playing at the U.S. Cellular Arena in 2008. (But keep an eye out for exhibition games in 2007.)

I’m now running Windows XP on my new Intel-based iMac thanks to Parallels.

Previous to this I was using Virtual PC on my pre-Intel Mac, and it worked… slowly… but it worked. I was able to test web sites in IE5, IE6, and IE7 in Windows. It wasn’t fun, but it was pretty much required. Virtual PC for Mac was killed off by Microsoft, which meant I had these virtual machines laying around which were useless, until now.

I wasn’t paying attention to virtualization on the Mac until I got the new iMac and my days of using Virtual PC were over. I ended up taking a quick look at VMWare’s Fusion, which is in beta now and available for pre-ordering at a reduced price. It looked interesting, but as I did more research, it became clear that Parallels was exactly what I wanted. Why? Because of Transporter.

Transporter allows you to put to use those old Virtual PC machines you created. It migrates them over to the format required by Parallels. It’s not a quick process, but it works. I did hit a few issues along the way, the first being that I had no networking, which means the first virtual machine I had was completely useless. I searched through forums, tried a few things, and rebooted the virtual Windows machine, only to be told I had to activate Windows before I could log in. Since there was no network, I had to activate via phone. This is the nightmare that is Windows. After talking to a robot, where I read the robot a string of 50+ characters and then the robot read me a string of 50+ characters, Windows was activated, and I could log in. (Is Microsoft serious? This is how they do things? In all my years of using the Mac, I can’t remember anything as frustrating as this process to just use the system. Anyway…)

Ok, so I finally figured out that in Parallels I had to go under Edit to Virtual Machine… and add a Network Adapter. I guess the original Virtual PC machine did not have a network adapter or something? I don’t know, but I did this to all the machines I migrated and they were all good after that.

So now I am running Windows. On my Mac. Again. Let the IE testing and swearing begin!

We went camping at Bark River Campground and it sucked.

I suppose I should elaborate. First, a disclaimer: I do not operate a campground, or know how to, but I do have common sense, respect for the land, and for others, and have been camping before.

With that said, I will say that we did have fun. It was the first camping trip for the kids, and they had fun, despite some harsh conditions. With that out of the way, I’ll get into why I think Bark River Campground sucks.

When we arrived, we pulled up to a camp site, and after surveying the area for a few minutes, one of the jerkwads at the next site says very loudly “It’s gonna get loud! It’s gonna get wild!” which I guess was his way of warning us they planned to be jerkwads and we shouldn’t camp there. So we moved on, but it was difficult trying to find a spot that was far enough away from them.

Eventually we settled just over the top of a hill, where we hoped we wouldn’t be able to hear them too much. (Oh, little did we know…) On the sites near the top of the hill we managed to find plenty of empty beer bottles, a diaper, dog poop, and part of a tent someone decided to burn and leave there. Get it straight, I ain’t no hippie, but I have some respect for the land, and as I remember, you’re supposed to leave nothing but footprints, and take nothing but photographs, right?

Anyway, we had a good time, even though many of the clientele seemed a bit, uh, “questionable” at best. This was the first time camping for the girls, and we spent a lot of time trying to explain how “real” camping works, as opposed to the “outdoor drunkfest party camping” we were witnessing. They’re excited to try it again at a better location.

So many other “campers” were just plain inconsiderate, it was incredible. At one point, 3 guys in golf carts drove up the hill and parked 20 feet from our tents and just sat there for 20 minutes. Oh, and a woman drove up in a golf cart, got out with her dog, and then let it poop about 20 feet from our tent. When Dana asked if she brought a bag along, she looked at us like we were crazy, so I asked if her dog pooped, and she said “yes” and I asked if she could at least tell us where so we could avoid stepping in it. I ended up burying it, and two others we found, right after I placed the diaper in the nearest outhouse.

Oh, and the jerkwads who warned us? We couldn’t even hear them, because at about 9PM two large pickup trucks pulled up, drove right past us, and then ended up camping down the hill, and spent all night long blasting their stereo, drinking, and swearing. Fun time for all! Seriously, this was the worst-case definition of what anarchy could be, a small group wrecking it for everyone else. I considered getting their license plate and reporting them to the management, but I doubt they even registered, and if they did, would anything be done? I also didn’t care because I wasn’t returning and I already saw the “NO REFUNDS!” sign when I first arrived.

While the “campers” sucked, the management of this place seems to be in need of improvement as well, or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they just like being handed $20 to rent an “anything goes” party space for the night.

My recommendation to you is to avoid Bark River Campground in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Instead, try one of the many state parks that offers camping. While I’m not a fan of the government, at least they know how to run a campground.

Update: Please see the follow-up post: The Blogging Effect

It was just over a year ago that I tossed out the idea of a BarCamp in Milwaukee, and just a few months later, we pulled it off.

If you want to help with BarCampMilwaukee2 being planned for this fall, join the BarCampMilwaukee Yahoo! Group and get involved in the discussion.

We’ll also be taling about it in real-life meetings, and there is one tonight, Tuesday July 17th, 2007, 7PM, at the July Web414 Meeting. You might also be interested in the Fireseed Group which Justin Kruger heads up, as he has been instrumental in making BarCampMilwaukee happen.

(If you know of any organizations who would like to sponsor BarCampMilwaukee2, please let me know. Thanks!)

I took a look at the iPhone when I stopped by the new Apple Store at Bayshore. It’s a nice device. I’m not about to replace my Nokia 7610 and 5th Gen iPod with it, but I can see the appeal of this device.

Sadly, as with many location-based services, we in the Midwest have some, uh, issues. The iPhone was easily able to locate San Francisco, but couldn’t find Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I know we’re not in Silicon Valley, but we still exist out here. I know at least one person in Milwaukee with an iPhone. I should ask him how the location stuff works here. He’s already mentioned that he’s aware that it’s a 1.0 device, but it’s still freakin’ amazing.

If you remember the first Hitching post, I mentioned how I’ve been looking for a trailer hitch for our Honda CR-V. Well, I got one.

I found one for about $80, which, with shipping was still under $100, so score one for shopping around via the interwebs. After acquiring a hitch, I had to deal with installation. Now, the sites I had looked at said it should take maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and some had testimonials saying as much. No drilling needed! You just need a file, and a wrench!

To begin with, there were two parts missing in my kit. There were supposed to be bolt leaders, which help put the bolts into place on the frame of the vehicle. I ended up making my own with some nylon cord and masking tape. It worked, but just barely. I ended up doing a lot of filing, and also ended up using my drill. A lot. I think spent more than 20 minutes just filing and drilling! As in all the diagrams I saw, no one ever mentioned the muffler, which I had to work around. So in total, I estimated that it took me over an hour to install the hitch. (Dana says it was closer to two hours, but we won’t argue that here.)

The large majority of the time was spent just trying to “modify” the holes of the frame to fit the bolts and plates. Once that was done, it was just a matter of getting the bolts into place. This was super-tricky, probably because I was missing the bolt leaders and had to make my own. Once the bolts were in place, it was simple as hell to just put the hitch on and tighten the bolts. So it definitely could have taken just 20 minutes if the bolts and plates had fit out of the box without needing to widen the holes.

So now I can add “putting on a trailer hitch” to the list of things I’ve done, and could probably do again.

Through some odd set of circumstances, I ended up searching Amazon for my own name, and found that I was mentioned in the Podcasting Bible.

In the image above you’ll see some highlighted text that says “Amphetadesk, an RSS newsreader developed by Pete Prodoehl” The problem is, that text is inaccurate and/or misleading. I’m not one to take credit for things I didn’t do. (But wait, isn’t the history of Podcasting filled with people taking credit for what they didn’t do?) Morbus Iff was the lead developer of Amphetadesk. Morbus is a friend of mine, and I was a big fan of Amphetadesk. I don’t know that any of my code or suggestions ever went into Amphetadesk, but I did create a skin for Amphetadesk which enabled the links found in RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures.

It appears the Podcasting Bible was published by Wiley in February 2007. Oddly enough, some of my writing oes appear in another Wiley book, Videoblogging. I mentioned that in the post I am a (Contributing) Author!

Anyway, if you want to give me credit for things I didn’t do, please feel free to do so… but you should know that I may try to set the record straight.

And then there were three…

Madison, one of my favorite Wisconsin cities, is getting an Apple Store. It’s at West Towne Mall, and will open July 7th, 2007.

And just a week after the Bayshore store opened. (Note: I’m hoping to be at the Apple Store Bayshore on Saturday July 7th, 2007 - Jason, are you working that day?)

It still amazes me how many server admins fail to properly configure their web servers and dns so that foo.com works just as well as www.foo.com

On the other hand, there is a whole group of people who think that the ‘www’ is absolutely required, and even if you tell them to go to bar.foo.com, they will go to www.bar.foo.com, so make sure you set that up as well. It’s easy in Apache, just add a ServerAlias like so:

ServerName bar.foo.com
ServerAlias www.bar.foo.com

A simple fix, and hopefully it will help prevent having to explain to people that you don’t need to type the ‘www’ part, just let them do it, it’s easier to fix things on the server than in people’s brains.

(And if you can’t make this fix on your server yourself, ask whoever maintains your server to make it for you.)