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BarCampMilwaukee.com is up and running. If you are interested in BarCampMilwaukee, please go there for details, and to sign-up.

Now that we’ve got a date (Sat. Sept. 30 & Sun. Oct. 1, 2006) and a place to have BarCamp (Bucketworks) we are working on things like getting participants (campers) and sponsors, and promoting it. Are you involved in a technology-related group in the Milwaukee area? Tell the people in your group about it.

We’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for BarCampMilwaukee where we are currently discussing all the details for the event. I think we’ll also be meeting at Bucketworks on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 to do some in-person discussion and planning (waiting for confirmation on that meeting…)

I’m also hoping to design & print up some flyers in the next few days… And, you know, if I’m posting too much about BarCampMilwaukee, just let me know. ;)

I do love my Nokia 7610, but recently had a bit of trouble with it, which involved not being able to actually answer calls…

At first it was somewhat random, I’d get a call and answer the phone, and all was well. I would then get another call, and it would ring once (or just a half a ring) and then no matter what button I pushed I could not answer the call. After the call was over, things went back to normal. I was also using my ringtone for the alarm, which would only play the half-ring, and then stop.

I ended up debugging the problem by changing profiles and selected ringtones, and finally realized that the MP3 I had created and used for a ringtone was causing the problem.

I’d been using an MP3 of a phone ringing for nearly a year now, and never had a problem. Did it become corrupt? It was stored in the phone’s memory, and I’m guessing it was written to memory once when I loaded it onto the phone, and read from memory each time the phone played the sound.

I’m using a different ringtone right now, but I’m going to load a new copy of the MP3 I created to see if a fresh copy fixes the problem.

I’ve seen a number of blog designs that display the comments made by readers at a much smaller font size than those of the author. I’m trying to determine if this is an attempt at lowering the value of the comments. I’d guess in most cases it is used as a visual differentiator to separate the post from the comments. I’m sure at least some people want to see what they’ve written stand out in size against other’s reactions to it. Is this good for conversation?

We are all set, BarCampMilwaukee is a go!

It’s happening Saturday, September 30 through Sunday, October 1, 2006 at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

We are looking for smart, passionate, innovative people to participate. If you want to share what you know, or learn something new, or discuss an issue that’s been bothering you, sign up. If being cooped-up with a bunch of nerds for 24+ hours to see what happens sounds at all interesting, sign up.

So what is a BarCamp? This was my attempt to explain it last night:

BarCamp is an “unconference” event. At a typical conference, you pay lots of money, and sit in a big room listening to a few people talk for an hour, and then you have 5 minutes to ask questions. BarCamp makes everyone attending a participant, you either demonstrate something, lead a session on something, or help someone else do those things. It is what we make it. Everyone who wants to participate is welcome.

Now it’s just a matter of getting all those interesting people to sign up, and seeing if we can get a few companies to sponsor the event. Feel free to contact me with questions on either of those two things.

(In the coming weeks we will be transitioning the info from the BarCamp wiki to BarCampMilwaukee.com, but feel free to drop by either site and get involved.)

On August 5th, 1997 I started this blog. Not a journal, or “writing on the web” or whatever, but a weblog, as they were eventually to become known. (The archives are a little screwed up right now, but they are there.)

That’s 9 years of blogging. I’ve seen a lot change in that time, and my life has changed a lot since then. I’ve lived in 5 different houses in 3 different cities, changed jobs a few time, went from being married to not married to enganged to be married, saw my children grow, made new friends, found old friends, seen the web mature, seen businesses launch and fail… Whew, it’s a little crazy when you think about it.

Through all this blogging, I’ve never really been a popular blogger. I don’t live in the Bay Area, I don’t work for some startup, I didn’t come up with the word “Ajax” but along the way I think I did some interesting things… I’ve worked with RSS, aggregators, podcasting, videoblogging, and other things. Through all of that, I stick with it. I feel I’m dedicated if nothing else. What I lack in talent I make up for in tenaciousness. I’ve seen bloggers come onto the scene, become very popular, and then disappear. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

I will patiently await my lifetime achievement award. See, since Cam doesn’t really keep CamWorld up to date, I believe my last target is Dave Winer. I’ve know Dave (in the internet sense of knowing someone) for probably 12 years now, and his time is coming. He admits that he is going to stop blogging at some point, and when he does, I can claim the title of LONGEST CONTINUALLY RUNNING WEBLOG ON THE INTERNET!!!

I’ll just keep cranking out the posts until that happens… I’ve waited this long, what’s another few months or years?