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Fishing at BarCampMadison

Yeah, that’s fishing, not phishing! I thought I had seem some odd BarCamp sessions before, but at BarCampMadison, someone has one titled Fishing (NOT PHISHING): A Geeks Hobby. Hey, this is Wisconsin after all…

Here’s a brief description:

71% of the earths surface is water and in that water there are fish for that catching. My goal with this session is to introduce some of my fellow geeks to hobby I find extremely enjoyable, that gets me outdoors, and doesn’t lack for technology.

Honestly, that doesn’t sound like your typical BarCamp session…

(Oh, on a somewhat related/unrelated note, a big thanks should go out to Chad Dickerson of Yahoo! for helping out with the sponsoring of BarCampMadison.)





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I Fell Through…

“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…

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Focus on Crazy Sword/Rape Story

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.

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BarCampMadison is shaping up!

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!




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Desktop Linux (is back!)

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?