Linuxworld 2006

Linuxworld 2006
I’m at Linuxworld at Moscone Center in San Francisco. It is the last day. I almost didn’t make it here because I’ve been so busy and kind of freaked out about getting homework done, which I still haven’t.

I accidentally took a class that started 2 weeks before my other two classes end. Oops. This week is the final project for both the CSS and JavaScript classes. Third class is about datbase design. Next week, the class I have been most excited about starts. It’s an advanced CSS class and covers the whole CSS 2.1 specification. The one I am taking now is more of a workshop that focuses on real world CSS problems and solutions.

But, I digress… Linuxworld. With some encouragement from K, along with a reminder that Linuxworld happens only once a year in these parts and that I would be really bummed if I didn’t come, I hopped on a BART train and made it here 10 minutes before the doors to the expo opened. I am really glad I made it here. Geeks everywhere. Servers. Open source open source open source everything. And t-shirts. It’s always fun coming to these things on the last day because people are always giving away their stuff so they don’t have to haul it back to wherever they came from. I also got a tiny usb hub, a few live linux distro cds, and of course, pens and magazines. There weren’t many live cds to be found that would run on a mac. They were either already all gone, or being worked on. The Gentoo folks still had one G4 mac disk, and were kind enough to burn me an intel version too. Gotta love that geek hospitality.

Talked to a bunch of people about servers. Someday. Also, some more realistic conversations about VPS (virtual private server) plans. I talked to the Joomla guy about the Joomla/Mambo split and about Joomla 1.5. Turns out it’s a pretty big leap from 1.0.10, and it will not be as easy as usual to update sites. I’m curious. BeeDragon’s running on Joomla. I think I’ll have to try it.

I also talked to a Motorola developer. They have a couple of phones running Linux now, and use Java for application development. I asked about mobile flash (or is it called flash lite these days?) and he said they have a team looking into using it at some point in the future. He showed me some cool stuff that they were working on where phones and websites and people were all connected in ways that they could share music and many other things. It was pretty interesting in a big brother sort of way.

One day is definitely enough time to be here. It is way smaller than Macworld, but definitely a higher geek per square foot ratio. I think there is no one here who is not a geek, except for the catering people, and maybe the security people. I am about ready to leave now, but will make another quick round of the expo floor, just in case I missed anything. After that, homework!

I didn’t go home. I got very sidetracked when I went back onto the floor. I met a nice guy that was there exhibiting Plone, which I’ve never tried, but have long been curious about. We ended up talking more about Python, which I am also very curious about. So many programming languages, so little time. I ended up meeting K at Powell St. BART station. She got off early because she had to go to the dentist. I am back home now and very very tired. My brain is fried. I hope I can do homework. Focusing is very hard these days. Still undermedicated. At least my homework is a bunch of coding, something I can focus on very well, but not get unfocused from so easily. I will try.

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