RailsConf Update 3
The first day has been filled with ups and downs. It started great with Dave Thomas challenging DHH's philosophies on Rails. His call for foreign keys and non-integer primary keys I think was dead on. I hope it gains some traction among the core developers. I started work on this awhile back but got no feedback whatsoever from core. Its definately not a very elegant solution but I think it will benefit Rails in the long run.
Mike Clarks Introduction to Capistrano was pretty good. Although I don't personally plan to use it until it works in parallel, it's still a pretty nice piece of software, although I still prefer my multicast notification and ftp-diff pull solution better. Maybe I should make Castripano???
The next session doesn't even deserve any mention, if you were stuck in it then you know what I'm talking about.
Dr. Stefan Kaes' session on Optimizing Rails had a lot of excellent material presented, although his presentation style was pretty dry. Much better talking to him in person.
I'm sure Martin Fowlers keynote was filled with insight, unfortunately, most of the caboosers were busy negotiating how many and what type of pizzas to get for dinner.
Afterwards, we acquired a room in the hotel and had some famous Chicago Deep Dish pizza from Giordanos. Think this is the first time in my life 2 pieces of pizza has filled me up, gotta love Chicago pizza!
Paul Graham's poetic speech was excellent and dealt with some items that I struggle with, mainly about taking risk. I have a lot of good ideas for applications, but my inner self talks me out of them before I even start coding.
To cap off the night, Why the lucky stiff did his thing. While I can certainly appreciate Why's artistic creativity, it was beyond the scope of my understanding. The only thing that I understood was Robert Scoble killing David Heinemeier Hansson. Others really seemed to enjoy it though. I imagine better acoustics would have improved the act.
Let's hope tomorrow continues to improve on the quality of the sessions and keynotes.
Mike Clarks Introduction to Capistrano was pretty good. Although I don't personally plan to use it until it works in parallel, it's still a pretty nice piece of software, although I still prefer my multicast notification and ftp-diff pull solution better. Maybe I should make Castripano???
The next session doesn't even deserve any mention, if you were stuck in it then you know what I'm talking about.
Dr. Stefan Kaes' session on Optimizing Rails had a lot of excellent material presented, although his presentation style was pretty dry. Much better talking to him in person.
I'm sure Martin Fowlers keynote was filled with insight, unfortunately, most of the caboosers were busy negotiating how many and what type of pizzas to get for dinner.
Afterwards, we acquired a room in the hotel and had some famous Chicago Deep Dish pizza from Giordanos. Think this is the first time in my life 2 pieces of pizza has filled me up, gotta love Chicago pizza!
Paul Graham's poetic speech was excellent and dealt with some items that I struggle with, mainly about taking risk. I have a lot of good ideas for applications, but my inner self talks me out of them before I even start coding.
To cap off the night, Why the lucky stiff did his thing. While I can certainly appreciate Why's artistic creativity, it was beyond the scope of my understanding. The only thing that I understood was Robert Scoble killing David Heinemeier Hansson. Others really seemed to enjoy it though. I imagine better acoustics would have improved the act.
Let's hope tomorrow continues to improve on the quality of the sessions and keynotes.
Hello Chicago!
After a 2 hour delay due to severe thunderstorms, I finally arrived in Chicago to slightly overcast skies and warm humid air. I'm checked into the Wyndham (room 151) and it turns out most of the caboosers went out to eat. I found Amy Hoy (eriberri on irc) and Blake and enjoyed a quiet dinner with them. I didn't realize the main conference doesn't actually start until Friday so I hope the "self-organizing" sessions are worthwhile tomorrow.
I haven't flown anywhere for quite awhile and I guess lighters are on the "banned" list of items for carry on (ironically, matches are ok????). So after my lighters got confiscated, I had to pay $6 for a pack of matches. The good news is, they came with a free pack of cigarettes.
More later as the conference progresses....
I haven't flown anywhere for quite awhile and I guess lighters are on the "banned" list of items for carry on (ironically, matches are ok????). So after my lighters got confiscated, I had to pay $6 for a pack of matches. The good news is, they came with a free pack of cigarettes.
More later as the conference progresses....