I am writing this post because I promised I would, and dammit, I keep my word!

But seriously, go read what Crystal has to say in her post: Ten Steps to Organizing a Barcamp. Below is just my own notes from helping to organize BarCampMilwaukee2. (Please note I said helping to organizing. It’s definitely a team effort, and none of us could have done it alone, so build a good team!)

We found a mailing list essential. This was the way ideas got out there and discussed. We wanted to keep things in the open, so almost all conversation through email was public, and anyone could join the list. If someone had something to offer, we wanted them to be able to without feeling like they had to join some secret club.

We met in person a number of times. Typically we’d do in-person discussions and try to make decisions. Again, these meeting were public and announced on the mailing list. Afterwards, we posted the results to the mailing list and web site for people to comment on. Through this process we hoped no one was feeling left out due to missing meetings. We felt that if you made the effort to make your voice be heard, someone would listen.

We had a great core group for BarCampMilwaukee2, so tasks got broken up pretty well. Shirt art and ordering, table-renting, projector-finding, mailing list managing, web site building, food/beverage shopping, meal planning, sponsor-wrangling, money co-ordinating… Luckily no single person got stuck doing all of those things. In some cases people did more than one task, but they usually had help, or backup as well.

Community building is a big part of BarCamp, and we definitely did that this time around, through the process of planning, as well as the event itself. Personally, this is one of the main reasons I am involved with BarCamp, to build community, meet new people, make connections - even if they are not directly involving me - I find it amazing that Person X and Person Y, whom I both knew prior to BarCamp, now seem to be great friends and hang out together, that’s the coolest part. Robots and promoting technology are cool, but for me it’s all about community.

A big thanks goes out to our sponsors and participants, we’ll see you again in the Fall of 2008.

Ok, if the local Best Buy has an Asus Eee PC tomorrow, I’ll get one. I’ve done a whole lot of reading this week, and for the price, and what you get, it’s a good match for what I need.

As I mentioned, I want a very portable device, that does not cost too much, and lets me connect to the net and do basic things. Even if I pay $400 for an Eee PC, a new MacBook would cost more than twice that, be more than twice as heavy, and probably break. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iMac, and all the other Macs around me, but I’m comfortable with Linux, and a portable internet appliance is just what I need. If Apple could make an under $500 small laptop (think Mac-mini + iBook) they’d probably sell a zillion of them, but until then, Asus is the one to watch.

Still, there are questions… If the system gets mucked-up, can you do a reinstall? Can it do it over the net somehow? Does it come with install disks? It has no optical drive, so would you need a USB optical drive? Could you backup the entire system to a USB device or SD card for re-install? What can you install on the Eee PC? On the internal storage versus an SD card or USB stick? Apache? MySQL? PHP? Is gcc on there? Can you easily add it? Many of these questions don’t have answers yet, but might in the next week or so.

I ended up calling Best Buy yesterday and asking about the Eee PC, and they suggested calling back on the 1st or 2nd, since Thursday and Friday are when new shipments come in. I’d prefer to just go buy one rather than order online, but if that’s not an option (I’ve read somewhere that Best Buy may not be selling them now?) I’ll figure something else out…

It’s been a while since I recorded. This one is called “Hot Water” and has a guitary intro and extro. You should be able to hear it right on this page, using the embedded player below.

You can grab it from Ourmedia or the Internet Archive, and it’s got a Creative Commons Attribution License. (If you need something else, get in touch with me.)

I’m interested in the Asus Eee PC. Very interested. In fact, if I can get one before the end of the year for around $300, I probably will.

Since the iBook died, and the Wallstreet is pretty much useless, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like (and what I need) in a mobile computing device. Since I manage servers, and really need to access the net at various unknown times, and on occasion need something to take with me, I first looked at the Nokia 770. I saw this device when it was released, but didn’t really look too closely because of the price. Once the N800 came out, the 770 dropped in price and I looked a bit more closely. Technology moves fast, so when the N810 came out, the price on the N800 dropped and I considered that over the 770. I still think they are great devices, and I’m a big Nokia fan, but I’m not sure any of these would suit my needs.

At BarCampMilwaukee2 I had heard Matt and Blake talk about the Asus Eee PC. Once I looked at it, it looked sweet! Since Matt and I are both victims of Apple lack of quality in building laptops that last, it seems we are both looking at the Eee PC as a small, cheap alternative to a traditional laptop.

Yes, I did say cheap. While I’d love a MacBook or MacBook Pro, I cannot easily justify the cost. I work on desktop machines most of the time, probably 95% of the time, but for that 5% where I would really like to be mobile, I can justify $200-$500. That amount won’t even get a used/reliable Mac laptop.

I’m still waiting for reviews to roll in, but so far, things are looking good. This may be the first new non-Apple computer I’ve bought in the last 10 years or so.

Well, somehow we pulled off another BarCamp in Milwaukee, and now BarCampMilwaukee2 is over.

A huge thanks goes out to the people and the sponsors who made it happen, without them, there would have been no BarCampMilwaukee2. Will we do it again? Oh yes… In fact, we had a session yesterday for the planning of BarCampMadison2, and if all goes well, that will happen in the Spring of 2008. There was a guy there from Green Bay who is also interested in doing one up there. We are also (tentatively) planning a DrupalCamp for January of 2008. It would be a much smaller and focused one day event. We’re pretty sure we can do this at a relatively low cost, and if it works, we can look at doing other *Camps. I tossed out the idea of KidCamp and at least a few people liked the sound of that. (The idea being, kids are often more creative than adults so so what can we learn from them?)

All in all, it was a great time, and many new connections were made. We even launched a web site at ihatetreehouses.info (Story coming soon on that one!)

You want photos? Oh yes, Flickr has many with the tag barcampmilwaukee2. (We convinced most people to use Creative Commons licenses with their images.)

I was going to call this post “BarCampMilwaukee2 is over” but really, it’s not. There is follow-up to do and take-away to discuss. As time allows, I’ll be posting more on specific session and ideas and things that happened, so stay tuned.

I’ve uploaded a Greasemonkey script to Userscripts.org. It’s called WebGrader Link Rewriter and it takes the goofy Javascript used by WebGrader.com and makes real links you can click on and open in a new tab/window. I made it because the developers of the site wrote what I consider poor code.

I should note that I contacted the company that develops WebGrader a few weeks back and said I could suggest improvements in their system, and the replied to me pretty welcoming. I have not gotten back to them yet, as I’ve been busy, but writing this script took me about 10 minutes. (Yes, I pretty much copied an existing script someone wrote to fix Haloscan comment links.)

Userscripts.org looks pretty awesome for those of us who want to put fixing sites into our own hands. I would like to be able to choose a license when uploading a script but hey, I’ll forgive that for now. (Maybe it’s all public domain? I dunno…)

I do worry that Greasespot “The weblog about Greasemonkey” hasn’t been updated since May 2007. I hope it’s not abandoned. Then again, I should look around more, since I’m new to this. There is also a wiki at wiki.greasespot.net I should explore.

Since the iBook died (R.I.P. and if you are keeping track, that’s 2 Macs that have died so far in 2007) it was time to revive the old Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet) and get computing!

The last time I even mentioned it was 2004 when the power adapter needed repair. After that I had a G3 iBook from work to use, until I didn’t, then I just stuck the old Wallstreet in the office to be forgotten, except when I stole RAM from it last year.

Well, it’s back folks! I am now using a Powerbook G3 running Mac OS X 10.1.5, and I’m trying to get apps on it. So far I have Firefox 1.0.7, and jEdit 4.1something on it, and am trying to find a version of Adium or Fire that will run on it. I think I’m stuck with Terminal.app over iTerm too… Sheesh, talk about the dark ages! I don’t even want to think about Thunderbird.

Wifi? Well, sort of… thanks to wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net and an old wifi card I had laying around. One problem, the card does not work with WEP, so while I can use it in my own house (by turning off WEP and restricting to MAC addresses) using it out and about is pretty much impossible without an ethernet cable. I also tried a USB PC card and a USB wifi adapter, but that didn’t work. I’d actually consider getting a wifi card that would work with WEP (and Mac OS X 10.1.5) if I could find one for cheap enough.

Anyway, I am mobile again… if you consider “mobile” sitting on the couch browsing the web very slowly.

There’s just one week until we kick-off BarCampMilwaukee2. It has all the makings of a great event. As of right now there are 180+ people signed up to attend, there are a ton of great session ideas, and thanks to the generous donations of all of our sponsors, we can afford to provide free shirts to everyone who pre-registered (before Oct. 1st, 2007) and we should be able to provide food for all who come as well. (This should let people focus on the event and not worry about where to go for a meal.)

I’m really proud of, and thankful to, the people who stepped up to do all the little things involved in getting ready for this event. Even with the load being distributed, I still feel like I have a million things to do. Presentations? I’m not sure if I’ll have anything prepared ahead of time. That’s OK, I’ve gotten used to winging it. The next week is going to be insane for me, and then I’m out of town for a few days right after BarCamp. Don’t worry though, we’re already planning the next *Camp. (I’m personally aiming for DrupalCamp…)

So one more time, in case I haven’t overdone it: BarCampMilwaukee2 will take place Saturday October 13th, 2007 through Sunday October 14th, 2007 at the Schlitz Park Center, 1555 Rivercenter Dr. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The event will run non-stop from Saturday morning at 10AM until Sunday afternoon at 4PM. (You are welcome to attend any time you are available.) Visit barcampmilwaukee.com for more info, and to sign-up.

iCal is good, but iCal sucks. It allows one computer/person to be the central point for a calendar’s control. So while Person A can created, and edit a calendar, they can do so only from the original Mac they created it on, and no one else can make edits, they can only view it. This can be good if you want total control over something, but not so good if you want to collaborate on editing.

Google Calendar is good, but Google Calendar sucks. It’s dead easy for multiple people to manage one calendar. But, sometimes I just don’t like to rely on someone else to manage my data. Seeing messages like “Oops, we couldn’t load details for your calendar, please try again in a few minutes” does not instill confidence that all is well. (In the Google Calendar Help group you’ll see some posts about things going wrong that do not instill confidence.)

Maybe my expectations are high because I’ve been running my own server for years with my personal calendar data, that gets backed up regularly. I dunno..

Anyway, we needed a solution at the office for a handful of people to all edit the same calendar. iCal can’t do this (yet) and while it was easy to create Yet Another Google Account, I didn’t want people to have to constantly login/logout or even have to sign up for an account. So I created an account, and then built a custom WebRunner app (or a Site Specific Browser, as they are called.)

So now we have a bunch of people who can subscribe to the calendar in iCal (nothing new there) and a select few who can use our gCalendar app (or, just log into Google) and edit the thing. iCal has a great interface, but dammit, you can only edit a calendar on the machine it was created on, unless you look to third party apps to fix that.

It’s clunky, but it works. Of course a few days later I found gCal.app which is a WebKit equivalent. So, hey, at least there are choices.

Along the way I also tried Calendar Server which did not work (Python-foo failures) but looks promising for the future.

Despite the progress, I just feel like calendaring still has a long way to go.

When I was a kid, you went to school, and the only time you had to worry about your parents knowing about your grades was when reports cards came, or when progress reports came (not good) or when there was a phone call made (really not good.)

But today there are things like WebGrader, which is an online system that schools and teachers use to let not just the students, but the parents know exactly what is going on. I mean exactly. (Hello Big Brother!)

So the parent in me who cares about my child’s grades and wants to keep tabs on things thinks this is a good thing. (Even more so as I don’t get to talk with my child each day about school.) On the other hand, the parent in me who wants to see my child be responsible for themself without me having to keep a close watch wonders what damage this close monitoring might do. (Honestly, I’m pretty lucky, as my child is quite responsible, in school and in life.)

The open-source, sharing, collaborating, and hacking parent in me wishes they provided an API or at least RSS feeds to make it easier to use. Like most apps in this genre, it suffers from poor usability issues. They do allow you to receive Inbox messages via email, so that’s a start, but honestly, I don’t know if they plan to innovate from there. (I did send them feedback about some UI issues, and they were very receptive, so that’s a plus.)

In the end, I think it’s a good thing, and here’s why: People make mistakes. My daughter is a good student, but she was a bit overwhelmed by middle school, so the first time I logged into WebGrader, I saw an F, and there was a note from a teacher about a missing assignment. I asked my daughter about it and she said she turned it in. I sent the teacher a message asking her to discuss it with my daughter, and it turns out it was turned in, but with no name on it. Simple mistake. The next week I saw another F and when questioned, my daughter said she handed it in, and got it back - with an A on it. A simple message to the teacher revealed that the grade was entered wrong, and was indeed an A. Again, a simple mistake, but one I am glad I could catch.

Have I really been using jEdit for 5 years now? Time flies, eh?

In that time I sort of dropped out of the jEdit community a bit, but I still use it daily. Yes, it still has bugs, and little things that annoy me, but overall I really like it. One problem I’ve had is that somewhere in the last year or so the XInsert plugin stopped working for me. It was last “officially” updated November 12, 2005. Urgh… Another abandoned piece of open source software. So even though I had written a ton of files for XInsert to use, I couldn’t use them. I ended up moving many of my files to use the Templates plugin, but still wasn’t happy. So since it’s open source, I started looking for a solution…

I found this post on the jEdit Community site with a reply titled “Fixed!” which said: “I’ve just removed comments at the beginning of dockables.xml file in xinsert.jar.” Really? Is that all it takes? Yes… I unjar’d the jar file, made the change, and rejar’d it, and the damn thing works. Imagine that. I wish I had found that fix a year ago.

Thus illustrates the good/bad of open source software. You scratch your own itch, but unless other know you even had an itch, they don’t know where to start scratching. Ummm, what I mean is, solving your own problems can take precedent to solving someone else’s problems, which is good for you, bad for the other person. Maybe we need to work on that? I dunno… I’m just glad my problem is solved.

To make things easier, you can download the version of the XInsert plugin I fixed.