My next door neighbor, Joe, is a huge Nektar fan. Who is Nektar? Well, they are a little unfamiliar to me as well, but they are a prog-rock band from the way-back machine who are still touring, and still have an incredibly loyal fan base. (You can find out more about them here.) What’s amazing to me is that I never heard of these guys before Joe started talking to me about them. How’d I miss them? I loved prog-rock in the 70s, and still do.

Anyway, they’re coming to St. Louis on December 1st, and Joe’s been hounding me to go. In fact, he’s such a big fan that he is planning to go the extra buck, and buy an all-access package. And, in preparation for twisting my arm to go with him, he bought an extra. He’s a mean, mean man. Here’s the skinny on that package (from the Nektar tour site):

VINP tickets are Very Important Nektar Person tickets. They are a premium price, high-value ticket that entitle the purchaser to a range of privledges.

VINP gives you the following:

Best tickets in the house, always in the front two rows and central.

Entry into the Load in / Sound-check for the show at 15.00 pm onwards

Permission to take photos and video during this period.

Tour of the stage area and discussion with all band mambers about equipment, the show and whatever takes your fancy during a set 30 minute period.

Photo taken with the band as a group and as individuals on stage, with photo supplied at the Merchandise Desk at the end of the show signed

Special Nektar goodie bag with exclusive VINP only items:
Exclusive Version of the Tour Program – more detailed
Postcards
Nektar Photos
Special VINP NEKTAR badge
Special VINP NEKTAR CD of rare audio
Book of Days T-Shirt Deluxe Ed.
Nektar Cap
Nektar Sticker
Leisurely access prior to doors of the Merchandising Stand
Book of Days Poster

This is all in a Nektar bag

You will be able to pick up your exclusive Nektar Laminate at the Box office on the day of the show. This will give you access as described. You will be met by Roy Clay – nektars manager who will look after you and ensure all your needs are addressed. You will be required to exit the venue about 18.00 pm but allowed back into the Foyer area when doors open. You will be able to pick up your photo after the show from the Merchandise desk, or have it mailed onto you.

This is pretty cool access, and the whole thing sounds great, but for me (you guessed it), it’s an opportunity to shoot unfettered during the sound check and warmup for three hours. That will be an amazing opportunity, and a kind of photography I’ve never practiced before. So, fast lenses are the order of the day, along with some cross-filters, and all the memory I can muster. I think I’ve got about 12Gb of CF, along with my 40Gb P-2000. That should do it for 3hrs of photo fun.

The e-mail Joe got back from the registration indicates the band would like copies of the photos. Who knows… maybe I’ll be allowed to shoot during the show, and perhaps make a little bit of a name for myself in that circle!

I think I’m probably the last person on the ‘net to see this, but the latest space tourist, Anousheh Ansari, has started posting photos to flickr. You can see them here. She’s got her own interesting website at anoushehansari.com.

Manoman, would I ever jump at that opportunity! All I need is a cool $20M. Any sponsors out there?

I neglected to mention that while I was gone to SF, I sold six prints.

Our company is a huge sponsor of the United Way campaign, and as a fundraiser, they had an employee vendor day. This allowed folks to show off their home-business wares — tupperware, cooking stuff, jewelry, etc. — and sell them at work, with a portion of the proceeds going to the UWay campaign. Well, during my absence, Beck handled my prints, and was able to sell six of them. I was hurrying through the airport in Denver when she told me about it, and I thought I’d fly home all by myself — no plane needed!

This is a great encouragement to me, and for my craft. And, the profit from that pays for about a third of the cost of my new printer. Pretty cool!!!!

11.7mi

Tonight marked a triumphant return to the trail after nearly three weeks away. Since the MS150 earlier this month, there’s been all kinds of things inserting themselves in between me and my bike, and that’s been a crying shame.

It was wonderful to get back out there, especially with the weather we’re having. On the way back to the trailhead, it was misting rain, and the temperature couldn’t have been more that 65 — perfect weather for me! It’s supposed to be cool for the next several days, so I expect I’ll get back out there to burn up more miles on the trail.

My recently-injured ankle didn’t bother me too bad, although I can definitely tell that I’ve ridden on it. I’ve just gotta keep strengthening it, and keep it flexible by working with it. There’s no better medicine for it than being on my bike!

Last week, I spent most of the week in San Francisco at the annual BEAWorld conference. I’d been in 2004, and found it to be a good show. This year’s was good, albeit not quite as groundbreaking.

Monday – Travel

In our crazy world, the folks in charge tell you that you need to be at the airport two or three hours ahead of your scheduled flight departure time. For me, that meant getting to the airport at 4.30am, which backed up into getting up at 3am. Ugh.

I got to the airport, parked the truck in offsite parking, and caught a shuttle to Lambert. I was surprised to easily find a shuttle at this time of the morning, but I guess if the airport and government are saying folks have to be at the airport at 4.30am or earlier, then you’ve gotta give ‘em a way of getting there. I lobbed my checked bag at the TSA folks, and went on through security.

This is the first time that I’ve flown since the events in August that dramatically tightened the airport security picture here in the States. I definitely got a sense that I was being watched very closely, as was everyone else in line. I had no trouble with my carryon, which only had my iPod, charger, and cell phone. No worries.

I’d never flown with my iPod, and man was that great. Being able to listen to any kind of music while reading my magazines in the terminal was just amazing. I still just cannot figure out how in the world how I got along without one of these. I’ve carried music with me all my life — transistor radios to high school, portable cassette tape decks to events — but nothing compares to this little Marvel from Cupertino.

The flight was great. The morning sun was just rising, and I could see fog in the river valleys of eastern and central Missouri as we took off. The ground slowly changed from tree-covered to farm-covered, and I could see the large tracts of land, box-like cuts upon the land, with the occassional circularly-plowed crops easily visible. I had to change flights in Denver, and made it with only ten minutes to spare. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember if I’d closed the sunroof on Smokey when I parked, so I had Beck checking into that while I continued on to San Francisco.

I got into SFO, and learned from Beck that the sunroof was indeed closed — yay! I picked up my luggage and went out to the cab line. Holy cow, there were a lot of folks trying to get cabs from the airport! I finally got one, and headed to the Hilton. However, what I didn’t count on was having a craaaaaazy cab driver carrying me to my temporary home. I mean, he was doing 80mph in a 50mph zone, dodging in and out of the heavy traffic. Sure, he’s probably a pro, but I didn’t need that kind of excitement to get my day moving!

The Hilton had everything ready for me, so I checked in, dropped off my luggage, and caught the BEA shuttle down to the Moscone Center to get my registration completed for the conference. I could’ve waited until Tuesday morning, but I’m kinda nuts about getting places early, and getting all my ducks in a row, just in case there’s things that need to be straightened out. There were no problems though, and I picked up my conference materials — carry all bag, booklets, schedule changes, floor layouts, etc. By this time, my internal clock was still on Central Time, and my stomach was crying foul, so I got a late lunch (or dinner, if your body’s still set two timezones to the right!) across the street from the Moscone.

After linner ( ), I headed back to the room, started figuring out my schedule for the next couple of days, and waited for 7pm to come. Azul Systems was holding a reception Monday night, and I was invited. Now, I’d met these guys a few months ago, and talked in some depth about their java appliances. It’s cool technology, and man do they promise a lot with it. I’ve not actually laid hands on the device, so I can’t testify to its capabilities, but if it really does live up to the specs — and I’ve no reason to believe it can’t — that’s a remarkable device, and I don’t know why there isn’t one or more of these in every company out there running java apps.

The reception was good, great food, good conversation, and I even caught back up with the folks that had come to St. Louis to show us their product. However, they held this in a sports bar, which wouldn’t ordinarily have been a huge big deal…. except that Monday Night Football was still on while they were trying to do their presentation. Kinda hard to compete with a game that went to halftime scoreless! Nonetheless, they got their presentation done, and I stuck around for a while. By the time I finally got back to the hotel, I’d been up 21 hours, and was absolutely exhausted.

What struck me the most about the eight or nine block back to the hotel was the number of homeless wandering the streets, panhandling to make it past another day. I believe I remember that SF had passed some legislation that gave these folks some rights to be there, be homeless, and panhandle, and I think it’s admirable that someone paid attention to them. It seems like it must’ve attracted so many more to the city though, which means there’s way too many people in one small area that need all kinds of help. Probably the somberest point of the trip for me.

Tuesday – Day One of BEAWorld

If your body is two hours off the local timezone for meals, it makes sense that it might also carry that time slippage over into your sleep. My body is a great timekeeper, and I was awake at 3am Pacific Time — which is my normal Central Time waking time — with little chance of getting back to sleep in a decent way. As it ends up, I would repeat this behavior every night I spent in San Francisco.

In 2004, BEAWorld had a great breakfast spread for us, and really took good care of our stomachs throughout the whole conference. In 2006, things were a little different.

I went to the Moscone on the shuttle, expecting a nice breakfast, and having not eaten anything before I left the hotel. That was probably a mistake. The idea for breakfast in 2006 was bagels and some fruit, along with all the coffee I could drink, along with sodas, water and some fruit juices. No hot cereal, no cold cereal, no toast….. and no tables! Frantically, I could hear the staff realizing that they just didn’t think about tables for breakfast. Big oversight! So, 4000 of us stood in the various parts of the Moscone, trying to juggle a plate with some light food, a drink and our silly little bags.

I was really disappointed in the carry-all bags we were given. They were a little lightweight, but that’s not what was odd about them. There were no dividers inside a pretty massive cavern to store things. Invariably, your materials floated flat to the bottom of the bag, and if you had a book or two in there, everything in the bag was crushed beneath them. Add to that the funny hang of the bag from the shoulder strap, and you end up with a crazy bag design that wasn’t very comfortable, and was only just useful for hauling stuff around the conference.

The doors opened for the keynotes, and the gaggle that is 4000 BEA junkies wandered into the big auditorium. Much like 2004, I felt like I had accidentally walked into a rock star’s reception: big screens, loud music, lights whirling and twirling, and a groupie-like atmosphere among my fellow attendees.

Alfred Chaung, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of BEA, spoke to us about the future of the brand, and where they were trying to head. What struck me was how he wandered around the stage, with what looked like a brown windbreaker on. I think I remember him wearing almost the same thing two years ago.

The best was next though. Shaygan Keradpir, CIO of Verizon, spoke to us about Verizon’s use of BEA’s technology, and it’s then I realized I was hanging on his every word. It was eye candy, brain candy. They are doing incredibly cool things for their customers, and even better, for their employee base. Shaygan talked for about an hour, showing off Verizon’s technology, and sucking me farther and farther down their road. It was inspiring to hear him speak, and to see the kinds of things their IS culture has fostered internally: blogs, video conferencing, gaming during videoconferences (yes!!!), and a culture where the CIO is accessible, and is reaching out to his folks. Shaygan asks his folks regularly what they are doing after hours. That’s a barometer for emerging technologies Verizon might want to look at, either for customers or for the employees. They are truly a community of workers, rather than just folks wandering around siloed from each other. Big difference in culture.

It was just flat amazing to see this convergence of so many technologies into a one-world view of your data, no matter where it was, or where you were. That’s cool stuff. It certainly made me look wistfully at the sexiness of what they are playing with day-to-day, and the mundane things that I work on day-to-day. It’s not that my work isn’t challenging or thought-provoking — it is — but at the end of the day, I haven’t advanced the art, advanced my skills much, nor done something that a whole bunch of other people haven’t already done. It’s regular ol’ business, not the cool, sexy stuff, and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed that.

When I first came to my employer, it was the sexy stuff, and it was things that were cool, useful, advancing the art, and hadn’t been done before. Somewhere over the last 11 years, that part of our company — at least from my view — fell away, withering on the vine of the necessity of the moment. I hadn’t really realized that until confronted with this incredible vision of not only the present, but the future.

As the speakers continued with their keynotes, I found a little humor in watching the Windows dudes trying to get their laptops connected to the wireless network BEA had supplied for us in the Moscone. In particular, I watched one guy reconfigured his network settings half a dozen times, trying to get connected to the outside world. If you’re gonna do that, then why in the world would you sit in the darkened keynote auditorium? Common courtesy says that you pay attention to the speakers — they might just have something interesting to say.

We broke for lunch, and afternoon breakout sessions. This was the first time the vendor display area was open to the public. I raced to get my lunch after gorging myself at breakfast — or not! — and was ready to get some grub in me. Lunch, despite being a box lunch, was really very tasty. I walked around a bit afterward, and ran into some folks from Wily Systems…. and they remembered me from two years ago. Amazing. I guess I have one of those faces.

Alfred had annnounced Guardian, a nifty little tool for keeping things running right in WebLogic-land, so I attended some sessions on that tool during the afternoon. This really seems like a great way to stay up to date on fixes, as well as being able to enforce compliance with internal standards. I can’t wait until this hits the streets sometime this winter.

I stayed through to the BEA reception Monday night. This was also held in the vendor area, and was fabulous. The food was incredible. And that’s when I noticed there was a problem. Again, we were juggling a drink in one hand, and food in the other…. leaving no hands to pick up literature, shake hands, or do anything else useful. There seems to be a theme here…… I need another arm!

Wednesday – Day Two of BEAWorld

After the fiasco of breakfast Tuesday, I elected to have breakfast in the hotel. A fine breakfast, with plenty of stuff on the buffet, and a good way to start the day.

Wednesday’s session opened with breakfast and more keynotes. Breakfast this time was Krispy Kremes — nice, but still not the kind of stuff to get you moving in the morning. This time there were tables…. although only enough for about a quarter of the attendees. Once again, folks were sitting on the floor all over the center, trying to eat their breakfast and read their e-mails or newspapers.

The keynotes were, with the highlight being a technical panel hosted by Rob Levy, EVP and CTO of BEA. He brought some of the best and brightest from BEA to the stage, and they had what appeared to be a very unrehearsed conversation about the state of things in BEA-land, and where things seemed to be headed. That was an amazing view into the minds of the folks shaping this sector of java platforms.

SOA was the big push in this conference, and BEA made sure there were plenty of opportunities to see material about implementing SOA. Two years ago, BEA challenged us attendees to “Deploy SOA Now!” This year, BEA helped with trying to tackle the organizational changes needed to do SOA correctly and well. That organizational change is critical, and was the key point throughout the afternoon sessions.

So, what’re my impressions of BEAWorld 2006. On balance, it was a good conference. There were quite a few logistical problems that would’ve been so easy to fix ahead of time. Had I been a vendor, I would’ve been ticked, as the vendor floor was only open during lunches, and during the reception on Tuesday night. That meant about five hours or so of useful time to get deep dives with so many attendees. That’s a shame. I think the breakouts were good, but again, there just wasn’t enough of them in the schedule, with only six sessions or so available in the schedule.

Were it me, I’d extend the thing by another day, maybe cut the keynotes in half, and facilitate some good conversation among the attendees. Back in the OS/2 TI days, those were called Birds of a Feather sessions, and they worked really well to foster networking among the attendees.

I spend the evening packing, and trying to get myself ready for travelling.

Thursday – Goin’ Home!

I was ready to get home. For some reason, this trip couldn’t be short enough for me. That’s not like me, so I’m not sure exactly what was going on there. That manifested itself in me getting to the airport around 8am for a 11am flight. I was fine with that, as that put me that much closer to getting home.

The trip back was pretty uneventful, aside from some turbulence over Kansas, and I got back to the house around 8pm, with the trip behind me, and another successful conference under my belt. Woo-hoo!

The Logitech NuLOOQ is one weird controller, but I couldn’t keep from buying it. Basically, it is a very Photoshop-centric device for your non-mouse-or-stylus ladened hand. The theory is that you keep one hand on the NuLOOQ, and another on your device of choice in PS. In practice, this actually seems to work.

With one hand on my Wacom stylus, and the other on the NuLOOQ, I tried to get the little device to work. And it just wouldn’t. That is, it wouldn’t until I plugged it directly into the back of my Quad. For some reason, it didn’t like my USB hub. Once the cable was moved, it the little guy began to work flawlessly. I believe it’s gonna take more retraining — kinda like when I got my Wacom in January — for me to use the thing well, but it seems to have so much promise.

I’ve seen some criticisms of the NuLOOQ — not heavy enough (although it does weigh 300gm, which seems plenty heavy enough to me), slides around on the desk (not on my glasstop it doesn’t!), and that it’s not very portable (I don’t get that one). The biggest complaint I think though is that it is an Mac-only device!

Anyway, two thumbs up, along with an occassional pinky (’cause I’m polite) — this is a cool little device!

When I headed to San Fran last week, I wanted badly to put a iPod Video in my bag. I wanted to be able to watch some video on the flights, and have something to do in the hotel. Well, no one in St. Louis had them before I left — neither of our Apple Stores, Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc. I couldn’t find one anywhere. However, the folks at the Apple Store said that the San Fran store was a “flagship store”, and they would certainly have it.

Well, they were right, and on Monday, I picked up this new beastie. It’s a gorgeous, sexy black model….. the only rub was that I had no way to get stuff from my old iPod Photo to the new iPod Video whilst on the road. It sat unused for the week, while I made my plans for moving my data over to it.

When I got home on Thursday, I think the third or fourth thing I did was hook it up to the Quad, and let it begin to assimilate its new world. Come Friday morning, it was ready to begin its journey with me.

I didn’t elect for any engraving this time, thinking of all the times I flipped my iPod Photo over and looked at my mantra… maybe half a dozen times over the last 13 months. I did pick up a Contour hardshell case for it though, thinking that this time I might be a little vain with my new toy, and try to keep it from taking too many unneccesary scratches.

So I hear you asking, “How’s the experience?” It’s sweet. Absolutely sweet. Having a bigger drive in the thing is nice, but the bigger addition is having video capabilities. Now, I haven’t gone out to ITMS and purchased a bunch of TV or movies for viewing, but I have put some small videos — mostly Apple commercials — on it, and have been quite impressed by the video quality on the 2.5″ screen. I’ve even dumped the video/audio streams out to the big screen in the den, and they look pretty good there too.

BTW, no Apple Pr0n this time — no photos of opening the boxes, etc. That’s interesting, but it’s been done, and only thousands of anonymous enthusiasts like me will have this new beastie. Someone else will surely cover Unboxing Day.

All in all, this was a good purchase, and one more step on the Cult of Mac.

Well, the “twists” part is that I rolled my ankle…. AGAIN! This morning, I was rolling my bike out to the truck, planning for a ride after work to take advantage of this great weather, when suddenly, both the bike and I were on the ground — fortunately, neither of us were tangled up with the other. Near as I can figure, I stepped on some kind of nut that the squirrels have been hiding and harvesting in the yard. I feel like a doof, but all I can do is baby the thing today, and try to get back to work tomorrow.

Being home isn’t all bad though. I was able to watch the Apple rumor sites do live coverage of the announcement of Aperture 1.5. From what I can tell from the release notes, it sounds like it’ll be a free upgrade to folks that own Aperture 1.1 — that’s good news. It seems like Apple’s listened to the user base, and have made some changes based on their input. That’s always a good thing.

Adobe, not to be outdone, released the fourth beta of Lightroom today. Still no word on pricing of this code, and exactly when it’ll be available.

I still haven’t figured out which of these suits my needs, or even if I need either of them. I know my workflow is a bit clunky, and nowhere near as zippy as I care for, but it does work for me, and that’s the whole point!

This morning, I fly to San Francisco for beaWorld — a conference held by bea to help a bunch of us middleware geeks network with each other, and learn more about their products. Long days, and lots and lots of conversation!

I’ll be back on Thursday, with all kinds of stories about the trip. TTFN!

Well the folks at Anandtech have been playing with upgrading the processors in a MacPro — details here. They also created the first octocore MacPro that I’ve heard of. You can read about that massive beastie here. Slashdot also has some coverage here.

Basically, they took the cheapest MacPro config you can buy — twin dual-core 2.0Ghz Xeons for $2199 retail — and upgraded it with a pair of 3.0Ghz Xeons. That’s cool, but what they did next was amazing — they stuffed some Clovertown chips in the thing….. and it worked!

Holy cow……

So, even though Apple’s probably gonna have eight cores later this year (or early next) in the MacPro, it seems possible to upgrade today’s dual-core based MacPros to eight cores. And probably a lot cheaper than buying that kind of rig from Apple.

Ahhhhh, but it’s a wonderful time to be an Apple geek!