Group 42

Arrrr, thar be comments on deck! (Sorry, getting in practice for Talk Like a Pirate Day).

Thanks to the anti-spam power of Akismet and the coding prowess of Markus Petrux at phpMiX.org I feel comfortable enabling comments.

It's the Vancouver Python Workshop 2006! Friday night opening keynotes with Python creator Guido van Rossum and IronPython/Jython creator Jim Hugunin were held at the SFU Downtown campus.

Van Rossum's keynote was an overview of Python 3000, a.k.a. Python 3.0. Python 3000 is a major departure from previous major versions because it breaks backward compatibility. Van Rossum explained there are many things he's wanted to clean up but couldn't because Python 2 worked hard, bugs aside, not to introduce incompatibilities. While not wanting to alienate the community because of core changes he wanted to fix design bugs introduced early on in the project. Python 3000 is all about fixing problems and will not incorporate a lot of new features. Design decisions are based on the best choice going forward, not compatibility.

The follow notes are part 2 of 3 from Narayanan 'Shiva' Shivakumar's presentation at the July 27th VanHPC meeting. These notes cover Shivakumar's discussion of the Google software infrastructure.

Jacob Nielsen has some things to say about size in his July 31 Alertbox. Specifically, screen resolution.

According to his figures, he didn't quote a source, about 60% of people are using 1024x768 and 17% are using 800x600 (hi Dad).

He gives the following advise:

Friends and I attended the Illuminares Lantern Procession this weekend. It's a yearly event put on by the Public Dreams Society.

The creativity on display on display is amazing and a lot of fun! A flash is not an option for capturing the lanterns and the low light makes photography a challenge. Obvious from my picture of the mushroom lanterns is the need for a monopod to steady my shots (though it would look ridicules attached to my tiny digital camera)!

I often wonder if it's possible to capture this kind of magic and fun in your typical technical day job. I've achieved it for short periods a handful of times. It's not often enough.

I'm currently having lots of technical fun outside the day job playing with Drupal. So far my results haven't been as beautiful or creative as the lanterns on Saturday. Everyone needs a goal!

The following notes are part 1 of 3 from Narayanan 'Shiva' Shivakumar's presentation at the July 27th VanHPC meeting. These notes cover Shivakumar's discussion of the Google hardware infrastructure.

Last Thursday (July 27th) I attended the VanHPC meeting with speaker Narayanan 'Shiva' Shivakumar, founding director of Google's Seattle-Kirkland R&D Center. He's a very good speaker with a wry sense of humour and was extremely generous about answering questions. His talk, while interesting, didn't have quite the depth I had hoped for.

Local Vancouver company Bryght has scored a heavy hitter in the Drupal community. Steven Wittens announced in his blog he is moving to Vancouver to become a "Bryght Guy". Steven is one of the original Drupal developers and until February the only other core committer besides Drupal creator Dries

This coming Friday is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Honour your SysAdmins!!!

I did that gig for 14 years. When you do it right almost no one notices. So send them a little appreciation ... the website has gift suggestions: http://www.sysadminday.com/

During a desktop file cleanup I (re)discovered my notes from this year's Northern Voice conference. Well, technically it was the Friday Moose Camp which preceded Northern Voice proper.

The following notes are from the Leadership Hacks session lead by David Sifry, a self described "serial entrepreneur", founder of Technorati, cofounder of Sputnik, and cofounder of Linuxcare.