by Peter Seibel
-- A fantastic collection of interviews with 15 famous programmers. Contains some great history and insights on the field of "computer science."
-- Geeks, drugs, and deception. An entertaining look into the (fictional) lives of techno con artists, and how a recently-fired comic book artist get pulled into their inner circle.
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-- Particularly useful reference when trying to eek out a few extra milliseconds of load times in older browsers.
-- Interesting tech, and somewhat engaging, but disappointing ending (or lack thereof.)
, by Neil Strauss
-- An engaging, first-person account on transforming from an urban writer into "Jason Bourne."
, by Cory Doctrow
-- A high school hacker fights the 'Department of Homeland Security' to reclaim American civil liberties after anti-terror tactics are taken to a new level.
" -- About finding untapped opportunities in your market and repositioning yourself to capitalize on them. Easy to grasp; Longer then it needed to be.
" -- A thin book with some good best-practices, but a little disappointing. Perhaps it's JavaScript's fault, not the author's ;-)
" -- Good overview of usability issues in designing HTML forms, backed by examples and eye-tracking research. I bought the 
" by Marshall Goldsmith
-- Discusses interpersonal skills (and how to identify and fix them) that most commonly hold executives back in their career advancement.
"
-- Lesson: Cut the corporate B.S. and stop wasting your time. Focus only on what matters most.
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-- Lessons on handling tough conversations: firing people, relationship problems, hostage negotiations (well, maybe not that last one.) Wasn't an exciting read, but I've been paying more attention to "turning points" in conversations since reading it.
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-- Lessons in building reusable ("pluggable") Django applications. Assumes you know the basics of Django and Python.
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-- I really enjoyed this one. Lots of suggestions and strategies for negotiating.
Date change! Rescheduled for February 3rd.
The first Austin UX Book Club meeting is this coming Tuesday, January 27th February 3rd, at 7pm. The book to read is, “Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.”
Latest Updates: austin RSS
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erik
Reminder: Austin UX Book Club meeting Feb. 3rd
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erik
Presenting at Austin Python User Group tomorrow (9/10) 7pm
FYI, some colleagues and I will be presenting at the Austin Python User Group (APUG) meeting tomorrow night (Wednesday, September 10th) at 7pm. We’ll be talking “behind-the-scenes tech” for one of the high-traffic, Django-based sites we’ve been building over the past year.
For directions and more info, see the APUG wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/AustinPythonUserGroup
Hope to see you there!
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erik
Austin Python Users Group meeting tomorrow (May 14th) with guest speaker Greg Wilson
This month’s APUG meeting will feature guest speaker Greg Wilson, author of Beautiful Code, Data Crunching, Parallel Programming Using C++, Practical Parallel Programming, etc.
For more details, see: http://wiki.python.org/moin/AustinPythonUserGroup and http://python.meetup.com/188/.
Hope to see you there!
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erik
Tomatoes and peppers off to a good start
Last year was the first time I intentionally tried growing anything meant for eating, though it was limited to just a few herbs (oregano, mint, rosemary, etc.) This season, I thought I’d expand the gardening to include a small selection of more fruitful plants. I dropped by a neighborhood “community garden” plant sale and picked up a small variety of peppers and tomatoes.
After giving them a nice, sunny plot in the back yard (and a little water in the mornings), the whole batch has tripled in size and begun budding and/or flowering. Since I’m pretty much making up this “gardening” thing as I go, I’m assuming that this behavior is a good thing.
The shot below shows one of the Jalapeno plants that has started to bud:
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erik
Hazardous Waste Collection in Austin
This past Saturday, the City of Austin held a Hazardous Waste Collection Event at a north Austin high school. The demand was overwhelming — so much so, that hundreds of people (including myself) were stuck in traffic for several hours trying to drop-off old paint cans, automotive fluids, expired household chemicals, etc. The turnout was a great success — but the event was a planning disaster. Traffic backed-up for miles… cars sat idling for hours only to be eventually turned away at the 1pm cut-off time.
The only positive thing to come out of it (for me, at least), was learning about the Household Hazardous Waste Facility in South Austin:
Residents of the City of Austin and Travis County may bring up to 30 gallons of hazardous waste, generated in the home, to the Household Hazardous Waste Facility free of charge.
The facility is open Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 12 noon to 6 p.m, and the first Saturday of each month, 7 a.m. to 12 noon.
For more:
- Directions to Household Hazardous Waste Facility in South Austin
- http://http://www.austinrecycles.com (Austin Solid Waste Services)
[Update: 2008-05-07]
With my old paint cans still in boxes, I went down to the Household Hazardous Waste Facility this past Saturday morning. There were zero cars in line. It took no time at all. -
erik
2008 SXSW Wristband details up — it’s an online drawing this year
No mad rush to Waterloo this year at the whim of an SMS. This time around, SXSW Music Wristbands will be sold online via a drawing. See more details at http://wristbands.sxsw.com/
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erik
TechShop (was) coming to Austin!
[Update: 2009-12-28]
There’s still no TechShop planned for Austin, but check this out if you’re interested: Austin Local Fab survey![Update: 2008-03-29]
Unfortunately, I just got word that TechShop Austin, and six other planned locations, have been delayed until 2009. It’s a bummer for Austin makers, but the schedule was a little too aggressive for the TechShop crew; instead, they’ll be focused on a new headquarters in Sunnyvale, and bringing up the Portland and Durham locations.[Original post]
Just saw this last night, TechShop Austin is scheduled to open this summer (2008)! I haven’t had access to a decent shop in a few years. I can’t wait to play with all the toys a TechShop should have! -
erik
A sea of schwag-bags… (an early sight at SXSW 2007)
Snapped this today while picking up my registration badge for SXSW 2007 Interactive:
That’s a lot of bags! Might be a tad more crowded this year…
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erik
BarCamp Austin, Mar. 9th – 10th 2007
Just a reminder — BarCamp Austin 2007 is coming up, March 9th – 10th (during SXSW Interactive.) The event is currently planned to happen at Bourbon Rocks (Neches and 6th), but you’ll want to check the wiki the day before in case something changes.
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erik
The 2007 SXSW Music sampler torrent is up
For the past few years, the organizers of the SXSW Conference have posted large mp3 collections online to showcase the bands playing the event. The first batch of 2007 tracks went live this past weekend. It contains 739 mp3’s (weighing 3.1 GB.) You can find the torrent here: SXSW Toolbox.
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erik
Touring the Sun “Project Blackbox”
I just left one of the AMD facilities in Austin, TX, where Sun Microsystems had a Project Blackbox on display. There was a short presentation where Sun representatives gave a quick overview of the design — including some impressive numbers for the amount of equipment and power you can run in the Blackbox. The key is the cooling system. The Blackbox uses an air circulation system that separates each rack with a water-cooled heat displacer. The servers are then racked sideways so that air can move clockwise inside the Blackbox. HEPA filters clean incoming air, and a dehumidifier extracts moisture.
The container itself is “water tight”, but it was recommended that the Blackbox be covered if placed outside. (Contrary to the photoshopped pictures of the Blackbox sitting on open building rooftops.)
I snapped a few pictures with my phone during the tour. These first two show the Project Blackbox sitting on a trailer:
Inside the container doors. This first door leads to an air circulation chamber:
Within the air circulation chamber, another door leads to the racks:
A rack being slid out from within the Project Blackbox:
At the back of Project Blackbox, this photo shows the dehumidifier, and the rack for networking gear:
Power, water, and network ports on the Sun Project Blackbox:
The power ports on the Sun Project Blackbox:
The representatives claimed that an empty Blackbox (ie., no servers) would likely cost between $300,000 – $400,000.
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erik
A bird threat, flash flooding, and now snow in Austin
Wow, we’re off to an interesting year. Last week it was a dead bird scare, and this week we were hit with flash flooding, and now snow! (Yes, it snows in Texas. Not often, but it happens.)
When the roads freeze over, cities in Texas tend to shut down. If you’re from a cold region, this sounds a little silly. But unfortunately, it happens so infrequently here that we’re not prepared for it. We drive on summer tires year round (well, I do anyway), we don’t have ice-scrapers or salt-trucks, and our roads are designed to withstand 100F+ conditions, not 20F, so they are very slippery when icy.
I took this shot this morning to give you an idea what it’s like out there:
I went back to the grocery store today for more supplies, and while cutting through the “snacks and chips” aisle, I couldn’t help notice how ransacked it was. Apparently, massive consumption of potato chips is how folks in the area make it though the cold nights:
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erik
Naming the conference rooms
Now that the paint is (mostly) dry in the new office, it’s time to start naming our conference rooms. Ideally, conference room names work in a theme (preferably one that that offers a slight puzzle) that is easily memorable and unique enough to not confuse the rooms. To add to the requirements, we also wanted something that reflected our Austin location.
After some creative brainstorming, we finally decided to go with the original historical street names of the numbered streets in downtown Austin.
For a little back-story on this, I pulled the following quote from the article, “Austin: Where the streets have many names (and history, too).”
“With the exception of Congress Avenue, the streets running north and south downtown parallel the order in which rivers flow throughout the state. From east to west, the streets (and the rivers) are: Sabine, Red River, Neches, Trinity, San Jacinto, Brazos, Colorado, Lavaca, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces and Rio Grande. Most of the numbered downtown streets bore tree names until the late 1880s. They included:”
- Second Street – Live Oak
- Third Street – Cypress
- Fourth Street – Cedar
- Fifth Street – Pine
- Sixth Street – Pecan
- Seventh Street – Bois de Arc
- Eighth Street – Hickory
- Ninth Street – Ash
- 10th Street – Mulberry
- 11th Street – Mesquite
So there we have it. Simple, unique enough to remember, a local flare, and a slight puzzle for the out-of-towner’s. [And yes, thankfully we only needed nine names.]
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erik
First day in the new office (take two)
Well, it turns out that bird-flu zombies didn’t take the Capital, so today was our first day in the new office!
It was a long and busy day, so I didn’t have time for a lengthly post, but I did have my Nokia N73 on me, so how about a few pictures instead:
Last week’s construction:
Inside. It’s still a bit empty, and we’re not exactly sure how we’re going to layout the desks, but it’s off to a great start!
The building from the outside (and no, we’re not the first floor tenant ;-):
Our view onto Congress Ave:
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erik
Dead birds shut down downtown Austin (was: First day in the new office)
I was hoping to start today by posting a few pictures of our brand-new Optaros office in downtown Austin. Today was to be our first day in the new space. Unfortunately, downtown Austin is closed today, after authorities found a number (possibly dozens) of dead birds along Congress Ave (the street the office is on), which happens to be right in front of the State Capitol building. With the legislative session scheduled to begin tomorrow, the authorities have taken an extra-paranoid view on the situation (which is fine by me.)
The State called in the police, fire department, and the 6th Civil Support Team (WMD) a “Texas National Guard unit, created in 1999 to respond to terrorist incidents involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, as well as other disasters and catastrophic events, both natural and man made.”
As of 10:45am, the local paper (The Statesman) and news sites have no updates.
For more:
- Dead birds shut down Congress Avenue
- Health Dept.: No Public Health Threat Despite Large Number Of Dead Birds
- KXAN Photo Gallery: Dead Birds Shut Down Congress Avenue
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[Update: 11:15am]
The news makes it to MSNBC, which reports that the dead bird count is more like 60! Downtown Austin shut down after bird deaths -
erik
First week on the new job
Yup — a new job. It’s a strange feeling after nearly five years with my previous employer, but the time had come to take on some new challenges and change things up a bit. I’ve joined a company called Optaros, based out of Boston, although I’ll be working from the Austin office scheduled to open in 2007.
Optaros is an “international consulting and systems integration firm” specializing in “Next Generation Internet” development, with a strong focus on leveraging (and participating in) Open Source software. That last bit was particularly import for me, and thankfully, the Open Source and Agile Development memes run strong in the company. In fact, the culture of the company is probably the number one reason I decided to join, though it doesn’t hurt that I’ve worked with some of these folks before (and was happy to be working with them again.)
I hoped up to Boston for my first few days, which was warmer or colder then Texas, depending on who you ask. The difference, of course, is that Boston had snow Monday morning, which was a welcome novelty for me. My time in Boston was spent getting to know people, getting plugged-in to the company, and wiping my new laptop to install linux (Ubuntu Edgy, to be specific, which is what I run at home on my non-OS X machines.)
It’s an exciting change, and hopefully I’ll be able to share more details once I’ve had a few more weeks to get settled in.
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erik
APUG: Austin (TX) Python Users Group meeting tonight, 7pm at Enthought
Just a reminder, the Austin (TX) Python Users Group meeting is tonight, 7pm, at Enthought, in downtown Austin. Eugene Oden will be giving a presentation on using Pyro (Python Remote Objects.)
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erik
FYI, I have a new mobile phone number
Of course, I’m not going to post it to my blog; But if you had my previous mobile number and haven’t received a message from me yet with my new number, you might want to drop me an email or something to get my new digits. The old number (which is on my business cards) will be disabled soon.
On a related note, if you happen to be in Austin and need a T-Mobile store, I’ve been twice now to the one at 4700 Guadalupe (at the Triangle.) There’s a guy there named Andrew who’s been extremely cool — excellent service. (Good enough to mention in a blog post!)
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erik
Open position at Nokia in Austin, TX for a Python/Java developer
For all the Pythonistas, there’s a publicly-listed position open at Nokia’s Austin, TX office:
The Software Engineering position will be responsible for development of software analysis tools within an Integrated Development Environment. The candidate will be required to design/develop static analysis models within Python that provide expression parsing and design pattern matching of Symbian OS applications and various UI environments, including UIQ and Series 60. Integration of the analysis tools within a Java based integrated development environment will be required through the development of application plugins. The candidate will be working in a fast paced software development environment that is very customer focused and is able to adapt features to meet customer requirements within planned product release cycles.
A couple thoughts to help interpret the above description:
- You won’t be starting from scratch.
- “A Java based integrated development environment” means Eclipse.
- If you’re not familiar with what the Austin office does, check out the “Creating Carbide.c++ Blog.”
In case the link to the job posting doesn’t work, try starting from the Nokia Careers page, which is either: <http://careers.nokia.com/> or <http://www.nokia.com/careers>.
Take note: If you’re interested in the position, contacting me isn’t the way to go. Follow the link to the job description and click the “Apply” button. Even if you know people in the office, you need to apply online to officially become a candidate.
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erik
Austin Python User Group moving
FYI, for any Python fans in Austin… The Austin Python User Group has moved off Meetup.com and back to the scipy-hosted mailing list. Meetings will now be organized using the APUG wiki page at: