eriksmartt.com/blog » austin

Reminder: Austin UX Book Club meeting Feb. 3rd

erik — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:14:37 +0000

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.” Follow the link for details.

Presenting at Austin Python User Group tomorrow (9/10) 7pm

erik — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:54:19 +0000

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!

Austin Python Users Group meeting tomorrow (May 14th) with guest speaker Greg Wilson

erik — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:35:57 +0000

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!

Tomatoes and peppers off to a good start

erik — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:26:49 +0000

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:

Hazardous Waste Collection in Austin

erik — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:06:33 +0000

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.

2008 SXSW Wristband details up — it’s an online drawing this year

erik — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:44:46 +0000

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/

TechShop (was) coming to Austin!

erik — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:34:48 +0000

[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!

A sea of schwag-bags… (an early sight at SXSW 2007)

erik — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:09:39 +0000

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…

BarCamp Austin, Mar. 9th – 10th 2007

erik — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:02:19 +0000

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.

The 2007 SXSW Music sampler torrent is up

erik — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:29:14 +0000

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.

Touring the Sun “Project Blackbox”

erik — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:25:21 +0000

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.

A bird threat, flash flooding, and now snow in Austin

erik — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:58:23 +0000

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: