Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

CodeWorks 09 Vital Stats

CodeWorks 09 day #: -5
Days till I see the Lovely and Talented Kathy:12
Cities left: 7
Miles Traveled: 0
Cups of Coffee: 0
Current Current City: London

Random Statistic of the day

Total number of pictures in both of my CodeWorks 09 slide decks: 3

Prep Work

I did very little prep work for CodeWorks 09 last night. Like most programmers I know, I have to maintain the network at my house. Unlike most programmers I know, for me, this involves ssh and remote Desktop from half way around the world. The Lovely and Talented Kathy needed Samba setup and working on our development server so she could start building out a new project. I fought with the firewall for about an hour (APF) before I read the entire conf.apf file. It turns out that while I was opening the right ports in the firewall, APF has an override BLACKLIST of ports and Samba’s ports were in that list. I did find out that there is very little in the way of documentation for APF with regards to Samba.

Random thought:Whats in my bag

I was going through my bag last night cleaning out the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of the last year’s worth of globe trotting and realized, I carry a lot of crap on my back. If you are attending one of the CodeWorks 09 conferences, and see me, no doubt I will either be wearing my backpack or have it handy as everything I need for my day to day life is wrapped up in that bag.

The bag itself is an Alienware branded Targus backpack. I got it in 2004 when I bought the worst laptop ever manufactured. Since then I’ve had 2 Dells and a Lenovo travel the US and parts of Europe in it. It’s a great bag!

The Dell is my personal lifeline, desktop, entertainment center, research facility and studio. The Latitude 6400 is a great machine and other than the fact that I absolutely hate touch pads, it’s one of the best laptops I’ve ever had. Right now on it’s hard disk it has:

• Podcasts in progress for DPC Radio
• 3 completed episodes of Box Lunch Training and 3 more in progress
• Several blog posts for the different blogs on which I post, either ready to post or in various stages of editing
• No less that 4 white papers for Ibuildings in various stages of editing or release
• One feature length article I’m trying to decide if I should finish and release or try to pitch it as a book
• Various other things that I need to get me through the day

Other than the laptop, the most important thing in my backpack is my Moleskine. My Moleskine is where I write ideas, final drafts of poems, other thoughts that strike me during my daily life. It’s also where I doodle. It’s kind of an expensive doodle pad, I know but it’s the one I like. Here’s an example of the kinds of stuff I doodle in there. Nobody has ever accused me of being either an artist or a poet but it’s really only for one person and as long as she likes it, that’s all that matters.

For descriptions of everything else, I’ll let you visit flickr and view the notes. (I’ve labeled almost everything for your convenience and amusement.)

Podcasting from the road

I have at least one podcast scheduled to record during CodeWorks 09 and will post here when I decide where and when to release it. If you have an idea for an interview, or topic for a 5-10 minute discussion, stop by and see me. I have a mic if you have an idea. :)

Until next time,
Ik hou van jou mijn liefste Kathy
=C=

Tags: alienware, apf, codeworks, conference, cw09, moleskine, PHP, podcasting, samba, targas

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under codeworks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.