Computation, Caffeination, and Conflagration

[Written on the plane to SXSW Austin. No, not for interactive.]

I never get around to blogging the things that are most deserving. ETech was so over-stimulating, I needed at least a week to let my braincells simmer, by which time I am left with only a vague happy memory, and a stack of business cards to remind me of conversations to resume soon.

So. ETech.

Best presentation: playsh
Worst hangover: Wednesday

• Irony. This year's theme was "The Attention Economy," and some of the speakers were warmed over affiliate-marketing-types explaining why capturing "consumers'" attention is vital. This in a room where the delicate sounds of distracted geeks typing on their Powerbooks drowned out the PA. Nothing could have been less apropos for this conference "Remembering Gopher and Usenet." I want to give that presentation. Screw consumers' attention. I want peoples' participation!

  We're barreling toward a Web 2.0 bubble, and though we still haven't figured out how to make money on free services and free shipping, by God we're going to capture peoples' Attention!

• So many people! This conference has gotten huge. Two years ago, finding the person you were looking for was a matter of raising your voice (louder than Marc's anyway). Now we're adaptable lot: One quarter of the people using cellphones in the lobby were talking with another quarter of people on the other side of the lobby. "Where are you?" "I'm by the bar... Look for the guy wearing a Yahoo t-shirt." Hopeless.

• Product pitches! I last attended two years ago, when Flickr was announced to the world. We all know what happened to them. But now... there's less "Look what we cooked up! Isn't it cool?" and more "We are fully Web 2.0 compliant. If you acquire us, you too can be Web 2.0 compliant."

• Backchannel. I seriously had to turn you fuckers off. I had to close my laptop and think of sad things to keep from giggling. A distributed group of bored, vicious geeks makes an awesome comedic force.

• BarCamp Etech. Open mike night at ETech. For when you just can't stand another damned product pitch. With pizza. Where I discover that microphones make me slightly nervous.

• Powerbooks. Lots of them. If you were hunched over a PC, you probably had your tie tucked into your slacks.

• ToorCon sponsored a Wine and Cheese party. If this does not signal the impending apocalypse, I don't know what does.

• Cool people: Gabe, Rob, Thor, Matt, Ewan, Sean, Kareem, Jo, Danah, Lenny, Quinn, Boogah, Mark, and everyone else who made this conference so much fun. Thanks for putting up with me.

Posted by eric at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a fully autonomous (it works when it wants to) vehicle constructed at BarCamp LA (with Jason Cosper).

It was the winner of (and only functional entrant in) the E-Iron chef competition. Apparently, I was supposed to "sign up" with a "team" for this competition, select a pile of junk from the donated crap table, and make something neat.

I wasn't really trying to make a car, I was just trying to make the motor explode... but the foam blocks, popsicle sticks, and duct tape roll just spoke to me and before long I had whipped out the leatherman, started whistling the MacGyver theme song, and covered the table in bits of discarded plastic and foam.

Ingredients:

• Three blocks of "florists foam"


• Two mini caster wheels


• Ten feet of duct tape


• Popsicle sticks


• One discarded computer cooling fan


• One 120VAC to 12VDC transformer


• One chopped up Mutaytor flyer


• More popsicle sticks

It needed a bit of a rolling start, and needed a crack team of experts to play out the extension cord, but it roll. And didn't blow up.

Damn.

Posted by eric at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you use Quicksilver regularly (I can't operate my computer without it), then you know that you can type "." to get a freeform textbox. Quicksilver ships with a couple useful actions you can perform on that text (including the ever-useful "Append to File..."). But perhaps the most useful thing I've found I can do with that text is pipe it to STDIN of any shell command. Compose the following in Script Editor:

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
	on process text theText
		do shell script 
         "echo " & quoted form of theText & " | mycommand"
	end process text
end using terms from

Replace "mycommand" with the custom perl script of your choosing, and store this script in "~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions" You'll probably have to create the Actions directory. Restart Quicksilver. Now, use "." to open the text input field, type some text, and select your script from the Actions pane.

Voila!

Posted by eric at 03:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)