Category Archives: Events

Conferences, meetups, talks, and gatherings.

Jish Goes to Houston

Events, Gallery, Travel

Had a wonderful time tonight at Market Square Grill with a number of new people who I hadn’t met in person before. The guest of honor, Jish, was an extremely nice guy. I think he really enjoyed his visit, because everything is bigger in Texas. It was wonderful meeting everyone, such colorful personalities, and I’m definitely going to make it out to the next event. In attendance were (Kathy’s list helped me out here) Katie, Mike, Jish, Elaine, Chuck, Ted, Robert, Hanna, David, Kathy, Christine, and Kymberlie.

The pictures from tonight are now online. I’ve also gotten around to putting up the entire morning shoot from the Sights Unseen series. I also added some photos from 9-27 with some interesting ones in the downtown area that Sarah took. Actually she didn’t take all of them, just the good ones.

Busy as a Bee

Events, Jazz

Today has been one of the busiest days I can remember, which is nice because I like having things to do, but is subconciously stressing just because there are things right after another. I’ve had my two hardest classes, a meeting with David Caceres, and now I have to go take a test. After that there’s a two hour rehearsal for the big band, and after that who knows what. On a more interesting note, I had a good talk with David about possibly starting a blog on his site. This would be espescially interesting because I don’t know of any full-time musicians, much less jazz musicians, who have blogs.

Greyscale

Design, Events, WordPress

A return to normalcy? Not quite, but it’s a beginning. Grief is a natural reaction to extraordinary events, it’s a protection mechanism to help us cope. However when it’s prolonged it can have the negative effect of holding us from moving forward. It’s impossible not to grieve with the images being shown on every station and website, however, things must move forward. I think that a lot of people took a step back and thought about things yesterday, and I couldn’t think of a better way to honor the memory of September 11th.

9/11 is a flashbulb memory for most everyone; every trivial detail about where we were, who we were with is burned into our memories. For my generation, this is really the first event of that kind, thankfully. I tried to think of today as a day of quiet introspection–remembrances, resolutions, emotions, and most of all, examination of today’s events. Where has the US gone since 9/11? I think reaction-ism on the part of some lawmakers has hurt the very things we’re trying to protect: our liberty, freedom, and ultimately, safety for ourselves and our progeny.

Anyway, mostly because I don’t want these things to fade in my own mind, I have set it up so on the 11th of every month the memorial (greyscale) theme will load for that day.

Google Image Hits

Events, Gallery

98% of the last 200 hits on swcdesign.com have been from images.google.com; I don’t often get hits from there so I decided to investigate what was causing such a ruckus and huge spike in traffic. Well it turns out a picture I made last year right around this time is on the tenth page of results for searches on “911” in Google images. On the tenth page and it hundreds of people a day have been following the link. I think it speaks a little to people’s thoughts at the moment, I know that personally I rarely go past the second page of results, especially on Google.

More importantly, it’s a somber reminder of the fast approaching anniversary of a date that at least in my mind I’ve been avoiding. Yesterday a lady told me a story about her brother who signed a lease that morning on an office in the WTC and was on his way to look at it when the first plane hit. Her other brother was forced to jump in the river when the towers collapsed. Both were okay. Every time someone mentions the event it seems I hear a new story almost too incredible for belief, but you know they’re mostly true. Still the incredible stories of survival only seem to whet my taste for real answers to the events.

Three hundred and sixty-four days later, what have we done? We’ve bombed the hell out of a third world country, caught a few underlings, spent $80 billion, took away more than a few personal liberties, and we’re now at the brink of war with an oil superpower. Very smart thing to do during a recession. I admit that I’ve always supported the Bush administration. Bush himself isn’t the most competent guy but he handled an emergency relatively well, and he surrounds himself with some of the best and brightest in the country (with the notable exception of John Ashcroft and John Poindexter). Now you have talk of Colin Powell not coming back for a second term, of course assuming that the administration makes it that far. The backlash has been brewing for weeks; people want results. Eighty billion dollars and they can’t even produce a body? The news media is pouncing in its traditional fashion, and there has been a rash of meta-news and meta-meta-news, and the world doesn’t need any more of that here. I won’t be posting Wednesday, but what I’m going to keep in my mind is that the terrorists were trying to destroy something much larger than the twin towers last year, and it’s up to everyone on a personal level to make sure they don’t succeed.

Houston Wireless Meeting

Events, Travel

Just wanted to let everyone know that the Houston Wireless Users Group is meeting tomorow at Kaveh Kanes. Here’s the announcement from Barrett:

Tuesday September 10th is the second Tuesday of the month…which
means…it’s meeting time again! Steven/Erewhon will be speaking about
video via 802.11b and a neighborhood-wide “wireless security mesh”
starting at 7:30 PM @ Kaveh Kanes. This is our first presentation on
the application of 802.11b technology outside of simply extending
Internet access. It should be fun.

PalmTalk

Events, Gallery

We filmed the first episode of PalmTalk today! It was different in some ways from what I was expecting, espescially in terms of how things flowed, but I was very impressed with some of the things they were able to do technologically with the cameras and effects. The guest, Lorraine Young, was really charismatic and had a great product to demo. All in all, I would say it was, well, a first episode. Ever seen any of the early episodes of Friends? There are definitely some things that are going to change before next week, and things are only going to change for the better, so I’m excited. I’m also curious to see how the whole thing turns out after all of the post-editing stuff they do. Anyway, I’ll see on Tuesday. The main dowside is I think I left my laptop AC adapter there, or at least I hope I did, because I can’t find it. Right now my laptop is hibernating until I get it back.

After the taping I had a very nice dinner with Sarah at one of my favorite chinese restruants, Ming’s on Montrose. After that I headed down to Kaveh Kanes, a great coffee shop downtown on Prarie with free WiFi internet access. Tonight was the monthly meeting (first Friday of the month) for people who listen to the radio show Technology Bytes, which is on Wednesday nights. I’ve heard it several times before and it’s a fun show to listen to. The people who were there were very interesting and we talked for a very long time from topics ranging from Apache 2 to Amiga to Minix to BeOS. I must admit that I was there partly by accident–I thought it was a HWUG meeting. I really enjoyed it though and afterwards I ended up going to House of Pies around 1 to continue the discussion with two unix/freebsd sysadmins I met there. It’s strange how much you can find you have in common with someone in such a short period of time. Also it was nice to meet the people who actually do the show, and you can tell they’re really technically competent and nice to talk to. Oh, and got another ‘tech support’ consulting job today, fixing a paper jam! What will I do next?

So Close, Yet So Far

Books, Events, Gallery

I’ve had what could be called a trying day, in a sense of the word, and it was not made better by my episode with Best Buy’s service, or lack thereof. I was very excited when at dinner my mother told me that a package had come in the mail today. I haven’t ordered anything lately so my mind raced to try and think what could have come in the mail. A sample for the PUG? Some books from Amazon? My camera back from the dead??? The return address had actually come off the box, but as soon as I opened it and dug through the peanuts I was delighted to see my camera. The slip of paper said they had reconnected two of the circuit boards, cleaned it, and tested it. Wonderful! Right?

The trouble started when I tried to turn it on. The problem before was that every time it tried to use the lens, the camera would just turn off. It would turn on in setup mode, or play mode, but as soon as you turn it to take a picture of any kind it would just turn off. I assume this meant there was some sort of bad connection with the lens mechanism, and whenever it tried to send power there it would short out. I was baffled: how could they send it back with the exact same problem it had before? What happened to this testing they talked about?

So I decided to go back to the store, because maybe there had been a mistake and this was how I should get my replacement, since they couldn’t/didn’t fix it. Nope. The store couldn’t have been less helpful. I eventually talked to a lower level manager, Marcus, who actually informed me to get a replacement they would have to send it to the service center four times! I’m on time number two right now, so taking the time the whole thing has taken so far, it could be well over a month before I can start taking pictures again with the digital. I can’t comprehend how them mailing me a broken unit back and me sending it back four times as a prerequisite to getting a replacement evolved as part of their bueracracy. It just boggles the mind. This has seriously tainted my view of Best Buy’s service and I will think very seriously before making any sort of significant purchase from them again, and I encourage others to do the same.

Insomnia

Books, Events, Music

As I enter my 38th hour awake, I’m starting to wonder, academically, how much longer this will last. It might be a useful tidbit of information starting college on Monday. I think I’m just nervous about everything that’s been happening. We had to postpone the production meeting today because the producer is down with a cold or virus of some sort. College is starting in just a few days, and Iଁm not sure if I’m ready physically, emotionally, intellectually.

I rearranged all the furniture in my room, which was almost like the puzzle where you have the squares with the different numbers and you can only move one at a time. Anyway I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out, as I now have true surround sound, dual monitors set up, and a *real* space to study that doesn’t require me moving other stuff out of the way. Also I have a much better practice area now, the next step is practicing more.

One of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time is Sing A Song of Song by Kenny Garrett which is available on the CD Songbook. Although I had heard it before, I was really introduced to it through Rex Gregory’s wonderful senior recital where I thought it was one of the best songs. The recital made me reexamine the song on Songbook and I was really moved by the performance. Kenny Garrett has more vitality and life in his playing then twenty of the other players with record deals and such.

Long Day

Events, Travel

Although I got a bit of a late start, this day has turned into a pretty long one. It started at Josh’s house with Rachel, Rebecca, and Jessica. Though the purpose of the gathering was actually to watch LOTR on DVD, we actually ended up just fooling around for a while before actually getting to the movie. Pillow fights and interesting observations made the movie more fun than I had remembered it, and it didn’t seem so long at all. After a quick trip home to pick up a Winslow ligature for Rene, we all met up at 59 Diner on, well, 59. Rene and I both got huge meals, and thankfully I wasn’t hungry the rest of the night.

After that we broke up and I went with Rene to my new favorite coffee house, Kaveh Kanes, which has free high speed wireless 802.11b internet access, set up by the wireless guru Barrett. Invitations went out online for Rene’s big going away BBQ, and afterwards we just talked for a while. In a while we were joined by Rene’s friend from church Momo, which is a nickname for something, but I don’t recall what. Then Alex and Melissa came by after the drum and bass DJ they were hoping to see decided not to play the club that night. Finally Joe, who I haven’t seen since he went to the Berklee summer camp about six weeks ago, came in and we had almost a full sax section :).

Eventually closing time came for Kaveh Kanes and we decided to head to House of Pies for a late-night snack and more conversation. The chocolate cream pie I had was fantanstic, and it was a ton of fun just hanging out with everyone. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Joe, and Rene is leaving relatively soon so every minute with him is great. Tonight was different from all the others this week because instead of almost everyone getting ready to leave town, it was just one person.

I dropped Rene and Joe off, and from the tone of my mother’s voice decided not to stay with Joe and start a cartoon marathon. Long rides late at night make me really appreciate the stereo in my car. Once home I finished up some database work I’m doing for a local private high school, and sat down to write this entry. Normally these words would have been written by my camera in the colors and motion of the pictures I take constantly. There are currently 1.4 gigabytes of photos online that describe my summer better than any narrative could; now there is a gap, a missing piece. I’m sure many will find this prosaic entry somewhat mundane, but right now it’s my only way of coping. There should be a twelve-step program for picture addicts!

Moving Up

Events, Jazz, Music

I was just lying in bed, soaking in the music and resting my eyes. There was a killer soprano player on, and as I walked to my desk to get something, I said that had to be Coltrane. The band was heavy with energy, the harmony was thick, a synergy/focus was there that you only hear from the very best jazz groups. As the drummer, who I could’ve sworn was Elvin kicked the melody back, I saw the artist on my Winamp playlist: Joshua Redman. Usually in instances like that I am inwardly embarrassed at my misidentification, but for some reason I felt proud of Joshua. Good for him. Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard is the name of the CD; it has Peter Martin on it, who I had the pleasure of meeting a year or so ago by the kitchen in a crowded and smokey New Orleans jazz club. Snug Harbor I think.

Speaking of jazz, and continuing today’s pattern of double entries, I’ll be seeing David Caceres, my teacher and first client, tonight at the Red Cat. He’s playing with Sebastian Whittaker and it looks to be a great show; I just wish I didn’t have a headache.

xml.house.gov

Events, Politics, Travel

Via Zeldman, there seems to be an initiative to eventually stucture legislation in XML. Browsing around, I espescially liked the member list of the 107th Congress; it’s beautiful XML styled through an XSL style sheet, the only major quirk I noticed was that the validation DTD was a local path. While this won’t make the content of the stuff coming out of DC any better, it will certainly make it better structured. I wish I had seen more of this kind of thing on my trip.

Growing

Books, Events, Jazz

You may (or may not) have noticed some new widgets on the site. First, I’m working on the JazzQuotes system. Right now all it does is echo a random quote, but eventually as the database becomes more inclusive it’ll have more features, including being able to browse by author (jazzer) and the ability to submit your own favorite quote. Also there is work being done on the toy section of the site, and I’m coding out a little script that will show what I’m listening to on my computer right now.

Hurricanes are great!

Economics, Events, Personal

A common misconception of students of economics is that events that normally would be viewed as economic detractors actually stimulated. I’ve heard this called the ‘window’ argument before: if someone walks down the street and throws rocks at all the windows, then all of a sudden the window man has work! He will use that money to eat at restaurants, buy clothes, send his child to college, and the world will be a better place. From the beginning this argument sounds a little off, and in this context, the flaws of the argument are especially obvious.

The money that was used for repairing existing facilities could have been better redirected towards capital investment, or any other sort of monetary allocation that increases long-term growth prospects. Anything that promotes inefficient allocation of resources (regulations, quotas, mandates, tariffs, etc.) ultimately hurts the country in the long run. It would take someone pretty heartless to bring this up in the context of the Trade Center, but in situations such as hurricanes where there is usually high property damage but only minimal loss in life the argument still seems to rear its ugly head. Perhaps it’s a simply a misinterpretation of creative destruction :).

Visit to Treasury

Economics, Events, Gallery

Today was another very interesting day in DC, marked so far by a very eventful visit to the Treasury. We started out by a very thorough tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It was nice not having to wait in any of the lines, and because some of the other machines weren’t working they were making $10 bills instead of the $1s most people see on tours. Afterwards we had a nice lunch and headed to the Treasury building for our meeting with the Treasurer, Rosario Marin (pics). That was of course wonderful, though she couldn’t sign my sheet of $2 bills because her name wasn’t on them, something about protocol.

Some of the more interesting tidbits I picked up were about the new full-color bills being introduced next year, and that there is some serious discussion about putting a new face into the currency, but they won’t be taking any of the current ones out. Hmmmm. It’s all basically part of the fight to stay ahead of the counterfiters, but personally I’m going to miss the old greenbacks.

As almost more coincidence than anything else, we were able to meet briefly with John Taylor (pics), one of the greatest living economists and named as one of the main people to possibly succeed Alan Greenspan. Taylor is currently the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs at the Treasury, no small job.

There were a few other things there, but it’s getting too late to write; check out the pictures