Mike Cohen

Photowalk this Sunday

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I’m really looking forward to the Ft. Lauderdale Photowalk this Sunday.

Paulo Jordao posted some final details:

We are going to meet around 9:45am at Las Olas Riverfront (300 Southwest 1st Avenue Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312). They have a little outside water-fountain that is going to be our meeting point.

If it rains, the meeting point will be the first floor, close to the escalators.

Photo of the day

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When I was walking home from the gym this evening, the sunset was really spectacular, so I rushed home to get my camera and take a few shots. Since time was running out, I didn’t bother taking the tripod. Here’s a 3 exposure HDR made without a tripod, using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR & Photomatix Tone Mapping.

HDR Sunset 06-16-2008

Things I learned at WWDC

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  1. JavaScript doesn’t suck. I’ve been looking at SproutCore and I really like it a lot. I’ll probably be using it for future web applications.
  2. Lots of cool stuff is being written in Ruby. I really need to start learning it.
  3. iPhone push notification is no substitute for background tasks. It still isn’t possible to schedule something to happen at a particular time. Apple just considered one very specific use case, where something like AIM needs to notify you that a message has been received. You can’t have a process check in with a server at timed intervals, for example.
  4. Animated effects are very easy. It takes almost no effort to add animated effects to views & controls in a Cocoa application and it makes the app look so much cooler. Simply set a property in Interface Builder, write a few lines of code to define the animation, and let it happen in its own thread as you go about your business.
  5. San Francisco has some of the most aggressive beggars. Headphones & loud music are a must when walking from Union Square to Moscone if you want to block them out.
  6. The Barenaked Ladies are a lot better than I realized. Somehow I never got into them, even though I like They Might Be Giants & Soul Coughing, whose attitude & humor are similar. After the Thursday Night Bash I bought some of their music in iTunes.
  7. Carrying a MacBook Pro for several hours isn’t fun. At the end of the day I usually had a sore back & shoulders. I’m considering a switch to either a MacBook or MacBook Air as a travel machine for my next trip. I’m not sure if the 1/2 pound difference of a MacBook will make it that much more pleasant, but it’s a much more capable machine.
  8. Thirsty Bear has the best beers in the Moscone area. Their Valencia Wheat is especially good.

DreamHost discount invites available

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I have 5 DreamHost discount codes available for my readers. These discounts will give you four times the normal disk and bandwidth, plus $150 off a five year plan or $200 off a ten year plan. Leave a comment or contact me to get one of the discount invites.

links for 2008-06-13

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WWDC a success

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Despite the record-setting crowd of over 5000 people, this year’s WWDC ran much more smoothly than any recent one. The WiFi network was very reliable, and for the first time we had WiFi working in the Presidio during the keynote, so I was able to live blog it at MacMegasite. Most of the rooms had plenty of power strips available, so it was easy to keep our laptops charged.

The lines were much longer for most of the sessions and they started lining up as much as 15 minutes before the sessions started, but I was able to get into all of the sessions easily.

For tonight’s bash, which took place in Yerba Buena Gardens as it did last year, Apple got the Barenaked Ladies to play for us. THe band members are big Apple fans, since one of their videos appeared on the System 8.6 CD.

I found that after carrying around a MacBook Pro for several hours a day, I ended up with sore shoulders. For my next trip I’m seriously considering getting either a MacBook Air or MacBook instead of the MacBook Pro. The MacBook only weighs about 1/2 pound less than the Pro, but it’s quite a bit smaller, and is a lot more powerful than the Air.