Chalk it up to pre-mid-life crises if you will, but I recently have been enjoying biking quite a bit. I bought my first “real” bike a few months back (a Kona Smoke) for commuting purposes, and it has served me very well. Kelly and I rode Mayor Jerry’s Hike & Bike on Labor day and while there I noticed folks in KY Mountain Biking Association jerseys. I guess I never really considered trail riding until that moment. I knew such things existed around town, considering our excellent Metro Parks system, and generally hilly terrain. My bike is essentially a converted mountain bike frame with slicker wheels, but would still be up to the task. Why not?!

Tuesday evening, with no one to play soccer with at the park, I decided to check out the Wilderness Trail Loop, a well-maintained beginner-level trail just south of Seneca Park on Old Cannons Lane. Not really knowing if my bike – or even I were up to it, I climbed up the trailhead and started on my merry way.

If there was a squirrel watching me as I flew down the trail, he’d have seen a man eyes wide with wonderment and a smile to match. It’s been a long time since I had this much fun on a bike.

Hey all! Just thought I’d give you a postcard from the road! Kelly and I let out of Louisville on Thursday night. We made good time (even stopping by an outlet mall where Kelly exercised amazing discipline both in purchase and in efficiency) and got to the Academy of Model Aeronautics site with enough time to set up the tent in the light. We were, however, surprised, to find a troop of Boy Scouts in the camping area when we arrived. No problems, though — it actually made me reminiscent of my scouting days.

Friday was Handlaunch day at the NATS, and the weather was crap – which means it was great for a contest! Windy and overcast, it had rained the first night a bit, and it threatened to do so the whole day. Thermal activity was boiling in the morning, but it quickly dissapated into what I think was some sort of low-level temperature inversion (think of it as a “cap” on the field) and thermalling was rough. Ed Franz, the contest director, loves to punish the handlaunch competitors, and the tasks were *real* long. One wrong move or one missed thermal and *pow* you were out of there! I flew pretty well during the middle of the day, but I really fell apart at the end of the day, and ended up in 9th out of 19. My buddy Bruce Davidson flew to 2nd place and fellow LASS-mate Ken Marks ended up in 15th. I’ll do better in Unlimited on Wednesday/Thursday and then in RES on Friday, right?

Friday night was rain, rain, rain and our tent has some leakage issues, so we were a little damp. Despite that, Saturday was beautiful and I hung around with “Team Polecat” as they bucked the trends and flew a 60″ ship in an event that usually calls for planes that are 160″ in wingspan. Kelly and I split around 2PM for Detroit, making a stop in Fort Wayne at their H&M store.

Today we went to a Detroit Tigers game, and had a blast! The weather has been very mild (low 80′s ) and a nice breeze was occassionally around. Kelly got to see her beloved “Pudge” Rodriguez, and we both enjoyed a day at the ballpark.

This evening, we headed out to another H&M store in Ann Arbor, and then drove north up State street to the University of Michigan area. What a cool little town up there! We walked around for a few hours and ate sushi and ice cream.

Tomorrow, the Henry Ford! Right now, there are photos here: 2006.07.23 – Detroit. Soaring related photos are here: 2006.07.21 – NATS Handlaunch and 2006.07.22 – NATS Cross-country.

This Thursday, Kelly and I are headed for vacation, bookended by me competing at the Academy of Model Aeronautics Soaring Nationals in Muncie, Indian, better known by it’s competitors as just the NATS. You may remember that last year I went to my first NATS and I managed to do pretty well. Hopefully, I can repeat that performance this year, but in all reality I’m just there to have fun.

The Soaring NATS is actually a number of different events packed into a week-long span. This year, I’m flying handlaunch, Unlimited and RES. Handlaunch being planes under 60″ launched by hand, Unlimited being winch-launched planes of any size, and RES being rudder/elevator/spoiler only planes. Handlaunch competition is on Friday, July 21st, and my next event, Unlimited, doesn’t start until the 26th, so Kelly and I have plans to go up to Detroit and kick around there for a little while. We are going to hit a Detroit Tigers game and go to the Henry Ford Museum as well. Not to mention that Kelly is most excited about going to H&M, the “hip Target”.

Photo courtesy of Charles Frey. That is a RES plane I’m throwing there, by the way. Handlaunch planes are under 60″ in wingspan.

Yesterday, I gave blood for the first time. I’m glad I did it, though it certainly knocked me for a loop! It took me a few hours to “get right” again. For my troubles, though, I did get a snappy “vintage Red Cross ballcap”, which I like very much.

Haven’t given blood before? It’s really not that bad. There is a very slight pain when the needle goes in (“the old familiar sting” in NIN parlance), but other than that, you lie there and drink some orange juice and squeeze a ball in your hand. The people running the show in the travelling truck that visited us were very nice.

As previously reported, Kelly and I were on The Great Prius Hunt, and as of last night, that hunt came to a satisfying close!

We got a call from Jim Parker over at GreenTree Toyota to let us know that the car was in and that we could seal the deal that evening. After a little wait for the financing lady to finish up with some other folks, we signed our lives away, and rolled on out the door.

This morning, I put the Prius to the real test, which was this: Can it fit all my sailplane stuff in the rear?. The answer to that most critical of questions is Yes, and handily.

Man, have I been busy as of late! Let me roll it down to you blog style!

First up, since about January, I’ve been helping out my buddy Denny over at Polecat Aeroplane Works to build the prototype of his new sailplane, the EZ Bubble Dancer. You may remember that I built something similar last winter, called the Allegro-Lite. The EZ Bubble Dancer is the “big brother” to what I built, with a 117″ wingspan. Denny saw my Allegro-Lite Building Gallery and offered to let me build the first EZ Bubble Dancer. I was elated! It took me a little longer than I had expected, but it was the first kit to be built, so I guess that is expected. I also volunteered to write the instruction manual, which ended up as a 59-page tome with full color photos. A lot of work, but well worth it! Oh, and I also help maintain the Polecat Aero website and have been helping out with Denny’s ginormous handlaunch contest as well.

Even deeper into hobby news, I’ve been helping to organize and plan the 2006 MidSouth Soaring Championships which will be held here in Louisville in late June/early July. I wrote the flyer for the contest, and am pretty close to finalizing a t-shirt design.

At work we’ve been pretty busy! The Interactive Department where I work has seen some changes over the past few months – and for the good! Last fall we added Matt Rasnake, a friend of mine and a fellow ex-Corvus Digital Systems employee. In the interim between the fall of Corvus and Power, he worked for GE on web stuff. He’s done right well at Power, and we’ve certainly had enough to keep him busy. This spring, we added Jackson Cooper, another friend of mine and chum from my University of Louisville College of Business / Computer Information System days who actually interviewed at Corvus a few times. He’s had better luck here at Power and like Matt, is doing very well and staying busy.

Me? Well, apparently last summer I was promoted, and didn’t know it! Now, I’m heading up a team of folks in the Interactive Department and moving into more of a Analyst role while still “keeping my hands dirty” in development of websites and such. I also got to pick my title, which I finally decided was “Senior Interactive Analyst / Developer”. We had a bit of a “Programmer” vs. “Developer” debate up here, and I’ve never been a big fan of title “Programmer”. That insinuates that all I do is write line after line of code all day long, which I’ll tell you is so remote from the truth that it boggles the mind. (Insert your witty puns here, friends).

On the fun and fitness end of things, I ran two miles in a row last night and did not collapse. It actually felt pretty good! Now, I probably won’t be trail-running or doing miniMarathons with Kelly any time soon, but it was nice to know that I could run from thugs or bears for a while and at least give them a decent go for it.

Finally, on the games front, I’ve been playing in a poker tournament hosted by colleague and interactive marketing consultant Jay Lane for the past 6 months, one night a month. I’ve been fair-to-middling placing as high as 4th out of the 21 people that play each month. Chuck Pearsall, Hunter Dixon and Chris Gerstle have faired much better (in that order) with Chris being in first place at the moment! The final tourney is this weekend. While I don’t think I have a chance at the money, I hope to ruin someone’s day!

Softball season is also upon us! Power Softball is in a rebuilding year after a fun year of 1-and-13 ball last year. The same Jay Lane of poker fame is heading up the team this year after Coach Johnny Kitson has stepped aside to go and get married. Yes, I know it’s softball, but dammit I do love anything close to baseball. Also, I’m not 28 yet, so I can’t join up with the Louisville Men’s Senior Baseball League 28 and Over.

Back at work today, which I’ll admit is a bit of a relief. Travelling does have it’s own stresses to be sure. Thinking about all that work you’ll have to come back to, not to mention things you’ve got to put off at home. Been thinking about php|tek 2006 over the weekend, and I’ve come up with a few final thoughts.

First, I’ll say that I did learn quite a bit at php|tek, but nothing that I was expecting to learn. My expectations for this PHP-centric conference were fairly broad. I had expected there to be a few very narrow, technical sessions with the majority being broader, more “this is where we are headed” type conversations. I did not expect many non-PHP-specific sessions to do me much of any good. What I encountered could be construed as completely the opposite.

The majority of the speakers at this conference were those either directly or almost directly related with the day-to-day development of PHP as a programming language. Many of the speakers were the originators of the stuff they spoke about, or at least had a hand in it. While this is truly a unique opportunity rarely granted in the IT world — to get to interact with the person who writes the language which you use each day — I don’t know if it is beneficial to most people who come to these conferences.

I wore my “Microsoft Freedom to Innovate” t-shirt today. I consider it the most ironic $10 I’ve ever spent, and I guess most folks get the joke. I did get my picture taken with someone with a “NO SOFTWARE PATENTS” shirt a lunch, so I consider that a small victory. His shirt was black, and mine was white. Nested ironies, I think. While I’m on the subject of attire, I’ll say that it’s been shorts and t-shirts for most everyone here, including the presenters. The “Schroedinger’s Cat is Dead” t-shirt I spied on a certain lass made me chuckle. The real “thinking outside the nerd attire box” award has got to go to Marcus Baker. I sat in on two of his sessions on two separate days, “Is Agile Development Right for You?” and “Breaking the OO Sound Barrier”. Both days he was wearing the same pair of pants. Big deal, right? I often wear the same pair of khakis a few days in a row at work. But Marcus doesn’t prefer the inconspicuousness of khaki – he prefers leather. Leather pants. Marcus, you have won the con. Congrats.

All kidding aside, I will say that Marcus’ sessions have been the most enlightening of all that I have attended. He is a natural and fluid speaker who doesn’t bombard the audience with a lot of code or pedantic knowledge. Granted, his topics haven’t been “Migrating from version X to version Y” or “The New Features of Some Code Gadget”, but instead have focused on analysis and design topics that lead to programming strategies. He does a very good job of it and and while their topics may differ, I think most of the folks I sat in with here at php|tek could take a cue from Marcus.

A certain level of knowledge about PHP is assumed if you are coming to this conference, yes, but I think that level should be fairly low. Many of the speakers here are actual developers *for* PHP. This obviously grants them wonderful insight on the depths of the language, but I would rather see more general and real-world applications of PHP. This is something that Rasmus Lerdorf did very well in his keynote. Oh – and before I forget the one session I sat in with Christian Wenz was also very good.

Dan and I took the free Zend Certification Exam this afternoon. I don’t know how well I did, and honestly I’m not that concerned having taken it. Many of the questions dealt with detailed specifics of the language and it’s constructs, which is something that I normally let the webserver worry about. I have bigger things to consider and remember when I use PHP. A certification is only a nice thing to put on your wall, I think. Programming’s name belies it’s complexity – a complexity that supercedes the language itself.

“PHP Pool Party” later tonight with an open bar! More later?

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Some say that the second Internet bubble is upon us. I think they might just be right, based on the amount and complexity of work that has been coming in to us at work. This time, however, it’s considerably more
robust and “pop-proof” (or at least we all hope so). The ideas that inflated the first bubble seem to have
risen from the ashes of that first wave. The idea of the Internet as Desktop and Desktop as Internet.
The dreamy “thin client” that was going to be everywhere, cheaply and clawing its way onto your TV, into your
car and on the front of your refrigerator. Rockets on your shoes and teleporters and the whole thing, too.

So maybe it’s apt that I’m here in Orlando, so close to Kennedy Space Center where, back in the 1960s, we
actually did make the impossible possible without an implosion. Lives aren’t on the line in the Internet,
and so such irrational exuberance can lead to such things. The hype was believed back then, but now the
people behind the scenes are wiser for the experience. There were so many great, grand ideas in the late
90′s, but so little consideration and so much money doesn’t fly in the world of the Internet.

In the meantime, things have settled down on the Internet. The browser wars have gone from hot to cold, and
the medium that is the Internet is a little more predictable with fewer outliers. This has allowed companies
like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (and a thousand smaller joints) to create applications for all people, all
browsers, all platforms that *work* and bring a little of the promise of the grand ideas of the late 90′s.

Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, digg.com, etc. all make use of these grand ideas, like /your data on the web/ and
/the web as read/write/ and the web as a moving, usable and up-to-date desktop application. The technologies
behind these are various and sundry (mostly sundry), but focus primarily on the easy exchange of easily
readable data. Things like map info, stock information, search results, whatever. Make that information easily
available and portable and great things happen.

The reason why I am here at php|tek 2006 is specifically for PHP, but a lot of the content so far has centered
around that overarching idea of what I was just musing about. The “Web 2.0″, the “next generation”, whatever
you’d like to call it. How does PHP fit in there? How is it changing to fit in? Knowing just where the
tech on the web is heading is truly the only way to know what is going on in PHP.

PHP is one of the most widely-used, profilic and advanced technologies used on the web. Rasmus Lerdorf started
PHP back in 1995 and has been instrumental in it’s development ever since. He now works for Yahoo!, and seems to
be focused on these emerging Internet technologies. Suffice it to say, he remains very much a “blue-collar” guy
who created and directs the development of a technology that has affected so much of the “white-collar” world.

Rasmus’ keynote speech earlier this morning was considerably less “high-level” than I had expected. This is what I have come to expect from the open-source world. The people who are making the changes and pushing things forward still have their hands dirty in the real world. However, those people who are truly successful are the odd ones who can do so and still keep a grip on the big picture. I get the feeling the Rasmus is one of those
people. He, in his hour-long keynote presentation (I wouldn’t call it a speech), explained by example and in code the pitfalls of the new-school web apps, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. He also showcased how PHP can simply and easily be integrated into these “Web 2.0″ apps. An interesting blend of real-world considerations, code and examples that underscored how important is the inter-relation between technologies.

An unusual keynote, for sure. Part of me was hoping for more of a “state of PHP” sort of address, but much like any good programmer, you leave that stuff for the brass, and get down to nitty-gritty with the troops. I’m sitting here in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops, so what else should I expect? More later!

You can check out Rasmus’ presentation in it’s entirety here: talks.php.net/show/tek06

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The promised free WiFi access didn’t materialize until about 3 PM here after a fandango of new access points and provider snafus. Probably a good thing, though, as it allowed the small cadre of geeks who showed up to this con a day early to focus on the “In-Depth Seminars”.

Dan and I chose the “Master OOP in PHP 5″ talk hosted by Marcus Boerger, one of the architects of the PHP 5 object-oriented code. Marcus, who lives in Germany, offered up a very straightforward, detailed talks spikedwith a wry sense of humor that pops up when you least expect it. PHP 5 introduces a “revamp” (a term Marcus didn’t care for) of the OO system in PHP, and pushes it more in the direction of what passes for a standard in the OO world. Better privacy control, extensibility and overall greater functionality. A very worthwhile talk and very much on the bleeding edge of the PHP world.

The next talk was “PHP & AJAX: A winning combination” with John Coggeshall, a very outspoken and enthusiastic guy who works with O’Reilly (the publisher of many a great book on technology) and Zend (the engine behind PHP). AJAX is one of those buzzwords in the industry right now like “LAMP” (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) and “podcast”, which aren’t anything new (see earlier post on podcasting) but now have a name people can talk about. AJAX is Javascript (the duct tape of the Internet) and XML (sorta) that powers things like Google Maps and GMail. Very whiz-bang stuff that brings the web interface a little closer to being what you might expect on the desktop. John spoke a lot about what is wrong with AJAX, and suprisingly little about what PHP can offer it. He didn’t really tell Dan or I anything we didn’t know about AJAX, but in a roundabout way inform everyone that AJAX is still very new and fraught with problems. AJAX apps may seem simple on the web, but behind the scenes there are some very touch problems borne from the challenge of making computers interface with humans a little bit better. From that and the little PHP content, I gather that even PHP doesn’t really know what to do with AJAX until it matures a little.

John wrapped up around 3PM, which luckily allowed Dan and I enough time to beat a path eastward to the Kennedy Space Center. I’m a sucker for anything involving space, so this was a welcome and awesome side-trip. Kennedy Space Center sits out on a island off the Florida coast and our rented Toyota Prius got us there quickly, quietly and burning little gas.

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