cwest's Journal

I'm over here, folks

cwest — 2006-12-20T01:57:45+00:00

Hi everyone, after a crazy long hiatus on blogging I'm giving it another shot, this time without mirroring to use Perl.

I love you all. Yes, like that.

Important Web 2.0 Observation

cwest — 2005-10-05T22:49:28+00:00

Since I may pass before the end of this session, I have to give you this important information.

Web 2.0 is the first conference I've been to where you pay a lot of money to be at the conference, your chances of actually seeing a session is 50/50, and if you make into a session you're likely to be baked within 45 minutes.

Paying for torture. Yeah baby!

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Arrival Day at Web 2.0

cwest — 2005-10-05T13:56:01+00:00

Yesterday I flew to San Francisco for Web 2.0. I went to my hotel, then to the Conference hotel to hang out and register. Since Socialtext is a sponsor I received a bright yellow badge with an even brighter ribbon. That's new to me, but so is Web 2.0. I know a bunch of folks at this conference, but none of them were around yesterday. Thankfully my co- worker Jon Prettyman arrived around dinner time so we took a walk to North Shore for food.

North Shore was cool. We found a Rogue Beer Garden, October Fest style, and sampled some Rogue and German beers. Then we went to a Seafood and Jazz place for dinner. They serve New Orleans and Cajun food while the band dishes out the tunes. Gelato and a last call drink finished off the excursion and I crashed in my room.

Now I'm up at 6:30am, my bright yellow badge almost glowing to keep me awake. Today should be fun. Several Socialtext employees get to speak at the conference and I get to meet some friends again.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

On my way to Web 2.0

cwest — 2005-10-04T12:12:42+00:00

Headed to a happening conference. About to board for Web 2.0.

I have the exciting opportunity to go to a conference as an attendee, I get to soak up all the interesting things from other people. I also get to meet some of my co-workers for the first time. I expect I'll be in Palo Alto for the afternoon, and I'll return to San Francisco in the evening. These things are very fluid though.

Web 2.0, see you soon!

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

What's Happening

cwest — 2005-09-26T13:42:57+00:00

Life goes fast.

Our new baby is a happy one, he sleeps well and eats a lot. He's cute too, I think.

Today is the beginning of week number four at a new job. I don't think I mentioned it when I started, which is bad, but I'm working at Socialtext and I'm having a great time. The team and work are great.

I'll be headed to Web 2.0 next week. This conference looks to be a lot of fun, I hope to see some of you there. I'll bring baby pictures and I'll help you get Wikiwyg integrated into your project if you like. I've been spending all of my time working on Wikiwyg lately, and I think it's a hot project. I even did the website design, which I think isn't too shabby.

My open source work has been lagging, as most of you know. I have plenty of excuses, but none of them are all that great. You know, little things like a new baby, new job, and new life. I will overcome these shortly. Please stay tuned.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

David Oliver West has Arrived

cwest — 2005-09-12T21:32:40+00:00

Welcome to the world!

Birth2005-09-12 17:12:00 Weight7lb 10oz Length20.5 Inches

See the picture: http://caseywest.com/journal/archives/005239.html

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

David Oliver West, ASAP

cwest — 2005-09-12T14:49:46+00:00

Chastity has begun labor. My new son will be born today. I'll be photo blogging him as soon as he's cleaned up and happy.

As you might imagine, I might be slightly unavailable today. Enjoy your day!

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Wiki Wednesday in Pittsburgh - Sep 7

cwest — 2005-09-06T13:30:51+00:00

Pittsburgh gets its own Wiki Wednesday meeting!

https://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?pittsburgh_wednesday_sept_7_2005

This is your chance to get a free scoop of ice cream and discuss the latest about wikis, find jobs in social software, find great wiki software for your business, and did I mention -- eat ice cream!

SocialText is going to pick up the tab for one scoop of Ben & Jerry's (in Squirrel Hill) ice cream for all RSVP's. Stop by and chat!

For more info on Wiki Wednesdays all over the world, visit https://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?wiki_wednesdays

See you there!

Apple's Address Book Disappoints

cwest — 2005-08-23T16:31:43+00:00

UDPATE: I suck. My color contrast is way off on my powerbook display. There is no little box in my edit view because of that. So the hate must be directed to my contrast selecting software, which probably exists somewhere behind my eyes.

I meet a lot of people and I'm trying to get into the habit of writing down some information about them. Things like phone numbers and names, and maybe how I met them or why I met them. Apple's Address Book application is great for that. But it falls short in one very important area. I can't store a photo!

I need a visual aid to remember lots of people. Photos are perfect for that, as it turns out, and address books should store that information too. I need to send this to hates-software...

I wonder if hates-software will junk up the HTML in this post I need for my journal... now do I hate MT or Siesta, or is my preemptive hate all for not?

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

JSAN Updates

cwest — 2005-08-19T00:18:12+00:00

JSAN - JavaScript Archive Network

Two more mirrors were created. One in Portugal and another hosted by Playboy.
David Wheeler updated the distribution display to show the README.
David Wheeler and I made the META link point to JSON or YAML meta files, given context.
I presented a talk on JSAN to the Sophos in late July that was very well received.
I presented two talks on JSAN at OSCON in Portland that were both well received.
The BOF on JSAN at OSCON was small but very well received.
JSAN powered Planet OSCON which was a huge success for a kind of "flash aggregator" for the event.
I was able to get a little rest and family time, and make some other huge changes in my life that I'll write about later.

Since I've last written there have been some major distributions uploaded. They're all quite neat and I'll discuss them over time. Today I'd like to talk about Brian Ingerson's (and friends) Wikiwyg distribution. It looks really cool! A rich text editor that turns any 'div' into an editing environment! Check out the demo.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

3:20PM in Keynote Room: why the lucky stiff IN CONCERT

cwest — 2005-08-04T20:39:21+00:00

In Concert, schedule change!

If you're at OSCON you need to be in the keynote room, in the Portland Rooms, for "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever", presented by why the lucky stiff!

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

JSAN at OSCON Today

cwest — 2005-08-04T15:21:10+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

JavaScript gets to take the high road and be with the rest of the wonderful open source languages today at OSCON.

In the morning you can go to the session on JSAN at 11:35 in Portland 251.

Join us for the BoF later in the evening.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Join Planet OSCON

cwest — 2005-08-02T22:14:29+00:00

Planet OSCON

So I was in the blogging BOF at OSCON and everyone was lamenting that O'Reilly didn't build a blog aggregator for them. I could only think, "But you can build one for yourself." So I build one for themselves. Please share and enjoy.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 40: Radar, Hack-A-Thon, Merciless Refactoring

cwest — 2005-07-26T07:17:53+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Brian Cassidy worked on much more style and XHTML validity changes.
Added feeds to Planet JavaScript.
Got some good press on radar.oreilly.com.
Planned the Hack-A-Thon at OSCON. Please sign up!
I've declared Thursday, August 4th as JSAN Day. JSAN will be considered released that day.
The smoke testing system mostly works now. Start Testing!
David Wheeler added JSON Metadata support to Module-Build- JSAN, which is nearing completion.
I gave the JSAN Library a working over, including new features such as JSAN.require() and JSAN.exporter() (the brother of Perl's import() for symbols).

I took a long weekend to spend time with the family. I'll be gone for nine days at OSCON! In any case, it was a Good Thing to take the time. I see things very clearly now. Thursday is release day, so everything builds to that.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 35: Planet JavaScript

cwest — 2005-07-21T06:21:39+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Brian Cassidy worked on more XHTML validity changes.
I released Planet JavaScript.
That would not have happened if Bob Ippolito hadn't fixed the Planet code to work on FreeBSD, and to handle utf8 properly.
The RSS Feed got proper dates for each entry. Now they just need descriptions for each upload. I'm thinking the abstr act and the Changes file. What do you think?
Adam Kennedy is working on a better road map.

Please, also, tell me what sites you read that have a syndication system and are JavaScript related. I want to add them to the list! (Or add them yourself by getting SVN rights.)

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 34: IE Works, Taxonomy, Clouds

cwest — 2005-07-20T05:28:06+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Brian Cassidy worked over the site's style to make it IE friendly. By far the coolest thing of the day.
Adam Kennedy is working on an alternative JSAN Client.
David Wheeler added support for tags in META.yml, in Module- Build-JSAN. This is very cool, it means you can supply a list of tags in Build.PL. Who needs categories anymore?
David also tweaked the JSAN Library to always refer to JSAN.globalScope to find the global scope. JSAN 0.08 was released with this change (I forgot to update the Changes file!). I also added tags to this library.
I added support for stripping inline POD from JavaScript libraries in Moudle-Build-JSAN. This will keep JSAN.js lean.
I added tag support to the incoming processor.
I added a tag cloud to the home page
The incoming processor now builds pages for tags too.

Categories are known to be a broken system. Taxonomy is much better. Therefore, authors can control the categories (tags) on JSAN by including them in the META.yml. Here is what the JSAN Library's META.yml file looks like now.

--- name: JSAN version: 0.08 author: - Casey West <casey@geeknest.com> abstract: JavaScript Archive Network license: artistic build_requires: Test.Simple: 0.11 provides: JSAN: file: lib/JSAN.js version: 0.08 generated_by: Module::Build version 0.2701 tags: - jsan - use - import - libraries

Of course this was generated using Module-Build-JSAN (which is in the JSAN SVN). Here's the Build.PL.

use Module::Build::JSAN; my $build = Module::Build::JSAN->new( module_name => 'JSAN', license => 'artistic', dist_author => 'Casey West <casey@geeknest.com>', abstract => 'JavaScript Archive Network', create_readme => 1, build_requires => { 'Test.Simple' => '0.11', }, tags => [qw[jsan use import libraries]], ); $build->create_build_script;

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Day 31..33: Rest (not REST), pair, and Source

cwest — 2005-07-19T05:44:33+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Took Saturday and Sunday off. It was nice.
We now have a mirror in the UK. Thanks Pete!
Moved master sites to the pair Networks mirror.
SVN now served from https://master.openjsan.org:81.
Changed styles to work a little better in broken IE.
Mirrors can now control their logo with JavaScript.
Rob Kinyon update the JSAN Library to accept multiple arguments and have a defined mechanism to import nothing.
I fixed indexes in the latest JSAN Shell for installation.
Module-Build-JSAN now extracts inline POD (but doesn't remove it). This is in Subversion for now. Rob did this.
View the Source!
Promoted our JSAN BOF at OSCON on the home page.
A reStructuredText to HTML tool was written and committed by Bob Ippolito, it will be integrated with the incoming processor to support RST documentation.

Lots of great work today by Bob and Rob. Bob marks our first non- Perl hacker on the project. I hope there will be a lot more like him in the days to come.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 30: Wiki, CIA, Commits, and Two

cwest — 2005-07-16T07:27:03+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

We're now listed with CIA.
The author-editable wiki is online, but still requires tweaking.
Smoke Testing is even closer to release.
You can read commits via the mailing list, with diffs, if you like.
An AUTHORS file was started at the root of SVN, please add yourself if you have commit rights.
A minimal MAP was added to SVN as well.
Garrett Rooney, Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, and Brian Cassidy all teamed up to fix up the Recent Uploads RSS.
Yuval Kogman fixed some JavaScript on the Go page, and fixed style issues
Adam Kennedy fixed some style issues on the site as well.
Brian Cassidy massaged the HTML to make it more compliant.
John Cappiello changed the "XML" images to "RSS" images, and also wrote the Kwiki Plugins required to get JAUSE authentication working for the wiki.

Yesterday (Friday) marked my two year anniversary at pair. Those that follows this journal know that I've decided to give my employer an evaluation at major milestones the same way they do me. I would say that I'm satisfied at work.

As for JSAN, things are moving along. The project has been launched for sixteen days and I really think it's working quite well. The major problem at the moment is that I don't have a windows computer so apparently the website looks and behaves horribly in Internet Explorer. I'm trying to find a way to fix this, I think a copy of Virtual PC is the answer but I certainly can't afford that answer right now.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 29: Commit, Doc, and Feed

cwest — 2005-07-15T06:11:39+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

We have a mirror in Europe!
Subversion Access will be wide open.
Road map and FAQ documents updated.
Soon, probably tomorrow, we'll have both smoke testing and author-writable wiki documentation online.
Get recent uploads as RSS.

I told you I'd take it easy today.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 28: Subversion, broken YAML

cwest — 2005-07-14T07:42:22+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

I've opened Subversion access for all to see. The JSAN Library version 0.06 was released. I think I'm going to rest a little tomorrow.

So when you're uploading distributions to JSAN you should double check the META.yml file. Broken files in CSS.Change and HTML.Form.Validator made my brain hurt, they broke the indexer. I've fixed the indexer to ignore broken META.yml files however. Here's a quick tester.

perl -MYAML=:all -e'LoadFile (shift)' META.yml

Must sleep now.

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Day 27: Search, Dependencies, IPv6

cwest — 2005-07-13T04:23:14+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Added search on the home page. Added quick link functionality (go to HTTP.Query). Version 0.03 of the JSAN Shell now follows prerequisites and installs them. We have two mirrors in Taiwan including one with IPv6 support.

Work continues but I'm going to bed early today.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 25,26: JSAN Indexes and Installer

cwest — 2005-07-12T05:32:20+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network

Lots of internal changes: switched to hashing login names to support expected growth, JAUSE IDs are now all lower-case (your ID may have been changed for you!). Tatsuhiko Miyagawa launched a mirror in Japan. Adam Kennedy built a mock of a Class::DBI and SQLite index system. I used that to convert the new YAML Index to an SQLite index. With that the JSAN Shell has been released! Look for version 0.02. Learn how to install JSAN libraries.

shell> jsan index shell> jsan -p /usr/local/js install Digest.MD5

The JSAN Shell is very alpha. It works but you will find bugs.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 24: JSAN RT, Store, and More

cwest — 2005-07-10T06:33:07+00:00

JavaScript Archive Network (http://openjsan.org).

Updates that happened today (or is it yesterday?).

You can now complain about bugs and stuff in the JSAN RT. The documentation bugs in the JSAN library have been fixed. If you are a mirror, or want to be, you can now get your logo on you mirror. We have launched a small Cafepress Store so you can wear an awesome JSAN shirt to your next geek event. JAUSE has better input validation now.

So go file a bug, buy a shirt, host a mirror!

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 23 [still]: Mirrors and JSAN Update

cwest — 2005-07-09T01:43:48+00:00

http://openjsan.org

OpenJSAN now has Mirrors: http://openjsan.org/community/mirrors.html
JSAN has been updated and should be easier to use: http://openjsan.org/doc/CWEST/JSAN/0.03/lib/JSAN.html

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Day 23: JSAN - Lots of Site Changes

cwest — 2005-07-08T05:23:44+00:00

https://openjsan.org

Marshall Roch created some excellent logos and gave me more CSS pointers. Ask Hansen provided a Develooper signed SSL certificate which means you can now log in over SSL! The start of a road map has been created, and we've created a neat way to promote JSAN. There were many internal changes as well.

These were lots of infrastructure and information changes. Lots of great work with the help of lots of great people.

Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.

Days 21 and 22: Mailing Lists and Acknowlegements

cwest — 2005-07-07T06:46:45+00:00

Here's an attempt to send rich email to my journal from Mail.app... http://openjsan.org It's all listed there, and it's getting late. :-)

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Day 21: Open JSAN Beta 1

cwest — 2005-07-06T03:56:23+00:00

So I think that autrijus (http://use.perl.org/~autrijus/journal) has the right idea for his project, so why not. This is the 21st day I've worked on this project. The first thing I built was the JSAN library. So from there this is what we're up to.

Open JSAN: http://openjsan.org
JAUSE: http://openjsan.org/jause/
JSAN Library: http://openjsan.org/doc/CWEST/JSAN/0.02/lib/JSAN.html
Test.Simple on JSAN: http://openjsan.org/doc/theory/Test/Simple/0.11/index.html

More to come! The system is very much a beta. We're on our way though.

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YAPC Finished

cwest — 2005-06-30T14:12:38+00:00

I had a great time in Toronto. My talks went well and I'm sufficiently tired. I feel like I've done good things. I'm traveling today and working tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be up to it, though it's a short ride.

Many more details later.

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A Walk Down Freedom Lane: Boston on Saturday

cwest — 2005-06-13T20:01:16+00:00

My family and I will be in Boston this coming weekend for a small family vacation, while our family is still small. Or are we mid-sized? Whatever the case we are certainly not flagship material.

Moving on.

I was wondering if anyone was up for a stroll along the freedom trail with us. This is of course a very family friendly stroll since we are a family and we will have strollers with children in them. Non-traditional families and single participants are welcome to come. You are not required to pose as a family, nor must you affix cardboard families to yourself to fit in. All are welcome.

The date and time of this venture is, roughly speaking, Saturday June 18th at 10:30:00am. I suspect it's easiest to start at the south end, which also appears to be the beginning according to The Map ( http://thefreedomtrail.org/freedom_trail_map.pdf ). Although the map is nearly impenetrable, there is a nice red brick road we're to follow.

My calculations suggest that if we walk at roughly 0.833 miles/hour that's basically 25 yards/minute. That should be a nice casual pace that everyone can enjoy. This should also take into consideration moderate site-seeing and very minor tourist shopping and browsing. This leaves us at the USS Constitution at 13:30:00pm. (Note: This pace is not required but offered merely as a suggestion. There will be no enforcement of this pace.)

If you have any questions or suggestions please send them.

So please, join us at The Boston Common, otherwise known as number one (1) on your map. We look forward to meeting you.

Casey (Jr), Evelina, Chastity, and Casey West

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She's Doing Well

cwest — 2005-06-02T01:07:40+00:00

Evelina's surgery was a success. She had no complications. Well, there was one. She's really pissed at doctors and nurses. But physically she's fine. She woke up about five minutes after they finished and she has been breathing just fine and she's doing well with what pain she can feel over the drugs. Plus there are Popsicles. She can't lose. She's in ICU so there aren't really many visiting opportunities but there is a chance she'll be home tomorrow.

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