I just got back from the first Misoula BarCamp, and I think it was a success. We had about 18 people show up, which I think is very good for the first one. One attendee ( a fellow Rails developer ) came all the way from Helena. There were also some people that I was hoping/expecting would be there that weren't so hopefully they'll come to the next, whenever that is. There was a great mix of technical and non-technical discussions and presentations (I gave a little Rails demo). At any rate, big shout out and thanks to Harold for putting the whole thing together. I don't think anybody who went was the least bit disappointed in doing so, despite missing out on the first really nice spring weather in a couple weeks.

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A few of the attendees looking over the topics board to
pick out which sessions they're going to go to.
Tags: Missoula, Events.
Comments: 2

The Obama Rally in Missoula this morning was fun and memorable. It was definitely worthwhile to be able to participate in such a historic event. I got there a little after 8 this morning and was amazed to see how long the line was already. I could see it stretching from the front door all the way back past the Montana Theater and to the end of the next building at the end of the block. I called some friends to see if they were already in line in hopes of being able to cut in line with them. They answered and replied that they were in line in front of the University Theater. "Dummy," I thought to myself, "that's not the University Theater.. that's the Montana Theater. The University Theater way down around the corner a couple blocks." But, no... he was right, they were in front of the University Theater... and they weren't even close to the end of the line. The line wound around from there and back on itself up and down several blocks. My unscientific guess is that the line maxed out at about 12 blocks long when it finally started moving.

Anyway, we managed to get some really good seats, and I managed to get almost the entire speech on video, which I'm now trying to get uploaded to youtube in 5 parts. The links to each are below (or will be once I get them all uploaded.) My camera's memory card decided that it had had enough politics for one day just seconds before the end of the speech, so that's where my footage ends. He was just wrapping up at that point though, so nothing of substance was missed.

Tags: Politics, Events, Missoula.
Comments: 2

As recently as just a couple years ago, I didn't "get" RSS feeds. I understood the general concept, but I didn't understand WHY. What's the point? Why all the hubub? Then one day, it just clicked. RSS feeds allow me to be notified that a particular website I'm interested in has been updated with new content, without having to remember to browse to the site everyday to check for myself, and without (this is the kicker) having to give them my email address. When I don't want to get updates anymore, I just cancel the feed on my end. No need to figure out what hoops I'm supposed to jump through on their site to try to unsubscribe, no worries about them selling my address to a spammer, nothing. I have complete control... as long as the site provides an RSS feed (which a couple years ago, not that many did).

Now, two years later, I can't believe that some sites STILL don't provide RSS feeds. Case in point... the Missoulian. This is a website for a newspaper! They have updates every day, but I really don't want to have to remember to go check their website every day (which I don't and that's why I rarely go there) and I don't want to have to wade through a bunch of garbage on the site to see what's new. I just want a simple list of headlines to automatically show up on my computer as they become available, and I want to be able to click any that interest me to go right to the full story at the Missoulian. This is the 21st Century. This is how news gets distributed now. Everybody from The New York Times to I Can Has Cheezburger? have RSS feeds now, but the Missoulian? Noooooo... well, until now. But not becuase they did anything about it.

I finally got fed up with not being able to keep up on the local news as easily as I could on the national and international news. So, I wrote a little Ruby script to figure out what the latest stories and breaking news was at the Missoulians website, and format it into a couple RSS feeds. And, because (as I've said before), "you're all that, and more," I'm giving it to you, too.

One word of warning, though. The underlying HTML at the Missoulian has the consistency and structure of potato salad, making it very difficult to programatically figure out where the news stories are inside the mess, and therefore any little change they make to their site could easily break the feed. Considering they should be seriously thinking about redesigning their site anyway, it's only a matter of time before this happens. Or, maybe not... who knows. Anyway, if the feed breaks, I'll see about fixing it as soon as I damn well feel like it... until they start paying me for the service.

So, without further ado, here's the links for the feeds. Copy and paste the URLs into your favorite feed reader. And post a comment here to let me know how you like them.

Another thing that I didn't really "get" until recently were Podcasts. Podcasts are like RSS feeds (in fact, they are RSS feeds), but instead of delivering text and a link off to some news site or blog, they provide a link to an mp3 file that your computer automatically downloads for you. When people hear mp3 they often think "music" but podcasts are usually just people talking, and the first ones I ever tried to listen to were people who really, really liked to hear themselves talk and who didn't say anything I was particularly interested in listening to. Which is why I didn't "get" it. "Why the hell do people want to listen to this crap?" I asked myself. A great many (maybe even most) are still like that. But I've come to realize that hidden among all the garbage are a few really, really good gems. Podcasts get their name from iPods, but you do NOT need an iPod to subscribe or listen to them. Any podcast client (google for it) that you can install on your computer will do, although having a convienent way to move them onto an mp3 player to so you can listen to them, for instance, while driving to work, mowing the lawn, and so on is extra nice. It's kinda like TIVO for internet talk radio.

So, anyway. While working on the above RSS feeds, I had an idea. KUFM, the local Public Radio station posts the evening news as an mp3 file on their site, but it's not a podcast. While I'm doing these RSS feeds for the Missoulian, why don't I turn that news into a podcast for KUFM? Then I can listen to the previous nights news while on my bike on my way to work the next morning! So... I did that too, and again, since you're all that, and more.... (note: they seem to be having some audio issues with the last couple episodes, but my tests for last weeks shows worked fine, so as soon as they solve that, this should work great.)

And to close things off, Here's a short list of some of my absolute favorite podcasts. Load your mp3 player up with these, and like me, you may never want to turn your TV on again.

Tags: RSS, Missoula, Podcasts.
Comments: 0 [add comment]

Obama and BarCamp are coming to Missoula. Thankfully, not on the same day.

Thanks to my new Missoulian RSS Feed (what? huh? move along, nothing to see here... next post on that subject) I just found out that Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is having a free rally at the Adams Center Saturday morning. I'd be there even if it was Bush III, I mean John McCain. This is history in the making folks!

And on a completely unrelated note, Missoula is having it's own BarCamp on April 26th (also a Saturday). What's a BarCamp? According to Wikipedia....

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

The official site for Missoula's contribution is at http://missoulabarcamp.org. Registration is required. Early registration recommended. I hope to see a great turnout of Missoula's Tech Professionals.

Tags: Missoula, Events, Politics.
Comments: 0 [add comment]

Well, it was a little more work than I'd originally anticipated, but 5Valleys is now both my personal OpenID server and a consumer for visitors wishing to use OpenID to identify themselves when posting comments. I used the ruby-openid gem, but otherwise wrote all my own code, trying to stay as RESTful as possible (OpenID itself isn't particularly friendly to REST practices), and getting a thorough understanding of the internals before my presentation at next week's Missoula Web Discussion Group meeting. If you have an OpenID, go ahead and post a comment to try it out. Hint: if you have accounts at any of these sites, then you've got an OpenID you can (hopefully) use here, or anyplace else that proudly accepts them.

Tags: OpenID, Missoula, Rails, Ruby.
Comments: 0 [add comment]

I recently attended (and meant to attend) a few local events and lectures that I found particularly interesting (or thought they might be in the case of those I missed). One was a talk/slide show at the Rocky Mountaineers meeting by Dave Staling, who walked from Missoula to Waterton in 8 weeks via the back country. I suspected it would be a fascinating talk, and I wasn't disappointed. The next was a lecture at UM's Underground Lecture hall by a CalTech Chemistry Professor on harvesting power from solar energy. This was supposed to be a non-technical talk, but as a non-chemist, I found it still rather technical. However, it was highly entertaining and informative none-the-less. I meant to go watch a recent bicycle race at McCormick Park that sounded like fun (lots of obstacles and such), but completely spaced it out. And I heard belatedly about a talk at the UM on global warming that I would have loved to have gone to... if I'd known about it before it actually happened.

After the CalTech Solar Power lecture, I got the idea that I should post here about events that I'm planning to attend so that maybe others with the same interests might hear about them and want to go too. And maybe those who find themselves regularly attending the same things I do, might notify me of events I haven't heard of yet. Then, on a bathroom wall, I discover a poster informing me (and now you) that...

On Monday, November 5th at 4:00pm, executive editor of Wired magazine Bob Cohn will be giving a talk at the Missoula Art Museum. NewWest.Net says it "promises to be a fascinating conversation about Wired, technology, the Internet and the evolution of the media world." I think I might even manage to stay on the clock and drag along some co-workers for this one. See you there!

Tags: Events, Missoula.
Comments: 0 [add comment]
At last, Missoula has a Linux Users Group. The Mailing list is located at http://groups.google.com/group/msla-lug?hl=en. We had 12 people show up to our first meeting on Wednesday, and have another one scheduled for Saturday the 15th. Hopefully we'll eventually settle on a regular schedule of meetings so they can be easily planned for.
Tags: Missoula, Linux.
Comments: 0 [add comment]