Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:42:57 GMT
Apparently I need to track more local blogs, because I missed the original announcement of the Seattle MindCamp. Fortunately, Ted Leung pointed it out to me, or I probably would have missed it entirely. This should be interesting–it’s essentially a local version of Foo Camp (or Bar Camp), held in an office building over a 26-hour span during the first weekend in November.
From the MindCamp website:
Seattle Mind Camp is a self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnight Seattle confab. What happens when you put 150 of Seattle’s smartest geeks in an empty office building for 24 hours? We’re not sure either, but we’d like to find out. It’s time to meet and connect with those involved in the interesting projects going on in Seattle in a relaxed environment.
What: A weekend, 24-hour, multi-track event. Think huge space with breakout rooms, broadband Wi-Fi, projectors, white boards - and you.
Who: 150 of Seattle’s forward thinkers: techies, entrepreneurs, executives, gamers, musicians, and anyone else with a great idea.
When: Mind Camp will take place on November 5-6
Why?: You know all those hallway conversations that never get to flourish during a “normal” conference? Now they will.
Seattle Mind Camp is completely free of charge, and registration will begin very soon. In the meantime, check out the About page for a little more information.
It looks like there are still a few spots left, but I doubt they’ll last very long.
Update: In the spirit of information spreading, I should probably mention Seattle Code Camp, which is happening this weekend. From looking at the code camp website, it looks a bit more organized, with pre-scheduled talks, and there seems to be a big Microsoft/C#/.NET focus on a lot of the events. There are a couple Perl/Linux sessions and an introduction to Ruby, as well as a pair of Cocoa/Objective C talks, but most of the content seems to be “cool new stuff in C#.” Which is fine, but it’s not really my sort of conference. MindCamp, on the other hand, seems to be drawing a more diverse crowd, with a number of open source people on the roster.
Posted in Seattle | Tags geekcamp, hacking, mindcamp, seattle, seattlemindcamp | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 04:54:45 GMT
Gabe, my 5 year old son, is really into knights right now. He has knight coloring books, plastic swords and armor, and likes to be called “Sir Gabe” from time to time.
It’ll pass eventually, just like last year’s dinosaur phase passed, but he’s enjoying it for now. I guess that’s why I let my wife talk me into taking him to the Camlann Medieval Village in Carnation yesterday to watch the Seattle Knights jousting show.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but they put on a good show, and we really enjoyed ourselves. I took a few hundred pictures, as usual, and I’m currently uploading a dozen or so of them to Flickr.
Posted in Seattle | Tags camlann, joust, knights, seattleknights | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:36:40 GMT
My driver’s license expired a few days ago and I’ve been meaning to go in and get it renewed, but I was dreading the experience. The last time I had to renew, I had to take time off from work so I could sit for an hour in a hot DMV building full of crabby people. I had no desire to repeat that.
I bit the bullet today and walked over to the downtown Seattle licensing office at 3rd and Union. I was expecting a wait, but the room was almost completely empty, so I was back out the door with a new license in under 5 minutes. The whole process, including the walk from my office and back again took me under 10 minutes.
I’m having a run of good customer service experiences today. First my DSL got a free speed upgrade and now my driver’s license. I don’t really know how to top that.
Posted in Seattle, Personal | Tags dmv, dol, driverslicense, renewal, seattle, unionst | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:55:15 GMT
I’ll have to call this a personal first: I had dinner at Chinoise yesterday with a group of people that I’d never actually met in person before, all arranged at the last minute via blog trackbacks.
Besides finally meeting Boris, I got to meet Chris, Lee, Kris, Amanda, and Silas. I’d never been to Chinoise before, but I’ll be back soon–great food, wonderful presented. The conversation was enjoyably geeky; Boris and I double-teamed Lee and Chris on the “you need a Nokia N91” front while the other half of the table discussed photo management software and backup strategies. Here are a couple pictures from Boris’s Nokia 6630, uploaded directly to Flickr during dinner. I really need to get a better phone.
Posted in Seattle, Personal | Tags bryght, chinoise, dinner, seattle, trackback | 4 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 25 Jul 2005 05:05:36 GMT
I spent almost two hours in an oral surgeon’s waiting room on Friday, waiting for him to fix my wife’s broken tooth (ouch!). While idly flipping through magazines, I found an article in Sunset on Jetty Island in Everett, WA. I’d never even heard of Jetty Island before, but it’s a narrow man-made island with a long, sandy beach in Everett’s harbor that was created as part of a failed construction project a century ago. The city of Everett runs a free ferry between Everett’s marina and the island every half-hour.
This afternoon, I was looking for something fun to do with the kids and decided to go check the island out. Cynthia wasn’t done recovering yet, so we left her at home and headed for the beach. The tide was out and it seems like the mudflats went on forever. The kids ran around for an hour and a half and had a great time. I put a few pictures on Flickr.
I can highly recommend Jetty island for those in the Seattle area with kids. I’m sure we’ll be heading back soon.
Posted in Seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:22:27 GMT
It looks like the Seattle Fry’s store will be selling Tiger for $99 this weekend. I suspect that other Fry’s locations will have similar prices, but it’s not at all uncommon for Fry’s to run different promotions in different regions. Take a look at frys-electronics-ads.com; they’ll probably have details within a day or two.
Posted in Seattle, Mac stuff | Tags apple, frys, macosx, tiger | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 23 Nov 2004 18:23:57 GMT
ProLab, Seattle’s second-largest pro film lab is closing their film processing and printing business. According to the Seattle P-I, the shift to digital has gutted not only their film processing, but also the demand for custom prints. Apparently people have noticed that a $2 8x10 from Costco with Dry Creek Photo’s profiles is pretty much the same as a $10 8x10 from a pro lab. With film, you’re pretty guaranteed that cheap places like Costco will scratch your film, screw up processing it, and leave it coated with gunk, but with digital that’s irrelevant.
So where does this leave the pro labs? For ProLab at least, they’re sticking with larger-format printing for advertising displays. Both ProLab and Ivey have been concentrating on this market for years, and it’ll probably serve them well for years to come, while traditional film printing fades into memory.
Posted in Seattle, Photography | Tags film, photography, seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:38:33 GMT
A friend just sent me a link to this week’s ads for Fry’s Electronics in Seattle. This has been a long-running irritation for both of us–unless we go out and buy a paper, we don’t know what Fry’s is selling this week. It seems ridiculous that they don’t post their sales online themselves; instead, this link above comes from one of the two major Seattle papers; they’re both hosted in nwsource.com.
While it’s nice to see their ads show up online, it’d be even nicer if they were actually usable–as it is, you get an unreadably small image of the ad; you can click to zoom, but the zoomed image only shows a single segment of the ad, usually one or two items. So, to read the whole ad, you’d have to load at least 100 distinct images. Nice work, guys.
Posted in Seattle, Computer Hardware | Tags frys, seattle | 17 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 08 Sep 2004 15:44:43 GMT
Remember Infinium Labs, the makers of the Phantom game console, which has been total vaporware for at least a couple years? Their latest quarterly report filing says that they’re almost out of cash. While a lot of people online don’t seem too surprised by this, I have a slightly different perspective, and what I’ve seen doesn’t look like a company that’s about to implode.
As mentioned before, Infinium’s Seattle R&D office was right next to my office, and I saw their people daily until they moved into bigger offices on September 1st. They certainly weren’t acting like they were broke–the employees were working long hours right up to their move-out date. I saw glimpses of Phantom prototypes and production samples from time to time, but I never got a demo. One of their managers had a wall-mounted countdown clock, set to trigger in November–they were really focused on getting their product out on time.
Personally, I expect them to ship the thing, perhaps on time, perhaps a bit late. I don’t have high expectations for their product, but I don’t expect them to implode before they ship.
(via Gizmodo and Firing Squad)
Posted in Seattle, Business, Computer Hardware | Tags broken, infinium, seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:07:48 GMT
From today’s Seattle P-I:
When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby – dozens of empty cans of Rainier Beer.
…
“He didn’t like that (Busch) and consumed, as near as we can tell, about 36 cans of Rainier.”
Cute. My parents camped there around July 30th, and had a run-in with a black bear in the campground. It’s probably safe to assume that this is the same bear.
Posted in Seattle | Tags bakerlake, bear, drunk | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 24 May 2004 23:55:58 GMT
After working yesterday evening, Gabe and I stopped by the grand opening festivities at Seattle’s new central library. Gabe’s still a bit unclear on the difference between bookstores and libraries, but either way, he thought this one was cool. It’s a lot bigger then I expected, and it doesn’t seem as complex in person as I’d expected. A couple pictures:
Posted in Seattle | Tags architecture, library, seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 03 May 2004 18:04:24 GMT
Even wonder who has the Washington personalized license plate with Microsoft’s stock symbol? I saw it this morning on my drive to work. I’m willing to bet it’s not a Microsoft manager–the plate is attached to a mid-90s burgundy-colored Geo Metro, in need of a bit of body work.
Posted in Seattle | Tags funny, microsoft, seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 07 Jan 2004 09:41:19 GMT
Well, it snowed today. They were calling for up to 6 inches, but I can only see 3 inches on the ground here. As usual, the forecast overstated the amount of snow to expect.
They didn’t overstate the traffic problems, though. I drove in to work around 9:00 today, and it was a piece of cake. 405 was clear and mostly dry, and 520 was only a little slow. 5 was slick, but there was no traffic. It wasn’t until I got off the freeway that the real fun began–I tried driving down Columbia. From 6th to 5th I mostly slid, but there was no one in the way, and I managed to stop only slightly into the crosswalk. From 5th to 4th I did a bit better, but I was still sliding slightly sideways by the bottom of the block. I had a green light so I continued through the intersection and stopped to see what to expect between 4th and 3rd. Good thing I stopped–there was a 3-car wreck sideways on the road, leaving only one lane open. Fortunately, there was a metered parking spot open right in front of me, so I parked and walked to the office.
I was the only person in the office. Everyone else was working from home today, apparently. Around noon, I checked on my car, and the wreck was clear, and the road was closed. There was a freezing rain rumor going around, and the snow was still coming down hard, so I decided to get out of downtown before I was stuck waiting out the storm. The commute home was mostly uneventful–I slid down Columbia to 3rd, which was a little slick, and then took University back uphill to 5, then on to 520. The bridge was deserted–at one point, I couldn’t see anyone in front of me or behind me–but the traffic picked up as soon as I reached the east shore. From there to 405, it was stop and go, on ice. Every time I started, I slid a few inches towards the divider. Great fun. 405 was bumper to bumper as well, at least through Kirkland.
So, what does this prove? Seattle can’t drive in the snow. Except for the downtown hills, none of the roads seemed particularly bad. The real problem was all of the other drivers, and the accidents blocking lanes and causing rubernecking. More plows would have helped, too.
Posted in Seattle | Tags seattle, snow, traffic | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 11 Dec 2003 18:36:24 GMT
Interesting–the Seattle Times is reporting a series of fake ads by “Plasma World” in newspapers across the country, selling plasma TVs (and down comforters and pillows?). The ads were paid for with counterfeit checks. The store address provided was a fake, and the phones were handled by a call center paid for by a stolen credit card. Customers who tried to buy things via the call center have had their credit cards milked for all that they’re worth.
You expect this sort of thing on the net, I guess, but for some reason it’s suprising to see it happening in the real world.
Posted in Seattle | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:47:40 GMT
The power was out at home from 2:30 PM yesterday until 3:30 AM this morning. No mail, no web server, no heat, and no lights. Apparently we weren’t alone; 190,000 homes were dark yesterday, thanks to the big windstorm.
Posted in Seattle | 1 comment
