WordCamp Wrap-up

There are a few random notes that I wanted to mention in order to bring closure to this series of adventure posts:

• Eton FR400 - Buy it! I used it while camping to check local weather where other forms of communication could fail.
• Twitter - I witnessed Andy use this to great effect from his cell phone by posting his gas stops. Wonderful use of the technology to keep family and friends informed.
• Cell Phone - While I have enjoyed using Skype as my sole source of voice communication it seems I might have to break down and buy a cell phone again. I discovered that long distance pay phone installations are quickly dying out. Some day WiFi access will be universal…
• Conference Power - I found it amusing that while attending a blogging conference there was a severe shortage of power connections BUT WiFi access worked fine. Seems kind of silly to have WiFi service when your laptop battery is dead. Boo.
• Offline Usage - I made a serious mistake by taking notes in various formats when I could have been using Windows Live Writer as an offline tool for composing blog posts. It supports the WordPress API and once I regained connectivity I could have published my posts, fully formatted, without using the web interface. On the other hand, offline access to my syndicated feeds via Feed Demon worked beautifully!
• Slideshare - Cool service. I mentioned it earlier, just wanted to mention it again.
• GPS-enhanced Pictures - I need the ability to take pictures with GPS coordinates recorded. It would make writing trip posts so much more interactive when you can link photos to maps. There are some technologies out there. Just need to incorporate them on this site…

OK, that is it. Trip is over.

Tags: WordCamp, WordPress

WordCamp - Day 8

I slept well in the tent set up the night before in Great Basin National Park. It had rained during the night but my tent was dry and made packing my gear on the bike easy. The following details some of my travels for the day.

Great Basin National Park

I needed to cover a lot of ground in order to make it into Colorado Springs by nightfall but could not resist traveling up the mountainside to get a glimpse of Wheeler Peak (13 miles of switchbacks from my campsite). The following captures some of the surrounding area, including Wheeler Peak and some shots of rain falling on the distant plains below:

After leaving Great Basin National Park, it was roughly another hundred miles before I reached Beaver, Utah. The roads were desolate but beautiful as the landscape still maintained the Nevada starkness except covered in golden grass. It was not until I reached Milford, Utah where I found a semblance of civilization. The following map will help put things in perspective:

From Beaver, Utah I connected to Interstate 70 and headed East.

Salt Wash

I try to stay away from interstate highways as much as possible but, as it turns out, Interstate 70 had a lot of offer. I enjoyed the high altitude driving near the Fishlake National Forest and the lower canyons found in Manti-La Sal National Forest.

There are several vista points worth checking out while in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Here are pictures taken while stopping at the Salt Wash vista point:

Devils Canyon

Not far from the Salt Wash is the Devils Canyon vista point. The landscape looks very familiar to what can be found at Hell’s Backbone near Escalante, Utah (as noted on Day 2).

Ghost Rock

Apparently, if I can recall from memory correctly, the story says that two cowboys saw these rocks in the fog and thought them to be ghosts:

I missed the chance to see one last vista point called “Spotted Wolf”, I think, where the interstate descended through jagged redrock to plains. From there the road flattened and warmed up as I traveled towards Moab and Arches National Park. I did not stop to visit Arches or the nearby Colorado Canyons National Recreation Area but would have liked to.

Independence Pass

I think it was near Grand Junction, Colorado where I caught up to the Colorado River and followed it for quite a ways before reaching Glenwood Springs, finally leaving Interstate 70. I then headed South on Highway 82 to Aspen, Colorado. The drive from Glenwood Springs, through Aspen, and over Independence Pass is really spectacular and something that everyone should experience. I have to admit that the road through this region is really slow, however. There is a lot of residential housing, businesses, and stop lights in this area so be warned. I should also mention that the road over Independence Pass is somewhat treacherous as it is covered in loose rock and narrows to a single lane at certain points. Do not let that deter you. It is worth it.

Aspen, Colorado blew me away. First time there. I have been to resort cities before (like Tremblant and Telluride) but nothing quite like this. I would have taken pictures but I plan to explore this more intimately in the future since it is not that far away. Anyway, here are some shots outside of Aspen via Independence Pass:

Twin Lakes

On the other side of Independence Pass are the Twin Lakes where I caught the last of the fading sunlight:

For the next couple of hours I would travel in the dark. Punishment, I suppose, for too much lally-gagging around earlier day. I reached home around 10:30pm.

Trips Stats

Alas, this concludes my road trip to and from WordCamp. I’ll end this post with a few travel stats:

• Total Length: 8 days
• Total Mileage: 2,861
• Total Gas Purchases (premium gas): $233

Tags: WordCamp

WordCamp - Day 7

The following illuminates some of the roads that I took while traveling back home from WordCamp. I have to admit that I was dreading this first day of the trip back because I was not sure what to expect in Nevada. To my surprise, I found that the landscape, though still barren, was slightly better than the what I found days earlier.

The Truckee River

Interstate 80 is heavily populated with patrol cars near the Lake Tahoe region leading up to Reno but I managed to not pay the road tax. If I were to travel through this region again, I would have done it differently and traveled closer to Lake Tahoe, hitting Highway 50 earlier as shown here (the route I took is in green, the alternate route I could have taken is shown with red arrows):

The following are pictures near the Truckee River on Interstate 80 just outside of Reno, Nevada.

Highway 50

I had a blast on this road. Very barren, yes, but an interesting road none-the-less. It was this road where I started to appreciate the state of Nevada more. The following are pictures taken at various points on Highway 50 (from Fernley to Austin, Nevada). An area map of the region in which these pictures were taken is included at the end.

Austin, Nevada

Here is a shot of Austin, Nevada while climbing a twisty road out of the city.

Austin is an small city with some old stone buildings and appears like a fun place to stop and visit. I gassed up here but would have liked to have checked out the town a bit more but wanted to make sure I had some daylight left in order to set up camp in the Great Basin National Park just outside of Baker, Nevada near the Utah border.

Tags: WordCamp

Protected: WordCamp - Day 7 (Fox & Goose)

Tags: WordCamp

WordCamp - Day 6 (Conference)

Introduction

Today was the second and last of the WordCamp conference. The following are my notes from the day.

10am - HyperDB and High Performance WordPress

Speakers: Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg

Interesting WordPress statistics. Best if you check out the slideshow.

10:45am - Blogs at the New York Times

Speaker: Jeremy Zilar

This was a spur of the moment presentation. He spoke about how they are using WordPress to power The New York Times. Check out their theme layout. Very cool!

A few blog essentials were discussed:

• About Page - Every blog should have one and it should describe the purpose and goal of the blog.
• Blogroll - I do not like this name as I call mine “Links of Interest” but this is where you link to the favorite sites you follow and subscribe to so that others can tune in.
• Posts - Well, you do not have much of a blog without them.
• Blog Title - Should be short, catchy, and to the point.

11am - Designing Massively Multiplayer Social Systems

Speaker: Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D.

She is a founder of SlideShare which is definitely something worth checking out. She spoke of first and second generation social networks and their evolution. Check out her slides. I also recommend watching her Perils of Popularity slideshow.

12pm - BBQ Lunch

Good but Joe’s BBQ is better!

1:15pm - Musical Interlude by Andy Skelton

Entertaining. Unfortunately, he had to sing about my accidental killing of rabbits near the Natural Bridges National Monument. Hey, you try driving in the evening and see how many you can avoid as they throw themselves at your tire(s)!

John Pozadzides has captured Andy Skelton’s performance if you want watch it.

1:30pm - Past, Present, and Future of Web Publishing

Speaker: Dave Winer

It is a shame that only an hour was given to Dave to speak. He had a sheet of topics to discuss and only covered a small portion. He spoke of the following:

• OPML Import/Export - All social software should have OMPL import and export capability.
• Future Safe Archives - We need to solve the problem of using technology of today in generations to come. It should be possible to view data stored today millions of years from now without having to know how to configure and manipulate the machinery and software in use today. For example, can you still read a 5.25” floppy disk on your computer?
• Data Portability - Data should be portable and accessible in as many forms as possible.

2:30pm - Usability Analysis

Speaker: Liz Danzico, Happy Cog

Liz has been working with the Automatic team to improve the WordPress usability experience. Most of her work will not be realized until the release of WordPress 2.4 but what is planned looks great. She spoke of the following:

• Desire Lines - When developers/designers create user interfaces they design with one idea in mind but in actuality users might use the software in an entirely different purpose or find shortcuts to getting things done faster. It is these shortcuts that are known as “desire lines”. When designing software, it is good to think of what desire lines are and build them in. Easiest way to do this is to be the user of your own software.
• Object Oriented Design - Think of design in terms of objects. I like this approach, being an object oriented developer. Examples of excellent object oriented design would be: Tumblr and the iPhone.

3:30pm - State of the Word

Speaker: Matt Mullenweg

He spoke of the following:

• bbPress - Bulletin board software that supports themes and plugins.
• BackPress - I did not take very good notes on this for some reason (maybe I thought I could link to it) but it has a user system, supports HyperDB, and supports script loading.
• WPCP - Work is being done on a WordPress Caching Proxy for improving WordPress speed and performance. Sounds interesting for high volume sites.
• WordPress 2.3 - Will have plugin update notification, tags (sweet!), and improved draft/pending post/page writing support.
• Blicki - I have been searching for a plugin that would allow one to add Wiki capabilities to WordPress and now I have found it.
• Windows Live Writer - Need to study this more. It’s been on my “ToDo” list but it sounds like this is a great offline application used to publish to WordPress as it supports most, if not all, WordPress API.

4:30pm - Developer Duke-out

Speakers: Matt Mullenweg, Michael Adams, Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, and Andy Skelton

Entertaining but was not able to stay for all of it as I had to hit the road. I need to get more involved with WordPress development. Baby steps first, starting with this web site.

Tags: WordPress

WordCamp - Day 5 (Conference)

Introduction

Today was the first day of the WordCamp conference. The following are my notes from the day.

Breakfast

Stopped for chai and scones at the Kape on 16th Street between Sanchez and Church. Serves Filipino cuisine and a great atmosphere. WiFi access is free. Check it out if you are ever in San Francisco and want something a little more quaint off Market Street.

10am - Podcasting

Speaker: Dan Kuykendall (author of PodPress)

I have been playing with Podpress off and on for some time now but am currently not using it on this site. This is about to change. Dan’s talk was mostly about showcasing Podpress, what it can do, and where it is headed. I like the fact that it supports not only audio but video. He mentioned that while YouTube video support is not there yet he is working on it. Sweet plugin.

The hardware/software that Dan is using for his podcasting setup is:

• MAudio Mobile
• AKG Perception 100
• Audacity (but Garage Band on the Mac is better).

11am - Blogs vs. Journalism

Speakers: John C. Dvorak and Om Malik

Always entertaining to hear John speak. I liked the fact that he supports and embraces blogging. A forward thinker that others in his field should aspire to.

12pm - Subway Sandwich Lunch

Curbed the hunger.

1pm - Kicking Ass Content Connections

Speaker: Lorelle VanFossen

Interesting lady. Energetic, boisterous, and strange but also friendly. I got a chance to chat with her later while having drinks with the rest of the WordCamp crew. I thanked her for the work she does on her site as I am an avid reader. Here are a few notes:

• Write something new.
• Have a fresh perspective.
• Never fail to stop asking “why”. Question everything.
• Think before writing/publishing. Try not to be the first but absorb and digest the information first.
• Blog for you first.
• Be a mirror for others. Once you find your community, they will understand and relate to you.
• Blogging is like archeology. The work that we have done and will do will be a wealth of information for future generations to use. This is something we have never had before and it feels good being part of it.
• Do not always complete a thought. Your audience is smart, let them fill in the blanks.
• As bloggers, it is our duty to comment back on other peoples blogs and keep the conversation going.
• Write timeless posts.
• Push yourself and go for extremes. Good advice for anything you do.
• Do not be an island, be part of the community.
• Do not be afraid to fail as failure is the pathway to success.

Those are my notes but you can watch the video for yourself.

2pm - Blog Monetization

Speaker: Jeremy Wright, b5media

Not sure I learned anything outside of what I already new. His lecture was mostly a panel discussion where he brought up three people from the audience and moderated. The different types of WordPress expriences by the people on the panel was interesting but not sure if this type of information was relative to the topic.

Nice guy though. Managed to survive Dr. Pepper shots with him later in the evening.

3pm - Getting Involved with WordPress

Speakers: Lloyd Budd (WordPress Quality Assurance) and Mark Jaquith (WordPress Development)

Nothing out of the ordinary here as they spoke about the following (much of which can be grokked from the WordPress site):

• Bug Tracking: trac.wordpress.org.
• Documentation: codex.wordpress.org.
• Source Code: Use svn co http://svn.automatic.com/wordpress.
• Development Mail List: lists.automatic.com.
• Development Instant Chat: Use #wordpress on freenote.

4pm - Designing the Obvious

Speaker: Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Apparently Matt really liked his book of the same name. I plan to check it out despite I thought the lecture was the worst of the day. I guess, in the last couple hours before Robert’s lecture, he decided to through his slides and improvise. Bad move, dude. Should have stuck to the slides.

Still, here are a few notes:

• Web site speed matters if you want to keep users.
• Surface feed syndication on your site and make sure it is understood. Use graphics or graphical documentation that illustrates the point clearly.
• Show the most popular posts.
• Show related posts.
• Show recently viewed posts.

5pm - Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers

Speaker: Matt Cutts, Google.

This was the best speaker of the day despite being ill prepared. Really enjoyed listening to him talk and what he had to offer. Details of Matt’s talk can be found on his site. Here are a few of my notes:

• ALT Tags - Use them. They are not only good for when images do not load but for those who are blind.
• Use post creation dates as they are good for giving the reader a sense of date and time as well as chronological order.
• Be wary of URL address usage as it can screw up your search results. Choose one format and stick with it. For example, use www.aeonscope.net or aeonscope.net but not both.
• Ad Sense - Try thinking about using the following tags in your posts to control Google Ads for a specific post rather than the entire web site (which is what you get by default):
  

7:30pm - Lucky 13 Bar

Open bar and with the WordCamp crew and attendees. Had a lot of fun meeting people.

Related Notes

Here are few related notes from the day starting with a few of the people I met during the day:

• Crystal R. Williams - She is a slave to coffee.
• Kari Unebasami - This is not her main site. I didn’t write down the link. Drat.
• Julie Nelson - She is trying to create a community around summer cottages in Canada. She has a hard road ahead of her due to the elder demographic she is trying to reach. I can not even get my parents connected!
• Mike Melanson - A Linux engineer using WordPress.
• Harald Rudell - A systems engineer using WordPress.
• Eleanor - A photo blogger.

Plugins worth checking out:

• Democracy - Allows for user polling in posts.
• SEO Title - Improves post title search capability.
• Brian’s Threaded Comments - Thread comments like a forum.
• WP Mobile - Enhances your web page so that content can be easily consumed on mobile device.

Finally, a few links:

• Finding Dereck - This is an author who is using a blog to create the main character of her new book through user participation. Clever.
• SOB Awards - Awarded to successful bloggers.
• Google Webmaster Central Blogspot - Web master tips and tricks.
• Google Webmaster Central - Tools for web masters.
• Google Keyword Tool - Improves your understanding and use of web keywords.

Tags: WordPress

Protected: WordCamp - Day 4

Tags: WordCamp

WordCamp - Day 3

Today was an amazing day! After leaving Tonopah, Nevada and crossing the border into California the landscape became very interesting. Lots to look at and enjoy. The following pictures are broken down by points of interest since they all are pretty much near the Yosemite National Park.

Highway 6 (Tonopah, Nevada to Benton, California)

Mono Basin National Forest

This caught my eye while on the way to Yosemite and could not resist investigating it further. I had to travel down a rather shifty rocky road to get there but it was well worth it.

Yosemite National Park

Since I had made really good time traveling though Nevada yesterday, it made it easy to spend most of the day playing in the park. I took my time, enjoying as many sights as I could.

I must come back and spend a week or more here. It ranks up there as one of the best parks I have been in.

Don Pedro Reservoir

Taken near Groveland, California just outside Yosemite National Park.

At this point, San Francisco was roughly 90 miles away so I decided to drive on into the city and see if I could find my friend Jeremy. I arrived into San Francisco around 7:30pm, found Jeremy, and then we both went out for drinks (several drinks).

Notes

Highway 120 is an excellent road with tons of challenges and technicalities from Lee Vining to Groveland, California. Great fun on a bike and something that every biker should experience.

Tags: WordCamp

WordCamp - Day 2

We woke up around 7am and started dismantling what we had set up from the day before at Natural Bridges National Monument:

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out all of what the park had to offer but I plan to come back. There is so much I have yet to see in this area despite having traveled though many times already.

We traveled on Highway 95 to Torrey, UT. The following are pictures from this region (map included at the end):

We stopped in Escalante, Utah on Highway 12 for lunch. We had burger, fries, and shake since it was hot out. With the fries came a special fry sauce that is a combination of thousand island dressing and pickles. Apparently it is unique to Utah and was a new discovery for me. I’ll be stopping there again! Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the burger stand but since the town is so small it would not be hard to figure out. The following is a picture of Hell’s Backbone near Escalante:

…and further down Highway 12 is Bryce Canyon (if you use the map above, you can see that Bryce is in the lower left corner):

While traveling the outskirts of a beautiful forest on Highway 14 into Cedar City, Utah, we spotted a forest fire in Zion National Park:

Once we reached Cedar City, Utah. Andy and I decided to part ways. It was not due to a personal dispute of any kind but because Andy had some business requirements that forced him to be in San Francisco Thursday afternoon instead of Thursday evening as I had assumed. He felt that he could reach San Francisco faster by traveling South through Las Vegas rather than cut across Nevada as I had mapped. So I stayed the course and started cutting across Nevada by myself where the roads were much like this:

Little did I know that the next 200 miles would be like that! I would travel though one ancient lake bed, over a hill top, and be greeted by similar terrain on the other side. There was not a soul in sight but I managed to travel 150 miles in an hour and a half maintaining a speed of roughly 100mph the whole time. Despite being extremely desolate, and the fact that if anything happened to me no one would probably figure it out for quite some time, it does have a sort of eerie beauty to it. Like a lunar landscape except not all white and much more shrubbery.

I reached Tonopah, Nevada around 7:45pm (local time) and checked into a Best Western hotel since it had free WiFi and breakfast. I couldn’t find any campgrounds out there but after having been through 200 miles of nothing I figured it was wise to take in some modern comforts.

Tags: WordPress

WordCamp - Day 1

We left home

a little after 8:30am to stop at:

Rocky Mountain Cycle Plaza
412 N Chelton Rd.
Colorado Springs, CO 80909

Andy needed a half-faced helmet that would give him more protection than what he already had since his original helmet was mostly just a skull cap. This set us back a couple hours due to traffic, construction, and getting to and from the Rocky Mountain Cycle Plaza. We managed to get out of Colorado Springs just after 11am with a new, half-faced, Bell helmet for Andy.

Once on the road, it was smooth sailing. Here are some shots from the Curecanti National Recreation Area (near Gunnison, Colorado):

We then traveled on to Norwood, Colorado which is at an elevation of 7,014 feet and flattens out to ranch and farmland. You end up scaling up a deep canyon as shown here:

We stopped for gas in Naturita, Colorado and met a local who mentioned we take this route as it is very scenic:

Unfortunately, we did not have time to investigate this further but I am making a note of this for future reference for others and myself. If the road from Naturita to La Sal, Utah then I am all for it! Here are some pictures taken on Highway 90 from Naturita to La Sal:

We ended the day by reaching Natural Bridges National Monument:

It was a long day traveling just under 500 miles and reaching the campsite by 10pm. After getting the place setup, fixing food, and cleaning up it was roughly midnight by the time we fell asleep.

I’ll be posting more updates on this site (when able) but you can also follow along on Andy’s site or check his twitter status.

Tags: WordPress