I’m going to stop yammering about backup and recovery for awhile and talk instead about the Machack conference in Dearborn, since that’s where I’m at today.
After driving down from Munising, I arrived at the conference hotel Wednesday evening around 9:00 PM. When I entered the lobby, I was immediately struck by the number of Mac users. Dozens of users were huddled around various tables in lobby, and also in the various easy-chairs; all seemed to have a Mac, and all were obviously having lots of just plain fun hacking away and talking with others about what they were doing. This was cool, and it’s a kind interaction I don’t often see at the typical corporate conference (such as Oracle OpenWorld) that I usually attend.
Lots of people have their kids with them. At Tim’s keynote I sat behind a father and two sons. All three had Mac OS X notebooks, and the older son was reading our Jython Essentials book and typing in code while Tim talked. Cool! More conferences should allow and encourage young people like MacHack does. I’d have given my eye-teeth when I was young to attend a conference like this with my dad. What a great way for a family to spend time together.
Tim O’Reilly gave the keynote. He started shortly after midnight, after we’d all had our fill of the pizza that Real Software so graciously supplied for us, and between talking and answering questions he spoke until about 2:30 AM. Tim was “piped in” for his talk by a bagpiper who was fully dressed in a kilt and all the accouterments that go with it. MacHack is really fun.
This show is my first time ever to lay hands on a Mac OS X computer. All I can say is that I want one. You’ll laugh, but I found myself constantly right-clicking to bring up a context menu, only there is no right mouse button. Funny how habits like that become so ingrained as to be
second-nature.
Any thoughts about MacHack? Want me to report on anything in particular? Let me know?
News on Zope and Python request
Per your request for items to lookout for:
Python & Zope related info. I expect they'll be more Python, but Zope is very functional on OS X, and now supplemented with a Portal and Mailing list: http://zope-mosx.zopeonarope.com (Note: I think the guy speaking on Python is also speaking on Web Objects.)
Misc:
Getting teenager's involved (and feeling very welcome) in user groups and conferences is awsome. Aside from pat sayings like "community keeps kids busy", the mentoring and exposure to profesional behavior, hobbies, and intellectually mature fun has a tremendous benfit. I, personally, am very grateful for the Glenside Color Computer Club for this and exposing me to another niche computer Unix version: OS/9.
2-Button mouse
Hey there,
Just thought I'd let ya know that OS X supports 2-button mice - just hook one up and you can keep using the right button for contextual menus! You can also use the scrollwheel in many many places, too!
Chris