In response to my own post from 7 years ago Bachelorhood, I would like to announce that I am a much better married man than Simon. My bachelorhood days are truly over, my laundry goes in a laundry basket, my clothes are always put away (whether I like it or not). My fridge is plugged in, has real food in it; I have a cell phone (actually numerous cell phones); I have an awesome custom made table; lastly I have a TV in my house. Bachelorhood officially ended last year, 30 years was a good run :)

I ve been tilting at windmills, recently. Windmill, actually. It s a Python program that lets your computer drive a web browser, without any human interference. We use it at Akoha to run tests that make sure that our website works with Firefox. We use it to help us test our site with Internet Explorer. So I dutifully set up a Windows machine and tried to get it to run our test suite. I quickly realized that our software was going to need something more Unix-like. Cygwin is the answer to that problem. It provides a full POSIX environment inside Windows. I built all our software and tried to fire up Windmill.

ImportError: No module named _winreg

Uh oh! Windmill needs to access the Windows Registry. According to the winreg documentation, it s only available for Windows. Apparently, Cygwin doesn t count as Windows. So I spent the weekend writing a library that fills in the gap. cygwinreg allows you to read, write, and explore the Windows Registry from inside Cygwin. Whenever you want to use winreg, use cygwinreg instead.

import sys
if sys.platform == "win32":
    try:
        import winreg
    except ImportError:
        import _winreg as winreg
elif sys.platform == "cygwin":
    import cygwinreg

After I did that, I plugged it in, stepped back and ran my tests. They worked!

Download cygwinreg
or install it with
easy_install cygwinreg

Biella, I am from there and I do agree. If I was still living there I would try to form a team and make a bid. Simon even made noises about organizing a bid at DebConfs past. I wish he would :)

But a DebConf in New York would be almost as good.

Akoha s sister company, Standout Jobs, has been hosting Montreal on Rails for quite a while. We figured we d get into the act. So we re sponsoring the first Montr al Python gathering tomorrow. Sadly, we don t really have enough space for everyone, so we re commandeering the Standout Jobs offices upstairs. After all, what good are siblings if you can t ask them for favours? I will actually be on a train to Toronto, so I m going to miss David Goodger talking about crazy awesome stuff he does in Python. But you should go! Intimidated? Don't think that Python is for you? Worry not! Python programmers are friendly, charming, and helpful. Montr al Python 1
Thursday, 7 February 2008
18:30 21:00
Standout Jobs
3981 boul. St-Laurent #615
Free admission ( Website Facebook Google Maps )

It s been a long time since I ve written about our local unconferences, but a neat one coming up is DemoCamp CUSEC 2. It s attached to the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference, which is being held in Montr al again. Last year, I did a demonstration on how to cook an omelette, with it being a metaphor for software engineering. This year, I m going to do something more prosaic and run a round of Powerpoint karaoke, under the guise of getting people to practise their presentation skills. Or it will be a convincing argument against its use. Show up if you can! Present something you ve been working on! (There are still some slots left.) It ll be exciting. DemoCamp CUSEC 2
Thursday, 17 January 2008
19:00 21:00
Centre Mont-Royal
2200 rue Mansfield
Free admission ( Sign up Google Maps )

Argh... I know it seems like I've given up on blogging entirely, but that's not the case. I've just been spending a lot of time working on Evan Prodromou instead of on evan.prodromou.name, which has been a whole different kind of world. I'm mostly poking my head up to point to an article in the Montreal Gazette about my new project, Vinismo. Montreal entrepreneur uncorks Wikipedia of wine, says the headline. I guess that "Montreal entrepreneur" is little ol' me. Go figure! The article is nice and balanced -- it covers the obvious fact that one month after launch Vinismo is not the definitive end-all be-all of wine information... yet. Roberto Rocha, the article's author, is doing a great job covering local entrepreneurs and the startup Internet scene, and I'm glad that our site got his vote of approval. And check out the photo they took of me and Niko at the excellent Pullman Wine Bar. How sophisticated. Glad to be getting some press about the site, and good news for Vinismo. tags: wine vinismo montreal gazette me press

BarCampCanada1 I managed to convoke the very busy trio of Sylvain Carle, Simon Law and Fred Ngo yesterday afternoon at La ka to nail down some plans for this fall. (We were lucky enough to get the funny and insightful Madame Woo to help out, too.) The cement's not dry yet, but it looks like we're going to have BarCampCanada1 here in Montreal the 9-10 of Novemeber. That gives us about 8 weeks to plan out what we hope will be the biggest BarCamp ever in Canada. tags: barcamp barcampcanada1 barcampmontreal

We've had a lot of great blog traffic about Vinismo. I thought I'd try to pull together a few of the better ones.

• vinismo! wiki wine compendium from Hugh McGuire.
• Vinismo Opens Its Doors to Wine Lovers Everywhere from the Creative Commons Weblog. Thanks, guys!
• Vinismo: Wiki + Wine from Zach Copley
• Vinismo from Wendy Copley.
• DemoCampMontreal3 report from Montreal Tech Watch
• DemoCampMontreal3 Report from Josh Nursing
• Vinismo Presentation at DemoCampMontreal3 on the SearchAnyway Blog. Probably one of my favourite pieces, although it makes Niko real mad since it cuts off just before he starts talking. Make mental note: don't say "Uh" so much.
• Bienvenue sur Vinismo, le guide des vins libre by Niko. Niko also bemoaned the difficulty of keeping our project under wraps in Mon lourd secret bient t d voil . What a drama queen.
• Vinismo : un wiki sur le vin by Olivier Niquet. He's suspicious that we are sponsored by J. Lohr, because there are so many J. Lohr wines on our front page.

All in all it's been pretty good. I hope we'll get some more, though! tags: blogs vinismo

DemoCampMontreal3 report So, it's been a couple of days and I should probably get around to posting my own DemoCampMontreal3 report.

• Niko and I started off with our own demo for Vinismo. It was a lot of fun: we talked about the reasons for starting the site, the technical, information architecture and graphics/UI design challenges, and what our future extensions are going to be. At the end of it, we took some questions, which was fun. The most interesting for me was from Roberto Rocha, whose TechnoCit is one of my favourite tech columns in Montreal. He asked, "Your typical contributor will be much older. What will you do to make your wiki more accessible to them?" It was a good question I don't have an answer to yet, but I want to think about it more.
• The second demo was by Heri Rakotomalala, who showed off his social-networking GTD tool, WorkCruncher. It's a TODO list with a twist: items that you don't get done age off the list. You have to re-commit to doing a task on an almost daily basis. I think it's a great and refreshing design; my TODO list gets depressing long and filled with unfinishable tasks, and I get too intimidated to work on ones that really matter. I think Heri might have to make some concessions to people's expectations for TODO lists -- maybe a way to automatically archive tasks, rather than deleting them entirely...?
• The third demo was by the gang from Defensio, who are providing an great anti-spam Web service similar to Akismet. They had a few examples of where they're different, but I'm not well-versed enough in comment spam issues to understand them. My guess is that since they're getting into the market after Akismet, though, they have the opportunity to make a smarter technology. Their one downside? They used slides -- which the rules of DemoCamp. They did demo the service, though.
• Fourth up was the indefatigable Simon Law. Simon's project? To turn back time. Talk about ambitious! His effort consisted of making a typical kitchen clock turn backwards. He disassembled the clock and explained how it worked to the audience. It was great, except for two things: the clock didn't work at the end of the demo (although he got it working by the end of DemoCamp), and he took a few minutes to draw a diagram of the clock; in my mind, that's just a low-tech PowerPoint slide.
• Fifth, and quite fascinating, was a tool that Jerome Paradis showed off. It was a Google-Maps mashup that filtered special emails for an informal private jet sharing network. Apparently, companies who charter private jets often have space in the jets, so they'll make that space available. People who need a last-minute charter jet can send email from their Blackberries and such, and if there's availability they get contacted by the charter companies. The interesting part? These people use a highly structured lingo ("O/W" = "one way"), and Jerome's tool scrapes these emails to make the data into a mapping app for his customers. Very interesting!

All in all, it was a good night -- probably made better by the Argentina Cabernet Sauvignon I had. There's a DemoCampMontreal4 scheduled for August 17th, but I won't be in town for it. Too bad for me! tags: democampmontreal3 defensio workcruncher simonlaw jeromeparadis vinismo

DemoCamp Montr al 3 is happening tomorrow. We're going to be at the SAT from 18:30 to 20:30, holding demonstrations on a whole range of different topics. Why DemoCamp? Well, Montrealers are some of the most creative people I know and they've got plenty of things to show and tell. DemoCamp is like a big gathering of creative minds who get to watch fifteen-minute presentations on anything. And since all you can do is demo: no slides, no gimmicks, then you actually get to see real stuff doing real things. I'm going to be there to show you how to make a counterclock. You know, the opposite of a clock that goes clockwise. Along the way, I'll do a little explaining of electricity, timekeeping, and motors. I just have to remember to buy a clock today. :P Come on, it'll be fun! DmoCamp Montr al 3
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
18:30 20:30
Societ des arts technologiques
1195 boul. St-Laurent
Free admission ( Sign up Facebook Upcoming Google Maps )

It seems that moving a cat is *really* expensive! We're not willing to consider sending her to a shelter just to be killed, but we're hoping to find someone in Montreal, Kingston or Toronto who can take her and love her.

She's 13 years old, declawed, likes to cuddle up. She can be a bit tempermental, but can be pet with a bit of practice. She's been feeling a bit put-out lately since Leif has been born, so someone willing to love her alot would be really appreciated. She's in good health and doesn't need any special pills or food beyond the usual "older cat" food.

Comments here or jbailey@raspberryginger.com if you're interested or know someone.

Busy day yesterday; the first day of RoCoCoCamp, and the first day seeing a lot of friends and friendly faces from out of town. I was out of bed at 6AM yesterday. I stopped at St. Viateur Bagel on Mont Royal and got 10 dozen bagels -- enough for our expected crowd. I got to SAT at about 8AM, just in time to start the coffee machines. The big percolators I rented for the event require about an hour to make coffee, so if people were going to be coming in at 9AM, I really wanted to get them started by 8. Alain Bernardeau from computation.to got there soon after, and set up the spare computers his organization is lending us. Brandon Sanders, Mark Dilley and Nathan R also came in early, looking for work to do. I got them all into the job of setting up the food for breakfast. By 9AM we were trucking along, and I figured I'd go try a cup of joe, which should be ready. But all I got from the carafe was cold water. The percolators draw so much current that they'd blown a circuit. Guillaume, the SAT tech, and I tried about 8 different ways to keep them running, but nothing worked. Finally he put them on the 220V industrial circuit, which they didn't blow. Awesome, but at 9:30AM, with almost everyone there, we had no expectation of coffee for another hour. Yikes! But by the time people started filtering into the circle for starting the event proper, coffee was rolling and I was much relieved. Our facilitator, Deborah Hartmann, gave a great bilingual introduction to Open Space Technology and got the ball rolling. I always have a moment of dread during the beginning of a Open Space event: what if this is the time that Open Space doesn't work? But it did, again, which is great. The first session I went to was Zach Copley's, about consensus-supporting software features. Brandon Sanders had some great cases from AboutUs's adult content policy. We shared a lot of Wikitravel's culture, too. I also stopped in to talk about Wikitravel:RDF with Reini Urban, who was demoing Semantic MediaWiki. It's a neat project, and it's a different tack than I've taken with Wikitravel. I'd like to see the two approaches harmonized at some time in the future. Lunch came quickly, and we had far too much to eat. I spent a lot of time talking to Simon Law about possibly using Open Space in some way for BarCampMontreal. I think it's a good idea -- it's growing to a point where our current format is straining under the load. We also talked about ubiquitous wikis and the cool browser Amaya, where Web pages are in edit mode by default. It's a good idea. After lunch I had a chance to hang out with Earle Martin of Open Guides and talk about wiki and the geospatial web. Mark Jarowski of Wikevent was there, and together we've decided to hammer out a RDF vocabulary for exchanging RDF data about business listings. It's the kind of productive talk I like having. I also spent some time with Jack Herrick talking about wiki entrepreneurship. Jack had a prepared presentation about wikiHow's business experience, which was really great, and provided a great case study for talking about commercialization of wikis in general. With Angela Beesley and Ray King around us, we had most of the interesting wiki content businesses represented. Pretty neat. It was a really productive first day, but by the time we got around to 5PM I was exhausted. Maj, Zach, Mark, Niko and I all went to our new house at 4690 rue Pontiac to meet Allegra and their two daughters, No ma and baby Anoushka. We got pizza and had beers and sat on our new couch and had a good old time. Technorati's rocococamp tag shows a lot of other positive responses on the Web: Matt Forsythe's sketches from RoCoCoCamp, NathanR's continuing paranoia, CITIZENShift (which quotes me, when I was talking about wiki entrepreneurship), and Patrick Tanguay.

I'm off to SAT again this morning. Should be a fun one, and I hope to get a little more time to myself before the event starts today. tags: rocococamp barcamp barcampmontreal recentchangescamp wiki wikitravel

Well, today started out really anxious and is ending pretty reasonably. (Or so I think -- maybe tomorrow is going to be really nuts). First, RoCoCoCamp buzz is just nuts! Lots of people are blogging about it, planning to attend, and having fun talking about it. I count at least Patrick Tanguay, Sekhmet Design, Montreal Tech Watch, Montreal Tech League (no relation), Michel LeBlanc, Fred Ngo, Sylvain Carle, Rhymin' Simon Law, NathanR, Creative Commons Canada (thanks for the shout-out, gang!), Adrien O'Leary, Andreas Gohr (coming all the way from Berlin!). We're flirting with almost 100 people on the participants list, which I think is going to mean about 120-150 people. So I'm no longer worried that not enough people are going to come. Last night I got a quote for someone to provide coffee in the morning and at afternoon break for all three days... for $1800! So this morning I rented three coffee percolators (one for regular, one for decaf, and one for tea) and a bunch of cups and plates from Celebrations up on Jean-Talon. Maj and I shopped for coffee this afternoon. Total cost? $250. That means more money left over for pizza Saturday night! It means some more hassle for me and for the attendees, but I think we can handle it. Tomorrow morning early I have to stop in at St. Viateur and get 10 dozen bagels for the whole gang. I think many people who are attending don't know Montreal bagels, so they'll be in for a treat. Of course, some of the Montrealers will be mad I didn't get rival Fairmount Bagels instead. Tough for them. I know tomorrow is going to be crazy, but tonight I'm feeling pretty mellow. My good friend Zach Copley is on his way into town right now; we're working together on the kei.ki project and it will be great to have him here. Tomorrow Mark and Allegra arrive. So many good folks are going to be at RoCoCo: I think it's going to be a lot of fun. tags: rocococamp recentchangescamp stviateur coffee keiki wiki barcamp

Tomorrow is the beginning of RoCoCoCamp 2007, a three-day unconference held right here in Montr al. It starts at 9:30 on Friday at the SAT and runs until Sunday evening. It's for all who are interested in wikis, weblogs, and creators interested in collaborating in on-line spaces. RoCoCoCamp is organized with OpenSpace Technology, where we collectively decide on an agenda where everybody has a chance to speak. There's no artifical divide between speakers and audience, so you can lead your own session if you have something to say. Think of RoCoCoCamp as a real-life wiki, where anybody can contribute. A detailed explaination of what RoCoCoCamp is about can be found on this invitation. I'm inviting you because I'm flying out on Saturday and can't make the whole conference, but I really hope you come. There will be discussions on:

• What projects people are doing around the world
• Development of collaborative tools like wikis, free wifi networks, content management systems, etc.
• Techniques for building collaborative communities
• Best practises for inspiring self-managment and self-policing
• Starting up new projects
• Plans for future collaborations

So how can you attend? I thought you'd never ask! See you there!

Tonight, I'm going to be attending an open panel discussion at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2007. It's completely open to the public and will be a discussion on freedom on the Internet. There are going to be a number of famous people there, including Whit Diffie, Peter Neumann, Anita Allen, Bruce Schneier, and Ed Viltz. I'm not sure exactly what they're going to be talking about, but I bet it'll be thought-provoking. At around 20:30, I'll be down at the CFP Welcome Party, which is basically a big fundraiser for Creative Commons and EPIC. You've probably heard me mention Creative Commons a few times, because they're a big proponent of having a healthy body of creative work that artists can draw from. Almost all of the art I produce is available under a Creative Commons license, which I've chosen so that you can share, copy, and modify it. So I'm more than happy to socialize with interesting people and to support a good cause. Sounds interesting? You bet! How do you get there? Well, the panel is at Hotel Bonaventure, and starts at 18:30. Details here. Then the welcome party is at 20:30, at Austin's place. Details here. For directions to Austin's house, send me an e-mail. Austin's address is on this flyer. If you're leaving from the Hilton, try these directions. Hope to see you there!

BarCamp Montr al 2 is coming up soon. Yup, our second big full-day unconference is happening next Saturday at the SAT. We're bigger and better this time, and we'd love to have you show up. What is BarCamp Montr al? It's an unconference. It's a gathering of active, interesting people who want to get together and share our experiences. It's for individuals and groups, artists and technologists, young and old. Nominally, there's an Internet-technology feel because that's what BarCamps around the world have traditionally done. But because Montr al has such a vibrant arts scene, we've also got talks that are about anything and everything. So how do you participate? Well, you can't just be a spectator. Nope, unabashed consumption is not our way. Show up on Saturday and give a presentation on a project that you've been working on. Or show up a little early and help us set up. Or stay late and clean while chatting with the exciting people you've met. We want you to be part of our community. We've got fifteen-minute presentations ranging on exciting topics like:

• Taking good photographs
• Building Web 2.0 applications
• Online multi-player games
• Lasers
• East-asian culture
• Starting a company

Have you got something to say? Or something to show? I hope so. Now that I have you convinced, you're going to want to know how you (and your interesting friends) can attend BarCamp Montr al 2
Saturday, 28 April 2007
9:30 18:00
Societ des arts technologiques
1195 boul. St-Laurent
Free admission ( Sign up Upcoming Google Maps ) See you there!

Hard to believe it's already time for DemoCampMontreal2 tomorrow night (Thursday, March 29, at the SAT). I had a pretty good time at the first DemoCampMontreal back in February, despite my demo going belly-up a few times. It was a good space and a fun time to talk. I think the BarCamp page on DemoCampMontreal2 has some good info, too. Check out Fred Ngo's writeup of DemoCampMontreal2, including a fancy photo of yours truly demoing in February. It looks a little like BarCampHell, but in a good way. tags: barcamp democamp montreal DemoCampMontreal2 fred ngo me

Big day Today's our big day -- we're closing on the house at 4690 rue Pontiac tonight at 7. We just got in from Las Vegas last night, but we headed out to the bank this morning to get a cashier's check for our (very large) down payment and dot the t's and cross the i's for the mortgage. Lots more running around today, but we go to the notaire tonight, and we'll have some sort of paper certifying us as homeowners sometime tonight. Shom-pan-yah to follow. tags: house buying closing 4690ruepontiac

Open Web Design One really great Open Content (or is it Open Source...?) resource that I don't pay enough attention to is the Open Web Design repository. It's a collection of very nicely done Web designs, delivered in convenient packets of HTML and CSS. They make very nice templates for "skins" of blog engines, CMSes, or even wikis. It's a great complement to the tons of Free Web software available out there (most of which is quite skinnable, and most of which has execrable default themes). My favourite part is that all the designs are dedicated to the public domain or made available under the liberal Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license, which makes them honest-to-goodness Free Culture per the Definition of Free Cultural Works. I'm going to be using one of these Web designs to clean up my kinda bland home site. It could use a bit of editing. tags: web design design open content skins themes

Thanks Mark, Allegra, No ma and Anoushka Thanks to Mark and family for the congratulations on our new house. We signed the papers tonight, and it went surprisingly smoothly. Our seller is a fascinating guy who started the animation lab at Ubisoft, so we enjoyed getting to talk to him in between onslaughts of legalese and flurries of signatures. In other good news, I guess the gang is coming out for RoCoCo. Wow! That'll be pretty fun. Good thing we'll have two houses then. tags: mark house rococo ubisoft

I'm proud to announce the next DemoCamp that we're holding in Montr al. DemoCamp Montreal 2 (Fran ais) is a gathering of people, both in high-tech and not, to see demonstrations given by people doing cool stuff. Anyone is welcome to show up and we've got some interesting talks lined up. I'll be there to take photographs again and to chat with people about the projects they've been tending. It should be an exciting and interesting evening. How do you attend? DemoCamp Montr al 2
Thursday, 29 March 2007
18:30 20:30
Societ des arts technologiques
1195 boul. St-Laurent
Free admission ( Sign up Upcoming.org Google Maps ) I hope to see you there!

DemoCamp Montr al 1
Tuesday 27 February 2007
18:30 20:30
Societ des arts technologiques
1195 boul. St-Laurent
Free admission ( Sign up Upcoming.org Google Maps ) Just a reminder that Montr al's first DemoCamp is happening this evening! We've got five excellent demonstrations lined up, so do sign up and join the fun. You can just come and watch people talk, but it's also a great opportunity to meet people who are interesting and do exciting things. For more information, please see my original post.

There's less than a week before Montr al's next little technology un-conference. DemoCamp Montreal 1 (Fran ais) follows in the footsteps of Toronto's DemoCamp, bringing neat demonstrations to the spotlight. What is DemoCamp? It's a mini-conference where you show up and get to see people present the cool things that they're doing. Be it some software they wrote, a robot they built, or even a live tutorial, there's always something interesting happening. And you need to know. All you have to do is show up. We'll be at the Societ des arts technologiques which has been cool enough to donate their space for us. Just show up on Tuesday 27 February 2007 at 18:30, after putting your name down on the registration list. Don't be shy, it's free! Demonstrations are short, sweet, and PowerPoint slides are forbidden. You get to actually see something happen, which is a much more exciting than your usual conference lecture. In addition, we'll hang out afterwards to shoot the breeze and discuss what we saw. I'll be there with my camera, helping my friends gorbash_dragon and peaceful_dragon run the show. Jonathan Kopanas, who went to Concordia, is coming up to introduce the presenters and Austin Hill is drumming up publicity. DemoCamp Montr al 1
Tuesday 27 February 2007
18:30 20:30
Societ des arts technologiques
1195 boul. St-Laurent
Free admission ( Sign up Upcoming.org Google Maps ) I'll see you there!

First day of Brumaire -- the foggy month -- today, and the Montreal weather seems bound and determined to fulfill the promise of that gray name. The day of pomme (apple), which reminds me that we&aposve wanted to go apple-picking in the Autumn since we arrived in Quebec a few years ago. But something seems to push us inside on October and November days. Locals say that the best way to confront Winter is face-first, getting outside and being active in the snow. I&aposm not sure; it&aposs never worked out that way for me. We had snowfall a couple of days ago; in the middle of a rainstorm big wet clumps of snow started falling from the sky. I was working out at the gym around the corner from our house, and people in the weight room went to the windows to watch the snow fall. Halloween is the traditional day for the first snow for Montrealers; more than a week early was kind of fantastical, like a long-odds horse winning a race. tags: montreal weather brumaire quebec

Mo&apos blogging I can&apost say why, but my production has dropped off precipitously on this blog in the last week or so. Partly it&aposs had to do with an increased workload; also, being out of town for two long weekends in wt:Hudson (New York) and wt:Halifax (Nova Scotia) threw me off my pace. And I&aposve felt some pressure to cover these trips and other things going on in my life, which has kept me from writing short sharp posts. But mostly I think it&aposs a case of keeping up a feedback loop for myself. When I&aposve made a blog post, I watch for responses on Technorati or Planet Debian. I add one more thing or one more post. I get in the habit of blogging and then it comes more naturally in short bits and movements. I guess it all comes down to the typical but hard-to-remember suggestion: if you want to do something, you have to do it. tags: blogs

BarCampMontreal Montreal&aposs BarCamp event turned out to be even better than I anticipated. I got up late on Saturday morning and I wasn&apost at the downtown location till quarter to 10. It was held in Fred Ngo&aposs swing dance studio, Cat&aposs Corner, on the power-centre block of 400 Ste.-Catherine. The studio had tables and chairs and a reception area set up, and it turned out to be a great venue -- lots of room and a big feeling because of the mirrors on the walls. I got there just in time to catch Chris Hand of Zeke&aposs Gallery give an excellent talk about collecting art and participating in art culture in Montreal. Not only was it extremely informative, but it charged me up to be more involved in Montreal&aposs art scene. It also set a great tone for the rest of the day -- talks at the event ranged from alternative voting systems to art and research projects to technology surveys to demos of new products and Web sites. It kept the entire thing really fun and refreshing -- different parts of your mind used at different times. I was glad to see that Heather Kelley and Damien had come; I&aposd made a point of inviting them, so it was good to see their faces. They did one of the first presentations, about their upcoming games-and-art event, GAMMA, at SAT on 9 November 2006, straddling the gap between the industry-oriented Montreal International Games Summit and the gamer convention Festival Arcadia, not to be confused with Montreal&aposs other top export, The Arcade Fire. Man, games are hard. Anyways, they demo&aposd a game they&aposre developing for GAMMA in which the gameplay action responds to arbitrary musical input; they&aposve got several teams of developers who are putting together games to fit this criterion. Interesting concept, fun and cool. There were a ton of great discussion, but I think my favorites for the day have to include Hugh McGuire&aposs talk about the excellent Librivox project; Anne Goldenberg&aposs presentation on Wikigraphe, which I&aposd seen before but which continues to boggle; Austin Hill&aposs discussion about raising money and building Zero Knowledge; and Sylvain Carle&aposs talk about successful consulting. The best part of the talks was that I came away feeling smarter and with new projects I wanted to work on. S bastien Pierre&aposs demo of data-mining del.icio.us tags in revealicious made me think hard about wp:data clustering algorithms (something I&aposve wanted to work on for a while). Patrick Tanguay gave a great talk about co-working setups in other cities, with the aim of starting one here in Montreal. As a near-independent worker who&aposs getting tired of his home office, this was a pretty fascinating idea, and I&aposm hoping to follow-up. And Simon Law&aposs talk about Web 2.0&aposs negative influence on Open Source software gave me a lot to chew on for my visit to the Web 2.0 Conference coverage I&aposm doing for Linux World. All in all, I thought the event was the best that BarCamp has to offer. Montreal has such a rich technology and Internet culture, and some of the smartest people in town were at the event. All our major tech sectors were covered, and people interested in hacking, yakking, and entrepreneurship were in a nice balanced attendance. We were all in one room together, which kept up a good atmosphere, and we had only 15 minutes per talk, which kept things well-varied and interesting. If I had any criticisms, it would be merely that I can think of so many people I wish had been there. There are a lot of women involved in Montreal technology and Internet culture who weren&apost in attendance, and Montreal&aposs majority francophone community was underrepresented. But I think those are outreach problems that need to be handled for the next time around. Fred Ngo is already talking about BarCampMontreal2, which may or may not be coordinated with RecentChangesCamp. Yesterday&aposs Montreal Gazette had an article called Geekfest comes to town which featured a photo of Heather and Damien in the print edition. Simon Law got an excellent BarCampMontreal photoset on Flickr, and also invited me out to take photos together (fun). There&aposs a BarCampMontreal post-mortem for those interested in a follow-up discussion. tags: montreal barcamp barcampmontreal

N Dollars... American! One of the funny things about Canadians is that when they talk about a large amount of money, they suffix the dollar amount with the word American to let you know that it&aposs really a large amount of money. Like, "I just ordered this t-shirt online and it cost me thirty-five dollars... American!" or "He moved to New York and now he&aposs making 85 thousand dollars a year... American!" It&aposs less of a punchline than it used to be -- American dollars used to trade at about 1:1.5 or 1:1.6 to the loonie, but now it&aposs hard to find 1:1.2. Still, Canadians talk about American dollars like D&D players talk about platinum pieces. They&aposre just a qualitatively different currency. I note this because I joked about in previewing Austin Hill&aposs talk at BarCampMontreal, and he did note that they raised $80 million American for Zer0 Knowledge. I had to stifle a laugh during the talk. Austin writes - Hi Evan. Yeah that&aposs funny. I may have mispoke - we raised $55 million american which at the time was important to distinguish because that was $80 million canadian. Just wanted to be clear. Loved your presentation BTW tags: dollars canada american

Project Blackbox Everybody&aposs all abuzz about Sun&aposs innovative design in their new Project Blackbox. It&aposs a datacentre that&aposs built into a big shipping container; whenever you need a datacentre you can just ship one of these blackboxes to wherever you need it. I have to admit that it&aposs an amazing piece of in-your-face metaphor. I mean, when a company is shipping tech jobs overseas, they can make it all the more poignant by actually taking the jobs and putting them in this big shipping container and stenciling "JOBS" on the side and packing it on a cargo ship and sending it off into the sunset. And you don&apost really use these big containers unless you&aposre shipping something faaar away. If your job is in that box, man, you can just kiss it good-bye, because baby it&aposs gone. Maybe the best way to ship out one of these jobs containers would be to have a big bulldozer that comes through the middle of town, crushing the community infrastructure under its treads, and then picks up the big shipping container full of tech jobs and carries it off to a big ship in the harbour (rolling over some more schools and houses and small businesses) and then sends it off to somewhere crazy and foreign where they keep monkeys as pets as a matter of course. In any case: good job, Sun. I hope this works out great for you. tags: jobs sun blackbox shipping container project blackbox