Getting Your RPG Freak On

Recently Ethan Gisdorf wrote and interesting post on TOR.com about Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. It's a great post that brings back a lot of memories. At the end of the post he asks a great question:

12. That random guy who introduced you to Tolkien or D&D

How did you first hear about fantasy books? Who gave you your first taste of role-playing games? Who led you into the Mines of Moria—those scary, thrilling dungeons of the teenage mind? In my case, it was my next door neighbor, a kid named JP, who taught me how to play D&D and inculcate a taste for slaying orcs and eating frozen pizza. I would later learn we all need an escape hatch, a place to blow off steam, and an arena to kill the baddie. We emerge into the light of day, victorious, and laden with treasure and, best of all, tales to tell.

For me, it was a Librarian at the Kearns Library. For some reason, the Librarian handed me a box with a new game in it, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st Edition, Starter Edition. In side were two books, some paper and some die. I was excited, mainly because it didn't cost me anything.

I spent the next few weeks reading all the books, and trying to get all the information I could about this awesome new game. Remember, in 1980, we didn't have the Internet to get information. And quiet honestly, I don't remember how we managed to make the game work. But thank goodness for the starter kit, which had a lot all the rules and examples to follow.

I spent the next several years playing D&D with my neighbors EB and WA. Eventually we started buying, painting and playing with miniatures, and ended up live role playing, before LARPing had even been thought of. We created swords out of 2x4's, wrapped in towels or carpet to help reduce the pain of a blow. We wore helmets, and shoulder pads, and what ever else we could think of to keep from killing ourselves.

We all moved on, but I'll never forget the fun times we had exploring the underworld that was Dungeons & Dragons.

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Utah Open Source Conference 2010 Wrap-Up

This year's Utah Open Source Conference was a great event. I'm still amazed this conference can pull off three days, but it some how does just that. I'll admit that on the third day, I'm pretty tired, and my brain is in information overload.

Clint Savage (@herlo) and crew have done an excellent job brining Open Source into the spotlight at least once a year. The conference is open to anyone, and I would really like to see more Enterprises that use Open Source get involved, and I think more Enterprises should send the staff to learn about Open Source alternatives to commercial software. There are a number of OSS products that are just as good if not better than their commercial counterpart. Everything from Office alternatives (OpenOffice.org), to network administration tools, intrusion detection, and photo management.

What is really exceptional is all of the content presented by folks who use the software, and in some cases, wrote the software. You have a mix of industry experts, and passionate users, sharing their experiences, and giving attendees the inside scoop.

I volunteered this year, and helped various presenters with their room needs. It never fails to amaze me the support this conference gets. Look for it next year, and get involved.

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Five Things I Like About The New Flickr Interface

Flickr recently updated the user interface of the online photo service, which has basically been the same for as long as I can remember. Honestly, I didn't think Yahoo! would even get around to sprucing up Flickr, but they did and here are the five things I like about the new interface:

1. Larger Images
Photo sharing services typically compress or shrink photos you upload to save space, but I really like the bigger cleaner crisper version of the new Flickr interface.

2. Better Navigation
I really like that you can now find all the features in a drop menu right above the images. Before I was always hunting for what I wanted to do.

3. Zoom
There is a handy Zoom button right above the image now, which takes you to a lightbox version, with the ability to see multiple sizes.

4. Improved Thumbnail Slider
In the old version of Flicker, you could only see two thumbnails, previous and next, and it was very clunky. The new thumbnail slider let's you see 5 images, and in fact slides back and forth without reloading the page.

5. Geo Tagging
Geo tagging is all the rage, but I really like being able to see where a picture was taken. Sometimes I want to go see the places people have taken pictures, but without having to email and ask, I can find the location right on the map.

Over all this is a huge upgrade for Flickr. Now, if Yahoo!/Flickr would just step into 2010 and add real social network sharing, they would have a killer service, one that would rival TwitPic or Posterous.

My Flickr photos.

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Fall 2010 Utah Code Camp

September and October are turning out to be a complete geek fest. With the Kynetx Impact Dev Day on 9/18, Utah Code Camp this week 9/25, and of course Utah Open Source Conference 10/7-10/9. Check out the camp schedule here.

I hope to attend these classes:

• Keynote 9:00am - 10:00am Modern Software Development, the State of the Craft -- David Starr


• 10:10am - 11:10am ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor -- Nathan Zaugg


• 11:20am - 12:20pm Internet-Enabled Applications for Windows Phone 7 -- Richard Thomson


• 12:20pm - 1:00pm Social Networking and Building your brand -- Pat Wright


• 1:00pm - 2:00pm What is ALT.NET? -- Craig Berntson


• 2:10pm - 3:10pm WPF MVVM Design Pattern -- Danny Staten


• 3:20pm - 4:20pm MVC and Entity Framework -- James Johnson

This should be a great event. Pat Wright and company do a great job. If you're Microsoft Developer, or want to learn more about Microsoft development tools, this would be a great place to start.

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Kynetx Impact Developer Day

I was fortunate enough to attend a Kynetx Impact Developer Day at the Kynetx World Wide HQ. I just wanted to share a few notes and links, and my over all impression.

First, the Kynetx group did an awesome job. One thing I have a hard time with at developer conferences are speeches and sales pitches. This event was far from that. We walked through code, wrote code, compiled code, deployed code.

I was impressed that the actual API engineers were presenting, demoing and coding. I was even excited that Jessie struggled to get some code to work he was writing on the fly. He's human, it's something programmers deal with a lot, and he handled it gracefully, all the while CEO Stephen Fulling was sitting in the audience. In the end, he got the demo to work, and it was very cool.

Founder and CTO Phil Windley opened with the reason he built what eventually became the Kynetx platform. He saw an opportunity to program the web. He saw the increase in available API's, and the ease in which data from various points on the web, and user initiated events, could be used to enhance the experience. Read more about Kynetx, the KRL language, and even sign up for a free developer account with an easy to use coding IDE.

Lunch was provided, prizes were awarded, and plenty to do, made for an exciting and educational day. In my opinion, if you don't leave an event like this with hundreds of new ideas you weren't really paying attention.

The only part that could have been better was the layout of the space. The tables weren't set up in a way I could use my computer and watch was going on up front. We were sideways, so I was always turning. I eventually gave up because I was more interested and watching what the presenter was doing. Guys, next time put the tables in classroom mode. You would have had plenty of room.

If you have a chance to attend an Impact Developer Day in your community I would do it. It's worth it.

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