This is Indy, my pit bull mutt.

Then it dawned on me the other day why she behaves like this. She is unbelievably sensitive to my moods. When I’m engrossed in my own world, annoyed, angry, deep in thought and far away from her.. she feels it, she really does. More so than the cute little furry lovable Gizmo. Or at least, she shows it more.

My two dogs have really grounded me and taught me a lot about myself in the short time we’ve been friends. I know I need them and the lessons I can learn from them as much as they need me.

It’s sad that she could never come to the UK with me even for a visit, as pit bulls (and cross breeds of them, which she is) have been banned as ferocious, uncontrollable killing machines. Seriously. Whoever initiated that law, needs to spend some time with Indy.

~~

Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue, wrote the posting below. I thought it was sound advice that warranted sharing during these challenging times.

Staying Up When the Market’s Down
FOUNTAINBLUE GROUP NEWS, October 31 - Staying Up When the Market’s Down
By Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
http://www.fountainblue.biz

Seasoned executives are used to the ebbs and flows of the valley - the high-highs that makes even nerds giddy, and the deep troughs of emotions and fortunes as the bubbles burst. But this time it’s different - it’s global, it’s personal, it’s pervasive, and it’s IN YOUR FACE. What’s more - it’s an
indication of times to come.

I’m an optimist; I can’t be a successful entrepreneur otherwise. But it’s hard to stay up when the market’s down. Yet, we must all stay up and keep optimistic and hopeful to navigate the troughs together, making the ships sturdier, the channel more protected. Here are some tips for doing so:

1. Know Yourself and Believe in Yourself
Regardless of your personal professional situation right now - as an entrepreneur, as an executive, as someone in transition . . . Take the time to know what you’re good at, what you enjoy doing, and what value you have in the market. Adjust your perceptions of yourself, but always believe in
yourself. If you don’t it’s hard for other people to believe in you.

2. Take Care of Yourself
Many of us are going through uncertain times - whether your funding is unsure, or whether you might be the next layoff victim. Regardless of these external circumstances, be good to yourself - nurture your body, mind and spirit. Make choices that will balance your interests and your needs. Manage
the stress of the uncertainties as best you can.

3. Forgive Yourself
In uncertain times, it’s easy to keep second-guessing yourself, and to berate yourself for past infractions. Remember that successful people focus on the present and the future. They don’t focus on past perceived failures. Instead, they congratulate themselves for making the attempt, and take the lessons with them on the next journey, making them stronger, more versatile and more knowledgeable!

4. Define Your Cause
When you know yourself, take care of yourself and forgive yourself, you’ll have a strong foundation. Next, you have to find the fire burning in your belly. What are you passionate about? How does it relate to what you’re doing now? Or does it?

5. Envision, Plan, Execute
Once you’ve defined your cause, envision where you’d like to go, create a plan for getting there, and execute on that plan.

6. Persevere - It Beats the Alternative
You might have the wrong cause, the wrong vision, the wrong plan. You might even end up worse than you are now. You might have to temporarily give up your dream to deal with practical realities. But persevere. Don’t give up on your dream. Do learn from the course corrections and adjust what you want and how and when you would get there. Just keep pushing the cause, and celebrate any forward momentum.

7. Connect with People Who Make You Stronger
Surround yourself with people who believe in you, and help you to think outside the box. Gravitate to people who are willing to brainstorm with you to mitigate risks rather than shooting down ideas because they are risky. And be more versatile about how others’ style and approaches might
complement your own.

8. Create a Network that Supports All
Create an ecosystem that connects quality people to each other for direct and indirect benefit to all. Hint: People who see a win-win world of abundance are better for your network than people who feel threatened by competitors or people who believe in the value of receiving more than the value of giving.

9. Reach Out for Additional Resources
Don’t expect that you and others in the network will have all you need to succeed, but do plan on how you will get those additional resources and connections to succeed!

10. Keep Growing!
It’s not a destination, it’s a journey. Enjoy the ride. add a comment

Quick list of pertinent links:

• Home of BarCampLA-6.
• BarCampLA twitter search.
• Event pics on flickr.

• iPhone Cost
  The newer, “lower price” 3G iPhone isn’t that at all. A quick Google for stories on the typical cost of running an iPhone (device plus monthly fees over the compulsory 2 year contract) turns up estimates ranging from $1649 through $1936

• iPhone Security Issues
  In May of this year stories emerged that it was possible to retrieve personal information from refurbished iPhones, even ones purchased direct from Apple. To their credit, Apple appear to have fixed this, but it was headline news for a while before they did.
  Currently (August 30th 2008) there’s an issue where anyone can gain access to personal data on an iPhone that has been locked with a code. Seems Apple considers this a trivial issue and are waiting to next month to release a fix. If someone can bypass an important security measure many users want and need, and Apple took the trouble to implement in the first place, is that a trivial security issue? Someone needs to explain this to me, because I don’t see it that way.

• Developer Frustration
  I’ve read a lot of stories of willing developers of iPhone applications having a hard time overall.

• The Competition
  Google Android. Demo here. There’s the Open Handset Alliance, an organization setup in support of this platform, and there are many companies signed up. This looks like it’s going to be a great platform, with lots of support and available on lots of different hardware.

• iPod Touch Upgrades
  The iPod Touch is a great device, but currently very overpriced. There are many rumors floating around the net that iPod upgrades are imminent, including GPS integration into the Touch, a feature I could really use.

The most damning issue to date is the blog story from a friend of mine about his experiences dealing with a lost/stolen iPhone. He’s been unable to get any love from Apple or AT&T like blocking the phone, brick it, tracking it down using GPS, or anything much really. So his iPhone is out there with all his personal and corporate information (email, etc.) still alive (it’s been used to check his personal voicemail since being lost) and Apple and AT&T don’t appear to be giving much of a sh*t about this fact.

The combination of a new iPod Touch (with GPS) and waiting for a Google Android phone seems to be the mix that suits me best, and gives me the most freedom.

We has attached photo of your fume.”

Indy .. check. Gizmo.. check. No other babies I know about. Must be spam.

~~~

Follow up, quick google turned up the following virus notifications about the virus payload.

I’ve had a lot of kind words, compliments, and encouragement from friends and family members that I’ve sat down and talked over my feelings on the subject.

Part of me is yelling grow up. Many other parts of me are yelling things like - I’ve invested 20+ years in this and countless hours honing the art. This is an art, which requires discipline. One will hit walls with anything practiced to a high level. I’ve clearly hit a complete bitch of a plateau.. am I going to knuckle down and work through it, or will I just bail and be a quitter?

To paraphrase the great Randy Pausch Last Lecture, walls are there for us to prove how bad we want it, and to keep out the undeserving folk who aren’t prepared to make the effort.

With that thought in mind, it’s obvious I must approach it differently. I need to give it the respect it deserves. Also I must make very conscious choices in how I spend my time playing alone, and put more thought into who I play with so I’m always moving forward. i.e. aim to play with folks out of my league as much as possible, to keep me growing.

Off topic, but related - I’ve had a really annoying cyst/lump on the back of my left hand for about 9 months and it’s not going away. It’s painful to do things like pushups, and it will be aggravated with prolonged drumming. I’d hope the break would give it a chance to subside, but it hasn’t. I’ve seen a hand specialist about it and he said they can aspirate it to remove it. I’ve booked an appointment for Monday morning to have that done. Ok, nuff gory stuff.

So.. yesterday I called my teacher and booked a lesson for a couple weeks time. That cranks things up a notch. I’ll also need to focus on getting my playing together to hit up some jam sessions.

We caught a flight very early in the morning, and a cab from the airport right to the conference.

There were two main rooms, one upstairs for the User track, one downstairs for the Developer track. Dr. Mike spent the day networking and in the upstairs room, while I split my time about 2/3 in the User track, the rest in the Developer track.

It was well worth the $20 for registration, the flight, and the hotel.. plus the schwag, coffee, and free poop colored WordPress shirt! Probably the only criticism I have during the event is that I was very underwhelmed by the food. I know it was only $20, but I’d rather have had a Subway sandwich.

The after party free bar was very much appreciated though!

I scanned in the conference schedule here, just for posterity sake.

What follows are some notes I wrote down during the talks I was able to attend during the conference..

• WordPress In Education

  Alan Levine (twitter) gave a talk entitled “The Future of Education and WP”.

  Some examples of educational blogs

  • http://www.edublogs.org/
  • http://blogs.ubc.ca/
  • http://homeschooljournal.net/

  Here are his slides and his post on his talk, and his experiences at WordCamp.

• SEO mistakes bloggers make

  Stephen Spencer (sites: personal, business) gave a great talk on giving your site a serious SEO makeover. He’s a big advocate of this SEO title tag plugin. Also discussed using the WP-Sticky plugin.

  Other great links..

  • His presentation slides.
  • Great SEO article.
  • Ebook on power searching with Google
  • SEO Best Practices & Worst Practices Checklist
  • SEO Planning Worksheet

  I thoroughly enjoyed his talk and I intend to do some detailed study of his slides.

• Even faster websites
  Steve Souders (author of High Performance Websites) gave a detailed talk on optimizing website load times. He’s got a great web metrics tool called “Cuzillion” available here.

  It was VERY comprehensive but admit it’s not a topic I’ve had to think about much.

  His talk slides are available here.

• Secure coding with WordPress
  Mark Jaquith gave this great talk on security and programming best practices for WordPress. I’m planning on doing a bunch of blog customization so I found this very useful.

  His talk slides are available here.

  His post on the weekend.

• WordPress and microformats
  Tantek Celik (twitter) gave a talk title “WordPress and Microformats: Past, Present, Future”. I really enjoyed this talk as it opened my eyes to a number of cool features supported by WordPress that I’m not using, and it made me more aware of the topic of Microformats and their pervasiveness on the web.

  Some random scribblings form the talk..

  • Try integrating the hcard (wikipedia) format to download contact info
  • The Operator plugin for Firefox
  • WordPress and microformats
  • Search for wordpress plugins that support microformats
  • http://buddypress.org/!
  • http://microformats.org/!
  • DiSo!

  His talk slides are available here.

• Quercus — PHP in Java

  Emil Ong gave this talk. I got into the talk late so I struggled a bit to get it. Looked interesting though and I need to review his slides and read into it some more.

  Here’s his post on the weekend.

• Nginx for fun and profit
  Chris Lea gave this talk on using Nginx as your main webserver instead of the usual Apache (sorry windows folks, this is a *nix biased blog ). Advantages are it’s simplicity and raw throughput power. If I remember correctly, it just serves up html pages, and delegates to an external php interpreter when required. I think he quoted an order of magnitude improvement over apache for basic tasks. Lots of very interesting points, definitely something to look into but not for the faint of heart as the doc compared to Apache is minimal - but apparently it doesn’t need all that doc anyways!

  Misc notes..

  • http://nginx.net/
  • http://wiki.codemongers.com/Main
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nginx
  • http://blog.netherlabs.nl/articles/2007/02/04

  No slides available at this point.

• WordPress APIs, iPhone and beyond!
  Joseph Scott gave this talk.

  Some notes..

  • AtomPub (WordPress support, Windows Livewriter, MarsEdit)
  • Open source iPhone app
  • xmlrpc client http://ditchnet.org/xmlrpc

  Slides available here.

• The State of the Word
  Matt (WordPress creator) gave a good talk covering lots of stuff. I was so busy listening I didn’t get time to write down much!

  Some notes..

  • Included slide on many DoD branches now using Wordpress
  • Top plugins include cforms, wp-polls, WP automatic upgrade, wp-cache, WordPress stats, nextgen-gallery, google-sitemap, akismet.
  • Budypress
  • Something called Hubpress

  His blog post on the WordCamp event.

• WordPress Consulting - getting paid for your WP skills
  Toni Schneider gave a good talk on making some $$ from your WordPress coding skills.

  Tips to get started include..

  • Put up your own site, make it look professional.
  • Be clear about the services you provide.
  • Avoid tire kickers, they’ll suck your time.
  • Think geographically, the US accounts for 40% of possible work, with the UK, Germany, Canada, etc. 5-10% in total.
  • Sign up on the wp-pro mailing list. Consultants have reported this list can generate several projects per month.
  • Perform work for referrals, “designed by” credit link, etc.
  • Provide free themes and plugins.

  Other notes..

  • A good list of consultants: http://automattic.com/services/wordpress-consultants/
  • Required coding skills include converting old sites, creating themes, programming, tweaking themes, plugins, howto upgrade/host, etc., custom themes, major areas: theme design, implementation, plugin development, others: security audits, training, SEO
  • Projects/budgets typically range from $200 to $100k
  • http://www.visudo.com/
  • http://cnpstudio.com/
  • http://allthingsd.com/

  Hi slides from the talk available here.

• Color Theory and the Making of Monotone

  Noel Jackson gave this design focused talk. I made it part way through so missed a lot of context.. must review his talk slides to get up to speed.

Photos from WordCamp on flickr, on my site. Also see the WordCamp twitter chatter.

8:00am Registration Check-in and Coffee
8:50am Welcome - Matt Mullenweg

User Track (Upstairs)

9:00am The Future of Education and WP, by Alan Levine
9:30am SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make, by Stephan Spencer
10:00am Open Source Business Models, by Stephen O’Grady
10:50am Andy Skelton - A Musical Performance
11:00am LOLcats and the Secret of Virality, by Ben Huh
11:30am WordPress & Microformats: Past, Present, by Tantek Celik
12:00pm LUNCH
1:00pm Switching to WordPress Painlessly, by Lloyd Budd
1:20pm 450 WordPress Power User Tips, by Lorelle VanFossen
1:40pm Hassle-free Upgrades, by Sam Bauers
2:00pm Matt Mullenweg - State of the Word
3:00pm Get Friendly with BuddyPress, by Andy Peatling
3:20pm Democratizing the Web through Global Voices, by Jeremy Clarke
3:40pm An interview with Om Malik
4:00pm Liz Danzico and Jane Wells - Riding the Crazyhorse
5:00pm A Musical Performance by Chuck Lewis aka SEO Rapper
5:10pm Kathy Sierra - Kicking Ass and Creating Passionate Users

Developer Track (Downstairs)

9:00am Search and Findability, by Aaron Brazell
9:30am DiSo, OAuth, and more, by Will Norris
10:00am Even Faster Web Sites, by Steve Souders
11:00am Secure Coding with WordPress, by Mark Jaquith
12:00 LUNCH
1:00pm Quercus PHP in Java, by Emil Ong
1:20pm Nginx for Fun and Profit, by Chris Lea
1:40pm WordPress APIs, iPhone and Beyond, by Joseph Scott
2:00pm Matt Mullenweg - State of the Word
3:00pm Intro to jquery, by Yehuda Katz
3:20pm Consulting, Getting Paid for your WP Skills, by Toni Schneider
3:40pm Color Theory and the Making of Monotone, by Noel Jackson

The contestant who identifies this type of tree, and provides 3 different links to new images of it the fastest will win! Remember to clearly state the name of the tree, and then provide the three links! Good luck!

“A moderate earthquake occurred at 11:42:15 AM (PDT) on Tuesday, July 29, 2008.
The magnitude 5.8 event occurred 3 km (2 miles) SW of Chino Hills, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 12 km ( 8 miles).”