DrunkCamp Postmortem

In the order that we sat:

• Rosyna: The correct way to produce his teletubby handle is “roe she na”. No kidding, I had to write it down. Oddly, he also responds to “Luke”. Even more oddly, neither is his real name.

• Gus: Along with Nicholas, I wish I heard more from Gus. It didn’t help his mic went dead during the last half. I secretly wonder if Wil “accidently” disconnected it with his new go-go-gadget italian leather shoes. In other news, I’m so lame: I missed the Cabinet Sanchez reference on his awesome tee. Gus is also the subject of my two favorite pics of the night.

• Jason: came dangerously close to out-styling me. I thought I had him checked before it began, but then he changed clothes. Owch. I met Jason just briefly at WWDC, so it was good to spend more time together. Oh, and everyone loves Chicken of the VNC.

• Paul: led the anti-DRM charge. No wonder, he’s got a couple of dogs in this fight. Not that I’m somehow insinuating dog-like properties on RA’s fine software. Whew.

• Wil: is anti-unit-testing, anti-frameworks and anti-your mama. Unless your mama is hot.

• Brent: Biggest surprise: Brent’s main keyboard is a Saratoga (aka “Apple Extended Keyboard II”) attached to an iMate ADB-USB adapter. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among Mac old-hands to worship this keyboard, and I confess to having a bit of the stockpile of them in the red shed. It’s my retirement plan. Year after year, I’ll sell one of them off to geek friends. That should keep me in cat food.

• Wolf: I brought a WWDC 2005 backpack full of various Apple shirts and even a brand-spanking-new Panic spinner shirt. I intended to throw them — and finally the backpack — into the audience. Unfortunately my plan freaked DB. Not so much the giving-away, but the hurtling-things-at-the-heads-of-a-attendees. So no shirts for you.

• Nicholas: is one of the most right-brained, intuitive developers I’ve met. During the panel, he made mention about breaking the guidelines to make the software feel right. He’s right, of course. We developers tend to over-rely on the Human Interface Guidelines. While it’s wrong to gratuitously break the HIG, it’s clear we have a responsibility to push software forward. (Quicksilver was hugely popular with the audience and panel.)

• Bob: I was worried Bob’s Apple affiliation would mean he wouldn’t be able to contribute much, but that fortunately turned out to be just a worry. He also got in a few plugs to CAWUG.

• Eric: Voted most likely to kill the rest of the panel.

• DB: He’s no Christian Bale burning down his mansion. He’s better.

Random notes:

• “I wonder if they can tell I’m not wearing any pants?” — an anonymous panelist. (You owe me for not outing you, anonymous panelist.)

• Met a bunch of folks. Hitched a ride with the MacZealots crew crew to Jak’s Tap, and got to meet Emily “Dating an Apple Developer” Hambidge. Ross Belmont bought me a beer, JC Burns enlightened me on After Effects, and Ars Technica was represented by Jacqui and Clint. Also got user group love from MacWarriors with Matt, Chad and Nicholas and PUMUG with Becky and friends.

• I saw Brent’s $400 leather jacket he “splurged” on after the NewsGator deal. Except it turns out it was on sale for ~$300, and Macy’s knocked another ~$50 off for signing up with their credit card. To all the developers toiling away the midnight hours in the hope of one day selling out to get your own $400 leather jacket: well, sorry to dash your dreams upon the jagged rocks of reality.

• Still on Brent, one quote that may have slipped under your radar. Brent mentioned he finally got to fire up Xcode after not using it for two months. It’s a shocking metric of just how overloaded with tech support Brent was. Things seem to be getting better now, fortunately.

• “You’re great; we get it!” — audience member during some Shipley braggadocio.

• To the untrained eye, it may appear this night was about indie Mac developers. However, the evening’s goal was, in fact, to get Chuck’s blog to be the first hit when Googling for “Shipley’s Ass”.

Monday, October 24, 2005
12:00 AM