HR Geeks

The local Hampton Roads Ruby/Cocoa Users Groups / Ken Collins is throwing an event friends, and it looks like it’s going to be good!

“On November 5th, 2009 Hampton Roads’ premier learning and network event for software developers, interactive agencies, and technology entrepreneurs will be held at Grow Interactive, Norfolk.”

Speakers:

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
by Andy Hunt
Author & Co-Founder Pragmatic Bookshelf

The Joy of Ruby
Clinton R. Nixon
Development Director at Viget Labs

iPhone Development: Touching Cocoa
Jamie Pinkham
Software Engineer at Mobelux

Sounds like a great event. It’s free, seating limited to 50. RSVP today!!

More information at www.757studio.org

From their home page, “The next Richmond Code Camp will be held at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College campus on Parham Road on Saturday, October 3rd 2009. It’s totally free. No gimmicks. No sales pitches. Enjoy breakfast and lunch at no charge while you mingle with your peers in a state of the art learning facility and enjoy over 40 awesome sessions covering a wide range of database, software and portal development topics.”

Looks interesting and isn’t far. I was told there are presentations there not specific to Microsoft Windows environment. Would be good to hear a report from someone that attends!

Official site: http://richmondcodecamp.org/
(Uses Microsoft site for event registration)

Things lined up right, and I was headed to DC for a data center visit for work so I made the most of my trip. I had lunch with Curt, a DC local I know from the diving forum (who also has computer skills) and then broke for the DC 2600. They start later, due to the traffic. I visited the old mall, and it looks so much smaller now that we have MacArthur center.

Having heard that the prior meeting had 17 or so, I looked forward to it. At first there was 2 folks, and then it turns out 4 others were in a different part of the restaurant. Everyone moved outside, and a few others joined. Overall it was pretty cool, but attendance was low due to the holiday. I told them I’d return in the future and perhaps bring more locals. Their meeting moved from the Pentagon City Fashion Center mall to a food place (similar to our HRGeeks meetings really). There seemed to be confusion on the location as the magazine just updated the info.

I’ll drop in again, but next trip it’s back to Raleigh unless I’m in DC already.

I ventured to Knoxville, TN over the weekend for a small con. I think the official attendance was around 27 people. It was good! People came from DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Lexington, Philly, Virginia and Maine (That I remember). Overall it was a great time, and fun to be able to discuss technical topics with knowledgeable people.

Neighborcon at the Yacht Club

Heads up, there is a competition coming up in Virginia Beach of college level autonomous surface vehicles.

More info can be seen at the official site http://www.auvsi.org/competitions/surface.cfm.

It is happening on the 18th thru 21st of June 2009 at Founders Inn
in Virginia Beach, VA, USA

Customers of Continental VisiNet Broadband who subscribe to their business internet access that is delivered by fixed wireless equipment were notified that they will be shutting down this service on June 1, 2009.

The letter actually refers people to Cox, Verizon and Paetec (which was USLEC).

Oh yea, where’d wimax go?

I dissed the 757 crew and headed Southwest to Raleigh to drop in on their 2600 meeting. I got caught up at work and didn’t get out of Norfolk until around 3:30pm, which delayed me a bit. I had planned to leave at 2pm to make it by the start of their meeting at 5pm. This put me at the Raleigh 2600 around 6:45PM. It was great fun! I met Koft and his girlfriend Dana there (Koft used to live in Hampton R0ads). Saw a few familiar faces from Carolina Con and met new people. Discussion ranged from Ardunio /microcontrollers, to Crestron and other building/entertainment automation platforms, to software, and hardware. Definitely an interesting group of people. I finally forced myself to leave at 11pm, and I have to admit time flew. The group was moving the meeting outside of the coffee shop at this point, the meeting apparently was far from over. In the future I will drop in on their meeting again, but first might have to pay a return visit to the DC 2600 meetings. Around the 1994 – 1996 time frame other locals and myself would make the road trip up there as we didn’t have a meeting here. Perhaps in a few months!

For that that haven’t caught it yet, Enferex (Matt) has an article published in the current (Spring) edition of “2600 – The Hacker Quarterly.” The title of the article is “MP3 Data Stream as a Covert Means of Distributing Information.” Page 16. 2600 can be found at any Barnes & Nobles.

Erik and myself headed down to CarolinaCon in Durham a few weeks ago. Have to say, it was fun! It’s a very small con, perhaps 100 people. There were some great presentations ranging in subjects from the McColo story (a co-location facility that housed a large number of servers used by people committing fraud and spamming).  The story included how people got them de-peered so they were disconnected from the internet and why it’s gone. TXS spoke on reverse engineering subjects, and some other talks that slip my mind at the moment. Sorry for the late update, but I had to say it was fun! Had hoped to make NotACon this year, but once  again missed it. Perhaps more locals will make Carolina Con next year?

A camera truck taking street level imagry was spotted in downtown Norfolk on Thursday. The truck carried the Windows Live Local logo on the back, and FaceT logo on the door. This is most likely a Google street-view competitor. Interesting means they have for mounting the cameras! Not only was there the panoramic “stove pipe” looking part, there was also a number of other sensors mounted on the luggage rack.

Original images are on my Flickr Account.)

FaceT/Windows Live Local camera truck in Freemason area of Norfolk

FaceT / Windows Live Local truck in Norfolk