Firstly, a couple of weeks ago I decided to splurge and take a trip to Hawaii. Since I had the miles and someone was willing to host me there, I figured I’d go before work got crazy. Let me tell you, it was one of the best ideas ever. I spent most of the time laying on the beach and lounging around. It was amazing. I didn’t make it to see any of the famous sites, but I figure I’ll go back and do that again later.

Beyond the trip to Hawaii, my life has pretty much come down to a few basic activites: training for Ragnar, working, and climbing.

As is normal for the month of July, I’m completely deep into my training for the Ragnar relay. As has been the case in previous years, I’m in a good regimen of running, lifting, and abstaining from drinking in any way. This year, I’m actually pushing myself a bit more in my runs, and I’ve decided not to ease off the lifting. As it turns out, I’m seeing great benefits over my training in my previous years and I’m really excited to see how things go with this years race. I’ve also been training in Vibrams, which I feel have helped me a great deal. As the relay is less than two weeks away, expect to hear more from me about the whole thing soon.

The next big thing in my life has been work. With the upcoming of release of Windows Phone 7, my team has been ramping up for the last push. As it often goes with software, this final push is where it all falls into place. Unfortunately, this also means a lot of work, some long hours, and a bit of a toll on me physically is all in store. I am, however, really loving what I’m doing. I’ve always been a bit of a phone freak, so getting the opportunity to work in this technology space is a real treat. It’s very much akin to my time at Zune. Although we aren’t quite marching like we did there.

The last big thing I’ve gotten even more into has been climbing. Since November, I’ve gotten into a pretty good rhythm of climbing with my friend Shawn. We’ve been climbing generally at least once a week, and life permitting, even more. Given that Shawn is quite a bit better than I am, I’ve actually improved a great deal, which has been rather awesome. I’ve also started climbing outdoors and leading, which is something I never thought I’d be up to doing.

So yeah, that’s kind of the life I’m living right now. I’m really happy with everything. As I told my friend Josh today as we were walking to dinner, “Life is good.”

I learned how to do all that crap manually when I was in college taking digital photography. As both a photographer and a computer scientist, I’m in awe.

So, while I am not happy in any way about it, I may have to bite the bullet int he near future and upgrade my computer hardware. I mean, I guess this is to be expected, given I hadn’t purchased new hardware in almost 6 years, and what I did get was a netbook. Still, I’m again keen on having some sort of desktop machine; and my media server is also giving up the ghost, so it looks like it’s time. Thankfully, I think I can use a lot of my stuff spread across the new gear, but I’m looking at another grand or so to get two fully functioning machines.

Oh well, I guess going almost six years is good enough.

The basis of the discussion was the fact that, due to a bit of instability in Ubuntu, my machine had gotten itself into a rather nasty state after a failed attempt at applying some system updates. Clearly, I was able to get the system back, but what isn’t so clear was how I had to do it. For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that a lot of command line work was required to get everything going gain.

Now, for me, this isn’t such a big deal. I prefer using the command line; I find it to be faster to get things done. Mind you, I’m also a software engineer, so what I think of in terms of an optimal user experience are a we bit different. I also look at the command line as a choice.

What is kind of sad about Linux given that it’s now been over a decade since it hit the “big time” is that it feels like it hasn’t changed in say…six years? Sure, the windows now fade in and out, but copying OS X (or God forbid Vista) shouldn’t really be seen as an improvement. I still need to use the command line to reliably do anything. The window manager just stops redrawing app windows for no good reason. (This has been a major issue for me with Ubuntu) And package management…well, there still needs to be “package management.”

Everything about this set-up feels exactly as it did when I was in college and futzing with this crap on a regular basis. All of the modularity that makes this awesome for geeks/powerusers/sysadmins really is kind of stupid when you just want to have a PC that runs. I installed a pretty basic version of Ubuntu and the update (it had been a week or two since I had done it previously) needed to change 100+ packages. And this wasn’t even for the complete distro upgrade.

I had heard how much better Linux had gotten since I had last looked at it seriously. Honestly, I don’t see it. Sure, they’ve put some graphical front ends onto the command line stuff, but given how often they’ve failed on me, they might as well not be there. It’s been about ten years since I started futzing with Linux and beyond some higher res art, it’s pretty much the same thing I was using before.

Interestingly, I no longer feel a need to update my Facebook status anymore. With the twitter plugin, there’s really no incentive to do it. Twitter is essentially Facebook status messages in a more public space; which, given how many people are on Facebook, might as well be public.

This leads me to wonder about where our current society is going. It’s clear that with Blackberries, iPhones and every other smartphone on the planet, we’re approaching the always connected world described in so many cyberpunk novels. I think I’m going to have to go back and watch Lain because I honestly feel like we’re approaching that world, or at least to some extent.

Hmmm, this might be an interesting blog post for another time.

Before you read this, please read this.

Eric Burns makes an interesting note about the MACWorld keynote. There really wasn’t anything about…I don’t know…Macintosh computers? Seriously, at the conference that was the unveiling of so many major computer releases (Original TiBook in January of 2001?), and is supposed to be about the Mac, where were the computer announcements? Where was the…you know…Mac? Gone.

Computers were an afterthought. And apparently, computers aren’t the big thing at Apple either. They dropped “Computer” from their company name. They’re Apple Inc, now. Apple Computers is dead.

Stop to think about that for a second. Has that sunk in yet? It’s ok, I’ll wait a bit longer.

That’s right, Apple Computer, the company that changed how we look at computers, who’s machines my generation grew up using in schools, no longer exsists. This is now Apple Inc. Maker of the IPod, the IPhone and the company that runs the iTunes Music Store.

Without much fanfare, Apple has smoothly turned themselves into a consumer electronics company. They are like a sleeker, hipper Sony. They make computers, but it isn’t their primary business anymore.

One could say the writing has been on the wall for a while. Increased pushing of the iPod at various conventions; the major shift in revenue and profit no longer coming from the computer devision. Even Apple’s pulling out of the PowerPC camp and using Intel for it’s computers (and then making it easy to install Windows on them). It feels in a way like Apple is now just putting up a token fight, but they are more concerned with other areas.

I wonder when the iPod went from a device to try and get people hooked into Apple’s computers, to the device that was the flagship for the company. I wonder what kind of computer announcements Apple will make in the future. What is the future of the Mac OS?

I decided to bring this back. This past WWDC makes me really wonder.

This is some interesting stuff when you think about it. Look at how far the web has come. The fact that I’m linking this video in my blog to share with people whom I know; people whom I think will enjoy this video. This post will be spread via my RSS feed to Facebook, Livejournal, Google, Technochrati, and lord knows whom else. People may or may not link to me. And it’s all based mainly on the users.

When I first put myself up on the web, back in 1997, things were very different. Design and content were hard coded together. Dynamic text? Don’t be absurd. Dynamic uploading of content from anywhere in the world? Crazy. The few with the technological skills were the ones who had all of the power. A personal home page? A thing for nerds.

Fast forward to the fall of 2000 when I entered Princeton. We (and by we, the geeks, really) had made strides. We’d begun tryign to seperate content from design. ASP, Coldfusion and CGI were now being used to create dynamic web applications. Software like Dreamweaver and Frontpage (ewww) were making web design more accessable to the non geeks. The web was becoming a bit more normal, more everyday. But still, it wasn’t everyone. And the idea of everyone contributing, having a voice, was still only in theory.

Go forward to the winter of 2003, and the start of this site. Blog sites were sprouting. Blogging software was beign deployed by people. Sure it was mainly the tech savey, but still, dynamic content was HERE and NOW. If you were static, you weren’t with it anymore. PHP was the hotness and seperating content from design was now a major thing. Having to change PHP pages to change layout was not optimal. (It was actually a bit of a pain) CSS was standardized now, the browsers didn’t support it the same, but still, there was a starting point.

Now fast forward to winter of 2007. It’s been 4 years and look where we are. Dynamic content? It’s a given. AJAX has changed how web applications are done. But applications aren’t what’s hot, applications are passe. Now it’s all about communities. Individuals coming together, sharing their ideas, thoughts, stories, pictures and movies. The tech-aristocracy, those with the vast knowledge, have made it accessable to the masses. Everyone is a part of if. Information, from the people, by the people, for the people, is here.

In 10 years, theory became practice. The internet truly is a global community. I’m begining to think this Web 2.0 stuff may be right.