Asymptomatic

Starting in September, which is right around the corner in case you hadn't noticed, there is a series of conferences that have entered my radar as something that might be edifying for me to attend. There may just be too many of them.

Podcamp Philly is the first of these, on September 6th and 7th. Like each of these conferences, this one has a theme. Being that this is a podcamp, the topic is "new media". I've been following the PANMA list for a year and a half and I'm still not sure what anyone really means when they say "new media", but I think it has something to do with blogging and podcasting and stuff like that.

Later in September (20-21) is Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. I'm waiting to hear more glowing reviews of this event from last year's attendees. This is a pretty expensive conference for blogging, and I wonder who the target market really is: bloggers or blog integrators. I think it's the latter, which it might be nice to pitch Habari at, but I'd like to get real users, not SEO people and themers. Maybe that's just me. Still, it would be nice to hobnob with the big players....

I've been doing a lot of things lately. Getting out of the house is becoming more common for me. And as I look forward to presentations at the PHP meetup at the end of April and PodCamp Ohio at the end of June, I've been attending little gatherings here and there as time allows. There are a couple trips in particular that require more elucidation than what effort I want to put into this seating, but I did want to write about something simple that strikes me every time I venture into the city for an event or meeting or whatever.

As I've observed in the past, you always take something with you when you visit somewhere like a major city, even if you're mostly retracing your steps. I've gotten in the habit of taking the R5 from Malvern to Market East on the instructions of folks whose company I enjoy but much less frequently these days than I like. On that route, I manage to walk through a good chunk of the Gallery, a kind of "train station meets three story mall". It is in this place that I've encountered one of my favorite Philly oddities.

It's just a matter of so many odd things being in one place at one time that strikes me, not that any one of these things in particular is odd. First off, I think that mall-on-station is probably a great idea commercially, but is still a tad strange. But then you add the fish and meat market. I think this is the only shopping center I've ever been in with a regular old Radio Shack, a bookstore, a CVS, a Game Stop, a standard food court, and... A fish market. Ok, maybe that's not weird, maybe it's just me. But then......

Berta and I went to IndyHall's movie night on Saturday to hang out in the city and to watch the first of the two films in the double-feature, "Office Space". We got to talk to a few of the folks down there, both some people we knew and some people we met for the first time.

The event was sponsored by Philly Car Share, which is an interesting organization that offers shared vehicles to city-dwellers. You basically make a reservation, and you get a car for a few hours. It's kind of like renting, I suppose, but it's a more comfortable plan. The cars are where you might need them to be, parked in nearby lots, rather than centrally at a rental place. And they have all different kinds of cars, so if you needed a trunk or a van, they've got that, or for a night out on the town, a convertible or BMW is obtainable. Neat idea for folks that live downtown, especially.

We don't have much use for the service, since we'd have to drive our own cars to anywhere where a carshare car would be waiting, and that doesn't make much sense. In talking to people who have more use for these services, I discovered an interesting distinction of what is "city" and "suburb", and it was amusing to me to see how the line moves depending on which side of it you primarily dwell....

I really want to post my impressions of both BlogOrlando and Ohio LinuxFest, but they're taking a long time to concoct, primarily because there was so much that happened. So for now, I would like to pose a question to all the locals and see if anyone's got some good recommendations for me.

This weekend, three of my wife's sisters and their husbands (plus one 1-year-old nephew of mine) are coming to stay for the weekend. This leads to the inevitable question: What will we do to entertain them?

Everyone coming is from out of town, at least 200 miles away, so they are not familiar with the area. It would be nice to take them to places that they would not normally see around home, to maybe give them a sense of the greatness that we experience living around here every day. There are a few nice hyperlocal spots. ...

A new front in the junk mail war has opened.

I struggle from day to day trying to keep loose trash out of my yard. It's not as bad in the new house as in the old, where the wind swept all of the trash into our lawn to roost, but the other yards in our neighborhood are so immaculate that one piece of rubbish in our lawn looks like a bright red boil on the face of a supermodel. That is why I am a bit concerned about this new Bulletin epidemic.

For a reason I don't know, a small Philadelphia newspaper has started delivering issues to my house and leaving them on my driveway and in my grass. They typically deliver the thing even in the rain, and the slight plastic wrapper that they're ensconced in doesn't do the job of keeping the moisture out, ruining the issue anyway. So I frequently get this soggy mess in my lawn or driveway that I don't even realize is there until half my neighbors drive past it on their way to work. Besides the quality of the materials, there are a couple of odd things about the paper delivery itself. ...