Re: KansasFest 2008 Report - Wednesday

[Kirk Mitchell <kirkmitchell@gmail.com>]

This morning started at 7:30 am, for me at least... My roomie wasn't
moving very fast.  Showered and got to breakfast, but the cafeteria
wasn't opened until 8:00...

HackFest started, and quite a few folks are entering.

A few more folks showed up, but our count is way down from last year.
Looks like costs are keeping even some of our regulars home this
year.  Still, the 30 folks we have are total gems.

Eventually, 11:15 rolled around and I started setting up for the
Kookout, which is generally my sole contribution to KFest.  Things
went smoothly, and I suffered not a single burn this year, and the
weather was pleasant enough, being overcast and not too windy at
around 90 F.  We ended up will plenty of food, and no food poisoning
cases at all.  B-)

Next up was the KansasFest 2008 Keynote, presented by Lane Roathe,
cofounder of Ideas From the Deep, and former managing editor of
Softdisk.

He was very entertaining, telling stories of his rise from a talented
high school student, to his current position in the mobile phone
applications business.  For some reason, I tended to rest my eyes
while listening to the questions and answers...  It was great, but
cooking over those hot coals must have wore me out.  Sheesh, it's only
Day 2 too...  I must be fossilizing!

The next session was Michael Mahon's AppleCrate II.  The AppleCrate is
a vertical stack of 17 Apple //e motherboards with power supply and
assorted other components that allow them to all run in parallel.

The thing is impressive, just as a work of art, but once Michael got
it running, and demonstrated several programs while explaining how it
worked, the crowds appreciation climbed several orders of magnitude!
My eyes didn't need to rest anymore.  He concluded the session by
playing the song "When I'm 64" using 13+ voices from the shared
efforts of 16 //e's.  This session kicked ass.

Bye this time, it was dinner time, so off we went.

Our after dinner session was by Rob Walch, podcaster of Today in
iPhone, who continued where he left off from last years entertaining
session, but added the new iPhone 3G features, as well as the 2.0
upgrade.  He also discussed the advantages of hacking the iPhone to
get nifty new features.  It is certainly tempting to get one, but
since I live in the boonies, and don't get AT&T, I'll just have to
mope and maybe pick up an iTouch instead.

Very good presentation!

We goofed around for a couple of hours, when the call of "Pizza!" rang
out!

Syndicomm and Juiced.GS had provided pizza and softdrinks for their
annual KFest reception, and it was much appreciated!

The last 3 hours have been watching our resident hackers coding, going
on beer^H^Hverage runs, playing pool without a cue ball, and
visiting.  Good times.  It's about 1:45 AM now, and things are
quieting down some, so I'll probably just post this, and then wander
around for a little bit more, before hitting the sack.

Tomorrow will be a VERY busy day!

(to be continued)