Glacial Erratics

Last week I was at OSCON 2005. It was interesting, but not quite as fun nor personally relevant as YAPC 2005 (my other conference for the summer). At YAPC there was a great deal of participation. At OSCON it was more about observation.    (PT4)

Despite the lack of ripping yarns to relate, it's clear there are some things afoot:    (PT5)

• There's more money floating around than there has been in some time. Companies are hiring again, especially Google, and they think that people with open source experience are worth a look.    (PT6)
• Related: companies are interested in following an open source model for pursuing revenue.    (PT7)
• The latest developments on the linux desktop (wiggly windows!) are suhweet. Miguel de Icaza did a fine job of making me feel guilty for joining the soulless legions that left Linux for OSX.    (PT8)

My favorite parts:    (PT9)

• Paul Grahams's keynote, since turned into an essay, had some nice (in the nice because they are damning sense) things to say about professionalism and work.    (PTA)
• why the lucky stiff gave an awesome presentation, ostensibly about Ruby. It was a multimedia extravaganza of elegant insanity that pushed me past the few remaining barriers preventing Ruby code in my life, despite having very little in the way of traditional pedagogical method. I've started working on something called rubead that I'll post about in a while.    (PTB)
• Seeing Matthew, Joe, Kevin and Brett and finally meeting and chatting with Kragen.    (PTC)