June, 2005

Ive read about and heard about Podcasts in the past, but only really tried them today with the release of iTune 4.9 which supports podcasts out of the box.

Im instantly addicted I did a google search and found that triple J offers some really cool podcasts here. The ones i subscribed to were Sunday Night Safran: religion, politics and hoochies, Hack and Dr Karl on triple j – triple j’s science guru.

Dr Karl has a podcast!

Ive gotta find more podcasts

Spam on this blog has gotten to the crazy stage. Its nothing for me to check comments and find that 60+ spam commnets are awaiting moderation. I guess its good that none of them are actually making it on the site but im getting sick of having to sift through comments to determine which are real and which arnt.

WordPress lets you mark them as spam, which flags them as spam int he database but it doesnt seem to do anything else with them. Im not sure if there are plans to somehow use the comments marked as spam to somehow determine what is spam and what isnt *shrugs* Im just not sure if its worth marking them as spam and keeping them in the database as apposed to just deleting them.

Actually, i might go check out the wordpress plugins page and seeif theres anything about spam.

And just like that, WWDC is over for another year. I havnt gotten around to posting much about the week, but the plan is to back date a few entries when i get around to typing them.

The final day went off pretty well. A few decent sessions a cool lunch time presentation by a fella from Pixar.

After the conference we headed out to eat with some of the other Aussies, we ended up at a chinese place which wasnt too bad i guess. In hindsight i probably would have enjoyed going to somewhere like Mels Dine In or Denny’s but oh well.

Everyone headed out to an Irish pub afterwards. Stayed there for a few hours then the group go spit into those who wanted to go somewhere else and those who wanted to go back to their hotel. I decided to come back to the hotel, by the time i got back it was around 2:30am.

Got online and chatted to Melanie for a bit, then headed to bed when she had to go.

Had a decent sleep last night, slept in till around 11am then got up and went for a stroll. I couldnt find anything to buy except a bottle of apple juice. There seems to be a lot of shops along the Market street section but none have anything i was really looking for. *shrugs*

So yeah, im sitting back in the hotel room now watching tv and playing with some of the conference examples. I might have to look at going to the Mels Dine In for lunch, it was pretty good the last time we went.

Im going out to eat with Mels Aunty Doris and Uncle Tim tonight. They are arriving to get me around 4pm. Shouldbe really good. There was somthing being planned for sunday but im not 100% sure as yet, all i know is around 9pm we fly out of San Francisco and head to Auckland.

Its been a fun trip, and ive learnt a lot, but im looking forward to getting back to Australia.

Im probably being really picky, but mobile phones at WWDC are starting to annoy me. At the beginning of every session they make an announcement along the lines of:

“For the benefit of all sessions members, please ensure all devices that create sound including laptops, mobile phones , etc are turned on silent”

Yet…. every single session ive been in today there has been at least 1 person whose mobile phone has started ringing during the session.

Sure i know some of these people might be busy people, and need to take important calls, but sheesh, mute it for the session and let it go to voice mail or somthing.

*sigh*

Woke up bright and early and headed off to the Student Sunday session. It was at the Argent hotel this year, a change from past years when it was held in the Moscone centre.

Got there around 8am, and got into the breakfast. I had a croisant thing with strawberry jam, wasnt too bad. Also had a few glasses of orange juice.

Around 9am we were all ushered into one of the room where they welcomed us and told us about the day.

Previously we had chosen a ‘track’ that we wanted to attend. Track 1 was aimed at people who hadnt done much Cocoa programming at all, track 2 was for people who had done some and wanted more. I picked track 2 and went along to it.

It was presented by Aaron Hillegass from BigNerdRanch.com, the guy that wrote the cocoa programming books. It was actually a really good session. He presents really well and explains things great.

After the first part we broke for lunch. I was amazed at the food they had. Salads, meats, sauces, and desserts it was awesome and tasted really good. I grabbed a coke as well and it was ok even though it doesnt tatse wuite as good as Australia

After lunch we went baack into our groups and were given a programming task to complete. Thomas, Luke and I played around with it and did some experimenting. In the end our example didnt work, but thats cool we had some fun and i think we were more productive then other people who just followed the examples.

Next we were given a talk by a guy from Delicious Monster who told us about mac programming, working for ourselves and making lots of money. Was entertaining and enjoyable.

We left the final student day session and headed to the AUC gathering at the Thirsty Bear. I actually tried 2 of the beers, the first was crap but the second was ok. We got to chat with a few other students and also 2 aussie guys that work at Apple. Was pretty cool and i enjoyed myself.

When i got back i got a call from Melanie Aunty Doris She managed to track me down I was planning on getting a phone call later in the week and giving her a call but she beat me to it.

So thats about it for today. Im sitting at the moment in the hotel typing out stuff and chatting on MSN. Tomorrow whould be really good, i really enjoy the keynotes and this one should be just as good if not better then previous ones.

Woke up around 7am this morning, showered, washing some tv and stuff until Luke and Thomas woke up.

We headed out to grab some breakfast and ended up an Mel’s Inn, a place we came across while walking around. I had scrambled eggs, bacon, has browns and toast – it was really good.

From there we wandered around a bit more, visited a few shops and stuff. Tried to register for the conference but found out its not open till 5pm, so we can back to the hotel room.

Thinking about going someplace tonight to watch the Kostya Tzy – Mickey Hatton fight which is on tonight.

Got a bit of a headache today, i think from the lack of sleep and stuff. Luckily i bought some Nurofen so thats dulled most of it. Good thing is that chances are i wont get another headache for the rest of the week so thats good and as long as i dont have one on the flight home ill be happy

Looking forward to the student day tomorrow, should be fun.

Went to the conference centre at around 5pm to get our conference badges and stuff. While i was there i ran into a guy i met when i was here in 2003. Anyway, he invited us to go graab some food with him and the people he was with so taht was cool. We ended up going to a mexican place and had some food then came back to our hotel and had some drinks and talk in the foyer area. Was fun and the other people were really cool. I think they were all from Canada except for 1 guy from Michigan here in the US.

So yeah, after that the other guys went back to their hotel and we came back up to our rooms. Talked a bit about which sessions we will go to and before we knew it it was 10pm. Im not that tired so im sitting here with the tv on and typing this thing.

Tomorrow starts early at 8am, we have breakfast with the other students at the Argent hotel (where the student day activities are held). Should be fun.

We departed Rocky at 6:30am, after a little worry of Thomas showing up late The flight to Brisbane was fast. We hung at Brisbane for a few hours and had something to east while we waited. When all was good we checked in and went to the ‘departing’ area.

We all wwaited till we got into the ‘departing’ area before buying books only to find the book shop there was pretty damn aweful. So, no books for us. Thankfully the flight to New Zealand went pretty fast. They showed some movie i cant remember the name of, i remember watching a preview of it recently though.

We arrived in New Zealand and it was around 11 degree and raining I was surprised at how green it looked as we flew in – very nice.

Waited at New Zealand for our next flight, met up with some other aussies that are going to the conference as well. Also had some more food and bought ourselves some books.

It was kinda weird but cool that the New Zealand departure terminal accepts NZ dollars, AUS dollars and US dollars. You can pretty much pay with whatever you want, even parts of all the currencies.

So yeah, the next flight was the longest. Around 13hours from New Zealand to San Francisco. The flight was ok, the food was great – i was impressed. With the movies they showed / ipod / books / snoozing the flight seemed to go fairly quick.

Arrived in San Francisco around 12 midday. We took the BART light rail to the stop closest to our hotel and walked the rest of the way.

At the moment we are all sitting in our rooms using the free broadband and thinking about going to get some free food

Currently sitting in the Argent Hotel at the WWDC student day breakfast. They have allowed an hour for breakfast and its only been 30mins and already people are pulling out their laptops.

Im really buggered this morning, dont know why. I think the pillows on my bed are the problem, they are really soft and when you put your head on it they just sink out and you may as well not use anything. Ive tried using two but that doesnt help much either.

Anyhow… thought id post somthing, ive been keeping a daily log type thing which ill post at some stage.

So, after around 16 hours in a plane, i am now in San Francisco. Its currently around 3:30pm Friday afternoon. We arrived around 3 hours ago and got the train from the airport to a fews blocks from the hotel.

The plane trip was ok. Cramped and somewhat boring as expected but i managed to fall asleep which chewed up a lot of the time.

The food on Air New Zealand trips is probably the best plane food ive ever had. Actually resembled ‘normal’ food. They showed a few movies on the plane as well which was pretty cool, we were unlucky though and got pretty crap seats as far as tv viewage went. We had to rely on a tiny screen about 4 rows in front of us. Have to try to remember to request better seats on the way back.

So, we are here. The hotel rooms have free broadband internet which is really cool. At some stage we will have to go find some food i think.

We have ended up with 2 rooms, 1 room with 2 queen beds and 1 room with 1 king bed. The rooms are joined by a door which is cool.

Its a pretty nice hotel, better then the past one i stayed at when i came.

So yeah, thats about it. Ill post more later.

And so begins my WWDC 2005 experience. We all fly out of Rocky at 6:30am tomorrow morning and arrive at brisbane an hour or so later. From there its off to Auckland then straight to San Francisco.

Im really excited, should be great fun and i cant wait to soak up all the cool stuff they will talk about. I still havnt completely figured out which sessions ill go to but i figure ill choose as i go along. They tend to announce new cool stuff at the keynote and therefore announce new sessions so ill keep my options open.

Saying that, im keen to find out about all the new tiger features – core data, spotlight searching, etc

Plan is to keep this blog fairly up to date on the day to day occurances, so stay tuned. For an alternative view to the whole thing check out Thomas’s Blog, no doubt he will be posting at every chance he gets