This weekend Jake & I are at BarCampBoston, an un-conference in Maynard Mass. The event organized in the loosest sense of the word. Everyone who attends is required to participate by either giving a talk, being on a panel, or something else. Both of us are giving talked related to the tech behind Zaadz sometime tomorrow.

This is an exciting event for me for two reasons. First, it's my first chance to meet and spend time with Mr. Unquiet himself, and second because a bunch of people I know from R.I.T.'s Computer Science House are here.

I'm stylin' in my Zaadz T-Shirt and Jake is pimp'n out the Z trying to find developers or interesting new tech to bring in.

Not so much vegan love here. Even the iceburg lettuce salads had cheese in them :-( 

more updates over the weekend.... 

One of the coolest things I've seen so far here at BarCampBoston is the urinal in the restroom. They're water free and use a special liquid that sits ontop of the urine in the trap, but is lighter than water so it floats and forms an air-tight layer that keeps the smell and gases out.

I want to see these in Zaadz men's rooms!

 http://falconwaterfree.com/

The best thing I can say about the first day of BarCampBoston is that it was fun. Some of the talks were cool, some were dull. There were VC (Venture Capitalists) roaming around that made me feel like they were strangers with candy and I was a young kid. There were more ladies than I expected (perhaps 6?) and even one baby, for what that's worth. 

Getting to hear some of the CSH guys talk was the highlight of the day for me. I wish I lived up here near Boston so I could see them more (than once every 5 years). The food was lack-luster, but for the price of "free" I didn't complain. Heck, I got a free t-shirt too and that's always good. Lunch was the worst but a the dinner "BBQ" (it was POURING rain so we had it inside) there were veggie burgers with fixin's so I ate enough. Jake & I didn't stick around to socialize / drink / geek out though. We drove back to his place in Boston.

When we arrived I got to meet the charming and energetic Jess and we spent the evening talking, drinking tea and munching on dessert. Later Jake & I sat down with our respective laptops to work on our presentations for tomorrow. As part of going to BarCamp you need to give a talk. Jake is doing his on "Social Networks with a Purpose" (can you guess what his subject matter comes from?!?) and I'm doing mine on an intro to the technology behind Zaadz which I'm calling "Newbie on Rails". It's nearly 1am and Jake has long since gone to sleep. I stayed up working on my sample application. It's a very simple recipe site I'm calling SloCookr that exists mostly to show off the features of Ruby on Rails with a bit of AJAX to season the dish.

Peas out! 

Woke up, breakfast, said by to Jess and out the door. Stopped to get soy lattes (iced for me, hot for jake) and now we're back at BarCampBoston. I've been practicing my Ruby on Rails intro and I think I'm ready to go! There are WAY less people here today than yesterday. Maybe 30 vs. 150. But many of those who are here were the interesting people  from yesterday. No CSHers though :-(

Getting here today was so much easier today since we knew which way to go when we got to this Clock Tower Place complex. 

Well, the presentation is over, for better or worse. Jake's talk was good and he covered what social websites are and what it means to establish one "with a purpose" (other than selling it to News Corp). He got some good questions and got to hear the thoughts from people involved in other, very different, social networks. Unfortunately the rooms we're in today aren't as good and his room "Left Brain" didn't have a projector. He had people look at his macbook but it wasn't optimal :-(

I got a late start to mine because there was no way I was making people look at my presentation and code demo on my tiny dell ultra-portable. So I got the guy giving a talk in the other room "Big Brain" to move. That room had a large plasma (or LCD?) monitor on the wall but my laptop couldn't run it clearly AND use the built in screen. So I had to do the typing on my laptop by the wall and look up over my shoulder to the big screen to see what I was typing (or rather typoing mostly).

I got through my short example without too much trouble. It was a super simple recipe app called SloCookr, but it made use of migrations, AJAX with RJS and a few other rails goodies. Not a completely different world than the normal RoR screencasts, but I tried to show things a bit differently where I could.

I hope people came away from it with some interest in Ruby on Rails. I know I've gained more experience teaching it.      

OMZ, New WEIRD AL SONG!!! He may not be fluffy, but he's vegan and my favorite artist! It's because of him that I learned what "vegan" was and through a crazy series of events my path ultimately reached Zaadz. So enjoy the new toon!

MP3 Format - Click to Play or Right-Click to Download  

I can't wait to see what he comes up with for a video for this song ;-) Especially given the original.

We adopted a puppy!

On Saturday, Tracy & I adopted Jessie into our family. He's a five and a half months right now and cute as can be. He's a Rottweiler mix. Click here to see some more photos of him.

He's settling in nicely and has claimed his spot on the couch. The cats are not amused with this surprise and have been giving us dirty looks. No reaction thus far from the bunnies, though we suspect that they are laughing at the cats on the inside.

Today I received an email from one of my Zaadz friends who I haven't seen in almost a year, Will Tuttle. Will is a composer and pianist. He tours the United States and other Countries performing and sharing his wisdom. 

Today's email from Will was about his newest album, Ascension. Here is part of what Will sent. 

I yearn, as we all do, to make a positive contribution in these challenging times and to help raise the spiritual vibration of humanity. I feel that in order for us to solve the problems and meet the challenges we face, we are called to raise our consciousness to a higher and more inclusive level, both as individuals and as a culture. As Einstein said, problems can only be solved by going to a higher level than the level we are on when we create them.

Over the past three years, while giving concerts throughout North America, and in Europe and South America as well, I’ve been receiving new musical inspirations that I feel are directly related to helping to raise our level of vibration and consciousness to connect more deeply with the fundamental truth of the interconnectedness of the welfare of all beings, and of our oneness with the infinite Love that is the source of all life.

I’m happy to announce that a new CD album of this powerful and uplifting original piano music, Ascension, is now available. Titled ASCENSION: A Journey Beyond, this long-awaited album comes closer than any yet to capturing the spirit and power of the vibrational energy of the music that comes through me.

It’s titled Ascension partly because it’s directly born of the yearning to awaken to a higher level of consciousness, and because of the ascension to a higher dimension of awareness that is required of us humans if we are to live in harmony, freedom, and wisdom on this earth. It's titled Ascension also because of ancient prophecies of humanity possibly ascending to a higher dimension of consciousness in these times. And it’s titled Ascension because I needed a catchy title!—one that would reflect the profound, uplifting energy of the music.

I'll leave it to Will to post his entire message, but I  hope this gives a good idea of the motivation and the feeling within Will's moving music. 

Another work of Will's I want to highlight is his excellent book The World Peace Diet.  This book is a great gift for anyone who has not yet made the connection between the food we eat, which as WIll says literally becomes us, and the nature of the world around us. 

Peas & Love,
Joshua

I admit it. I'm vegangelical (a term I learned from Brian). My activism, which can at times be lacking, focuses on giving detailed information on the cruelties of factory farming directly to college students as part of the Adopt-A-College program run by the absolutely amazing non-profit Vegan Outreach. 

Today I found out that VO has an opportunity to double any donations they receive because of a matching challenge from a very generous member. In light of this I've done something I've ment to do for some time. I've signed up for a recurring monthly donation. The work of Vegan Outreach is as important to me as anything else I support and clearly deserves my support as regularly as the gas company does ;-)

Click here to read the newsletter I just received. I had the good fortune of hosting John Camp at my condo last year and with his help Connecticut activists handed out over three thousand booklets directly to students in one week. Mad props to John and everyone hitting campuses for the cause.  

Every month I also automatically give a donation to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. The little fella at the top of this blog entry is Dylan, the calf I sponsor. He's not veal today because of people who are taking a stand, boycotting the cruel animal agriculture industries and also supporting important causes like Vegan Outreach and their local farmed animal sanctuaries.  

I'm able to give this every month because of Zaadz, and specifically our amazing Zaadz members. If it wasn't for every one of them I'd not have such great work to do. 

Ok, so it was the first International Rails Conference... so it had to be the best. This past weekend the big Z sent me to Chicago for RailsConf. This site is built using Ruby on Rails (in case you hadn't heard that yet) and since this is such a new framework we're taking every chance we can to up our level of proficiency with it. 

Highlights of the weekend were seeing a live performance by Why the Lucky Stiff (and the Thirsty Cups), a keynote from Paul Graham, Martin Fowler and the big man himself, DHH. I also received a Certificate of Non-Conformance for bringing a PC laptop to RailsConf.  

While out there I was fortunate enough to get dinner at The Chicago Diner, an amazing vegetarian diner. Mint Chocolate Chip "Milk"shake, Chile-Lime Chikin Quesadillas, and an open-face Rueben with a side of soy mac-n-cheeze. Mmmmmmmmm. I HIGHLY recommend checking them out.  RailsConf was nice enough to offer a vegan box lunch every day, as well as a whole pile of vegetarian lunches for those still kickin' the dairy habit. Assorted sliced animal sandwiches were available as well :-( 

All in all, it was a very nice weekend. I'm happy to be home and looking forward to more training in September. Thanks Uncle Zaady!