Compared to Portland, there’s a much higher level of activity down here (obviously). I’ve been attending startup events with one of the people I met as I researched the show, a serial entrepreneur and product builder, Arte Merritt. We crashed the Techcrunch40 event at the Palace Hotel yesterday, an overblown event where startups paid big bucks to demo their services and compete for a $50,000 award. We got into everything but the large demo hall, and spent a lot of time in the demo pit, a vegas like atmosphere with booth babes and demos set up like slot machines. There was lots of free food. there was another event which was much more Portland scale, the SF New Tech Meetup, with companies demoing with Powerpoint slides and live demos. hecklers in the crowd tore the presenters to pieces, which was really lame. “so, what you’ve done is taken a Wiki, and Google Maps, and you haven’t even changed the Wiki CSS… so what excelty is new here at all?” It’s easy to judge, it’s much harder to put yourself out there and pitch something you believe in.

I’ve been a b a d blogger lately, I’ll be more up to date, and of course you’ll notice my twitter updates on the right, if you want a less detailed but more up to date info on what I’m doing.

Common Errors in English

don’t steal, originally uploaded by heidi/quiddle.

This is hilarious. Courtesy of my friend Heidi.

Fwd:, originally uploaded by expatrick.

Lov.li in mercury!

Come to the lov.li Fair!, originally uploaded by expatrick.

The fair is going to be a blast! Come down and bring cash t buy art and handmade products!

Purists question why I need the Windows box at all, and lately, because it’s become such a pig due to

• Windows ’service packs’ which install hundreds of megabytes of code on my computer and seem only to slow it down
• Anti-virus software which intercepts just about everything that happens on the computer to make sure it’s not malicious, but in the process slows the computer to a crawl
• The viruses and spyware that make it through the antivirus software

On top of that, Microsoft has really been pissing me, and everyone else, off:

• Microsoft is talking about suing linux users for patent infringement, and acquiring patents they think linux might infringe on, and trying to sell licenses(!) to linux users. That’s just protection money.
• Windows Vista has ridiculous hardware requirements which make me think that, even with a racehorse computer, the thing will be a dog in months. This has been confirmed by my experience with Vista at the computer store - it seems to barely be able to draw the screen or load it’s own Start menu without a discouraging delay. There’s no way I’m going there.

But there are reasons I can’t work without it - in particular, a five letter word - a d o b e. I need Photoshop to do the design part of my job. Why won’t Adobe sell a linux version of Photoshop? I’d be the first in line to pay for this. They could sell a binary distribution, so there’s no reason for them to give away their source code. The code would be very similar to the Mac OS X version, since OS X is based on the same platform as linux.

A fellow PHP developer I work with has said that he estimated he lost 3 days every year keeping his Windows computer running the way he wanted it to. Mine is at least that. Since he switched to a Mac, he says he spends almost no time keeping his computer working properly.

So this is an experiment - necessity is the mother of invention. My Windows laptop is literally unusable right now, despite North Antivirus and anti-spyware software. So I am using my linux laptop for everything - email, surfing, MP3, spreadsheet, word processing. So far everything has been great - not always straightforward - but it’s always my mistake, and I know what’s under the hood of my computer, and if I don’t like it, I can change it. There’s just one thing missing.

I miss you, Photoshop.

Here it is, as it was. It appeared on a bunch of great blogs. I’m proud of this one - I designed this and all the Barcamp Portland logos and t-shirts. I worked hard to make it look like a tasty piece of chewing gum.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/flash

and am now up and running with Flash 9, watching video with sound.

My Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player arrives tomorrow, and I’ll report how well it works with Linux.

If you’re interested in getting away from Microsoft on your desktop or laptop, the time has come. Start with your last computer, the one that got slower and slower with each Microsoft Disservice Pack, virus and spyware. Header over to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and follow the instructions for turning that computer into something fun and useful again.

05-21-07_1846.jpg, originally uploaded by expatrick.

Fiona comforting megan during first contractions of her brother alex.