Contest photos

I enjoy listening to The Apple Phone Show podcast and reading their blog.

They have a couple contests running right now.

As the entry to the first contest, I uploaded these two photos of Elleda and Gabe I took with my iPhone to Flickr.com.



This blog post is my entry to the second contest.

First family bike ride

A couple weeks ago both Gabe and Elleda renewed their interest in their bikes. Actually, in addition to the larger bikes with training wheels that they each have, they both also have a smaller bike with no training wheels. Gabe gave his a shot back when he learned how to ride without training wheels, but he found the smaller, lighter bike harder to balance. (I see that I blogged about him wanting his training wheels back in May, so I don't think he's tried to ride without them since then.) However the idea got planted, we found ourselves taking those smaller bikes to the park.

For Gabe, learning to ride his bike again was just like riding a bike. Because he could easily put his feet on the ground while sitting on the bike, he could stop easily. That gave him his confidence back. But he still needed our help getting started.

Elleda didn't want our help, and didn't even want us to watch. So we watched out of the corner of our eyes. (She really did seem to have performance anxiety--she did better when she didn't think we were watching.) She was persistent. I think she figured out how to ride (for the first time, without training wheels), stop and start without help in less than an hour.

I think seeing Elleda figure it all out for herself gave Gabe some incentive. Gabe announced proudly this week when I got home from work that he could start by himself.

So Saturday I took down Claire's bike from the garage roof and re-inflated the tires, and went out and bought a WeeRide seat for Henry and mounted on my bike. After everyone awoke from their naps we went for our first family bike ride. We were pretty ambitious: we rode probably a little more than a mile to the local Jamba Juice. The kids did great--no complaining, they stopped and walked their bikes across the street and through a busy parking lot, and (aside from the parking lot) they rode all the way there and back. I was especially impressed with Elleda--she's now quite confident on her little bike. I even saw her ride right off a curb.

Unconditional Love

I just listened to another excellent episode of This American Life. In Act Two, "Dave Royko talks about the decision he and his wife faced about their autustic son's future..." which got me thinking about our short-lived fears about Henry.

It's been only a little over a month since I wrote "The flood gates are opening", and those gates have been opening ever wider since. We've lost count of how many words Henry uses on his own (and he will repeat very many other words after hearing Claire or I, or even Elleda or Gabe say it). And he has begun to say a few two-word sentences, like "Bye-bye Mama" or "Hi Dada".

We are so very lucky.

GTAC

I very much enjoyed the Google Test Automation Conference. The quality of the presentations exceeded my expectations. You can watch them on YouTube. (Also check out the comments on the "Community Thread" on Google's Testing Blog. And there is a GTAC Google Group.)

My favorite presentations were:

• The GTAC Keynote
• Skoll Distributed Continuous Quality Assurance System
• Functional Testing Swing Applications with Frankenstein
• CustomInk DSL [that video doesn't seem to be posted yet]
• Beyond JUnit: Introducing TestNG
  

There were several presentations on testing web applications, which were very interesting and enlightening but that kind of testing isn't a priority for me at Altera right now.

And as I expected, it was an excellent opportunity for networking and exchanging (and generating new) ideas. I fought my introverted tendencies and made an effort to talk to someone new at each opportunity (especially during lunch and at the reception Thursday night). Everyone I met was a pleasure to talk with and several took particular interest in my work. (Two gentlemen in particular gave me some very good insights and pointers at the reception.)

Google was a generous host. They organized the conference and provided their facilities and breakfast, lunch (and dinner Thursday) at no change. All the attendees received a "goody bag" with a t-shirt, notebook and pen and a light-up fridge magnet, and the speakers were given what looked like very nice laptop bags. And we were all invited on a Hudson River boat cruise tomorrow morning. (I'll be there.)

Sure, Google can afford it and they will benefit from their largess; but they still deserve credit for being a class act. (That reminds me of years ago when Microsoft was lauching DirectX and reserved Great America in Santa Clara for the exclusive use of about 100 developers. But that's another story.)

This was actually the second-annual GTAC. Next year it will be in Hyderabad, so it's unlikely Altera will send me (though perhaps they'll send someone from Penang). It I want to be invited back though, my best bet is to submit a speaker submission; this year they invited everyone who do so (even if they weren't chosen to be a speaker).

I'm on YouTube!

I'm in New York City for the Google Test Automation Conference. Today was the second (and final) day. I signed up (and managed to get enough votes to be selected) to give a lightning talk at the end of the day today, the AV folks at Google already have a video up on YouTube.



I thought I would just be part of one long video of all the lightning talks, but they went to the trouble of posting just my talk. We each had 5 minutes to talk, and if we exceeded that time limit we'd be pelted by plastic balls. (And the audience was just waiting for the chance.)



I posted the photos you see me taking with my iPhone on Flickr.

I also found my photo on Picasa Web Albums. It's not bad...that's my good side.



But it wasn't all about me. :-)

I'll follow-up with a post (or two) about the conference itself.

The Art of Pitching

nytimes.com has a very interesting "Interactive Graphic" on The Art of Pitching. I recommend you check it out ASAP, before it's no longer free.

The Legend Of Jack Cust

Worth reading: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/albert_chen/07/31/jack.cust0806/

Tonight is a good night to post this; Cust hit a grand slam and drove in seven of Oakland's 16 runs (vs. Detroit's 10).

He's got 17 home runs (leading the A's) in 240 ABs for just over 14 ABs/HR, which doesn't compare to A-Rod's 11.6 ABs/HR (Ryan Howard's is under 11!), but it's up there. (I wish I had time to write a program to figure out what percentile that puts him at.)