At the Morgan Hill music and movie night.

Band is great, playing lots of R&B covers. The movie tonight is Ferris
Bueller's Day Off. I love this town.

Anderson dam cycle ride

Jackie and I headed up to Anderson dam for a fun but strenuous bicycle
ride.

View from the Office

This is the view I had while I ate my lunch today. I really must get out here and work more often...

Talking at the Google Technology User Group on Monday

I will be talking at the Google Technology User Group meeting on Monday 12th May, about Google App Engine. There is some room left, so if you are interested, please sign up and come and mingle - there is a lot more than just my talk to see at these meetings, and the community is great.

You can find the signup page at http://sv-gtug.org/event/2008-05-12.html. I hope to see you there.

Cheers

Dick

WikiNotes Open Sourced

I am very pleased to announce that a project I have been working on at Google has now been open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. This application implements a personal Wiki for the Android platform and demonstrates a number of key concepts about Android software development. You can read the full announcement at http://android-developers.blogspot.com and the project is at http://code.google.com/p/apps-for-android. Enjoy.

On Air

Putting the finishing touch into my new podcast recording studio seemed to be the ideal excuse to try and start blogging again. The sign you see on the left is an "antique" on-air sign that Jackie bought me for Christmas. I mounted it on the door today and put a little fluorescent light in it, and voila - the finishing touch.

Of course, a podcast isn't really "on air" but it is nice to let people know when you are recording so that they can avoid walking in during the recording. The completion of the studio is good for starting something else up again as well - the Podcasting book that I almost finished and then put on hold for a year while we moved out to California, started new jobs and all that other stuff.

I am pleased as punch with my studio - some of the highlights include a video-conferencing and media center powered by a Mac Mini connected to a 32" HDTV, and video conference capable as well. I have the room pre-wired with four microphones so that we can just sit down and start recording a posse episode, and also the mac mini has an output that runs straight into the 14 channel mixer along (with USB output) along with the mics - this means that we can record people in the room plus video or audio conference other people in and record them as well.

On top of all this, there is a monitor output from the sound board to an infra-red headphones transmitter, and four pairs of receiving wireless headphones so that we can all monitor the recording while it is happening, but not have any trailing headphone wires (it is also a wickedly good setup for recording conferences without the people at the other end hearing any echo, or their voice getting picked up by the microphones in the room).

The room is filled with comfy furniture, and I put up heavy curtains around three of the walls which, when drawn, help deaden any echoes. The results are pretty good - you can always judge for yourself at http://javaposse.com.