Eclipse Con 2006 - Day 3

It's day 3 of EclipseCon 2006 and nothing too exciting happened. I went to the usual talks and presentations about RCP, DSDP, and other Eclipse projects and tools. Some of the more interesting ones I attended were about actions and commands and the undo system.

The key note about Apache and Eclipse presented at the start of the day wasn't particually interesting. I spent most of the talk just checking email and surfing the web...

After the second day of attending the short talks held towards the end of the day, I have to say that I really hate the way they have set it up. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the short talks of nine minutes are held in different conference rooms spread all over the convention center and are presented one right after the othere. There are not breaks in between the short talks. So that means you gotta run or leave the a talk early in order to attend the next talk without missing it.

Today's lunch wasn't all that great either - it was some kind of pasta. But the reception at the end of the day was much better. There were a variety of foods from different cultures.

Anyway, I bought a bunch of books on Eclipse plug-in and RCP development, and one on JST. Although I can get them for less expensive at Amazon.com because of the taxes I have to pay here, I figured that since my company is gonna reimburse me for the purchases, why not go all out!

Eclipse Con 2006 - Day 2

Day 2 of EclipseCon 2006 was great - lots of informative talks and presentations, good food (breakfast, lunch, AND dinner), and free vendor marketing crap!

The talks and presentations I attended today mostly consisted of RCP and plug-in development, and various tools for Web Services and Hibernate. The one talk I attended today that was particularly interesting was "NASA Mission Operations with RCP". The talk went over how NASA uses RCP and many other Eclipse platform tools to create custom applications used by the Mars lander and Mars rover missions. It's hard to describe everything the RCP application does, so just take my word for it, it was very cool!

The one thing I don't like at the conference are the the 9-minute talks. I don't mind that the talks are only 9 minutes, actually I think it's a good thing since it prevents the presenters from rambling on and on. What I DON'T like is that there is no extra time in between the short talks to move from one place to the other - a new short talk starts right after the other ends. That means I had to run from one conference room to another if I wanted to attend a different short talk without being late. I hope this is something they'll change in next year's conference. I think a two minute passing time would be great to have between each short talk.

Eclipse Con 2006 - Day 1

So my employer, Lunar Logic, Inc., sent me over to Santa Clara for this year's Eclipse Conference. I was pretty excited because it's my first time attending the Eclipse Conference, or any conference of this size and exposure for that matter. Not only am I excited about the conference, but also to take a week away from work and visit the Bay Area. I have a few friends in San Fran that I plan to visit at the end of the week before I head back to Eugene.

Today was the first day of Eclipse Con 2006 - and what a day it was! There were ALOT of people at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and I'm sure there will be even more during the rest of the conference. There were people of all ages and ethnicities from all over the world. Not surprisingly, the male/female ratio was about 10 to 1...

All registered participants recieved a compensation bag full of goodies. There was a nice EclipseCon backpack specifically designed for the tech geek in all of us - lots of pockets for your accessories, a pouch for your laptop, and even a PDA protector! Also included in the bag were a 256MB USB stick, the "Eclipse Rich Client Platform" book (McAffer, Lemieux), CDs, brochures, a t-shirt, and some marketing junk.

The two turtorials I took today were "Plug-in Development" and "Rich Client Platform Development". Both were really good and full of useful information. Before taking the tutorials, I knew very little about both subjects. Now, I feel like I can program them in any applicatoin - well, not really, but I do know much more that before and I plan to use this information in some future projects I have in mind.

The next few days at Eclipse Con I'll be attending various talks and presentations on RCP, plug-in, and mobile development. I feel these subjects will be most useful for my personal, as well as professional, projects.

Been Busy...Enjoying the Snow

Nothing exciting happened in the last month since my last post except that I've been trying to enjoy the last part of the Winter season. I've gone skiing and snow-blading pretty much every weekend since the start of the new year. I have to say, since this is only my first season skiing and snow-blading, I'm doing quite well. In fact, I'm donig very well that I went on some "black-daimond" runs the last few times I was up at Willamette Pass.

It's Spring break now, but there's still alot of snow falling up at the Cascades. After I get back from the Eclipse Conference, I plan on heading up to Mt. Bachelor one more time before the end of the season. I started the season there, and I want to end it there, weather permitting.

A White Valentine

I woke up this morning, Valentines day, to find snow flakes falling outside my window. It has been years since the last time it snowed in Eugene, so I was excited, to say the least. As I drove to work, and for most of the morning, it started to snow more. It was beautiful to watch the snow flakes fall from my 4th floor corner office in downtown Eugene. Most of the morning wasn't very productive due to me just staring outside and day dreaming about the snow and my special Valentine (you know who you are).

Well, I just want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day. Whether or not you have someone to spend this day with - it's a perfect time to stuff down tons of chocalate and milk...yumm!