The FreeBSD Diary

On Friday, I wrote about heading down to Linux World Expo. Since then I've become convinced that this event has not been widely advertised. I've heard from at least a dozen people who didn't know it was on. That said, perhaps such events don't need to be widely known to be both heavily attended and extremely useful. I'll find both answers soon enough.

Here are are the events I am planning on seeing. This list was compiled through the Linux World Expo site. It's a nice feature. You create yourself a login, click on the talks you want, and you have a schedule. Conflicts are highlighted, as well as walking times between talks. You can add items to the schedule, such as meetings with other users. It's very handy.

You can also select the exhibitors you wish to visit. You can then print out a custom map. That's useful, but I have two gripes about that feature.

1. Hightlighting the selected vendors in red isn't much useful when printing in black and white. It makes the booth number impossible to read. A grey scale instead would be better.
2. I selected well over 40 vendors. When printing the map, the vendor list was printed behind the map. Not very useful. See for yourself on this screenshot. I tried Opera, IE, and Netscape. They all had the same problem. I saved the output to a file, then manually massaged the file until I could get something worth printing.

My schedule is:

• Wed, Jan 21, 2004
  • Introduction to LDAP
  • The Golden Penguin Bowl
  • PostgreSQL
• Thu, Jan 22, 2004
  • Open Source in US and International Government
  • Linux Solutions - Ubiquitous Computing
  • Open Source is Open for Business
  • Linux Impact On The Public Sector
  • NYC *BSD Users Group
• Fri, Jan 23, 2004
  • Preparing for PHP 5
  • The Complimentary Nature of SSL VPNs and IPSec VPNs
  • Programming Weblogs with Python
  • Open Source Licensing for Commercial Applications

If you think there are other absolutely-must-see talks, please let me know.

Since Friday, I have redone the brochures for Bacula and BSDCan. I decided that folding several hundred pieces of paper was not a good thing to do. Staples printed 750 copies of the BSDCan brochure and 500 copies of the Bacula brochure for about CAD$87.00. Remember: both brochures are double sided.

On Sunday night, I also did up a brochure for Open Source Weekend. I'm taking about 100 copies of that, single sided, so I'll just print those off at home.

I haven't seen my friend Dana since she visited New Zealand. Since then she has accumulated a husband and 1.5 children. I've met none of them despite living just 8 hours drive from them. I'll be visiting them too.