Another year, another great OSCON event. The slides for my intl me this, intl me that talk are now available online via Talks page.

This past Tuesday I was a co-presenter at GeekSessions, an event that brings together speakers on a particular topic and the audience interested in it, or, as their site says, "a place with smart people and free beer." This Geeksessions event was, of course, centered on PHP and the other speakers were Cal Henderson of Flickr, Lucas Nealan of Facebook, and Sara Golemon of Yahoo!. We each had 15 minutes, but everyone had excellent talks given the time constraints.

Thanks to Cindy and Shon Burton and Christian Perry for inviting me and for organizing the event, and to Terry Chay, for being the MC.

The slides from my 15 minute talk, all 40+ of them are on the Talks page.

I've just uploaded some photos taken over the New Year's eve period. One album is from a pre-party at my friends' place, and the other from the awesome Sea of Dreams event at the SF Concourse center. I had a lot of fun shooting both events, and a lot of it was due to my new camera acquisition - Nikon D3 - with its absolutely amazing performance in low-light situations.

I'll have more to say on D3 in another post, but for now, check out the photos. A selection of Sea of Dreams ones can also be seen on Flickr, or even better - on Flickriver.

As if the current proliferation of social networks was not enough, Plaxo has recently launched its own offering called Pulse, in the best tradition of branding-via-metonymy. First of all, "Pulse"? I am generally not in the habit of checking my friends' vital signs several times a day, so that kind of got lost on me. Maybe they could have done better with Spasm, Borborygm, or ultimately, Omphaloskepsis, since that's basically what social networks are.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that Plaxo Pulse fails. Out of the gate. Dead on arrival. Why? Well, ever since it launched I've been receiving notices that such-and-such has added me as friend or wants to add me as a business contact. These notices provide a link to go to Pulse site and confirm the connection. Not recognizing one of the names, I decided to clicke on the link to check it out, but all I saw was a page that said, "Not a member yet? Sign up!" Are you freaking kidding me? You expect me to sign up just to see who wanted to add me as a contact? No thanks, Pulse. You lost me at "click here".

I am back from Atlanta. This was a pretty good conference and also my first visit to that area. There were some very interesting talks, and the closing keynote was supremely funny and inventive - great job, Sean (and Marco). A few of us ventured into the city in the evening and had the best LHB event so far.

Slides for my keynote and VIM presentation are available on the Talks page.

Ed Finkler, or funkatron, as he prefers to be known (although I'll have to investigate this claim of "tron"ing the "funk"), put up a Guide to php|works Atlanta. He has good judgement to highlight both of my talks (your pick of a beer at the conference, Ed). Apparently, Matt Mullenweg won't like whatever it is I have to say in my keynote, which means I can make whatever extravagant claims I want. And yes, "Vim for (PHP) Programers" should be very nerdy, yet very, very hot. Oh yes. Work it, baby. I'm almost positive someone will go into the Insert mode during the talk.

Off to Atlanta tomorrow. I hear that the ratio of single, attractive, funny and intelligent women to, well, men over there is about 9:1. 'Nuff said.

So I was going to write a long post, nay, multiple long posts about my new job, moving to San Francisco, how cool my new place is, how much I love living here, etc, etc, etc. You know, the usual stuff from someone who moves from suburbia of South Bay to the coolest city in the country. But I'll save you the grief of reading through that and summarize:

1. My new job (at Outspark) is cool. I get to build platforms to support games that we publish and all these games include some type of social interaction. So, Web 2.0 + games = profit!


2. Our first game — Fiesta — is blazing through our target demographic like Homer Simpson through week-old donut bucket behind Kwik-E-Mart.


3. San Francisco rocks. You should try living here at least once.


4. On second thought, no, don't try living here, it's crowded and expensive enough as-is. You can visit, but if you do, please, never, ever call it San Fran. Or SF. Or, heaven forbid, Frisco. The locals call it "the city", but for you it's San Francisco. St. Francis of Assisi, mkay? Welcome.


5. You should vote for my submission to the Passport theme photo contest at JPG Mag. Really. All the cool kids are doing it.

Let's move on to the real topic. Even before I moved to the city, I kept hearing that the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is something to be experienced. So this past weekend, I got up early enough (yes, 10 am, I blame my co-workers for the previous night) and went to "experience" it. My place is just over a mile from the Ferry Building and it's a very nice walk along Embarcadero and all the piers. Just beautiful, especially on a cool, breezy morning.

The market itself is outside, along the front of the building, but most of it is on the rear plaza overlooking the Bay. Walking through it is enough to make you salivate: fresh vegetables piled high on the tables, golden honey glistening under the sun, heirloom tomatoes showing their multi-hued juiciness to the public. I saw a stall that sold not fewer than 6 different types of pluot. I tasted (and bought) Snow Giant white peaches that were so sweet and tender that you don't even have to chew them. I lost count of the word "organic" written on the product signs. And if you tire or get hungry, like I did, just walk to one of the food stalls on the south side, get yourself a nice California-style omelet, salad, or sandwich, and enjoy it while sitting by the water and thinking how awesome this place is.

Still with me? Good, it's not over yet. There's also the Ferry Building itself, which I can unabashedly and without slightest exaggeration call "foodie heaven". From Cowgirl Creamery, making dozens of varieties of cheeses and creams, to I Preferiti di Boriana, giving you a taste of Tuscany, to Recchiuti Confections, that looks nothing more like Apple Store, but for chocolates. And then there is Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Cafe, which surprised even me with their selection. Plus, there are restaurants, cafes, wine shop, gelateria, and even a bookshop, to complete the picture. Quite awesome, to sum it up, and a great place to spend a few hours. Or a day. And a bunch of your money. The only other place I've seen anything like it is Paris.

Granted, Mountain View Farmers Market is quite good and is cheaper. But then, it is in Mountain View.

So if you do visit San Francisco — or if you live here, but haven't bothered to visit the market — do yourself a favor and get over to Ferry Building on a nice Saturday morning. You won't regret it.