Here I am in Japan at RubyKaigi 2010. Wow. Generally I tweet a lot about the conf live and then publish those tweets here (in italics) and provide slightly more commentary. So lets get it on.
So my flight leaves at noon for #rubykaigi, takes 13 hours, and arrives at 3pm tomorrow... Wait -- that can't be right. #looksitupagain
Before today's trip to Japan the furthest from the U.S.A. I've ever been is: Canada. #howisthatpossible
In cab. It has begun.
Someone once said "If you've never missed a flight you're spending too much time in airports" #atgate2hoursearly
Yep - can you feel the panic in those first couple of tweets? I was totally freaked out. The actual trip turned out to be easy. I met up with Chad Fowler, Yehuda, and Woody at the airport and we took a bus straight to Tsukuba. I went to an exotic foreign land and the first thing I did was take a bus through 100 minutes of strip malls. But I was in Japan. And Yehuda held forth on 'snowmen' and encodings for most of the way so that was interesting.
So it's 7:15 am in Chicago, meaning I've been up for over 24 hours. So that's like 36 old man hours.
My first meal in Japan was near 60 bucks. And I'm not even in Tokyo yet. I'm gonna need a bigger wallet.
Also, I almost got run over by not one, but two bicyclists using cell phones to text.
And 7-11's are everywhere.
So I survived the first day and even had an excellent dinner. It was a bit pricey but worth it. Many thanks to Makoto Inoue for helping organize this get together - it was exactly what I needed.
Donuts are cute in Japan: http://is.gd/eFXCR
Ate second breakfast/lunch at "Mr. Donut" which is really nice here in Japan. Of course you can get noodles.
Good news: #rubykaigi has a non-freezing temperature. I was worried it would be 91 outside and 50 inside. Which tends to make me sick
Some nice low-key techno playing in the #rubykaigi main convention hall.
RT @headius Ruby 1.8.8 will release this year and be the last 1.8 release. Some debate still about whether to backport 1.9.2 features. #rubykaigi
Ah, Charles got to got to the secret Ruby Core meeting so he's in the know. Actually I could have probably gone too but I wasn't sure if just anyone was allowed.
Btw, the advice I received to stay up as long as possible after my flight to Japan was good. Feeling no jet-lag.
I adjusted my Japanese rent-a-phone to display am/pm and now it reads "0:32pm" I guess they really like military time here
It's the little things that are the most endearing.
Getting an introduction to #rubykaigi in japanese with translations coming in IRC which is displayed on side screens. #lag
Next up at #rubykaigi is a panel on Rails 3/ Ruby 1.9.2 (replacing canceled keynote)
Ah, the translations are back. Mostly. #rubykaigi
RT @headius I can't decide if it will be more or less exhausting to attend three days of conference sessions I can't understand :) #RubyKaigi
.@wycats is fearless - he's critiquing Ruby 1.9.2 while sitting 5 feet from matz on stage
So Leonard was doing the translation from Japanese to English and Matz was doing the translation from English to Japanese which lead the a moment where Matz had to translate Yehuda's (nice) criticism of Ruby 1.9.
One of things @tenderlove really likes about 1.9 is using encodings is painless. You have to think about it but it's easy. #rubykaigi
Secret to getting commit rights on Ruby or Rails? Submit patches with tests over a consistent period. #rubykaigi
.@tenderlove doesn't think that ActiveRecord got the same amount of love that ActiveSupport did in Rails 3. #rubykaigi
Specifically @tenderlove doesn't like ActiveRelation's integration in ActiveRecord in Rails 3. "It needs help" #rubykaigi
.@tenderlove feels less able to bounce around the whole project when developing on Ruby as compared to Rails. #rubykaigi
.@wycats brought up something for Ruby core, saw a lot of discussion referencing his name but he could not participate. #rubykaigi
Ah the perils of trying to develop across (real) languages.
Wait, Sarah's talk is going to be in Japanese? #rubykaigi
Oh, just the first part -- well done. #rubykaigi
She learned a lot of Japanese just for this presentation. Good for her.
Rails wrapping of Javascript is kind of a disaster - mostly because javascript is changing fast. #rubykaigi
Good point - I hadn't really thought about why wrapping SQL works so well while wrapping Javascript works out so poorly.
Step one to writing testable Javascript: Get it out of the view. #rubykaigi
Pivotal uses Jasmine to test their Javascript: Bdd/RSpec like syntax and no dom is required. Can run in browser or headless. #rubykaigi
There's no time between sessions to escape one and go to another. Good thing I don't mind appearing rude. #rubykaigi
Picture a lot of me saying "Excuse me" to people who don't understand english.
OH "Social games are just CMS with bad UI's" #rubykaigi
That's really funny.
MySql 5 only supports 3 bytes for UTF8. huh. #rubykaigi
A 'u' with an umlaut is two code points that represent one character. #rubykaigi
UTF8 and UTF16 are both encodings of unicode. #rubykaigi
In Ruby 1.8 and C a string is just an array of bytes. #rubykaigi
"Corruption is normal" - @wycats #rubykaigi
force_encoding is not the way. If you have to use it you probably have a deeper problem. #rubykaigi
Dear internet: Take all sweeping statements with a grain of salt.
Two sessions in a row on encodings. We all feel like we need to know more about encodings. And then we ignore that feeling until it bites us in the ass.
jugyo has a lot of Growl-themed ideas. #rubykaigi
Had an outbreak of super-sleepiness. Purchased a strange energy drink from an even stranger vending machine and I'm good. #rubykaigi
TermColor can do blink! Now that's progress. #rubykaigi
Cinatra is Sinatra for command line apps. #rubykaigi
"write code like writing blog entries" - jugyo #rubykaigi
Watching Jugyo talk is always entertaining - I loved his lightning talk at last years Ruby Conf.
.@tenderlove has changed into a crappy suit -- It's business time! #rubykaigi
And headgear? #rubykaigi
That, my friends, is awesome. I can't compete in shear crazy and acknowledge my superior.
The number of languages (code) vs. the number of languages (speak) is completely off. #rubykaigi
"People are interpreters with forgiving parsers." - @tenderlove #rubykaigi
.@tenderlove enjoys programming the most at hack nights. Challenging and fun. #rubykaigi
PHP and Ruby living together: Webrick serving up WordPress. You are one weird dude @tenderlove #rubykaigi
Webrick serving up PHP WordPress. Think about that for a moment.
Making some last minute changes to my #rubykaigi presentation: "Speedy Tests" Come see it tomorrow at 13:30 in room 200
Hey, I just found out I have an hour time slot when I had thought I was going to present for 30 minutes. I guess the crowd is going to get some bonus metric_fu coverage. As I'm going to present in 4 hours I better go write some more content. Panic!
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