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Posts with tag codejam

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The Veranda, Orlando. With French doors. A romantic place for a codejam.

The magic of Orlando

It's not that Alex's apartment isn't nice (it's actually very nice, with a great view of many other condos), but it's no Grand Floridian. Thankfully, the Blogsmith clan seems to thrive in reduced space and comfort. And we've done our best work since the days of the White Plains Code Crunches. I'm confident that we've yet again revolutionized the blogosphere in a way that unfortunately only a relative few will ever get to benefit from. Suffice to say that graphic designers/html guys have never had it so good for building blogs. You can thank me later, Matt.

What else happened over the week?
  • I managed to sit next to both Sir Richard Attenborough and an unnamed member of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the plane ride back. I also was on two flights that took off and arrived pretty much on time. This might be a first.
  • I played a Wii. Now I really want one. (Did you see me resist the temptation to say "I played with Alex's Wii?")
  • We provided a textbook case of our work process for Alex to document for his talk at the AOL developers' conference this week.
  • Gavin managed to perform his new managerial duties while still getting a bit of slick code written.
  • I met Celly's fiancee and Gavin's new lady friend as well.
  • We got to hang out with Brian on the first day of him being someone else's boss.
  • I got a great idea for starting a business by ripping off drunks and letting them pretend to understand/enjoy wine (annoying flash site warning. To sum up, dispense single ounces of wine for 10% of the price of a bottle, enjoy your profit).
Oh, and I started refining my new startup idea. I can't wait to tell everyone!

Free Association (bullet list edition)

Let me know the first thing that comes to mind when you hear:
It must be CodeJame Puma. Unhinged. These past two codejams have been a little on the twitchy side. Not much recreation. And I thought this was the happiest place on earth. To be fair, there were constant fireworks, and quite the amazing rainbow... and we did get to go on these little awesome boats.

Oh wait. No we didn't. I just thought we were gonna because Gavin promised.

Good things:
  • Doodlebops?
  • California Grill
  • Wazzabi
  • Fran
  • Colors in the CMS -- finally
  • The porch
  • monorails
  • bash.org
  • pumas, pumas, pumas
Not as good things:
  • Delayed launch
  • Crazed media tab
  • Brian sick
  • Airplanes
  • No boats. Not even a little. Not even go-karts. I don't think Gavin and Celly realize how much they take the sun in November for granted. I'm more than likely going home to snow now.
So I guess it evens out. Except for the part about the boats. Look for those updates to launch soon. I'm using the "alpha" version now, and it's a far more pleasant blogging experience.

CodeJam Orlando

an egret perched along the water at the Portofino hotelGavin's a lucky guy, he gets to spend his birthday not just with me, but a room full of the Blogsmith team plus something like 27 other people.

We're split between the Portofino (Gavin and Alex's room and our "office") and the Hard Rock, both at Universal. Pretty nice, a little bit Vegas-y, and definitely the biggest room we've been in for any Blogsmith trip. Then again, it's the most people ever involved in any trip.

The first major result of this? Engadget and some other sites (soon to be all) are now readable on phones and other mobile devices. If you use a PSP or a Sidekick, or one of a few other sundry devices that answer as desktops for some reason, you can manually point your browser to m.sitename.com. Most of the bugs should be ironed out soon.