PlayStation3

Yes, I was one of those nuts who waited for a PlayStation3 on launch day. I chose the Metreon in San Francisco as my spot, and that was luxurious until midnight when they stopped feeding us. All in all, a 24 hour wait in line ’til I left with my black PlayStation3 bags.

Like my good friend Miguel put it, “But why did you do that? You don’t even game.” To prove his point even more, launch day was almost a month ago and it’s taken me this long to start messing with my PS3. Before tonight, I watched the free Blu-Ray movie and checked out the photo slideshow, but that was about it.

Today, I tried out Resistance: Fall of Man. I have to admit. It was pretty fun. The graphics are nice, but not mind blowing. I haven’t gotten very far, but there’s some fun things in the game already like controlling a tank and taking over some mega-guns to shoot the enemies. The online gaming feature was fun too, but that’s not why I bought a PS3.

Instead, I’m excited for something I ordered today: Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3. I’m excited about this for many reasons. This will be my first tinkering with Linux. More importantly though, I’ll get to program for the Cell processor. Now, I’m not sure how much of the processor I’ll be able to program for (I keep reading conflicting stories), but I hope all of it. For some reason, the Cell processor just has this pull on me.

Another neat thing too is that the PS3 runs Flash from the GameOS. I’m trying to figure out which version so I can build stuff for it. I’m know it’s not version 9, but I hope they get a v9 player soon. I’d like to develop some Flex stuff to browse from the PS3.

All in all, pretty exciting stuff…as far as a computer nerd is concerned. LOL

360Flex – A Brief History

360Flex, our lil Flex conference, is open for registration. It’s hard to believe that less than 2 months ago, the idea for 360Flex wasn’t even there. One day while chatting with John Wilker I said, “You know, we need a Flex conference. MAX is good and all, but we need a conference dedicated just to Flex and nothing else.” John agreed and we decided to have a conference. Now, John will be the first to tell you that I tend to have Pie-in-the-Sky ideas and this sounded right up that alley. He probably thought I might bring it up once or twice afterwards, but it would more likely than not drop to the wayside.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I’m chatting with Ted Patrick. We’re just about to announce the whole Free Flex Training ditty. I tell Ted, “You know, we really need to take this to the next level.” Ted nods. “We need to have a full fledged Flex Conference.” Ted says he was thinking of the same thing. Ted and I are smart guys, relatively speaking. =) We realize that having two competing Flex Conferences would be pointless. Therefore, we decide to combine our efforts. I introduce Ted to John and the committee is born.

None of us had really done a conference before, so we just sort of asked people we know who do conferences for some pointers. I ask Doug and Dave of Mashup Camp fame for some pointers. Fate puts me next to Michael Smith of CFUnited fame at the MAX UGM dinner, so I pester him with some questions. I’m not sure who Ted and John talked to, but from there we had our base from which to jump.

October 17th 2006, we have our inaugural virtual meeting. December 6th 2006, the registration site goes live. March 5th 2007, the conference begins. I don’t know how fast most conferences go, but I think we’ve done pretty good for ourselves.

Luckily, I had Silvafug to bounce ideas off of. If you’re a UGM, don’t overlook the valuable resource that is your group. Throw things at them and see what sticks. They’ll let you know what’s good (free Flex Training, Flex Conferences) and what’s not (matching UG t-shirts to wear at MAX). I still think matching shirts woulda rocked! =)