Dave Landers

I just got back from a fun overnight with my son Paul and his friend Nick. Around Christmas, Paul decided we needed to do a “Cross Country Ski / Backpacking” overnighter. We had planned to go last week while I was on vacation, but we decided to wait due to our colds. So I took off a couple extra days from work and we headed out yesterday.

We decided to hit the Sourdough trail - an area we are familiar with (at least in the Summer). The forecast called for high winds along the Front Range, and snow in the mountains. I figured, due to the area where we were going, that we’d have one, both, or neither :).

We get to the trailhead, and it snowing lightly and somewhat windy. By “somewhat windy”, I mean that my estimate at the time was 60 MPH or more. That was confirmed today as I checked the Niwot Ridge data (a set of CU weather research stations). Their Saddle Site is the closet to where we camped (about 1.5 miles south), and it showed average wind speeds at around 50 MPH, and gusts in the 60-70 MPH range. One of their other stations registered a peak gust of around 106 MPH that morning.

Fortunately, once we were off the road and in the forrest, we didn’t experience much of the wind.

For the first mile of the trail, the snow was pretty poor - we walked about as much as we skied But south of the Beaver Bog TH the snow was pretty decent.

We made it to the junction of the Wapiti/Baptiste Ski Trails, (about another mile) and decided the location would be a good spot to make camp - the area seemed to be reasonably sheltered from the wind, and there was a good place where we could camp without worrying about snags or widow makers.

We set up camp and built a fire, intending to do a bit more skiing (without the backpacks) but it didn’t happen. Just a quiet afternoon and evening around the fire.

The trip back this morning was nice - more downhill than the trip in. Downhill is obviously easier, but for us novice cross-country skiers carrying backpacks it also proved to be occasionally exciting. But no one was injured, and we had a great time.

I hope to do things like this more often, it was fun.

In past years, at the Colorado Software Summit, we have taken up a collection and given some sort of “surprise” gift to the organizers: Wayne and Peggy.

We’re going to do something different this year. We recently lost one of our “family” - our dear friend dIon Gillard.

This year’s collection will be sent to the Melanoma Foundation (Austrailia) - hopefully we make it less likely that we loose another friend to this awful disease.

If you are here at the conference, find me or Kelvin and please make a donation.

Thanks.

Technorati Tags: colorado software summit, conference, softwaresummit

I have created a twitter group and an associated pair of bots for use during this year’s Colorado Software Summit.

Listening to @swsmt

The twitter group is @swsmt. If you use twitter, and want to follow tweets about the conference, then just follow @swsmt.

A few minutes later, you should also see @swsmt start following you. The main reason for this is to allow you to direct message the group. If you remove @swsmt from your followers, it should also then quit following you.

Tweeting to @swsmt

To tweet about the conference, or to send a message to everyone following @swsmt, you can do one of several things:

• Direct message the swsmt group (For example: D swsmt blah).
• Reply to @swsmt, or otherwise mention @swsmt in a tweet.
• Use the #swsmt hashtag in a tweet.
• Mention "SoftwareSummit" (one word) in your tweet - this will also pick up anyone tweeting a link to softwaresummit.com

When my bot sees any of the above, it will retweet them to the @swsmt account, so that everyone following the group will then see them.

The bots

Twitter has a pretty decent REST API, and I also found a nifty ruby library (twitter) wrapping that. Throwing together a couple of scripts was pretty easy after that.

Syncing friends

The first script I wrote syncs the group’s friends with followers. Keeping these in sync lets the follow act kind of like a subscription to the group.

The script just grabs both the followers and friends lists, and adds/removes based on the diffs between them.

The script is:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# synchronize followers/followed
# we do this because followers (those who 'join this group') will see
# all the messages, but we need to make them our friend so they
# can direct message the group

# http://twitter.rubyforge.org/
# sudo gem install twitter
require 'rubygems'
require 'twitter'

group_name = 'swsmt'
passwd = 'XYZZY'   # not really :)

# Log in
group = Twitter::Base.new(group_name,passwd)

# TODO only returns 100
# when we get more than 100, this will probably stop working very well
friends = group.friends.collect{ |f| f.screen_name }
followers = group.followers.collect{ |f| f.screen_name }

# followers who are not the group's friend yet (add them)
followers.each do |f|
  unless friends.include? f then
    begin
      puts "Adding friend (following) #{f}"
      group.create_friendship f
    rescue
      puts "Unable to add friend #{f}: #{$!}"
    end
  end
end

# friends who no longer follow the group (remove them)
friends.each do |f|
  unless followers.include? f then
    begin
      puts "Removing friend (following) #{f}"
      group.destroy_friendship f
    rescue
      puts "Unable to remove friend #{f}: #{$!}"
    end
  end
end

Retweeting script

The retweet script searches recent tweets for @swsmt, #swsmt, or softwaresummit, and retweets that to @swsmt. It then grabs any recent direct messages, and retweets those.

Here’s that script:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# retweet messages to the @group
# we'll search for messages with a group hashtag #group or
# referencing the @group
# as well as some other keywords.
# also retweet any direct messages to the group
# run this via cron every couple of minutes to keep the group updated

# http://twitter.rubyforge.org/
# sudo gem install twitter
require 'rubygems'
require 'twitter'

group_name = 'swsmt'
passwd = 'XYZZY'   # not

# search for hashtags, group ref, or conference name
search_query = "##{group_name} OR @#{group_name} OR SoftwareSummit"

# Log in
group = Twitter::Base.new(group_name,passwd)

def retweet(group, from, text, id, lastid)
  retweet =  "Via @#{from}: #{text}"
  retweet = retweet[0,140] + '...' if retweet.length > 159
  puts retweet
  begin
    group.post(retweet)
    id.to_i > lastid.to_i ? id.to_i : lastid
  rescue
    puts "Error retweeting: #{$!}"
    lastid
  end
end
# Keep track of the last ids we retweeted
searchid_file = File.expand_path('~/.group_retweet.searchid')

last_searchid = nil
last_searchid = File.open(searchid_file){ |f| f.gets.to_i } if File.exists?(searchid_file)

begin
  # search for #group hashtag etc
  # TODO this will only return the 50 most recent - if there's too much traffic,
  #   we will drop some.
  Twitter::Search.new(search_query).since(last_searchid).per_page(50).sort {|a,b| a['id'] <=> b['id'] }.each do |m|
    # skip messages from the group itself (probably our last retweet)
    unless  m['from_user'] == group_name then
      last_searchid = retweet group, m['from_user'], m['text'], m['id'], last_searchid
    end
  end
ensure
  File.open(searchid_file, 'w'){ |f| f.puts last_searchid } unless last_searchid.nil?
end

directid_file = File.expand_path('~/.group_retweet.directid')
last_directid = nil
last_directid = File.open(directid_file){ |f| f.gets.to_i } if File.exists?(directid_file)

begin
  # now grab any new direct messages and retweet them
  # TODO this will only return the 20 most recent - if there's too much traffic,
  #    we will drop some
  group.direct_messages(:since_id=>last_directid).sort {|a,b| a.id <=> b.id }.each do |m|
      last_directid = retweet group, m.sender_screen_name, m.text, m.id, last_directid
  end
ensure
   File.open(directid_file, 'w'){ |f| f.puts last_directid } unless last_directid.nil?
end

I’m running both of these via cron. I just turned this on, so we’ll see how it goes.

Technorati Tags: colorado software summit, conference, hashtag, bot, ruby, softwaresummit, twitter

Poking around Google’s street view the other day, I noticed that they drove through the parking lot along Arapahoe and Folsom (Boulder, CO):

View Larger Map

I noticed this on Arapahoe, between 28th and Folsom, and on Folsom just north of Arapahoe.

Sometimes life comes at you all at once. My last week has been like that. Not enough time between events (good and bad) to really process everything.

Late last week, I learned that my good friend dIon in Australia was not doing well. He had been fighting melanoma since May, and the cancer was now definitely winning. We heard that dIon was still fighting and still spewing his usual humor and sarcasm.

Somehow, I was able to set that somewhat aside and get on with my weekend. I helped cook for a 110 people at one of our Order of the Arrow (Boy Scout) service weekends. The guys were fixing up our Cub Scout camp while we cooked for them. We did dinner in 20 Dutch Ovens (plus 6 for the cakes). It was a lot of fun and a big success. Pictures will follow.

After getting back home on Sunday, I took a well-needed nap and avoided the computer because I just couldn’t bring myself to open my email.

Sunday night, we had to call 911 for my Father in Law (my in-laws live next door to us). He had been living with Parkinson’s disease for something like 15 years. We spent basically all night in the ER… he was not expected to live out the day.

This same week last year we were with my Mother in Law in the ICU. She has made an amazing recovery this year, thankfully.

Monday morning, I checked my email (the hospital has wireless everywhere), and discovered dIon was still hanging in there, and was enjoying being read letters from his friends. I was able to choke out a final letter while sitting in the family room down the hall.

My Father in Law passed away peacefully on Tuesday. David Camp was a Presbyterian minister, an Army Chaplain (Korea and Viet Nam), a devoted Kiwanian, and among many other endeavors he was pretty decent at stained glass art. It was frustrating for him to have Parkinson’s take each of these things away, one by one, but he handled it with grace. The family has not quite got our heads around this yet, but on the whole we know he is in a better place and no longer limited by this stupid disease.

On Wednesday, I learned that dIon also passed away. Due to the oddities of time zones around a spinning globe, he actually passed on Thursday. Typical of dIon to mess with my head like that. He was an amazing fellow: a businessman, a technologist, a gifted software developer, a wonderfully artistic photographer, a very funny guy, and it was my privilege to call him my friend.

I’m not whining about any of this. Life hands us the bad and the good. But it sure would have been nice to be able to process each of these one at a time.