thoughts.on.code

I was perusing my favorite online email service just now and saw this red banner blazing across the top of my mail:

My first reaction was “Holy shit they detected Firebug?!?!” My next reaction was “ok, lets see how we fix this”. So I clicked the link. It brought me to this page (included below incase you cannot see the page):

Firebug can make Gmail slow

If you’re using Windows or Linux

For the best Gmail performance, we suggest disabling Firebug for www.google.com by following these steps:

1. Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
2. Click the bug icon in the top left corner of Firebug and select ‘Disable Firebug for mail.google.com.’

If you’d like to keep Firebug running, you may improve Gmail performance by following these steps:

1. Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
2. Click the Console tab.
3. Select Options.
4. Uncheck Show XMLHttpRequests.
5. Click the Net tab.
6. Select Options.
7. Check Disable Network Monitoring.

If you’re using a Mac

Please note that if you’re using a Mac, you’ll continue to experience performance problems unless you disable Firebug for Gmail. To disable Firebug for www.google.com, please follow the steps below:

1. Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
2. Click the bug icon in the top left corner of Firebug and select ‘Disable Firebug for mail.google.com.’

If disabling Firebug for Gmail doesn’t improve performance results, you may have to entirely disable Firebug.

I am just now disabling Firebug for Gmail… hopefully that will also speed up iGoogle, ’cause it is slower than a snail most of the time on my Powerbook.

Too funny

I put my InfoTec 2007 presentations online last night. If you don’t want to hear about how much fun I had giving them, here is the link.

My first talk was a 4 hour “Introduction to Ruby on Rails”. It had a decent turnout, and was a lot of fun to give. Thanks to a IM chat with Harish the night before the talk, I gave the best line I’ve given so far in a talk (IMHO): “So, what type of web application would you like to build today?”

My second talk was “Agile Java Web Frameworks”. There were twice as many people in this talk that had signed up before the conference started, though slightly fewer than in my rails talk. A slightly disjointed talk, I hit upon some of the more interesting web frameworks in the java world: Struts2, Spring MVC/WebFlow, Click, Rife, and then the dynamic contenders: Grails, Rails, and Lift.

Click was an interesting experience, as I had only learned about it the night before from Stephen Haberman. It looks pretty promising.

We only had enough time to quickly dive into one of the frameworks, and the audience chose Grails. So we delved into the bowels of GroovyQuiz and I showed them how it works.

Overall I had a lot of fun, and am looking forward to next years InfoTec.

I’ve got a few talks coming up in the next couple months:

March:

Domain Specific Languages - I’ll be talking to the Omaha Dynamic Language Users Group on March 6th.    I will be focusing on the Groovy language, but may slip in some Ruby and Lisp.

Basic Spring -  This talk will be part of the Omaha Java Users Group March 20th meeting.  It will be a “nothing but Spring” meeting.   Nick Larson will be talking about Spring MVC, whil I will focus on the fundamentals.

April:

This year I will be presenting at Infotec, the local Omaha conference for Information Technologies, put together by the local AITP association.  I have one session and one tutorial:

Agile Java Web Frameworks - sort of an omnibus of the latest frameworks, and of course what a “agile web framework” is.

Introduction to Ruby on Rails - this will be a four, yes FOUR, hour tutorial  using Ruby on Rails.  I am so excited to be doing this!  We will be building an application from scratch, covering most of the features in Rails.
Should be a fun couple of months!

Last night I was given the opportunity to come back to Des Moines (after being there just two weeks ago with NoFluff) and talk with the Central Iowa Java Users Group. My talk was entitled “Integrating AJAX into the Enterprise”, which was very well received. Thank you to everyone there last night, I really enjoyed talking with you! The slides will be up on my Presentations page sometime today.Update: slides are posted now… enjoy!

Last night was the last stop in “Secoske’s Summer Speaking Tour 2006″ (I just made that up) and I am very relieved. As I have posted before, I had a lot of talks (at least for me) in the last two months-and-some-days, and it was difficult to prepare for all of them, but I have had a blast! This has been an amazing year for me. Speaking at NoFluff and OSCON, CIJUG, Omaha’s Dynamic Languages User’s Group, and of course home sweet home OJUG, I have gotten the chance to meet and talk with so many amazing people, doing amazing things. I have learned a lot about the technologies I’ve talked about (Ruby/Rails, Java Performance tools, AJAX) and a lot about me.

I really enjoy speaking/teaching. I first started teaching while in Community College (they let me teach Intermediate DOS). At that point in my path I was definetly NOT ready for something of that magnitude. I knew the material, but was not nearly confident enough to talk in front of a class (or any group of people for that matter). And I did not do the best job because of that.

Times have changed quite a bit since then (a decade ago already!), and today I feel a lot stronger in my presentation skills. However, every time I get in front of a group of people I still feel like the consultant/mildly retarded person in today’s Dilbert:

And frankly, I wish I knew too!

Anyone can speak

I have started to take another view of all this speaking stuff: I may not - am most likely not in fact - be an expert in whatever it is I am talking about, but I do know something about the topic, and I have my own experience and background that provides color and context to the topic, and that is the value I can bring to the talk. And you know what the absolute greatest thing is about this veiw? It says that anybody who wants to talk can provide their color and context to the discussion. And we all grow from that. The trick seems to be getting people to want to.

That is one of the big reasons why I push so much at OJUG for new people to get up and talk. I feel that we are a unique, local platform for people who have not had the chance or willingness to speak in public to get up in front of a group familiar people and talk about something that interests them. To that end, we (the OJUG Leadership) have been trying to coax people to give 5,10,15 minute talks on a topic of their choice (I don’t even care if its Java related, as long as they are passionate about it). I don’t want to sound too much like Kathy Sierra (not that thats a bad thing at all!), but when people share what they are passionate about, then we all get something out of it… we all are a little smarter.

Zen and Conversations

While I am rambling, I thought I would throw one more thing out there. Last night was great for another reason. I felt like I had a conversation with the people at the JUG meeting. I was slightly disrobed (not quite naked). And for those of you who have absolutely no idea (or are afraid you do have an idea) what I am talking about, visit Presentation Zen. I did not use a podium (haven’t in a long time actually… man that feels good), and felt like it was much more “talking with friends” than a lecture. And that is so awesome. I feel like I was able to convey so much more than my dry, cliche bullet point slides could have ever done if I had just repeated what was on them. I am really looking forward to the day when I do not need slides at all (going fully naked). I tried that once, when I presented Test Driven Development to OJUG, with just an open, empty word document and Eclipse. That was uncomforable, but liberating at the same time (and obviously difficult for me to explain). I am still very much learning (aren’t we all still very much learning?), and I am happy to be on this path.