April 2009

Blooming Cacti

I almost forgot to mention how amazing the cactus flowers are around our house this year. Don’t take my word for it - check it out:

Cactus Flower

Cactus Flower

Grateful Journal

Mountains
Cactus Flowers
George Bright
Sunlight
Being a Geek!
Apple’s Invitations

Salt Lake City

Now I’m in Salt Lake City! Apple invited me to speak, for a second time, about my work with Podcast Producer. This time I will speak on a panel of three, each of us have been using Podcast Producer to support podcasting on our various campuses. At the University of Arizona, we have just invested a fair amount in a back-end to support the product as it seems to be one of the most cost-effective, standards-friendly ways to deliver video and audio over the internet for a University that is seeing 20% or more budget cuts this year. Ouch.

This is a pretty campus. I had some time to wander around. OK, actually, I had some time to get completely lost! Aargh! LOL. Some of the street names have changed or are not posted well, and there aren’t many campus maps around. That, plus I’m prone to getting lost. Oh well. Nice place to be lost, though. The mountains surrounding the city are stunning.



I don’t suppose you can tell from a panorama photo made small enough to fit on a blog page {smirk}, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

I did get to the workshops they were holding on Podcast Producer 101. Probably I should have gone to the iPhone application development training as the one I went to was too basic for me now that I’ve been working on it for a year. Oh well. It was fun anyway. It’s nice to be surrounded by technical folks interested in the same things I am.

Seattle Photos

I just returned from a week in Seattle. I went for a training related to the Podcast Producer server back-end that my colleague, Bernard, and myself will be building for the University of Arizona campus.

Carl tagged along and we had some fun excursions in the city.

We had some great food! Most notably a Brazilian restaurant, Tempero Do Brazil, at the end of University Way, walking distance from where we stayed at Hotel Deca. We shared Feijoada, and I had Xinju, a black Brazilian beer. Yum!

Tempero Do Brazil in Seattle on University WayHotel Deca in Seattle

Probably our best time was visiting with Garrett and Don. Garrett is a member of a Brazilian drum ensemble in Seattle called VamoLá! and we were able to see them perform on Saturday night at a festival of marching bands in Georgetown. Even better, Garrett and Don invited us to attend a birthday party for one of their friends, David, before Garrett, Carl and I headed off to the performance, and then we capped off the night with a beer at a local bar, C. C. Attle’s. It was a great way to end a week in Seattle!

I have posted some photos I snapped while in town. You have to check out the panorama I took of the cherry blossoms on the quad at the University of Washington!