A quick heads-up to two brief speaking engagments I’ve got coming up on the horizon.

First, I’ll be talking about software to tell stories with at the London Techa Kucha night on 25th July that Steve and Tom are running. That’ll be a radio-edit of the talk I gave at Reboot, more or less.

Then, I’ll be talking at LRUG on August 8th, looking at how as a Rails developer you can work effectively with front-end designers and client-side developers, and how you can keep the integrity of your front-end code at the same level as the back-end.

Come along if you feel like it. And if you found out about these events through the blog, do say hi.

I had my first ever nightmare about work. Well, I say nightmare; to be honest, it only qualifies as unsettling.

But it did involve Ruby’s unicode support.

If you know what I’m talking about, you’ll appreciate why I was scared.

It appears that I’ve been AWOL for a little while. For that, and many other things: apologies.

It appears to have taken a while to decompress from Reboot and get things back on track. The to-do list floating above my desktop has not really got much shorter for a few weeks now. Even though I’m making my way through it, there always seems to be new stuff that needs adding. Also, the stuffy heat is contributing to a lack of both sleep and energy, so maybe that’s why I’ve been posting here less.

Still, I have been doing a few things behind the scenes. My Flickr stream has seen a lot of updates recently, and you’ll probably have noticed the string of del.icio.us links filling the blog up. As ever, they provide rough hints to where my brain currently is.

One thing I’ve been working on is… redeveloping this blog. Boring, I know. But the last time I redesigned, the purpose was to get me writing again. It kind-of worked, but it was also an experiment at developing a truly generic WordPress theme (which almost succeeded). Now I want to make something just for me (although, it turns out that it shares some aesthetic sensibilities). At the same time, it seems like a good enough resaon to upgrade to WordPress 2.0. That’s a story in itself, I tell you. I’ll write more about the technicalities of redeveloping it once it’s launched; there’s a post in the works on patching tagging plugins, the ups and downs of upgrading and the hell that is wp_rewrite, and also another on faking “offset” with the WordPress Loop. Until then, expect to see this place updated soon.

Other things I’ve been working on: a moderately-sized Rails project, on which I’m sole developer and designer. It’s going quite slowly, due to the concentration it’s now demanding – I’m at the “complicated” part of the development, when things go beyond CRUD, and also start demanding the final templates – so there’s been a big diversion into XHTML work. Still, this is also the stage where it gets *really* satisfying. I’m not going to be able to opensource the project as it stands, but there’s at least one plugin to be released from it, not to mention some useful experience. I’ve currently been adding fragment cacheing, which has been most satisfying – both (relatively) simple and elegant in its implementation.

We’ve also been busy at work, having finally launched Nature Network Boston in beta. There’s still some work that needs to be done there – on my part, fixing the microformats (again, more in the future) and tidying the HTML output – but it’s great to see it in “the wild”, as it were. Out of that, I’ve got an article I’d like to write for this site on “Rails from a design team perspective” – there’s an existing “Rails for Designers” piece on the web doesn’t quite cover the ground I’d like it to, or in enough details, so, you know, rather than whinging, I thought I’d write my own. Expect to see that in a week or two.

So, in short: expect to see more, longer content here. I need to get back into writing, and it seems sensible to start by writing up the stuff I’ve been doing that others might find interesting – or at least want to correct me on. In short: this place is going to be revitalised. I’m looking forward to the challenge I’ve set myself.

Day 1: I’m having a lot of fun at Reboot 8. That fun’s mainly taking the form of a lot of entertaining mental somersaults.

I’ve already met so many interesting people doing fantastic, tangibly brilliant things, and listened to many fantastic talks. And there’s a wonderful, wonderful balance of technology, art, media, design, all hinged around an axis of thought. It’s really good. I’m definitely coming again next year, I’ve already decided.

Michael Thomsen’s opening was a cracker; Matt’s Making Senses was thought-provoking, revealing, and no less enjoyable than ever. Adam Arvidsson’s General Intellect – or the Renaissance of Karl Marx was utterly captivating – a lecturer with no slides, no notes, and the audience in the palm of his hand for 45 minutes. It also complemented Ulla-Maaria Mutanen’s Crafter Economics very well indeed, and illuminated more of that talk for me.

Ben’s “How to be a Renaissance man” ended the day – and began the night. I have merely one sentence of notes from it, but it was pretty fantastic, and a pep talk that I really needed right now. A pep talk for doing, making, building, and being in the future. I hope I’ll return to the UK energised and excited – and with enough momentum that nothing else will get in my way.

I hope, anyhow. I turned down another beer for the sake of sleep and my talk tomorrow. I’m talking tomorrow, which is moderately nerve-wracking. Hope it goes well.

Over in Denmark now. If you’re at Reboot, do say hi to the bequiffed redhead with a beard. Ended up flying out sitting next to Jeremy and Jessica; very pleasant chat, and nice to meet someone before the conference proper kicks off.

I took the opportunity to finish my slides on the plane. A job well done, I feel. Now: to go and find a boat…

Been quiet here; it’s been busy at work (more on that next week) and it’s been busy outside work, working on my talk for Reboot.

Looking forward to Reboot hugely. The lineup looks fabulous – really mind-expanding, powerful stuff – and I’m really looking forward to meeting the many new faces I don’t know, as well as seeing old friends again.

I hope to put the PDF of the slides, big as it may be, online soon, along with a rough PDF script. Let me polish them off, first. Also, there’s now a pReboot podcast interview with me over at bloxpert which you can listen to. Not sure how it came across – a bit enthusiastic, a bit dorky – but hope it all makes sense.

Post-Denmark, things will really kick off around these parts. Hoping to be writing more, taking more pictures, and making sure it’s all very visible here. What Ben writes about building and sculpting the tangible, the physical is really striking a chord right now. Now, I just need to work out how to build these things.

Well, that was America. Thanks to the very generous Dan Heaf, I’m sitting in the Virgin Atlantic Lounge at LAX, sipping free drinks and catching up the world online. The presentation went down well, it seems; I’ve had some interesting emails as a result and some kind words. The PDF isn’t up online yet, but the most indepthwrite-up – featuring pictures of yours truly + slides – is over at Near Near Future. Given Regine was in the front row, hammering away at her notes, there are obviously some gaps but the basic premise is there. I’d argue it’s less a “consumer” perspective and more just a perspective on the gaming industry (rather than academic/research perspectives), but it’s still great to see it out there, and to a huge audience. Thanks very much for the write-up, Regine!

And so I’m about to board a plane and hop back to the UK. I’ve had a great time at Etech – it all began sinking in late on Thursday (and especially very late on Thursday, when I had a fantastic night, thanks to danah, Matt, Alex, and many others).

Many thanks must also go to the organisers of the conference, O’Reilly and especially to all those (friends and new acquaintances) in the British contingent who put up with me, nerves and all, and steered me through safely. It’s slowly sinking in just how wonderful an experience it was. My further thoughts from the conference – and there are, as ever, several, will follow in due course.

So, I made it. Been in the states a few days now and I’m pretty much over the jetlag. I think.

ETech kicks off today – I’m sitting watching Cal set up for an eight-hour marathon on How We Built Flickr – well, I missed it in the UK, so I may as well take all the opportunities I can get. My talk is in rude health – pretty much there, just requires a degree of fine tuning.

Have been having a great time in the US so far. The train ride down from LA to SD was just awesome; I’ve got a big stack of gorgeous photos that’ll be gracing Flickr soon, I hope. Then I hung around with Simon and Tom for a while – watching them eat a $200 lunch, hitting up the Apple Store for goodies, and then finally (and much documented), watching the Oscars.

Last night a huge stack of UK geeks went to the Kansas City barbeque joint – as the sign outside said, where the “Top Gun Sleazy Bar Scene” got filmed. Good barbeque, I tell you.

And now the talk’s about to begin. More later…