Plains, Rails, and Automobiles
I am sitting the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, having happily found a data port and an Ethernet cable in my laptop bag. (Apparently air travel profiteering precludes the possibility of free wireless access here.)
RailsConf 2009 was definitely a success in my book. Among my favorites sessions were talks on testing, automated code quality checking, user-interface design principles, caching, Metal and Rack, and a brief introduction to Sinatra.
During the final keynote, an informal poll was taken concerning the Las Vegas venue. Surprisingly, quite a few didn’t think it was that great. Personally, I enjoyed it more than I expected. I spent one night walking the 6.6 miles up and down the Strip taking pictures, another watching the new Star Trek movie at an IMax, and a third at Blue Man Group. Most of Saturday I hiked around Red Rock Canyon, again with my camera. I don’t understand how or why someone would come to that part of the world spend all their time at a poker table, or walking up and down a few blocks of pavement. There is no doubt in my mind that what’s out of doors in Vegas is of much more worth than what’s inside them. But maybe that’s just me.
