Hello BarCampers, my name is George Huff, but on twitter, my name is georgehuff - nice to meet you.  Over the course of this weekend I attended my first Barcamp.  Well, actually it was my second, but only on the technicality that I caught the tail end party at SXSW in Austin.  This was right before we played Urban Frisbee on the way to another party. Anyhow…

BarCamp is a (geek) conference built like a wiki, we can have a democratic schedule built on the fly.  Want to discuss a topic?  Any topic at all?  Come to BarCamp and paste your topic and name in one of the many timeslots.  At first I decided to be a fly on the wall and sort of take it all in, but then I changed my mind and decided to join up with Bram Piyoto and be an “assistant” presenter where design meets tech.  Hopefully I come across as being less of a jackass than I really am, here’s to hope.

And then came Sunday, while sitting in on a panel discussing hacking existing Wordpress themes I decided to address a need of how to build a theme from scratch. Because I once wrote a post detailing how to simply build a wordpress theme, I decided to build on the basic idea.  But instead of discussing building Eleven3, I discussed my most recent project, HomeSkillet Records.  As I did it last minute, I had a little tiny room with about 8 guests, it may have been light, but it sure was a captive audience! You’re sort of forced to listen with numbers that small - but I hope it was useful for people.

Mmmm Brain Power

Anytime a bunch of geeks get together there is a lot of brain power getting kicked around, so that’s pretty awesome.  What’s great is the general goodwill everyone has.  People are happy to be here and love a chance to have their thoughts and ideas expressed or learn new ones.  Traditionally, other conferences are a little bit idol worshippy feeling, which is fine (cause I am so into Shaun Inman and Jon Hicks), but this one is the opposite.  There are a few “names” here, but generally speaking everyone here is just here to geek out, prettttty awesome.

I had a blast and met many people who I have seen on Twitter - it’s always good to meet people in real life. I am not a stalker.

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After my long stint in Alaska, I decided I needed to take the day off (if you are a client, i’m back on track tomorrow!!). I never really take days off as I have said before. I emailed a few people and talked to a few clients, enough to make sure there were no immediate fires. After that, I got ready for a trip through the heart of Portland, out to the Apple store in Beaverton, and then back to North Portland (nopo) where I reside.

One might think this would be an easy trip at 1:30 in the afternoon, nope! Let’s start with the first stop on the agenda, the auto shop. I’m not going to name name’s as my fiancee’s cousin works there and they’ve been good about the situation as-so-far. But I have had to bring the car BACK for the third time for the exact same problem. My POS Jeep can’t seem to get fixed. This last time they had the car while I was in Alaska! Two Weeks! Today I picked it up, I was weary of it working at all.
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Danielle, my girlfriend, has a migraine headache. She is lying in bed, sensitive to light, movement, and any other form of sensory perception. Thank goodness she can’t read my mind, I am a shitty caretaker. With this migraine being worse than the one before, and the one before being worse than the one before, Danielle, who is afraid of needles, has opted to track down a doctor to give her a shot.

The problem is, her normal doctor’s office is closed today. Any new doctors she would like to see require a three week wait time for new patients. That leaves us with a handful of emergency/urgent care facilities in the Portland area.

This shouldn’t be to hard to compile a list right?
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Me!

I had a colleague ask me about this site, asking if it was mine. While I do live in Portland, I do love CSS, I am shocked that Google would bestow this honor upon me. And as James Hall, a CSS guru from The Good Harvest, told me, blogging about the fact I am known for Portland and CSS will make my Google Search ranking even stronger for those terms!

So here I am. Feeling fancy! Indulge me in my narcissism and run a search for portland and css. Oh happy joy day.

Ok, back to the code.

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Update: Ok, no longer number one, stupid Google! That lasted all of 20 minutes.

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The sun is shining and I am in my office playing catch up on all of my projects. It’s ok though, cause I really like to do this stuff. Toula, my dog, is whining at me and letting me know it’s time to put down the work. Today is St. Patties Day, which translates into green, drinking, and leaving the computer screen.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and it means spring is here. Thank goodness, the winter always drags on me. Just like it did in Sitka, Alaska where I grew up. Yes. I am a different breed. The grass will need to be cut soon. The first project out the door is HomeSkilletFest. This site changes once a year for each new fest. I don’t know how I am going to think up a new theme every year, but I guess that can worry can wait.

I’m feeling quite good these days as I finally feel like I’m on the right path. That’s all I have to say about that.

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Ok, so that title is so played out, but what can I say? I am sitting in my office and it’s 102 degrees outside, in Portland. I forgot to mention, my office is my garage, my garage has no AC. I am sitting in here cooking. No worries though, the tail end of this week was spent at WebVisions, which is conveniently located across the river from my day job.

I went and saw four different speakers. From the four that I went to, nothing groundbreaking, or new to me was presented. However, I think it was a huge value to the majority of the audience there. Out of the four I attended, I got ideas for more posts, found I was thinking in the right direction, and thoroughly enjoyed the celebration of geekdom that is webvisions.

What follows is my account of the minority of speakers I saw.
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