Daily Archives: February 20, 2016

SCaLE14x

Computer Science, Linux, Technology & Culture

21-24 January 2016

This weekend, the Southern California Linux Expo came to Pasadena. I’d met my brother Kevin at SCaLE 12x at the LAX Hilton two years ago, but the convention had outgrown that hotel, and a tech-friendly Pasadena councilmember thought that bringing them here to the Pasadena Convention Center would be a good idea.

It was. There were 3000+ hardcore geeks who descended on the town for the weekend.

You know it’s a Linux convention when the nervous nerd walking on the sidewalk looks up at you, takes note of your event badge, and actually says ‘hi’ to you.

On Saturday, Jan 23, eleven students from Polytechnic School—M Yen, K Callero, M Flannery, G Hashimoto, C Hicks, D Magsarili, J Wong, M Xu, C Strassle, M Berke, and J Lang—attended the event, including the SCaLE Youth Track, various other sessions, and the Expo. We learned about the Open Source movement in general, Linux in particular, and met some great people.

It was awesome.

Since the Expo:

  • I’ve been contacted by multiple parents saying how much their kids enjoyed the event, and asking for further info/opportunities like this.
  • I’ve been in email contact with Tom Callaway about a new CS course I’m writing.
  • I appear to have stumbled into a mentoring relationship with a local teacher-in-training with whom I struck up a conversation while leaving Callaway’s talk Sunday morning.

Photo Jan 23, 14 55 47

Southern California Linux Expo comes to Pasadena

Photo Jan 23, 13 15 43

The Hewlett-Packard Pavilion

Photo Jan 23, 11 43 04

Poly student, hoping to win a penguin

Photo Jan 23, 14 18 11

Roaming the Expo

Photo Jan 23, 14 26 29

Poly students grill the System76 representative

Photo Jan 23, 14 18 04

Poly students getting the sales pitch

Photo Jan 25, 16 40 27

Mr. White’s swag

We’ll definitely be back.

Welcome Back (to me!)

Uncategorized

Hi, everybody.

You’re forgiven for not hanging around to see how things have been going here. I’ve been gone for far too long, but I’ll plead “Real Life Happens” and let it go at that. I’ve been extraordinarily busy, and happily so, with a long list of things that I’ll be sharing with you over the course of the next couple of months.

This includes:

  • Teaching an overload the first semester of the school year, during which half of my classes were Physics and half were Computer Science;
  • The development of a new Computer Science curriculum for my school, Advanced Topics in Computer Science.
  • The slow-but-steady consideration of what direction Technology and Computer Science programs will take over the course of the coming years (as far as I can tell, anyway).
  • A reconsideration of the primary topics of interest for this website/blog.
  • A consideration of the “Own Your Own Domain” movement.
  • A consideration of Content Management Systems / Static Site Generation
  • A discussion concerning Edward Snowden
  • Rumination on Twitter and email as communication media
  • A report from the field regarding a student field trip to a Linux conference in southern California.
  • And other topics too numerous to mention.

We’ve got lots to do, eh?

Let’s get started! :)