While poking around one of the Ruby on Rails sites, I stumbled upon the video of DHH’s keynote at RailsConf 2009. Rails 3 looks really cool, but DHH has definitely mellowed from the 2006 and 2007 RailsConfs I attended. Just watching the keynote brought back some good memories of the 2007 RailsConf.

RailsConf 2007 was held in Portland, Oregon, which is about the most awesome city I’ve been to for a conference. It has all the amenities of a big city, but still keeps a quirky small town feel. Between the conference, awesome micro-brews, and Powell Books, it was a really good time.

This was the RailsConf I went to with my Windows notebook while 99% of everyone there was running on a MacBook, so I played the leper. The speakers were great, and it was absolutely hilarious when one of the vendors had the Extra Action Marching Band show up at lunch the first day to perform. It pissed off the stodgy convention center management, but it was a sight to see. Check out James Duncan Davidson’s excellent photos if you want to see how fun a RailsConf could be.

I was thinking of going to RailsConf this year, but it is in Baltimore. I’ve never been a fan of east coast conferences, and I’m worried RailsConf is losing its fire. Just like JavaOne tapered off in to boredom, RailsConf on the east coast could be its jump the shark moment. But if they ever get around to having it in Portland again, I’ll be there.

After enough time in technology, one tends to become pretty jaded about vendor claims. I’ve seen enough miracle solutions before, most them involving code generation to “eliminate the developer.” It has gotten to the point that if I even hear a vendor mention SOA, I whip out a can of Bear Mace and let them have it.

So it came as a great personal surprise when I actually saw a vendor demo for something both cool and practical. I sit on the .NET Center of Excellence for our oversized company, and part of the role is listening to vendors show off their latest and greatest. Our last demo was from a company called InnerWorkings and I had honestly never heard of them before the demo.

InnerWorkings has an incredibly awesome computer-based training (CBT) system for learning .NET. It goes beyond book reading and is heavily based around coding exercises which are even scored by the system. It has a Visual Studio plugin for working with the vast library of learning material and links to O’Reilly’s Safari Books for reference.

I had never seen a CBT product before this which I would actually considered to be effective. This looked good enough that I would almost be willing to invest my own dollars. If you need to bring a development team up to speed on .NET programming, or a specific area on the bleeding edge, I highly recommend taking a look at InnerWorkings.

I’m going to diverge a bit from my usual talk of bits and bytes to pay tribute to another one of my favorites: role playing games. 28 years ago, my mother purchased the red box D&D basic set for me. It was pure magic. I was always a fan of fantasy writing, but this was actually about being a part of the fantasy rather than a casual spectator. I didn’t actually start playing until a year or so later when we moved to Heidelberg, Germany. My tight circle of friends were all gamers. Those were the days of the original first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We would play every weekend, checking every month for the latest edition of Dragon magazine at the Stars and Stripes bookstore on post so we could try something new.

I continued to play throughout my own military career, expanding out into many other games. I usually ended up being the ring leader / gamemaster and had the pleasure of running campaigns for AD&D, Shadowrun, Top Secret, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: The Masquerade and various one-offs just for fun. I quit regular play over a decade ago after leaving the military, but I still collect the books.

Tabletop gaming is a bit of an enigma nowadays. In the era of World of Warcraft, everyone is too busy on their computers to actually sit down at the same table together to experience face to face gaming. And it is a loss. There are whole generations who will not know the joy of exploring Expedition to Barrier Peaks or the Keep on the Borderlands. Then there is the palpable terror of taking a group through Missing Blood or The Haunted House for the first time. These were the experiences of my youth that I think every imaginative kid should have have the chance to know and enjoy.

It is sad because in the age of instant gratification on the web, people miss out on actually using their imagination in a social setting. WoW is about the destination, killing monsters to get better gear; RPGs are about the journey — the roads travelled together by friends exploring the depths of their imagination.

The state of gaming is sad today compared to the heydays, but it is still going strong for some. I finally attended a GenCon last year and was awed with the quantity and quality of gaming experiences. I’ve resolved to go every year I can now and plan to take my daughter when she is big enough. Since the collapse of the big names (TSR, FASA, White Wolf), the gaming scene has changed a lot. But there are still some nuggets of awesomeness out there:

Pathfinder – Paizo is now carrying the reigns to the heart of D&D in their own RPG inspired by D&D 3.5. Their books and modules are extremely well written and bring back the excitement of what RPGs are supposed to be about. Where the current 4th edition of D&D feels like a computer game, Pathfinder is role playing gaming at it’s finest.

Delta Green – Pagan Publishing took the Call of Cthulhu mythos and gave it an X-Files spin. I’m a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and Delta Green puts a modern conspiracy theory flavor on top of it. There are a couple books of Delta Green fiction which are must-reads, and the gaming books themselves are fascinating.

Goodman Games – These guys write some of the best modules out there for D&D. They actually care about the story telling. I ran in two of their games at GenCon last year and they were a really good time.

Kobold Quarterly – This magazine reminds me of what Dragon magazine used to be like in the early days. Awesome content and a thrill to read. Every gamer should subscribe.

The Oldies – One of my favorite settings is still a combination of first edition AD&D along with some spice from the Arduin Grimoire series. You can easily find all the classics at good prices at any of the used game vendors like Noble Knight, and it will be a more satisfying gaming experience than a lot of the new crap out there.

Unfortunately, for every bright spot, there is a trail of failure — and that trail is littered with the former glory of the big names:

D&D 4th Edition – In an attempt to reboot the game, Hasbro/WOTC has created a tabletop version of World of Warcraft. While fun the first few times, it quickly loses it’s luster and doesn’t have the feel of anything I would want to run a campaign in. And it still has the wallet-sucking book-a-month bloat problem.

Shadowrun – This IP has passed through many hands. From FASA to Whiz Kids to Catalyst Labs, it has lost something along each hop. At the beginning, I was enthralled with the setting and possibilities. It was truly brilliant. But the rules are fundamentally over complicated and imbalanced, and it gets old having every adventure end in a double cross.

Champions – This was the original dream game for min-maxers. Even the early guides took a tongue-in-cheek approach to it. But the early game was concise and had a really fun combat system. The latest versions of Champions / Hero Systems are now encyclopedia-sized monstrosities of rules. I play to have fun, not to study.

White Wolf – The first version of Vampire: The Masquerade was pure brilliance. I actually had a campaign I ran for about a year set in my home town of Olympia, Washington. It was fresh and fun. Then the book bloat hit. Now I’m afraid to even look at the White Wolf bookshelf. And White Wolf literally held a contest at GenCon having people compete to see who could hold up their latest two-inch thick sourcebook the longest.

So I’ve resolved this year to try and be a more active gamer. I’ve already registered for GenCon this year, and look forward to meeting new friends and discovering new games. And anyone out there who was also a gamer should take a look at the current crop of winners and support them.

To start off the New Year, I did a little physical un-cluttering to go along with the mental part. My desk had become a disaster zone so I took some time this evening and solved the problem. As it won’t stay in this state for too long, I decided to capture what I view as the ultimate geek desk setup for posterity’s sake.

Here’s an overview of the whole desk. I’m a wide-open spaces person for desks, so my desk is a 30×60 inch commercial workbench. Simple and to the point.

My computer is a 13″ MacBook Pro with 4gb of RAM. I use a 23″ Apple Cinema Display at home. This gives me the best of both worlds. Plenty of screen real estate when I’m at the desk, while still having a small laptop for on-the-go work.

My only grief with the display is that it sits too low when I’m seated at the desk. A quick trip to my local Woodcraft store solved that problem. I bought an 8×8x2 inch block of nice hardwood and smoothed it down. I then glued a piece of thick brown leather on the top and felt feet on the bottom. It is the perfect stand for this display.

My second best investment was a BookArc for holding my MacBook vertically behind the display. It doesn’t hold the laptop completely vertical like in the picture, but it is very stable and helps save a ton of desk space.

Here you can see how the MacBook tucks in behind the screen.

For the keyboard, I picked up one of the compact Apple bluetooth keyboards. I love the compact size, and it is easy to get out of the way when I need to work on other stuff on my desk. I stuck with a Logitech mouse, the VX Nano. It is a shame Logitech quit making them. It is the best mouse I’ve ever used. It is a laptop size mouse but still works perfect for all-day work at the desk.

Finally, two of my favorite desk accessories are a Rotring 600 Series 3 .7mm mechanical pencil and ballpoint pen. These are the older models with the knurled grips. They haven’t been made for over a decade and have become collectors items on eBay. If it is good enough for Jason Bourne, it is good enough for me.

So this is the current state of my geek creation station. We’ll see how long it lasts, but a clean desk feels like a clean mind.

Seeing as I did pretty well on my technology predictions for 2009, I’ll head out on the limb again for 2010. Here’s what I see happening:

1. Three Words: Dead Cat Bounce – If you haven’t heard this term before, it is a way of describing the financial markets when they make a small bounce after a downturn and then head downwards again. Unfortunately, I’m expecting things to get much worse this year, as all the problems that caused the Great Recession are still present and the mortgage mess is only getting worse. Add in the fact that all our large financial institutions are still fundamentally insolvent and exist at the grace of the American taxpayers, and you have a recipe for a big mess. Looking back in December 2010, people will say 2010 was much worse than 2009.
2. Oracle will buy VMWare – VMWare tried to gussy themselves up by acquiring SpringSource, and this will be the year they go a courting. Oracle is a natural, as it fills some holes for them and gets them the crown jewels of Java, the Spring Framework
3. .NET 4 will be a Killer – This is almost a gimme, but it is worth stating. With the dynamic language features in .NET 4, we’ll see a dynamic language crack the corporate mainstream market. This is nothing but good news for all the other dynamic language warriors out there like Ruby and Groovy. 2010 will be an awesome year for dynamic languages.
4. Java cements its position as the new Cobol – With dynamic languages making inroads on the heels of .NET 4, no one will want to be starting new straight Java projects anymore, relegating it to the world of endless maintenance.
5. Silverlight starts to kill off Flash – Silverlight 3 has almost caught up with Flex, and Silverlight 4 should push it ahead. Yes, there will still be a ton of Flash out there, and most of it will be annoying banner ads or boutique marketing websites. Developers who do not want to learn JavaScript but still build RIAs will be using Silverlight 4.
6. Chrome starts to kill off Firefox – Let’s face it, the only reason most of us use Firefox is for the plugins, with Adblock Plus being the biggie. Chrome is blazing fast and has a more streamlined browsing experience. When Chrome gets a rich plugin community going, and a port of Adblock Plus, Firefox will be on the ropes.
7. Someone buys ExtJS – This was my wildcard last year. I expected Microsoft to buy them, but they went with JQuery instead. They will be purchased by someone this year, and I’ll bet on some oddball shotgun wedding instrumented by greedy VCs.