wshaffer

Another FOGcon has come and gone! I had an absolutely fantastic time, and lots of other people seemed to have a great time. Seanan McGuire and Tim Powers were both wonderful guests: they were funny and insightful as panelists, and really friendly and approachable outside of programming. I feel very happy about the way this convention went - we have plenty of things that we can improve on for next year, but I was particularly pleased by the number of people who commented that they found the convention very friendly and welcoming. If we don't get that right, it doesn't much matter if we get other things right.

In case you haven't seen it, we're already able to announce our theme and honored guests for next year. The theme of FOGcon 5 will be "The Traveler", and Kim Stanley Robinson and Catherynne Valente. And we're already collecting programming ideas for next year. If you have something you'd like to see on programming, suggest it here: http://db.fogcon.org/idea.

Lots of us love conventions. I love conventions so much that I'm helping to run one. But conventions can be tough, especially if you're a new congoer trying to get the most out of your convention experience. If you're thinking of coming to FOGcon, or to any other convention, check out these tips from Amy Sundberg on surviving and thriving!

FOGcon 4 is very pleased to announce that our guests of honor will be Seanan McGuire and Tim Powers, and that our ghost of honor will be James Tiptree, Jr. More info here: http://fogcon.org/2014-guests/

FOGcon 4 will be happening March 7-9, 2014 at the Walnut Creek Marriott, where we've been for the past two conventions. The theme of this year's convention is Secrets, which has turned out to be more timely than we could have imagined when we chose it.

Registration is open now. Hope you can join us. And please spread the word - we don't want to keep FOGcon a secret from anyone who might enjoy attending!

A couple of months ago, I started learning to program in Ruby. Largely because I somehow stumbled across Brian Marick's book, Everyday Scripting with Ruby, which poses the questions: "Do you spend too much of your working life copying and pasting or otherwise manually manipulating data? Wouldn't you like to be able to get a computer to do that for you?" To which I answered, "Yes!"

So, I've been slowly working my way through Marick's book, and playing around with ruby koans, and reading bits of why's poignant guide to ruby, which has got to be one of the most extraordinary pieces of technical writing ever committed.

And I've written some little toy scripts, but today I wrote my very first properly useful script. To give a bit of background: For FOGcon, we keep the code for our website backend in a source code repository called Github. We use Github, among other things, to track the bugs and issues that people report in using the database. And one of the things I periodically have to do is get information about issues out of Github and pass it on to people who don't have Github accounts and so don't have the ability to access our issues tracker directly. Up until today, I have been doing this by clicking around in Github and copying and pasting.

But today, I thought, "I should be able to script this." And lo and behold, with a bit of tinkering, I now have a script that logs into Github, downloads all the open issues in a given milestone, and prints out the issue number, title, and description for each one.

Interestingly, the breakdown of how I developed the script went something like this:
~30 minutes: Determining that there is a Github API, that a suitable Ruby wrapper for the API exists, and researching whether this wrapper can access the information I want.
~1 hour 30 minutes: Installing various necessary Ruby 'gems' (a.k.a libraries) and dinking around trying to resolve various dependency issues.
15 minutes: Writing and testing the script.

This was pretty much tinker toy programming, in that the Octokit Ruby library that I used did all the hard work. All I had to know was how to do some basic operations on an array, and how to print out the information. The entire script is 13 lines long.

So, yeah, this decision to learn a bit of Ruby scripting seems to be paying off.

Meaningful blogging has been a little scarce around here lately: I had a horrible cold for most of last week, preparations for FOGcon 3 are reaching a fever pitch, and I have a reasonably big work project with a deadline just before FOGcon. (Better that than just after FOGcon.) I'm getting everything done, and keeping up with health-and-sanity maintaining things like exercise, cooking, and having a social life, but every time I find myself facing a blank livejournal update page or Facebook status or twitter status, I'm kind of like, "Oh, wow, Internet. I have been doing...stuff. And things!"

I would really like to post about some of the books I've been reading, and the very tasty dish I made recently with leeks and Swiss chard and feta cheese, and my random thoughts about Swedish melodic death metal, and my reaction to having finally seen "Death to the Daleks" a mere 38 years after it first aired. But all of that will have to wait until I have more spare brain.

Just a reminder that the window for suggesting programming items for FOGcon 3 is scheduled to close this week. If you've got some great ideas for panels or other programming items, now is the time to get them in.

Go to http://db.fogcon.org, log in, and click Submit an Idea!

Registration for FOGcon 3 is now open: http://db.fogcon.org/registration. Start by clicking "Create Account".

We have a shiny new database backend that has better integration with PayPal and should make buying your convention registration (and Unaward Banquet tickets) easier. In the near future, it should also make submitting programming suggestions and signing up for programming easier. It is a new system, so there are bound to be a few bugs left to shake out - please do email registration@fogcon.org if you encounter any problems registering.

(For anyone not familiar with FOGcon, it is a literary-focused science fiction convention held in the San Francisco Bay Area in early March. Our theme for 2013 is "Law, Order, and Crime", and our honored guests are Terry Bisson and Susan R. Matthews.)

How you know I'm a child of the eighties: some tiny secret part of my mind was afraid that something like this would happen on my watch at the FOGcon consuite. It didn't, of course.

Here are The Beastie Boys, with "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)":

Over the weekend, I signed up for FOGcon programming: http://fogcon.org/programming-sign-up/. Sign-ups close Feb. 17, so now is a great time to go sign up. Even if you don't want to participate in programming, go tell us which panels you'd like to attend - we have lots more programming ideas than we have slots for, so it would be great to know what people actually want to see.

If you're planning on attending FOGcon 2012, now would be an excellent time to register, since the current rate of $60 per adult membership is scheduled to rise slightly on November 15. If you're not yet planning on attending FOGcon, think about it. If you've enjoyed WisCon, or 4th Street, or other smallish literary-focused SF conventions, I think I can promise you you will have a blast at FOGcon.

One of the things that last year's FOGcon gathered justifiable praise for was the quality of its programming. And one of the reasons's for the quality of the programming is that the con actually asked potential attendees to suggest topics that they would find interesting. The form for submitting programming suggestions is now up. Please feel free to suggest ideas. Even if you're not coming to FOGcon. (But you should totally come to FOGcon.)