During my long blogging hiatus, I've been up to a few things:

• Kicking off my new business, Distance Software. The website isn't much to look at yet, but I've got the new logo (one is also coming for Distance Debugging shortly), and I'm working with that same designer to create the new site.
• I've started a new Drupal setup to start to try to create a community debugging site/forum. There isn't much there yet, but I'm going to start porting over content that I've posted here, as well as new material.? Check out FixIt!
• Ported distancedebugging.com and distancesoftware.com over to new digs on a dedicated server at SuperbInternet.
• Helping with the planning for BarCampMilwaukee.? I had a lot of fun at last year's event, and I'm hoping to contribute a lot more time and energy this year.? I'm going to have Distance Software sponsor, and I'm also running the BCM site here on my box to give it some bandwidth and horsepower.? We'll see how it holds up!

Look for lots of new posts now that I'm back in the saddle.

I attended the first BarCamp Milwaukee yesterday, and I think I had the same reaction as many people walking in there: "I can't believe this tech community exists in Milwaukee", which is just silly. I know some people came from other cities and even states, but I think that it speaks to the weird mismatch between perception and reality in terms of the tech community here. I'm hoping that one thing that can come out of this is an ongoing set of meet-ups, possibly continuing at Bucketworks, rather than having this one-time (although fabulous) event, to keep and build momentum.

I attended 2 sessions and led a third. The first session, about Ruby on Rails was great for me (I was the guy asking way too many questions) since it was something that I'd heard a ton of great things about but hadn't had time to really investigate. The second session was about gadgets, and I really liked the discussion regarding the open-source vs. proprietary software model in the work of small devices, as well as looking at why certain devices failed or succeeded. I led a session about Linux in everyday devices, focusing on how things become hackable with Linux inside, and whether that is a good or bad thing for consumers and for businesses. It was actually an interesting follow on to the discussion that started in the Gadgets session.

Anyway, kudos to the organizer and I hope this is the start of something bigger here in Milwaukee.