00.01h PDT - Tosj | The second time of the week that we are not awake before the alarm of my cell phone goes off. This time because we stayed up till half past 2 to work on our Dashboard program Tigergotchi. A small description: Tigergotchi is a funny little widget that makes you responsible for the upcoming tiger release, while Tiger is in captivity of Apple it's your job to make it survive until the day it is released in the wild. Give it all the food, water and love it needs to become and stay a happy tiger. And for what it's worth, never push Apple!!
Later that day Alex admits that he actually stayed up till 4.30h to try to get it working! When he almost fell asleep he got the final quick solution, but didn't get out anymore. After waking up I get into the shower and when I get back Alex is already programming the solution into our widget. It works great, especially when we slow down time we are perfectly able to keep the tiger alive. For a picture of what is already our most favorite program look here.
Because of the 'release' of Tigergotchi' we skipped the first sessions of the day and arrive around 9.30h, have a little breakfast and prepare for the next session round. I go up to the Presidio for 'Developing Accessible Applications' and Alex attends the 'Advanced Core Data' session in Russian Hill. During lunch we head for the science lounge for a discussion on Topic: Data Visualization in Bioinformatics and Biology, moderated by Ann Loraine, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Genetics and Biostatistics, University of Alabama. The session is again well attended and we have a nice discussion on open source data and platform compatibilities. Alex also suggests that after BioPerl, there should be also some space for BioCocoa. The first session of the afternoon we spend in the science lounge and the second and also last session of today we spend in The Sunset, attending the Cocoa Feedback Forum.
There were only 2 sessions this afternoon, because we are going to the Apple Campus for the Bash and Plugfest 2004. After bringing most stuff to the hotel, we get back at Moscone Center and all of a sudden we walk into a huge waiting line of people waiting for the busses. The line start in Howard Street and goes around 2 corners of the block of Moscone West! So we get neatly in line, just as last monday during the Keynote, but don't have to wait very long, because each bus harbors around 50 people so about 15 minutes later we are on our way to Cupertino. After a trip of about 1 hour we arrive in the city of Cupertino and a few minutes later we turn into 'Infinite Loop' where the Apple Campus resides. We get a round on Infinite Loop for free, but that is also for the people from security to check our IDs so they can make up wether we are aloud to drink alcohol or not.
One loop further we get out and see there is already a huge line in front of the Apple Store. We also want to have a look at the store, but decide to first take some pictures with the big Apple logo at the start of the street leading to the main building. A few pictures later we get inside and outside again, but this time we find ourselves back on the inside 'park' of the campus. We immediately get in line to get our programs build on XCode for Tiger to get some other shirts with an XCode logo on them.
We both get a t-shirt for building 2 of our programs and head for the Plugfest, because there you really can get into the Apple building, although well secured. Alex has a quick look at the toilets, they do their work properly, and find one of the special mini conference rooms empty. THE opportunity to make some funny pictures and get the hell out of there again. At that time we are almost starved, so we get in line for the food, but not after Alex recognizes Aaron Hillegass who is eating in the employees restaurant. The food is good and as we are in line a guy in a big american football shirt (later turned out to be a hockey shirt, because of the match Apple and Sun had on Tuesday) walks by. As I note this to Alex, he is immediately excited, because it turned out to be Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing of Apple! Within half an hour he gets on stage stating the he won't sing, because 'that would stink' but announces the band: Jimmy Eat World. Time for us to get in line for the Apple Store. We bought ourselves of course some cool Apple items among which an iPod and went back to finally get some beer.
We had some chats with several developers and found ourselves back in the bus to San Francisco at 21.30h. It was a great day, we'll never forget, perhaps next year a sequel?
