My brother and I got 1st place in the Tropo hackathon at phptek11. If you want to read the rules they were here. We won a Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter for making a two-factor authentication system using Tropo’s apis.

Just got back from SFO and MacWorld 2011 yesterday. I happened to catch one of the very last flights out of Baltimore before the storm hit last Wednesday. While I flew, my wife spent an equal 5 hours driving home in the snow.

Before the conference started, Jeff and I went for a hike to Pier 14 where I made the above panoramic. It was the only nice day there with clear skies and a high of 54F. The rest of the time was cold and wet. Unfortunately my tendonitis flared up in both knees and my right hip, reducing our ability to explore SF.
It was a good time to hang out with my brother and continue our plans of world domination. Gravett Island was solidy under our control by the end. Unfortunately, we had less time than I had hoped. He had to man the Shedworx booth a good portion of the time, and I went to some of the seminars. The other developers at his company were fun to get to know. There was one Greg and two Craigs, all from Australia, making conversations confusing at times.

All in all I felt that MacWorldExpo was not worthwhile for a web application developer like myself. Most events focused on audio & video. One of the key conference talks I went for was cancelled. I counted 13 expo booths selling iPhone cases. There was very little free stuff, unlike OSCON, ZendCon, and phpTek. On the bright side, CultofMac featured my brother and I at the top of their MacWorld Day 3 post. Their managing editor, Traci, was very nice to talk to, albeit briefly. Next year Shedworx should pay us to come out and be Booth Studs.

As a note: I do not work for Shedworx, I just happened to be hanging out at their booth because I had already wandered the expo hall five times.

I try not to brag about the presents I get for Christmas. But, I have to give a special mention to my brother for this one. I can only wonder how long he was searching until he found something like this. On the other hand, he got Drew 2 cars also, so he may have just caught it out of the corner of his eye.