I went to php|tek here in Chicago this year. I've been wanting to attend one of these for some time, and got lucky because this year it was being held about 45 minutes from where I live.

It was great being able to listen to developers who are much smarter than me talk. I think I learned more there in three days than I learned in college. Well... maybe not really, but it was close.

It was also good inspiration for me to start trying to learn more new things instead of just doing what I do to get paid every week. I've started a new side project in order to learn a few technologies that were brought up at the convention and if I get anywhere with it, I'll be posting it here and probably on Source Forge as well.

Anyway, it's been at least a few months since I've posted here, so just sayin hey to the 2 people who actually read this thing.

Yesterday while doing some last minute Christmas shopping I noticed a floating image on a window of the Ralph Lauren store. At first I thought it was just a neat trick with some mirrors and a projector (which still would have been impressive), but then the video said "Touch Here".Turns out the image that was being projected onto something called Interactive Foil. I'm guessing that what it does is measure resistance changes when someone pokes it. So basically you have a giant touch screen monitor that's translucent. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in a really long time. I so have to have one.

How cool would it be to have a touch screen floating on a shower door. The left half could be a TV so you can watch the morning news, the other side could be useful information like traffic and weather, maybe some other headlines, or your favorite RSS reader. Plus the whole thing would be completely safe because its all water proof and no electricity is passing through it.

So, now I have to read all about it, get even more excited and come up with ideas, and then have them crushed when I find out this thing is $40,000. Let's hope its cheap so I can have geekier showers.