Hampton Catlin’s on, he’s talking about replacing Javascript, basically. Well, there’s more to it than that. But he says, “I find when programmers think an idea is a really bad idea and they can’t give you a good ****ing reason for it, then it’s a good idea!”

Guilty as charged.

Giles is up there doing the Archeopteryx Ruby MIDI generator talk. Best quote so far: “most people don’t use the freedom they have.”

I can’t describe to you how rapid, funny, inspiring and informative his talk is. Maybe I can: we’re all starving for dim sum lunch and are willingly sticking it out to the end of his talk. It’s that awesome.

Zed Shaw is up next. He is pacing. He told me he’s especially looking forward to angering the musicians in the audience. And he has a harmonica. Lord help us.

A major theme, concept, or understanding here at “Ruby Fringe”http://www.rubyfringe.com amongst folks seems to be owning what you do. Not that it’s expressed this way – but I think a lot of what we’re discussing here comes down to owning your work, owning how you spend your time, owning your mistakes and growing from there. From Fail Camp to discussion on sales and business relationships to networking and how you spend your time, to the slogan on the back of the conference tags, “Ask me about my startup!”, this is about owning what you do and consciously running with it.

Quite frankly, it’s exhilarating. This is not a normal programming conference.

Zed Shaw literally just rocked the house by playing into his own sequencing software and winging some lyrics, guitar and harmonica.