Update: Visit to Google and My First Facebook App

I haven't been blogging much the last few weeks—partly because I've been busy at work and partly, I think, because my Facebook status has become the primary way I get telling the world what I'm up to out of my system.

The last week, however, I've been up to some fun stuff. On Saturday, I made my first visit to the Googleplex for the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit. You can see a photo of us all here. The 'plex felt like a cross between a kindergarten (bright colours, play areas, places to nap) and a top-secret military installation (with security at every corner to make sure you didn't wander off into any restricted areas).

Then from Sunday thru Tuesday, I attended the Graphing Social Patterns conference on the business and technology of Facebook. Had a wonderful time catching up with some longtime friends there (who I hadn't seen for six odd years) as well as getting caught up in the incredible buzz around the Facebook platform. Apparently there's a Facebook conference on every week in the valley now but, not being a local, it was new and exciting for me.

While there, I built my first Facebook app—deployed on Django (of course). I'll say more in subsequent posts—I have a lot more planned.

Now I'm about to hop on a plane back to Australia for a week or two. I'll be working from there but should have some time for some hacking and blogging.