Category: Technology

"You'll need a snorkel to breathe underneath the pile of groupies that will sack you."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My wife sent me this link titled How to totally fake being a geek (which I assume she found through some sort of google search that scours the web for any mention of Buffy The Vampire Slayer). I’m glad it’s tongue-in-cheek, ’cause I’d hate to think that knowing Assembler is the ne plus ultra of geekiness. Why? Because I know Assembler. At least, I knew it. At least, a I knew a little bit. When I first moved here my job was mainframe programming; don’t ask me why, ’cause I had no programming experience.

It was tough to learn, since writing Assembler is what I imagine it’s like to talk to a retarded robot, but from then on every other programming language seemed like a treat. The first time I tried COBOL I was ecstatic because it could do, you know, math like a human. It was like when my brothers and I learned to drive; we didn’t learn on a car, or on any automatic…we learned on the 2-ton stick-shift farm truck. Once you can work with that, a Ford Tempo’s a pussycat.

That said, it’s been so long since my foot’s touched a clutch, it’d probably be pretty comical to watch me try.

[tags]geekery, buffy, assembler, cobol[/tags]

"Any site that's got a longer entry on 'truthiness' than on Lutherans has its priorities straight."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m not sure even Stephen Colbert himself expected this after wikiality was The Word on Monday night. [via Digg]

.:.

Also via Digg, I learned about the Christian version of Ubuntu Linux. I anxiously await operating system flavours for Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Scientology. Unless someone figures out that this is retarded first.

.:.

Make Marketing History points us to a couple of disturbing statistics: 58% of people never read a book once they leave high school, and 46% of people don’t read newspapers. I think the first stat freaks me out the most. I actually can’t figure out how you’d avoid it, what with long airport waits and bedtime stories and such.

[tags]colbert report, wikiality, truthiness, christian ubuntu, people don’t read[/tags]

I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Just when I was getting my music inbox under control, it’s ballooned again, mostly because I finally got around to reading an Esquire article that I’d ripped out and left on my desk a month ago. It listed a few bands — the Cold War Kids and Murder By Death — whose myspace pages intrigued me enough to download their albums; if I like them (and early indications are that I will) I’ll begin the search for way to buy their obscure albums.

There are still more myspace pages in that article too; for now here’s the current playlist (including what might be the greatest album title of all time, courtesy of Yo La Tengo):

  • johnny cash – a hundred highways
  • yndi halda – enjoy eternal bliss
  • yo la tengo – i am not afraid of you and i will beat your ass
  • mates of state – bring it back
  • ladyhawk – ladyhawk
  • murder by death – in bocca al lupo
  • cold war kids – up in rags
  • cold war kids – with our wallets full
  • cold war kids – mulberry street

.:.

Connections seem to be popping up for me all over the place on LinkedIn.com. My brother invited me…more than a year ago, I think, and I didn’t pay attention until recently, and suddenly everyone seems to be using it. My friend Joe pointed out that it’s almost as gay as Friendster. He’s right…but it’s still funny to see all the ex-Delanoids and remember some names from the past.

[tags]esquire, johnny cash, yndi halda, yo la tengo, mates of state, ladyhawk, murder by death, cold war kids, linkedin, friendster, delano technology[/tags]

Snakes on a [your industry here]

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I cross-posted this to my blog at work. It seems to apply equally to the outside world.

This blog post from the CTO of Cap Gemini got me thinking. He references something propethic Peter Drucker said years ago, about the first technology innovation being all about printing (I can’t find the original Drucker quotes, so I assume he meant Gutenberg) and how it displaced monks as the sole source of knowledge management. Publishers now held all the distribution power, but the general public had much freer access to information.

Fast forward a few hundred years and things haven’t changed much; a tiny minority of publishers hold all the power in deciding what gets bound, distributed and sold. Sure, there are underground ‘zines and such, but their reach is miniscule. Drucker’s afore-mentioned comments were about the PC, which signalled changes to the way information was gathered (like Gutenberg’s movable type machine supplanting the monk’s pen), but he probably didn’t know about the internet (still called Arpanet at the time) which would go on to provide an incredibly efficient distribution network reaching practically everyone (which Gutenberg couldn’t have even conceived of). In recent years we’ve seen personal publishing tools like blogs get us past the PC limitation; even five years ago to get any content online you pretty much needed to know how to write HTML and secure web hosting, but now anyone can fire up a blogger or wordpress account and let ‘er rip. Continuing the analogy, this is not unlike Gutenberg delivering one of his presses to every household who wanted one, complete with a team of messengers who could run printed copies around the world in a few seconds.

So what does this mean? Who cares if everyone can now blog about their cat or what they ate for dinner last night or whether Ubuntu Linux is better than OSX? Well, it goes beyond that. Consider this other example I found this morning on Church Of The Customer: given the interesting way in which Snakes On A Plane has developed, Samuel Jackson is advocating an open-source, script-by-committee movie.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia‘s been judged to be about as accurate as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, artists are posting their music on MySpace and winning over fans they would never have found living under the thumb of the recording industry (just ask the Arctic Monkeys) and products like Dell and Kryptonite bike locks are finding out the hard way that bad news travels fast.

Think this doesn’t apply to you? Wrong. It applies to everyone. As of today, no one controls their own marketing.

[tags]cap gemini, peter drucker, gutenberg, social marketing, social computing, wikipedia, snakes on a plane, dell hell, arctic monkeys[/tags]

[UPDATE] S3 IS

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

If we don’t melt in the heat, I think we may go buy this camera tomorrow. Our old 3.2 megapixel just isn’t gonna do our upcoming Rockies trip justice.

[UPDATE] It’s been boughten. Nellie now plans to spend the day testing it out.

[thanks to c|net for the picture]

[tags]canon s3 is, digital camera, rockies[/tags]

"Jim Henson knew his place"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

For the sake of my waistline, I really need my family to stop visiting Toronto. Last night we took another brother and his wife to Fieramosca — our second visit in as many Saturdays — and left the place stuffed, as always. The staff actually ribbed us a bit, saying “OK, see you tomorrow night!” as we left. Smartasses. I had the salsiccia e quaglia alla griglia, a sausage & quail plate that TimmyD got last week (which I just had to try), my brother had the linguine di mama ninetta (a favourite of T-Bone’s), and the ladies shared the seafood pasta for 2. The hostess Mani (sp?) gave us some Tiramisu to keep us busy while the ladies had their after-dinner glass of Amarone. 3.5 hours later, we managed to waddle home. Oy.

Sadly, we didn’t get to spend much more time than that with them. They arrived mid-afternoon, after trying to deal with some lost luggage, and after we got some food into them the ladies went shopping while my brother and I sat and Starbucks and caught up on things. Then we popped down to Henry’s to find them a new digital camera (and may have found one ourselves: the Canon S3 IS), swung by the condo to have a look, strolled down to Front Street and then came back up on the subway (fighting for seats with Indy fans) to relax before dinner. While relaxing we put it on Just For Laughs — there was really nothing else on — and saw a very bizarre, very funny ventriloquist act by Nina Conti…it was weird to see this beautiful woman do a surrealist comedy act with a smarmy monkey. Anyway. Good fun, but it’s too bad they could only stick around for half a day.

Now then…to find a salad…

[tags]fieramosca, henry’s, nina conti, molson indy[/tags]