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January 2009
This article also appears on Global Nerdy.
TechCrunch points to a news report from San Francisco-based TV station KRON that dates all the way back to 1981, when home computers were 8-bit wonders like the era of the Apple ///, TRS-80 and Atari 400 and 800. The piece on how some people are reading their newspapers by logging into Compuserve, and how someday, we’ll all be reading our newspapers and magazines on our computers:
Back then, a computer in the home was very unusual, hence their underscoring of this interviewee’s name with “owns home computer”. It seems quaint now, but back then, that was pretty 1337:
The TechCrunch article points out a couple of lines in the piece that stand out given our 2009 persepctive. The first is from the San Francisco Examiner’s David Cole:
This is an experiment. We’re trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to us, as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user. And we’re not in it to make money, we’re probably not going to lose a lot but we aren’t going to make much either.
The other memorable line is from the reporter:
This is only the first step in newspapers by computers. Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.
This is Joey deVilla, signing off from one of those Dynabook-style computers.
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The New York Times has a story on a tasty-looking dish called the Bacon Explosion, which is made by weaving strips of raw bacon into a mat, covering the bacon mat with a layer of sausage and then a crunchy layer of cooked bacon, then rolling it up.
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The first bit of the Gilles Vigneault song that every good Canadian high school student used to know goes like this: “Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver”. Translated from French, it means “My country is not a country – it’s the winter.” In Quebec, that’s very true.
The winter temperatures in Montreal dip considerably lower than they do here in Accordion City. Luckily for the Montrealers, their culture is descended from the one that invented joie de vivre, and as expected, they’ve managed to turn the cold into a party. In spite of the –25C (-13F) temperatures on Saturday night, Crescent Street had been closed to traffic for a street concert and dance party, which was shockingly well attended.
Another way Montreal took advantage of the cold was by putting ice sculptures everywhere. I took only a few pictures; had it been a little warmer – say a balmy –10C – I’d have taken more.
Here’s some corporate ice sculpting: an entire hockey game cast in ice, solely for the purpose of convincing people to drink Bud Light. I’m not so keen on the beer, but I love the statues:
One more pic: this guy and his crew were sawing large blocks of ice into bricks to form a wall around a restaurant not far from my hotel. They were doing all this at around 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, when the chill was so bad that every breath I took formed ice crystals on my beard.
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Once again, it’s time for another Developer Lunch here in Accordion City! This is going to be the ninth in the series of lunches organized by Kristan "Krispy" Uccello, and it will be held at the usual location, Sky Dragon restaurant (on the 5th floor of Dragon City mall at the corner of Spadina and Dundas).
These lunches give Toronto-area developers and other techie types to get together for some delicious dim sum and conversation. I’ve been to several of these, and they’ve always been fun. The bill gets split on a per-table basis, and it’s typically worked out to about $12 a person, and everyone leaves full.
If you’re a developer – and that means anyone who practices or is interested in programming – you should come on over to Sky Dragon and join us for lunch! I’ll be there, and you’ can ask me about anything, whether it’s development, Microsoft, accordions, whatever!
The Developer Lunch takes place today (Tuesday, January 27th) at noon and runs until about 1:30 p.m.. Just look for the tables with the geeks!
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Before I forget, let me wish you all a happy Chinese New Year! This year, it’s the Year of the Ox, so it’s only fitting that I post a picture of him:
Jon "The Ox" Entwistle, bassist for The Who.
For more on the Year of the Ox and Chinese astrology, this article at SFGate.com should help get you started.
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This article originally appeared on Global Nerdy.
After winning the auction for the Free Software Foundation plush gnu, I hung out in the hotel lobby, checking my email. I talked with some passers-by, and occasionally Richard Stallman, who sat at the couch across from me, cracked the occasional (and very painful) pun.
In these conversations, I was approached by no less than three people who asked me if the gnu – the animal mascot of the Free Software Foundation — was a real creature or a mythical one.
Doesn’t anyone watch Animal Planet, nature shows or The Great Space Coaster (starring Gary Gnu) anymore?
They’re real. Here’s the first line of their Wikipedia entry:
The wildebeest (plural wildebeest or wildebeests), also called the gnu (/gəˈnuː/ or /ˈnjuː/), is an antelope of the genus Connochaetes. It is a hooved (ungulate) mammal.
Maybe it’s time to organize a bus trip of geeks so that we can all go to the zoo.
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Perhaps if they’d given the night another name, it might have turned out differently:
I have no idea what bar this sign is for. I just ran across this picture here and thought it was too good not to share.
(I hear every Monday is Shitfaced Monday over at David Crow’s house.)
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Beer and science have always gone together!
This article was originally published in Global Nerdy.
I’m going to speaking at tonight’s Nature Network Pub Night here in Toronto on the topic of blogs, how they’ve helped me both do and find work, and how people in the sciences can make use of them.
The pub night is being held at Fionn MacCool’s at University and Adelaide (the full address is 181 University). People will start assembling there for dinner, drinks and conversation at 6:00 p.m. with the presentations starting at 7:00 p.m..
If you’re interested in getting to know your fellow science-types in town or want to catch up with me and talk about blogging, programming, science, accordion playing or anything else, please drop by tonight!
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Over at my tech blog Global Nerdy, there’s a story from the recent CUSEC convention that’ll only seem funny (or even make sense) if you’re a programmer who knows about the Free Software Foundation and how they view Microsoft. It’s called Winning the Gnu, and it’s about my winning bid at Richard Stallman’s auction for a plush gnu.
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I’m at CUSEC (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference) in Montreal, where Daniel, pictured below, is wearing the T-shirt of the day, devoted to The Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time: Zardoz!
Daniel screened this one himself, and he’s promised me one. Looking forward to wearing it!
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This article was originally posted in Global Nerdy.
On Tuesday, the day that Barack Obama got sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, my 3-month probationary period at Microsoft also ended and I became a full-fledged Microsoft Developer Evangelist. I figured that if Obama could have a swearing-in ceremony to mark his official entrance into his new job, why couldn’t I?
As luck would have it, I was at the Vancouver Convention Centre to speak at Microsoft’s TechDays conference, where the Microsoft logo was projected onto the waterfall on the second floor. It made a pretty good backdrop for the ceremony, which was conducted by my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe. I swore my oath on a “Techie Crunch” box, a cereal box containing the swag we gave to every attendee:
This magic moment would’ve been lost forever if it weren’t for videographer, blogger and man-about-tech Warren Frey, who was recording interviews for TechVibes and caught it for posterity. Thanks, Warren! I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
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