My visit to Tampa has drawn to a close, and The Lady just dropped me off at the airport. Right by the Air Canada entrance, this styrofoam box marked “CAKE” has been unnerving passengers. It’s empty — it probably held cake for transport but was too big to fit into the car that picked it up — but I let some airport staff know that it was beginning to worry some people. Namely, the security-conscious and Portal players.
These were on display — and thankfully, left unopened — at the party I attended Saturday night.
Want to know more?
Catch it before 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm issue the takedown: it’s all six Star Wars films, all at once. Skip your Ritalin dose and enjoy your ADD!
I’ve been in Florida for the past ten days, enjoying the weather (while it’s still cool here, it’s considerably warmer than back home in Accordion City), the company of friends, and of course, the company of The Girlfriend. My jobs over the time we’ve been seeing each other — the past year and a half — have allowed me to be here for a week out of each month, and things have been going rather well. The rest of the time, I’m working hard on getting our mobile tech consultancy off the ground.
“One week on and three weeks off?” said one of the guys in the shared office space we had a while back in Mississauga. “You’re living the dream!”
It’s a pretty workable arrangement, although I’d like to have her around more often. I’ll work on that soon.
“I found a Groupon deal for indoor skydiving,” the girlfriend asked a couple of months back. “D’you want to try it out?”
Having answered “yes”, we made our way to the Orlando area to visit Gatorland (I’ll put those photos in another post) and then iFly. It’s an “indoor skydiving” facility with a giant wind chamber that moves air at speeds of 100 mph and higher. The wind generated inside the chamber is strong enough to lift people weighing up to 250 pounds, and with a puffy jumpsuit and the right body position, you can “fly” as if you were in freefall and even perform aerial acrobatics. Many local skydivers go there to work on their technique.
Here are some shots of me “Sumpermanning” like a mofo:
Moments after entering the chamber.
“Straight outta Krypton, yo!”
WHOOOOOOO!
Finding the right position and getting some lift.
Getting a whirling dervish ride to the top of the chamber with the instructor.
I had a blast, and will have to check out Niagara Freefall in my neck of the woods.
The 1977/78 Spider-Man TV series may have not had the best writing, acting, effects or costume, but it did have one funk-tastic theme:
If you’re curious and looking to kill an hour or two today, here’s something: the 1977 pilot for the series, complete with their take on the “bitten by a radioactive spider” origin of our hero:
Weird as this all may have seemed, it was out-weirded by the Japanese version (they somehow got a licence from Marvel Comics), who added a giant robot to the mix:
I love this flag of Italy, done up as basil, spaghetti and tomatoes. That’s not the only flag that’s been done up as food…
Someone needs to do one for the Canadian flag. Perhaps cheese curds for the white field and back bacon for the maple leaf and bars?
A popular implement for a common type of quarterbacking.
In the wake of the PyCon 2013 “Dongle” incident and the ensuing fallout, the emails — but notably, no tweets, Facebook comments or any sort of messages delivered in the open — have been trickling in, asking what my thoughts on the matter were, given that:
My answer: wait.
With the intersection of a lot of “hot button” issues: privacy, privilege, sexism, racism, back-and-forth accusations of misogyny and misandry and conflicting visions of justice, there’s been far too much bile being passed back and forth for listening and civil discourse to take place.
(If you really must read something on the topic, Amanda Blum’s take on it in her blog most closely aligns with my own point of view.)
I’d like my contribution to the discussion to be one that benefits rather than harms, and you can’t do that by “shooting from the hip”. That will take time and thought, care and consideration.
In the meantime, since the incident has caused more than a few people to ask “What is a developer evangelist, anyway?” Here are some links you may find useful:
…and here’s an article about how well I evangelized evangelism.