Author: Joey deVilla

Welcome back to the working week!

For today, the last Monday of the month, some Monday-related entertainment. First, here are some scans from The Executive Coloring Book. It may seem mildly amusing today, but it must’ve been downright subversive to some when it was first released in 1961 (here’s a review from Time magazine, dated Frdiay, December 29, 1961, in which it’s reviewed alongside the equally counter-culture Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book, written by good ol’ Shel Silverstein.

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Continuing with the “Monday blues” theme, here’s the song of the week: Ween’s Push th’ Little Daisies, a classic that Rik “Please, the name is DJ Stinky Poo-Poo!” Young introduced to me during his sets at the Caribbean Club back in that wacky summer of 1992. As with all songs of the week, this will evaporate in a week [Update: A week has passed and the song is now gone]. Enjoy!

Click to download the full-size version [945K PNG image].

For your Photoshopping pleasure, here’s a file of Leonidas heads on a transparent background [945K PNG image], ready to cut and paste into photos to hilarious effect. It’s useful for all sorts of things, including animations like the one shown below…

If you’re a regular reader of BoingBoing or the geek-friendly comic xkcd, you’ve probably already seen the strip in which Cory Doctorow gets name-dropped:

It turns out that the line in the last panel is more true than you think. Here’s a photo that I took at his birthday party in 2002, with Mr. Doctorow sporting his mail-order Mig fighter pilot goggles:

He might not be wearing a cape, but that shiny purple ‘Decepticon’ shirt is a pretty good substitute.

As for blogging from a hot air balloon, how about from a Mickey Mouse balloon chair? Here’s a shot of him at the original Toronto OpenCola office, taken March 2000:

“What I would I do with a million dollars of VC funding? Tell you what I’d do, man. Two computers at the same time, man.”

Here’s another shot taken ion the same session, from another angle.

Oh, those Web 1.0 salad days.

Anyhow, I hope this proves something about Doctorow’s Law: Any exaggerated statement about Cory Doctorow is closer to the truth than you might think.

Yes, Global Nerdy remains an ongoing concern. We’ve posted 4 new articles today. Here are the most recent ones…

• HotelChatter’s “Best Geek Hotels in the World” List. An interesting list; I don’t agree with all the choices.
• 16 Ways the Media Can Make Use of Blogs. Yeah, this should be screamingly obvious to longtime blogosphere denizens, whether readers or writers, but as George and I like to say, “There’s a lot of value in repeating the obvious.”
• PowerPoint Slide of the Day. Surprising candor at a Motorola presentation.
• Brokeback Excel. It was Friday, I was entitled to post a joke entry!
• Andrés Taylor: “Top ten things ten years of professional software development has taught me”. Includes a bonus list: “The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School”.
• Wear Them to Your Annual Review. Would you believe that they make USB-powered heated kneepads?
• Send Twitter Messages from the Command Line (Mac OS and Linux). It’s how the cool kids (well, me anyway) do it, yo.
• Quick, send in the clowns*. George’s take on the NBC Universal/News Corp. online video joint venture.

Last night, Mom sent me a collection of photos taken by my uncle in 1967. The photos are of Mom, Dad and my grandparents at my grandparent’s place in San Juan, a neighbourhood smack in the dead center of Manila, where I lived from 1972 to 1975. A couple of the photos showed Grand-dad’s sweet rides, one of which was the Corvette pictured below.

I remember getting rides to school in the Corvette from my uncle, a racing enthusiast, who lead-footed the short distance between home and school in an exciting run down San Juan’s narrow streets. The car was sold after we moved to Canada; I hope it’s still alive and kicking somewhere.

From the Washington Post:

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Two Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after a trial in which they had no lawyer and which used Arabic, not their first language, the rights group Amnesty International said.

Sadia Idriss Fadul was sentenced on February 13 and Amouna Abdallah Daldoum on March 6 and their sentences could be carried out at any time, the London-based group said in a statement released late on Monday.

North Sudan implements Islamic sharia law.

“The women had no lawyer during their trial and were not able to defend themselves, as their first languages are those of their ethnic groups,” Amnesty said.

Both women are from non-Arab tribes but the proceedings were in Arabic and no interpreter was provided, Amnesty said. Their trial took place in central Al Gezira state.