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Geek It Happened to Me

We’ll be in Seattle This Week!

Seattle skyline

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Starting tonight (Pacific Coast Time), John Bristowe, I, and a few other folks from Microsoft Canada’s De veloper & Platform Evangelism team, will be in Seattle all next week to attend Microsoft’s 8th TechReady conference. TechReady is a Microsoft internal conference where ‘Softies from all over the world gather to get briefed on upcoming releases. The coming months promise a bumper crop of Microsoft goodies – Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, Visual Studio 2010 and Azure to name a few – so the sessions should be very interesting. (I think I’ll actually be taking a lot of notes during the presentations rather than checking my mail or looking at that video of kittens riding a Roomba.)

We’re going to try to take advantage of this gathering to get some interviews with  some of the big brains at Microsoft from Redmond and all over the world, as well as show you some of the sights and sounds of Seattle. Watch this blog for updates!

Are you in Seattle? Want to catch up? Talk about Microsoft, software development, accordions. Zardoz or anything else? Drop me a line or give me a ring (416-948-6447)!

[Seattle photo by Andrew “papalars” Larsen and licenced under Creative Commons. Click here to see the original.]

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Geek It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Developer Lunch at Sky Dragon in Toronto Today!

Wooden steamers and plates full of dim sum dishes

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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Geek It Happened to Me

Talking About Blogging at Tonight’s Nature Network Pub Night in Toronto

A glass of beer and a book
Beer and science have always gone together!

This article was originally published in Global Nerdy.

nature-networkI’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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Geek It Happened to Me

Fun with Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman and Joey deVilla onstage with a plush gnu at the CUSEC 2009 conference

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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Geek

My Favourite Slides from Francis Hwang’s Presentation at CUSEC

This article was originally published in Global Nerdy.

Slide: "Programming is a big world. You have choices."

Slide: "Q: How is a brain surgeon a kind of artist? A: Why would I want to be an artist? I'm a fucking brain surgeon." 

Slide: "Live some of your life outside of the nerd ghetto."

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Geek

Maybe It’s Time to Update Your Twitter Password

First, there were the Twitter phishing attacks that looked like direct messages from your friends offering you a chance to win an iPhone. Now some big-shot Twitter accounts appear to have been accessed by pranksters: FOX News’, CNN’s Rick Sanchez’ and Britney Spears’ accounts have all had tweets posted to them by unauthorized parties.

These tweets have since been deleted, but their images have been saved in a number of places, including a Flickr photoset by Mat Honan and on TechCrunch.

Here’s an image of the unauthorized post on Britney’s Twitter account. The pusillanimous bowlderizers over at TechCrunch blurred out the word “vagina” in their screenshot of the posting, but we don’t do that sort of thing here at Global Nerdy:

Screenshot of hacked Britney Spears tweet: "HI Yall! Brit here, just wanted to update you on the size of my vagina. Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth."
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

Michael Arrington, you big girl’s blouse, they use the word “vagina” on prime time TV – for starters, on Family Guy. Also, thanks to Britney’s now legendary bad judgement and celebrity blogs, we’ve all seen said vagina anyway [link not safe for work!].

Here’s the unauthorized post on Rick Sanchez’ Twitter account:

Screenshot of hacked Rick Sanchez Twitter account: "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today"
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

And my favourite, the unauthorized post on FOX News’ Twitter account that tells the shocking truth of about falafel-and-loofah fetishist and screaming head Bill O’Reilly:

Screenshot of FOX News Twitter account: "Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay"
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

Anyhow, you might not be a celebrity, but it still might be a good idea to update your Twitter password if it’s something easily cracked, like a word that can be found in the dictionary.

[This article was originally posted on Global Nerdy.]

Categories
Geek

Why I Hate Having Multiple Chats

It’s because I always end up typing the wrong message in the wrong chat window. So far, I haven’t done anything as embarrassing as the ChaCha guide below, but I’m not going to tempt fate…

Q: Randy Newman show at Seattle's Moore Theater tonight. What time do the doors open? A: An Eiffel Tower is a threesome with two guys and a girl. The guys are high-fiving over the girl to make the Eiffel Tower shape.
Screen capture courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

[This article was originally posted on Global Nerdy.]