This one’s for the programmers: I’ve started a one-man project to write libraries of PHP wrapper functions for the Tucows APIs called “Project Ash”. It’s named after “Ash” from the Evil Dead series of movies; he was one guy with a chainsaw trying to make a difference. If your eyes haven’t yet glazed over, go check out this article on the blog I’m paid to write for: the Tucows Blog.
In case you were wondering, the tech news blog that I share with my buddy George, Global Nerdy is still an ongoing concern. Current stories include:
The comic panel on the right (taken from this Achewood comic) summarizes what I want to say to the folks behind Windows Vista. Yes, I think that it’s got some improvements on Windows XP, but the annoyances I’ve had have eclipsed the steps forward. In the second installment of The Tainted Vista Review — my review of the controversial Acer Ferrari Laptop that Microsoft sent me — I write about my experiences trying to get the laptop to recognize its own Bluetooth mouse.
Even the relatively low-tech field of baking has adopted computers: a number of bakeries can now “print” photos onto a cake with an ordinary inkjet printer, edible paper and food-grade dyes. If you’re not satisfied with posting pictures of your cat on your blog, you can join the ranks of the edible imagers — there are companies like Icing Images and Icing Magic who carry the necessary supplies and books.
Since edible imaging is done with a computer, it’s only natural that someone would create a web order form where customers could enter the message they’d like to have printed on the cake. Of course, it helps to make sure that you’ve got the web application debugged; otherwise, you’ll get results like the one shown below:
Click to see a larger picture.
Those of you who are web developers will recognize the Microsoft conditional comments peppered all over the cake.
I suppose that nerds could give each other cakes with error messages printed on them — “444: Birthday entity too old,” and such.
For a little more detail on what happened with this cake, see this article.
UPDATE: I’ve added an opening for a MySQL Sysadmin position.
Are you a techie based in the Accordion City area and looking for a job at a great place to work? Tucows needs to fill a couple of positions. First, we need a Customer Service Representative:
Click the picture to more information about the Customer Service Representative position.
We also need a Technical Support Analyst:
Click the picture to more information about the Technical Support Analyst position.
Finally, for those of you into databases, we need a MySQL sysadmin:
Click the picture to more information about the MySQL Sysadmin position.
More details are in the Tucows Blog.
The types of jobs that get outsourced are those that management thinks are the type in which people are interchangeable and for which there are set procedures or routines from which you don’t deviate. I don’t worry that my job will be outsourced to India because my line of work — technical evangelist — is relatively outsourcing-proof.
As a tech evangelist based in North America, I’m required to be a good communicator in the English language. Hence posters like the one shown below give me a feeling of comfort:
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
The line “There are two class: first class and no class” cracks me up.
Well, that didn’t take long. In his Thursday, December 28th blog entry, geek blogger Joel “Joel on Software” Spolsky wrote this rather absolute-sounding pronouncement on Microsoft’s Vista-loaded laptop giveaway:
Microsoft’s crazy offer, though, made me think a lot more about this whole thing, and I’ve decided that from this point forward I’m not accepting anything, full stop.
In the very next blog entry, he writes:
Anyway, only three days after announcing my new policy of “no gifts,” I’m stuck with this copy of the book I got in the mail for free. Should I send it back and buy my own copy? The New York Times policy on Journalism Ethics says, “Staff members may keep for their own collections—but may not sell or copy—books, recordings, tapes, compact discs and computer programs sent to them for review. Such submissions are considered press releases.”
Although I have to give kudos to Joel for being forthright and even though I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with his statement of principles or with accepting giveaways from companies, I can’t resist poking a little fun at him for backpedalling so quickly. I’m reminded of “Tom Tuttle from Tacoma”, John Candy’s character in the movie Volunteers, who resists communist brainwashing for a whole sixty seconds (the brainwashing is also undone with just one slap to the face). Dude, I have stationery that doesn’t fold as quickly as you do.