Category: Geek

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:

• “Computer, run exploit!” If you record a sound file containing spoken commands, you might be able to con a Vista user with speech recognition enabled into playing it, after which hilarity will ensue.
• The Truth (and Lies) About Online Dating. “Internet dating is a web of lies and obesity,” said a cynical programmer friend of mine, and he wasn’t that far off from the truth.
• Tech’s Environmental Footprint. iTunes and the environment — are we filling less landfills with old CD packages, or using more electricity because we’re playing music on power-hungry computers versus CD players, which consume less power?
• BBSpot’s Windows Vista Upgrade Decision Flowchart. Although meant to be a humour piece, the flowchart’s a pretty guide as to whether you should upgrade to Vista or not.
• Flickr’s Dirty Little Secret: You Suck at Taking Photos. A report that flickr automatically sharpens images you upload to it to make them look better.
• It’s Vista Day! The official comic of the Windows Vista release.
• iPhone Shuffle? If these exists an iPhone, it stands to reason that there must also exist an iPhone Shuffle.

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.

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.

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.

Here’s something of interest to those of you who are interested in helping promote Accordion City as a great place for techies to live, work and play: Wired’s article, 10 Top Tech Towns, in which they list the top 10 cities across the U.S. “to get your geek on”. The cities, in alphabetical order, are:

• Austin
• Boston
• Los Angeles
• New York City
• Orlando
• Pittsburgh
• Raleigh-Durham
• San Francisco Bay Area
• Seattle
• Washington, DC

The factors that were measured in choosing these cities were:

Proximity to top-ranked engineering schools

Tech jobs, per capita, on Dice

Personal ads, per capita, on Geek 2 Geek.

Craigslist postings per capita

Number of attendees at local meetings of Dorkbot, a group for “people doing strange things with electricity”

Availability of free Wi-Fi

Comic book stores per capita

Circuit City stores per capita

With the inclusion of Canadian cities and some minor substitutions — for example, substitute “Future Shop” or “Best Buy” for “Circuit City”, and thing like “DemoCamp” and “Sumo Robot Challenge” for “Dorkbot” — I think that Toronto could easily find itself in this list.

Of course, it’s one thing to have the virtues of a top 10 tech city and another to have them known. Luckily, we’re working on that — Toronto Tech Week will take place at the end of May, and I’m hoping to play a key role in its success. I’ll write more on it later, but for now, check out Mark Kuznicki’s piece on Toronto Tech Week.