Category: Uncategorized

Click the picture to see the book’s web page.

Dave Thomas — not the founder of the Wendy’s burger chain, but author

of the highly- acclaimed book The Pragmatic Programmer — helps to put out a series of

useful programming books bearing the Pragmatic Programmer mark. One

such book coming out in August is titled My Job Went to India (and all

I Got was This Lousy Book). Here’s a bit of the book’s description from

its site:

HINT: It’s not “their” fault, it’s ours…

The American IT job market is slowly coming apart at the seams, and

it’s all our fault. Most of us have been stumbling around letting our

careers take us where they may, and now we’re surprised when our

companies are shipping our jobs overseas for a fraction of the

price. It’s time to take control of our careers, and in the process,

learn to stay both relevant and employed. This book will show you how

to take action to avoid becoming yet another casualty of offshoring.

There’s a little more detail about this book in my professional blog, The Farm.

In this blog entry,

Dave notes that some people have written to him claiming that the

book’s title is racist. Dave in turn has set up a forum in the form of

a wiki page where you can comment on the issue and even vote on what he

should do.

My own feeling is that the title is not racist, based on the old maxim “if it bends, it’s comedy. If it breaks, it isn’t.”

What do you think?

Wait a minute — there was one thing that I wanted to blog: the return of Michael O’Connor Clarke to blogging. Luckily, Michael’s initials and circumstances lend themselves very well to an AC/DC-inspired “welcome back” graphic:

Michael’s posting entries in his blog again, and he’s also looking for work. He writes:

After four terrific years flacking my brains out as a senior exec. with some of Canada’s foremost public relations companies, I’ve decided to explore options to re-enter the technology sector, where my career began. I’m certainly not averse to agency gigs, of course – the priority is to find the right fit with a creative, growing organization. Right now, it’s all about finding a job where the sanity level exceeds the craziness.

His qualifications:

• Managed 45-person global marketing organization for Canada’s third-largest software company, with total accountability for US$4.5 million budget.
• Grew market share of global software company’s principal product to 42% (by independent estimates), through focused and intensive marketing campaigns.
• Created and grew new Technology Practice for Canadian arm of large international PR agency, generating $1.2 million in new revenue in first year.
• Developed and presented compelling new business pitches resulting in significant key account wins against very strong competition (including winning business with Accenture, eBay.ca, Agilent, MDS Inc., AOL Canada, H&R Block, and others).
• Led the communications plan for one of the largest and most successful technology sector mergers in Canadian history — Hummingbird’s $300 million acquisition of PC DOCS Group.
• Successfully managed the integration of two international marketing organizations into one with minimal disruption to clients, staff and business partners.
• Co-designed and executed long-term PR strategy for Compaq Canada that led to national media coverage increasing by 64 per cent in first 12 months.
• Co-founded successful UK-based software company; negotiated acquisition by Canadian technology firm; relaunched in North America and helped manage through $36 million Initial Public Offering.

He’s smart, funny, knows a helluva lot about both the PR and software fields. He keeps the company of far brighter lights than I, including Suw Charman, AKMA, and Doc Searls.

For more info, see Michael’s blog entry, Gizza Job.

Everything I want to blog about is accompanied by photos that are still

at home on my camera, so in the meantime, as part of my recent Superman kick,

please enjoy this Kryptonite Handbook (click the picture below to see the whole guide).

Today, Saturday May 7th, 2005, is Free Comic Book Day, the fourth such

annual event in which comic book shops across North America give away

free comic books to anyone who enters their stores.

Since it’s a bright spring day here in Accordion City, I thought I

might do some busking today. I think I’ll also take a peek at the

nearby comic shop, Silver Snail.

While looking up some links for the Star Wars Holiday Special

(see these posts), I stumbled across Stomp Tokyo’s review of a terrible

Bollywood rip-off of the Christopher Reeve Superman movie. How could I possibly resist a movie with a review that is best summarized like this?

Faced

with the daunting task of bringing a legend to life for the Hindi

film-viewing populace, these actors do their utmost to defile the

source material in every way imaginable. The only way they could have

made it any worse would have been to stuff things down Christopher

Reeves’ breathing tube.

Better

still, they link to a clip from the movie, which is summarized below:

In

an attempt to let Superman do something in the movie, the scene moves

to an airplane. Both Gita [the “Lois Lane” character] and Mr. Odious [The reviewer’s nickname for the mandatory obnoxious comic relief character] are on it for some reason, so

it is naturally hijacked minutes later. But first, wackiness ensues!

Mr. Odious needs to go to the bathroom, but it’s occupied. Ha! He

stands there for a few minutes, his face in positions of anguish as his

bladder distends. (We think that was anguish — it’s difficult

to separate all of Jagdeep’s [the actor who plays “Mr. Odious”] different facial contortions, since they

mostly resemble what any one of us looks like after a hammer has been

dropped on our foot.) When he is finally released from his watery

torture, he is waylaid by an amorous woman who introduces herself, in

English, as “Ms. Muscle Woman from Zambia.” Hilarious! Kill us!

When the hijacking arrives, it is a great mercy. One of the baddies

punches Mr. Odious! Yay! Mr. Odious falls into Ms. Muscle Woman’s arms

and a full two minutes of “comedy” follows. Boo!

Superman saves the day by dragging the plane to an airfield, as

represented by shots of a transparent airliner superimposed over aerial

shots of Bombay at night, inter-cut with shots of Jor-El casting his

arms about. It must have taken a while to get the plane to the airfield

— by the time they land, Bombay’s nighttime has become mid-afternoon.

Superman then enters the plane, dispenses some poorly edited justice to

the terrorists, and the scene ends abruptly without an encounter

between Superman and Gita. What the –?

Unlike Spider-Man India, this isn’t an authorized Indian version of a popular American hero.

A scene in which Superman rescues a hijacked plane. Note

angle in relation to the background.

Herve Villechaize taunts Superman: “Welcome to my Kyptonite Kitchen, Man of Steel!”

I downloaded the movie clip and posted it to the temporary download locations listed below. Enjoy!

• Temporary Download Site 1 [12.5 MB]
• Temporary Download Site 2 [12.5 MB]
• Temporary Download Site 3 [12.5 MB]

[cross-posted to the Blogware blog]

Liz “I Speak of Dreams” Ditz pointed me to the BlogHer site, which has details about the upcoming BlogHer conference…

From the BlogHer

blog:

BlogHer is a network for women bloggers to

draw on for exposure,

education, and community. By holding a day-long conference on July 30,

2005, and establishing an online hub, BlogHer is initiating an

opportunity for greater visibility, learning and success for

individual

women bloggers and for the community of bloggers as a

whole.

BlogHer plans to achieve this goal by

providing three key items: exposure, education and

community:

• Exposure for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s goal is helping women

  bloggers identify, reach and grow the audience they seek

  by raising their visibility and searchability. Once women bloggers

  build relationships with each other — online and in person

  –- it will

  be easier for Web users to find more quality, relevant bloggers. A

  broader diversity of top-trafficked bloggers will follow.

• Education for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s conference schedule is being

  designed as an opportunity for

  women to educate themselves and each other, both technically and

  conversationally. Via scheduled talks, panels and applied training

  sessions, everyone who attends BlogHer’s conference, either online or

  in person, will have the opportunity to learn new technoilogies and

  best practives that help bloggers better express and market

  themselves.

  At the same time, participants will explore opportunities, challenges

  and key questions facing women bloggers, both those writing about

  professional sectors (such as journalism and technology) and those

  exploring issues fundamental to female identity online (such as

  motherhood and dating). An essential feature of BlogHer’s approach to

  these discussions is the “Room of Your Own” track, where women in the

  BlogHer community can host their own seminars.

• Community for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s conference and

  online hub are opportunities for women

  bloggers to develop a network of colleagues they trust and support.

  Only this kind of social network, steeped in shared interests and

  experience, will create a sustainable community capable of delivering

  ongoing, mutual exposure and education. That’s why the

  conference

  agenda and the site will afford plenty of time for discussion, formal

  meet-ups, ad-hoc conversations and fun. Because community begins at

  the

  conference, and we expect it to continue at BlogHer.org all year

  long.

For more information about this conference,

visit the BlogHer blog.

If Kim Jong Il can have a LiveJournal, Darth Vader can have a blog.

(Bonus: Enjoy this Eminem-inspired parody [640KB, MP3] while reading Vader’s blog!)