The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

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The Amazon / eBay / Google Tactic (or: "Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now!")

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date April 13, 2005
3 Comments on The Amazon / eBay / Google Tactic (or: "Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now!")

I was looking for an excuse to post a Red Hot Chili Peppers pic.

Business 2.0’s article, The Great Giveaway,

takes a look at the tactic being used by Amazon, eBay and Google:

giving developers access to their databases — for free. Such an idea

would be unthinkable a little while ago, but by following Clay Shirky’s

maxim of what makes workable P2P (“Centralize what makes you money and

distribute what costs you money”) these three powerhouses are not only

enabling other businesses, they’re also driving customers their way and

turning themselves into application platforms.

Geek

From the Work Blogs…

On The Farm, the Tucows programming-in-general blog:

CocoaDialog
– a command-line app that you can call from shell scripts / other

command-line apps to display standard dialog boxes. Good for giving

your interactive command-line apps a Mac-like UI with very little work

on your part.
Two articles on the book Higher-Order Perl,
a book on writing Perl frameworks that generate functions. I point to

both the book’s site and an interview with the author of Higher-Order Perl, Mark Jason Dominus.
MySQL Cheat Sheet. SELECT * FROM MySQL_Reference_Material WHERE usefulness = 100;!
Python Code Snippets for Nokia Series 60 Phones. Writing apps for these phones is easier than you think.
Mac OS X “Tiger” Release Date — April 29th. Yeah, I’m going to be at my local Apple retailer that day.
mir.aculo.us and prototype
— one’s a weblog with some awesome JavaScript/DHTML code; the other is

a useful library for JavaScript/DHTML apps. There’s also some mention

of Ruby on Rails.
Continuations for Curmudgeons. Quite possibly the clearest explanation of continuations I’ve seen.

On IndieGameDev, the blog for independent game developers:

Mouse Ray Picking Explained. “There
comes a time in every 3D game where the user needs to click on

something in the scene. Maybe he needs to select a unit in an RTS, or

open a door in an RPG, or delete some geometry in a level editing tool.

This conceptually simple task is easy to screw up since there are so

many little steps that can go wrong.”
TheoWorlds Isometric Flash Game SDKs. Toolkits for building isometric games and chatrooms in Flash, a la Habbo Hotel.

In the Blogware blog:

Ryerson Review of Journalism on Blogging and Journalism.
A well known J-school’s magazine (produced by graduating journalism

students) takes a look at the intersection of blogging and journalism.

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"You see, kitten…when a man and a woman love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug."

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date April 13, 2005
5 Comments on "You see, kitten…when a man and a woman love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug."

This weekend, I’m flying down to Boston, and from there Wendy and I

will drive to the home of our friends Rachel “Velveteen Rabbi”

Barenblat and Ethan “Global Bacontarian” Zuckerman. Rachel will be the

rabbi at our wedding (with AKMA as the Christian ambassador), and we’ll

be there to discuss how we’re going to blend Filipino and Jewish

traditions in the ceremony.

There may also be some pre-marriage

counselling involved. Wendy and I have already done our homework; we’ve

listened to this 1950’s recording, The Marriage Union [4.3MB MP3]. Hey, Rachel, maybe you’d like to give this a listen — y’know, just so we’re all on the same page…

Apparently, back in the 1950s, they thought they could get away

with an adult voice-acting the

part of an adolescent girl. Give it a listen, but be warned — this

piece is so full of treacle and cheese that you might want to keep an

insulin shot handy.

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Powerpuff Pantheon!

At GheeHappy.com

(ghee is Indian clarified butter), you’re going to find a goregously

cute site devoted to Indian culture. The artwork is gorgeous, from the highly stylized rendition of the Hindu gods to the playful typography that gives the site an India flavour without falling into cliche.

GheeHappy is the creation of Sanjay Patel, who in addition to having an interesting site also has an interesting job: he works at Pixar.

Here are some of his renditions of the Hindu gods…

Graphic: Ganesha.

Ganesha. “Please do not offer my god a peanut.”

Graphic: Kali.

Kali. This looks like what will happen to me if I am late to pick up Wendy from the aiport again.

Graphic: Rama.

Rama. He bears a striking resemblance to Roger Ramjet in both name and appearance.

Graphic: Shiva.

Shiva. For the destroyer of worlds, he’s pretty cute.

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Anakin Skywalker is Going to Turn Evil! I Have Proof!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date April 13, 2005
1 Comment on Anakin Skywalker is Going to Turn Evil! I Have Proof!

Screen shot: Illustrated script for Star Wars: Revenge of the

Sith.

“Launch lucrative toys!…erm, I mean, fighters!”

If you know where to look, you can find both the script and the comic book adaptation of the upcoming Star Wars installment, Revenge of the Sith…

Screen shot: Scanned comic book adaptation of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

“I have you now, Saruman!…er, I mean, Count Dooku!”

In the News

Cat Hunting?

[via Boing Boing] Given my dislike of cats, I find it amusing that Wisconsin is considering making cat hunting legal. That’s “cat hunting” as in “humans hunting cats” rather than what is depicted in the picture below (click to see it at full size):

I thought I’d never have an excuse to use this picture. I don’t even remember where I downloaded this pic from. Click the picture to see it at full size.

It Happened to Me

Geek Gridlock (or: Appearing at Penguicon)

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date April 11, 2005
3 Comments on Geek Gridlock (or: Appearing at Penguicon)

I’ve been invited as a “Nifty Guest” to Penguicon 3.0

(think of it as a Reese’s peanut butter convention where Linux and

science fiction collide in creamy geeky goodness), which takes

place April 22nd through 24th in Novi, Michigan. Major guests include

my friend and former employer Cory Doctorow; nifty guests include the one and only Eric S. Raymond.

My major presentation will take place on Sunday, April 24th and appears in the program as:

Interactive Fiction: Down and Out in the Grue Kingdom

2:00 to 3:00 pm

Joey deVilla

Interactive Fiction, also known as “IF” and formerly known as “text

adventure games”, has a history spanning over 30 years and thrives even

in this day of console games. If you are (or hope to be) a game

developer, an author, or both, join us as we show you how to develop IF

using the Inform programming language. We’ll implement a game/interactive story based on a scene from Cory Doctorow’s “Down and

Out in the Magic Kingdom”.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, c’mon down and say “hi” —

you might even decide that you’d like to write your own interactive

fiction games!

I looked at the schedule and initially thought “Hey, good,

no major draws away from my presentation” — Cory’s reading is from

1:00 to 1:30, and the big panel with Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda, Eric S.

Raymond and Nat Torkington is at 3:00. But then I saw it:

Jay Maynard and Fame in Fandom

2:00 to 3:00 pm

Jay Maynard

The Tron Guy! You saw him on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Let him

talk about being famous and sought after! How can you become big man in

fandom? Come find out.

In the nerd world, that’s like having your band play the same night as Radiohead.

Jay Maynard, the Tron Guy. Check out his site at www.tronguy.net.