Dave “Dave’s Picks” Polaschek informs me that the my age — the number 37 — is sacred in the numerology of the Hells’ Tunas Motorocycle Club.
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Accordionizing the Eschaton
I was busy cleaning up the house and getting ready for the arrival of Wendy and her parents (2:20 this afternoon) when someone came to the front door. Normally, I’m not bothered by door-to-door “spammers”; I’m usually safe from them at the Tucows offices. I’m glad that my house has a front door intercom with which I can screen out door-to-door salesleeches, Jehovah’s witnesses and the like.
I hit the “talk” button and the conversation went like this…
Me: Hello?
Guy: Hi, I was going door-to-door — I tried to reach your neighbours but they weren’t home — and I wanted to talk to you about The Rapture and the Great Tribulation…
Me: I’m very sorry, but I’m on my way out the door. Look could you, er, come by later?
Guy: Sure. I was wondering if you…
Me: Oh, I know about the Last Days. I read Left Behind, see, and I fully expect to be pulled away in The Rapture. I think that with everything the way it is in the world right now, it could happen really soon; the signs are there! Maybe you could come by for coffee later and we cou…
…and that’s when I let go of the intercom’s “talk” button.
He buzzed three more times, each buzz growing in length and sounding more desperate, but by then, I’d started scrubbing the toilet.
To the poor fella out there: Thank you for the opportunity to indulge in a little birthday prankery. Best present so far!
To those of you who were wondering if there’s a Chick tract on the topic: of course there is! You get bonus points for correctly guessing that it contains a reference to the Catholic church as “The Whore of Babylon”.
And to to my Evangelical friends: Real Rapture believers don’t buy green bananas!
[Cross-posted to my professional blog, The Farm]
Clay Shirky has a great
article titled Group as User:
Flaming and the Design of Social Software
in which he says that one of the misconceptions of designers of social
software is that they see the “user” of a piece of social software is
not a collection of individuals, but a group:
When we hear the word “software,” most of us think of things like
Word, Powerpoint, or Photoshop, tools for individual users. These
tools treat the computer as a box, a self-contained environment in
which the user does things. Much of the current literature and
practice of software design — feature requirements, UI design,
usability testing — targets the individual user, functioning in
isolation.
And yet, when we poll users about what they actually do with their
computers, some form of social interaction always tops the list —
conversation, collaboration, playing games, and so on. The practice of
software design is shot through with computer-as-box assumptions,
while our actual behavior is closer to computer-as-door, treating the
device as an entrance to a social space.
We have grown quite adept at designing interfaces and interactions
between computers and machines, but our social tools — the software
the users actually use most often — remain badly misfit to their
task.
Social interactions are far more complex and unpredictable than
human/computer interaction, and that unpredictability defeats classic
user-centric design. As a result, tools used daily by tens of millions
are either ignored as design challenges, or treated as if the only
possible site of improvement is the user-to-tool interface.
The design gap between
computer-as-box and computer-as-door
persists because of a diminished conception of the user. The user of a
piece of social software is not just a collection of individuals, but
a group. Individual users take on roles that only make sense in
groups: leader, follower, peacemaker, process nazi, and so on. There
are also behaviors that can only occur in groups, from consensus
building to social climbing. And yet, despite these obvious
differences between personal and social behaviors, we have very little
design practice that treats the group as an entity to be designed for.
A related entry: Joel on Social
Software.
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Birthday Gift Art
This just arrived in my inbox. My thanks to Patrick Kent!
Me at the OpenCola office in August 2000.
More birthday self-indulgence: I’ve set up a photo album that would be
a catalog of where I was and what I was doing all these years. The
photos contained within the album were selected from my 1998 through
2001 collections; I’ll add more later.
| In 1967…
|
| Jose Martin “Joey / Accordion Guy” deVilla is born in Manila, Philippines.
Also born this year: Dave Matthews, Kurt Cobain, Liz Phair, Vin Diesel, Julia Roberts, and Anna Nicole Smith.
Ferdinand Marcos is president of the Philippines. Lyndon B. Johnson is president of the US, the next country in which I live. Lester B. Pearson is prime minister of Canada. my current home. Love is a Many Splendored Thing debuts on US daytime television and is the first soap opera to deal with an interracial relationship. CBS censors find it too controversial and ask for it to be stopped, causing show creator Irna Phillips to quit. President Johnson and Soviet premiere Aleksei Kosygin agree not to let any crisis push them into war. The X-15 research aircraft with Chuck Yeager establishes a speed record of Mach 6.7. Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice. The first home microwave is released by Amana. St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series. Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I. The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. They have not won it since. Disney’s The Jungle Book and The Graduate are the top grossing films The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is published. Paul McCartney announces that all four members of the Beatles have “dropped acid”. For the first time, Jimi Hendrix sets his guitar on fire during a concert in London. Canada celebrates its first one hundred years of Confederation. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released. The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published. US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Sesame Street ensues. The FCC orders that cigarette ads on television, radio and in print must include a warning about the health risks of smoking. And finally: The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state law which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. That’s gonna come in pretty handy next year,
|
Categories
Big Weekend Coming Up
This is a big weekend for Yours Truly for a couple reasons. There’s the
party (email me at accordionguy you-know-what-symbol gmail
you-know-what-punctuation-mark com if you’re in Accordion City and would like to attend), but even more importantly, this is the weekend when Wendy
and her parents fly in for the Meeting of the Parents. This is not new
territory for me, as our family did this back in 1999 when we first met
my brother-in-law’s folks (this meeting gets some mention in the final installment of my Worst Date Ever story).
This is also the weekend that I give Wendy her ring. It’s a little bit
unusual and a little bit flash. Perfect for the special lady who wants
to spend the rest of her life with me.
Robertson and I did some party shopping yesterday evening. First Costco
for food and mix, followed by a trip to the beer store. I’m supplying
microbrew this year, all from the Wellington Brewery: Beehive Honey Lager, Wellington Special Pale Ale and Wellington County Dark Ale. In honour of the engagement, I’m also serving Ring Pops.
an old friend of Wendy whom I met in July, arrives in Toronto Friday
night. Dave, I’m hoping to show you a little bit of the ol’ stomping
ground — perhaps Smokeless Joe for some fine ales or the Bovine Sex Club for some disreputable drinkin’!
I can guarantee that an ambulance guy will show up sometime at the party, but I assure you it’ll be good news. Tom “Random Acts of Reality” Reynolds
is flying from London to Accordion City to attend the bash. Tom, you
have earned the party’s Phineas Fogg award for being the guest who
travelled the greatest distance to attend the party.
(Tom’s blog, which details stories about his life in the London
Ambulance Service, is a gripping read — it earned him an interview in The Guardian.)
I have a Shaun of the Dead trucker cap that I keep forgetting to send to Suw “Chocolate and Vodka” Charman, who is possibly the world’s biggest fan of that movie. I’m going to give it to Tom to bring back to her.