My friend and co-editor of Misc, the “lifestyle” section of the Queen’s Journal (the main student paper at
My only directive, and I quote: “No boobies.” This was relayed to me second-hand, but I suspect it’s from Derek’s fiancee. I have every intention of respecting that directive, for while I may be a goofball, I am an honourable goofball.
This should be interesting. I’ll take photos.
Hey, I got email from Steve Mann! Cool!
He wrote in response to the posting about my photography experience at IKEA. He tells me that the Thursday evening panel discussion that I mentioned in this posting is going to cover the issues of surveillance versus sousveillance — where surveillance is turned upside down and the watched watch the watchers — and matters related to public versus private.
Thanks for the heads-up, Steve!
And double thank you for taking my “MISTER CYBORG” ribbing in the good-natured spirit in which it was intended. After all, who am I to talk? The present-day version of the rig he carries everywhere is less bulky and probably weighs a tenth as much as the accordion I carry everywhere.
(And as I take off my backpack and empty my pockets to change to dress up for tonight’s stag party for a friend, what do I see? In the backpack, a 12″ G4 Powerbook, power supply, Logitech MX500 mouse, spare power bar, small ethernet hub and power supply, USB ultra-bright LED reading light, USB hub. Ahem. In my pockets: Nikon Coolpix SQ camera, Samsung N370 cell phone, Mandylion password-memorizing/generating key fob, Handspring Visor Platinum, Planet Bike flashing ultra-bright LED bike light. Dammit, I may as well be a loosely-coupled cyborg myself.)
I extend a filet mignon on a flaming sword to the professor!
Maybe he’ll record the next Friday accordion video with me. The song I have in mind is Gary Numan’s Are “Friends” Electric?
Steve Mann’s page on sousveillance. Who watches the watchers?
This is not “The Softer Side of Sears”. An MPEG video in which Steve asks Sears staff about their surveillance equipment. The whinging that the Sears staff do is quite something, and the way they react when they realize that they’re on camera is priceless.
Thanks to Steve Mann for the links!
That new version of Flight Simulator must be really good, ’cause Scoble’s got it on the brain.
(I’ll probably pick it up. I said I was lowering my reliance on Microsoft-based stuff, not ditching it outright. But first, there’s Star Wars Galaxies, and I don’t dare touch that until I’ve got my freelance coding work off my plate.)
In a recent blog entry of mine, Getting pragmatic, part 1, I talked about what Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas in The Pragmatic Programmer refer to as “The Power of Plain Text”. Scoble, in response to that part of my entry, writes:
I think I should be able to do more than just plain text on my computer. For instance, I wanna play some Flight Simulator (seen the latest version, it’s freaking awesome).
I wanna use my Tablet to write in ink. That ain’t plain text.
My friend built a system to run a Pistachio factory. That ain’t plain text.
It would appear that our wires are getting crossed. When I speak of plain text, I’m not talking about plain text interfaces, but plain text data formats:
That’s what I was talking about.
Hey, if I wanted plain text interfaces, I wouldn’t have paid the “Apple tax” and bought a Powerbook. I would’ve gotten an off-brand notebook, covered it with skateboard stickers and saved myself a lot of dough (and spared myself the trouble of having a life, too).
Of course it would be silly to make Flight Simulator a plain text game, although imagining it is fertile ground for a laugh:
> MAINTAIN COURSEYour course remains unchanged, but you are approaching the point where you will be "handed off" to the flight control tower at Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. "Good," you think. "I'll annoy them by saying 'over and oot. Stupid Canuckleheads."
The stick feels a little sluggish today; you find yourself constantly arm-wrestling with it as the 737's nose insists on pointing downward. The pedals don't feel right, either. There's a bit of yaw to the right, and the crosswind isn't helping make things any easier.
Airspeed remains constant at 340 knots.
There is an exit to the aft.
There is a stewardess here.
> LOOK STEWARDESS
She's hot.
I’ll elaborate more on plain text and how it serves interoperability later.
On Wednesday evening, my friend Trysh and I went out for the complete suburban experience. First, dinner at Swiss Chalet (for non-Canadians, it’s a chain of family restaurants specializing in roast chicken with dipping sauce) followed by a shopping trip to IKEA, the home of BILLY bookshelves, Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce…
…and a bizarre “no photos” policy.
We discovered this policy when we passed by a bin of stuffed animals. Stuffed ants, to be precise.
“Eeeeeeugh,” said my pretty companion, “you know, the last thing that I’d like to snuggle up with would be…”
“…a three-foot giant ant?” I said, completing her sentence. I grabbed one out of the bin and gave it a big bear hug.
“Give me your camera,” she said, “we have to take a picture of this.”
Here’s the resulting picture:
Apparently, this is some kind of violation.
Immediately after the picture above was taken, an IKEA customer service representative came up to us and informed us that photography is forbidden in IKEA.
Since it was only a half-hour until closing and since Trysh needed to get some picture frames, I decided not to argue the point then and there. She was, after all, someone who didn’t make that stupid policy and probably not aware enough of the decision-making process behind that policy to debate it.
A “no photographs” policy for a furniture showroom is silly.
If I were from a competing store attempting to undercut IKEA’s prices, I could just as easily take notes. IKEA gives you golf pencils and paper so that you can take notes.
If I wanted to copy IKEA furniture design, I wouldn’t photograph it; I’d buy one so could study it in detail.
If I wanted to get a better idea of how a piece of furniture would look in my home or whether it would match my current decor, I would take a digital photograph.
If I wanted someone else’s opinion on a piece of furniture, I’d take a digital photograph so that i could show it to them.
Many people take their kids to IKEA. What if one of those “important moments” happens while you’re there, and you want to capture it? (It’s not as ridiculous as you think — my friend Bryce’s kid started walking for the first time while we were at a Mexican restaurant at a big dinner full of people from the CodeCon 2002 conference.)
I really hate being treated like some kind of criminal by companies who then expect me to give them money. I don’t like being told that I can’t have a friend take a picture of me inside their showroom when I’m quite certain that they themselves are monitoring me through the store’s security cameras. I’m with Lawrence Lessig when he says:
…it is bizarre that we increasingly live in this world where every movement is captured by a camera, yet increasingly, ordinary people are not permitted to take pictures with cameras. This is yet another part of a growing obsession with control that seems to mark so much of this society. At a minimum, we have a right to take note of this control, and criticize it where we can.
I think it’s time for me to write to IKEA’s customer relations department.
And take my business elsewhere, say a nice Canadian company like EQ3, who have funky furniture and are just down the street from me.
Or organize one helluva flash mob.
Perhaps all of the above.
Who’s with me?
The Photographer’s Right. A downloadable flyer that explains “our rights when stopped or confronted for photography”. Written with US laws in mind, but it should work for Canadians too.
The Starbucks Challenge. Starbucks doesn’t have a “no photography” policy, but some of its managers don’t know that. here’s the original story, and here are some comments.
You may have noticed that there’s no way to make non-anonymous comments without logging in. (Of course, you can simply put your name in the body of an anonymous comment.)
This software behind this blog — Blogware — was designed with a “membership has its privileges” philosophy. By giving readers Blogware accounts, it’s possible to create special members-only areas that are not visible to non-members. For instance, this blog has some super-secret sections accessible only to people within my section (Innovation and Research) of the company for which I work (Tucows). I could also create sections in which I grant certain people author status, so they can post their own articles — a collaborative blog, if you will.
I don’t agree with making users sign up for an account just so they can leave comments with their name and URL attached. I think that although signing up for an account is a quick process, it makes my readers jump through unneccesary hoops for “benefits” of dubious value. I think that the “if you get an account, you’ll get cool privileges” line of thinking is the kind of tunnel-vision one gets from working on a piece of software without getting a detached third-party point of view (and, speaking as a programmer and software designer, I’ve fallen into that trap myself).
(Please keep in mind, that this sticking point about accounts aside, I’m enjoying using Blogware.)
However, I have agreed to give this system a try. if you have an opinion on this subject, please let me know through by leaving me a comment or sending me some email.
If you would like an account, the sign up process is simple. Go to the account signup page. Fill it out, then submit it. You will then receive an email asking you to confirm your request. Once you have confirmed your request, your account will be automatically activated.
I fyou have any questions, let me know in the comments!
Yup, a new feature on The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century: Accordion Video Day!
Every Friday, I will post a video of an accordion performance. It might be of a cover tune or an original song. It might be topical, or perhaps it’ll be something I felt like doing. The two things I guarantee are:
This week’s accordion video is a tribute to Pulling Out All the Stops, the nude accordionist calendar put out to raise money by the St. John’s Arts Council at the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival this past weekend.
My favourite part of the article is a missed double-entendre:
Accordion players of all ages are featured: the youngest is 19 while the oldest are senior citizens, including Mr. September, Frank Maher.
“They were saying ‘Frank, are you beating off the women?'” Maher laughed.
I would, if I were him.
To celebrate this great milestone in the upward trending of the accordion, I have decided that the I would perform the first accordion video naked. Then I decided I’d look even better if I wore my Famous Cowboy Hat. Then I decided that the most appropriate song would be Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time. And all this was decided while I was sober!
Three takes later, I had a keeper.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…Britney, naked. I mean, I’m naked. But doing Britney. I mean, as a cover. (And yes, the video actually is safe for work.)
Click the photo to see the video (QuickTime, 544K).
Thanks to the dozen people who emailed me about the nude accordion calendar. Extra special thanks to Elliot Noss, the CEO of Tucows, the company for which I work, for taking time out of his busy day to seek me personally, just to tell me about the nude accordion calendar. (I’m still on my three-month probationary period and I know he reads this blog, so I figure it might be a good idea to kiss some ass.)
I’m taking requests for next Friday’s accordion video. If you have any ideas, comment away!
Here’s a tiny (130K) QuickTime movie showing everyone’s favourite semi-disposable Swedish furniture store. Note the Homer Simpson-esque awe in my voice as I narrate.
Taking pictures outside IKEA is a piece of cake. However, there’s a company policy against taking pictures inside. I’ll rant more about this later tonight.