Month: May 2006

Today is a holiday in both America, where’s it Memorial Day, and Fiji, where it’s Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna Day. Have a good one!

Wendy and I picked up Douglas Coupland’s latest book, JPod, at Chapters last week for a song. It was front-and-centre at the Bloor and Runnymede branch, with a “30% off” sticker on it, knocking it down to about 25 bucks, which is pretty decent for a hardcover.

Wendy ploughed through it last weekend. Her one-line on-the-spot review: “Wicked realistic: you’d live in JPod too if you let your true personality shine.”

Now it’s my turn. So far, so good, and yes, like Microserfs, it paints a pretty believable picture of life in a geek workplace. Yes, the dialogue is a little too Gilmore Girls-precious and pop-culture-metaphor-rich to be realistic, but that’s what I read Coupland for.

Here’s an excerpt from the start of the book, courtesy of NeverHappened.org:

Never Mess with the Subway Diet

"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."

"That asshole."

"Who does he think he is?"

"Come on, guys, focus. We’ve got a major problem on our hands." The six of us were silent, but for our footsteps. The main corridor’s muted plasma TVs blipped out the news and sports, while co-workers in long-sleeved blue and black T-shirts oompah-loompahed in and out of laminate-access doors, elevated walkways, staircases and elevators, their missions inscrutable and squirrelly. It was a rare sunny day. Freakishly articulated sunbeams highlighted specks of mica in the hallway’s designer granite. They looked like randomized particle events.

Mark said, "I can’t even think about what just happened in there."

John Doe said, "I’d like to do whatever it is people statistically do when confronted by a jolt of large and bad news."

I suggested he ingest five milligrams of Valium and three shots of hard liquor or four glasses of domestic wine.

"Really?"

"Don’t ask me, John. Google it."

"And so I shall."

Cowboy had a Jones for cough syrup, while Bree fished through one of her many pink vinyl Japanese handbags for lip gloss—phase one of her well-established pattern of pursuing sexual conquest to silence her inner pain.

The only quiet member of our group of six was Kaitlin, new to our work area as of the day before. She was walking with us mostly because she didn’t yet know how to get from the meeting room to our cubicles. We’re not sure if Kaitlin is boring or if she’s resistant to bonding, but then again none of us have really cranked up our charm.

We passed Warren from the motion capture studio. "Yo! jPodsters! A turtle! All right" He flashed a thumbs-up.

"Thank you, Warren. We can all feel the love in the room." Clearly, via the gift of text messaging, Warren and pretty much everyone in the company now knew of our plight, which is this: during today’s marketing meeting we learned we now have to retroactively insert a charismatic cuddly turtle character into our skateboard game, which is already nearly one-third of the way through its production cycle. Yes, you read that correctly, a turtle character—in a skateboard game.

The three-hour meeting had taken place in a two-hundred-seat room nicknamed the air-conditioned rectum. I tried to make the event go faster by pretending to have superpower vision: I could see the carbon dioxide pumping in and out of everyone’s nose and mouth—it was purple. It made me think of that urban legend about the chemical they put in swimming pools that reveals when somebody pees. Then I wondered if Leonardo da Vinci had ever inhaled any of the oxygen molecules I was breathing, or if he ever had to sit through a marketing meeting. What would that have been like? "Leo, thanks for your input, but our studies indicate that when they see Lisa smile, they want a sexy, flirty smile, not that grim little slit she has now. Also, I don’t know what that closet case Michelangelo is thinking with that naked David guy, but Jesus, clamp a diaper onto him pronto. Next item on the agenda: Perspective—Passing Fad or Opportunity to Win? But first, Katie here is going to tell us about this Friday’s Jeans Day, to be followed by a ten-minute muffin break."

But the word "turtle" pulled me out of my reverie, uttered by Fearless Leader—our new head of marketing, Steve. I put up my hand and quite reasonably asked, "Sorry, Steve, did you say a turtle?"

Christine, a senior development director, said, "No need to be sarcastic, Ethan. Steve here took Toblerone chocolate and turned it around inside of two years."

"No," Steve protested. "I appreciate an open dialogue. All I’m really saying is that, at home, my son, Carter, plays SimQuest4 and can’t get enough of its turtle character, and if my Carter likes turtle characters, then a turtle character is a winner, and thus, this skateboard game needs a turtle."

John Doe BlackBerried me: I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS

And so the order was issued to make our new turtle character "accessible" and "fun" and the buzzword is so horrible I have to spell it out in ASCII: "{101, 100, 103, 121}"

Although I am a programmer, I haven’t memorized the ASCII table with the exception of uppercase “A” (65) and the space character (32). This may be the first non-tech book I’ve read that sent me scurrying to ol’ PowerBook to try something out. I threw together this Ruby one-liner to find out what the buzzword was:

  [101, 100, 103, 121].each {|x| print x.chr}

  

So as not to spoil it for you, I won’t give away the buzzword in plain sight, but link to it here.

If the image above is too obscure, see these blog entries by:

• Rob Hyndman
• Mathew Ingram
• Paul Kedrosky
• Rex Hammock
• Shel Israel
• Rick Segal has two articles: this one and this one
• John Battelle’s defense of O’Reilly
• The first official response from O’Reilly
• The follow-up official response from O’Reilly, in which they say that the mark applies only to live events and conferences (meaning that Mesh somehow escaped their radar)
• and of course, the guy who got served the cease-and-desist order: Tom Raftery

For reference, here’s Tim O’Reilly’s essay from last year, What is Web 2.0?. Note that nowhere in this essay does it say “And it’s my buzzword! Miiiiiine!“

Me outside Fry’s Electronics in Silicon Valley, circa 2000.

Time is short today, so I’m going to be brief with this “Silicon Valley” post…

Nearly a hundred comments so far: Paul Graham’s using the site reddit.com as the comments section for his How to Be Silicon Valley essay, and he’s getting comments aplenty.

Ethan considers Canadian cities with a notable tech presence in the comments of this blog.

Memer suggests that “the one major missing piece (besides, potentially, cost of living) is the [lack of] perception of Toronto as a hip, liberal place to be.” I think this can and will happen — consider that in the 1950’s, you’d get arrested for playing a pick-up game of football on a Sunday. Nobody said a having a WASP heritage didn’t have a down-side.

An anonymous commenter says “I might be out of the loop, but I’m not really currently aware of any contending or ramping up Toronto start-ups that are generating buzz.” Of course, if this were the case, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion. What we do have are most, if not all, of the elements in place. In terms of the evolution of life on earth, we’ve got the “chemical soup” and there are thunderclaps nearby.

And finally, ideas we can steal from other Canadian cities with a strong tech presence in order to make Toronto a better tech hub:

• Vancouver: London Drugs (late-night drug stores that are practically grocery stores and computer stores) and late-night coffee places.
• Montreal: Night life, cafe culture and perhaps a little architecture.
• Edmonton: Never been there, so I have no idea. I do know that they can put away a lot of beer.