Month: March 2007

I assume it’s some kind of art piece:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Even at this distance, I can identify the make of accordion — it’s a Titano.

Here’s what I posted on other blogs today.

On the Tucows Blog:

• Some .NET Tucows API Client Code for You to Try. If you’ve been thinking about selling domain names, email service, digital certificates, managed DNS or other Tucows services but couldn’t because there weren’t any C#/.NET code examples, the wait is over.
• Some Ruby Tucows API Client Code for You to Try Some quick example code — the first step towards creating a Rails plug-in or helper that would let you create a site to sell domain names, hosted email or other Tucows services.
• Tucows’ Kim Phelan on the RFP/RFI Process. Our Director of Product Management co-leads a seminar at the Toronto Product Management Association.

On Global Nerdy:

• 11 Confessions of a T-Mobile Sales Rep. A sales rep tells you what to do to get the best deals from T-Mobile.
• “Dude, Where’s My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?” Why, if you have a 32-bit operatin system, buying more than 3 gigs of RAM is a waste.
• Inc.com: “U.S. Workers Hate Their Jobs More Than Ever”. “More than half of all respondents said they dislike their current jobs, compared to less than 40 percent in a similar survey conducted 20 years ago.”
• 5 Signs That It’s Time to Find Another Job. “Those days [the just-after-the-bubble-burst days, when tech jobs were scarce] are gone. High-tech jobs are being created. There are new positions to move into. A lot of people, though, aren’t picking up stakes and moving on. They’re stuck in that head-down mentality and maybe they’re missing the opportunity to find that great next job.”

Here’s a quote from Accordion City city councillor Rob Ford in an article in yesterday’s edition of the Toronto Star:

I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.

The best summary of the problem with Rob Ford comes from a comment in the blog Raise the Hammer:

Ford is an idiot, there’s no defending that, but he highlights a common problem among City Councilors:

a. he does a great job at meeting his constituent’s needs. A recent Star article highlighted a day with Councilor Ford which found him working 12 hours, and visiting constituent’s homes personally, along with various city staffers, to address their complaints directly. Now that’s service. He is also ethically astute and regularly files the lowest expense reports of all Toronto Councilors. But:

b. he has a complete lack of understanding of how to build and manage a livable city. His ignorance is truly astounding.

The good news is that from this description, there’s hope for this guy — after all, as the saying goes, “Ignorance can be cured, but stupid is forever.”

What we need to do is build up a collection of the benefits of living in a cities with a good mix of pedestrians, bikes and cars, where a significant portion of the population use bicycles to get around.

(And no, I don’t think that Critical Mass is the answer.)

[via Reddit]

On Global Nerdy, there are these stories:

• Newspapers Need Nerds! There’s a demand in newsrooms for people who have both programming and journalism chops, like Adrian “Django” Holovaty.
• My Dirty Network Neutrality Secret. What’s my secret? That I haven’t fully worked out my position on network neutrality.
• Developers Aim to Lure Women to Adult Games, A Little More Hesitant About the Gay Dudes. Two words: “Ass physics.”

And on Tucows Blog, there are these articles:

• The Latest Domain Name Statistics. I put together some graphs based on VeriSign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.
• .mobi Names Hit the 400K Mark. Well done for the folks at dotMobi, who say that their adoption rate outpaces .com, which got only 100,000 registrations in its first decade. I put that statement into perspective.

Who knew insurance guys could be edgy? Here’s a Nativity-themed ad for car insurance from Puerto Rico:

Click the image to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

A fun graphic for a chilly but sunny day, courtesy of Reddit:

Back when I was a freelancer and worked from home (or quite often, at a cafe), I took an hour off in the afternoon and went outdoors, sometimes with the laptop and sometimes just to relax. Besides, I maintain a nice caffe latte shade year-round.

You could argue either way. Personally, I think he’s a member of the late Rhino party…

Click to see the comic at full size on its original page.

The comic comes from The Pain — When Will it End?