Category: Geek

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Geek

More at Global Nerdy

pensionbook_snippet.gif
A snippet from Facebook for Old People

Here’s what I posted to my tech blog, Global Nerdy in the past couple of days…

On Extended Warranties: They’re still for suckers.

Gift Idea: “RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Site with Ruby on Rails”. Looking for a gift for a programmer who’s looking to get into Ruby on Rails? (And c’mon, you all have a friend like that!) I recommend giving this book.

New York Times Article on The Parallel Processing Problem: We nerds have been talking about it for a little while, and now it’s getting mainstream coverage.

Happy 20th Birthday, Perl! Birthday greetings to the programming language known as “The Duct Tape of the Internet”. It’s still too young to drink in the U.S., but it is old enough to be tried as an adult.

Facebook for Old People: Most of the groups are about knitting and kvetching.

Many RailsConf Proposals Submitted, Included Mine: Looks like Chad and the rest of the RailsConf committee have their work cut out for them. I publish the proposal I submitted.

Categories
Geek

Meanwhile, on “Global Nerdy”…

In case you’d forgotten, I write another blog: Global Nerdy, where I cover articles of interest to programmers, techies, nerds and all you folks who like keeping up with all things geeky. Listed beow are some of the most recent postings:

Angry woman holding a rolling pin beside “Master Chief” from “Halo 3”.“Halo 3” Cheat Codes, as Explained by a Neglected Girlfriend: “X, A, B, DOWN, RIGHT, Y: God mode. Total invincibility to all attacks. You can just stand there and the aliens can’t kill you. Heck, you could even put the controller down and they still can’t do anything. You could even walk away from the Xbox and—crazy idea—talk to someone who’s been sitting here for the past hour wondering if that was in fact an actual conversation she had earlier about going to the movies this afternoon and not just an incredibly realistic dream.”

Bug vs. Feature: Just in case the difference wasn’t clear to you.

It’s Complicated: An XKCD comic on everyone’s favourite Facebook relaionship status.

Photo of my desk and gear setup at TSOT.

Developer Hardware Nerdvana at TSOT: They give us some pretty nice gear at work.

In PHP, There’s Equality and Then There’s EQUALITY: Not all “equals” operators are created equal.

Area Man Gives Glowing Review for His Windows Vista to XP Upgrade Experience: I’m thinking about upgrading from Vista to XP myself.

Panel from a comic: “Show her how good you are at math!”Pythagorean Pick-Up: If you were (or are) a high school nerd, you’ll wish school social life worked like this.

1000 Copies of “Rock Band” Taken in Truck Heist: A sure sign we’re living in the 21st century: a couple of guys hijacked a truckload of videogames!

“BioShock” Meets a Shopping Cart: Quite possibly the world’s first Objectivist shopping cart.

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Geek Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

TSOT’s Ruby/Rails Project Nights – Starting January 8th

Bruce Lee, wearing a TSOT t-shirt and holding Ruby on Rails nunchuks.

The Quick Version

TSOT Ruby/Rails Night
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 (and the second Tuesday of every month)
@ TSOT’s office — 151 Bloor Street West (on the south side, just east of Avenue Road)
11th floor
Door open and food at 5:30 p.m.
Presentations start at 6-ish
FREE ADMISSION (but limited space)
To register, please email joey.devilla@tsotinc.com

About TSOT

TSOT is a Toronto-based start-up that develops — look out, here come the buzzwords — social networking applications using Ruby on Rails. Our first applications are FraternityLive and SororityLive, social software built specifically for people in fraternities and sororities. Both apps are currently being tested with a userbase of thousands of university students and alumni, and we expect to release them in early 2008.

About Ruby/Rails Project Nights

We believe that it’s good for Toronto to have a healthy developer ecosystem — it’s good not only for us as a Toronto-based development shop, but also as a group of developers who are passionate about the work we do. We’d like to see Toronto as “Silicon Valley++” — with the vibrant high-tech scene, but with all the amenities that make Toronto a better place to live than the Valley (such as not being a dreary 50-mile stretch of suburbia and having decent places to go at night).

Hence our contribution to the local developer scene: TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Nights, which will take place on the second Tuesday of every month. They’ll feature in-depth presentations by developers working on interesting projects — primarily Ruby and Ruby on Rails — along with drinks and munchies and a chance to socialize with your fellow developers. They’ll be hosted by Yours Truly, TSOT developer and DemoCamp regular Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla.

The First Night: Tuesday, January 8th

This first Ruby/Rails Night will feature presentations by a couple of Ruby/Rails local heroes on their current Ruby/Rails projects:

The doors will open at 5:30, the first presentation will start at about 6, and we hope to wrap up the evening by 8:30 or 9. We’ll provide food and drinks, and if there’s enough of a demand, we can always go out to a nearby pub afterwards. There’s no cost to attend (but be advised that seating is limited).

If you’ve been thinking about making a Ruby or Rails presentation (perhaps you want to rehearse for RailsConf 2008!), we’d like to have you present it at one of our project nights!

Add TSOT Ruby/Rails Nights to your list of New Year’s resolutions!

How Do I Register?

Registration is free, but space is limited. To register for the upcoming Jan 8th gathering, please email joey.devilla@tsotinc.com

For More Information

For more information about TSOT Project Nights, please contact:

The event is also listed on Upcoming.org.

Categories
Geek

Here Comes Another Bubble

[This was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

Here Comes Another Bubble, which my fellow TSOT developer Adam showed me, is a song about the current “Web 2.0” bubble set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “laundry list” song about world events that took place during his lifetime, We Didn’t Start the Fire. Here’s the video for the song — I like the infographic that shows that Facebook’s valuation ($15 billion) is really close to that of the Ford Motor Company ($16.8 billion):

Categories
Geek It Happened to Me Work

Whoo-hoo! My Own News Release!

“Big News” clip art

Well, this is nice: it’s a news release announcing my joining TSOT. It’s not 100% technically correct (we’re a team of Ruby on Rails developers, not PHP developers), but hey! I got a news release all about me! Whoo-hoo!

Categories
Geek Music

Vintage Ad Against Using Recorded Music for Movies

Back in the 1980s, I was a regular reader of Keyboard magazine. I always rolled my eyes at the two-page ad spread usually near the middle of the magazine that bore the headline “Don’t let them do DAT”, a campaign whose purpose was to keep DAT — that’s digital audio tape — recorders out of consumers’ hands. The worry was that giving consumers access to technology that could produce recordings that could be duplicated perfectly would kill the music industry (you young’uns would laugh at the audio fidelity of compact cassettes). The ad looked like a contest — in exchange for adding your name to their list of musicians who wanted to keep technology out of people’s hands, you’d get a chance to win some nice musical gear. Needless to say, I never participated in that silly campaign, which these days seems as quaint as Ned Ludd and his followers.

That’s not the first time that there’s been tension between musicians and technology. Back in the late 1920s and early 1930s, movies with sound were still new. Most films were “silent films” with the dialogue appearing on screen and music performed by live musicians in the theatre, a la Vern and Johnny, the vaudeville duo from Family Guy:

Vern and Johnny, the vaudeville duo from “Family Guy”

Here’s an ad that talks of the dangers of using recorded music in movies instead of musicans from 1931 titled The Robot at the Helm:

“The Robot at the Helm” ad
Image courtesy of the Paleo-Future blog. Click the picture to see the source article.

Here’s the text of the ad:

Here is a struggle of intense interest to all music lovers. If the Robot of Canned Music wrests the helm from the Muse, passengers aboard the good ship Musical Culture may well echo the offer of Gonzalo to trade “a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of ground.” Are you content to face a limitless expanse of “sound” without a sign of music?

Monotony of the theatre — corruption of taste — destruction of art. These must inevitably follow substitution of mechanical music for living music.

Millions of Music Defense League Members cordially invite you to join them in putting the Robot in his place. Just sign and mail the coupon.

As neat as having live musicians performing in sync to films would be — and hey, there’s room for that sort of thing — if anything is killing art, I’d say it’s Hollywood’s lack of creativity.

[Image from the Paleo-Future blog. Cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

Categories
Geek It Happened to Me Work

Scenes from Day 1 at the New Job

The New Company

People from the SororityLive and FraternityLive home pages
The “mascots” from the SororityLive and FraternityLive home pages. Party! Whoo!

My new company is TSOT, a little start-up specializing in social software. The company’s first products are SororityLive and FraternityLive, social software with special features for people in — you guessed it — sororities and fraternities. It’s pretty interesting software, and it doesn’t hurt that the customer base relies on social networking and has some money to throw around.

The New ’Hood

151 Bloor Street West
151 Bloor Street West. It’s smack-dab in the middle of a lot of fancy-pants shops.

The photo above shows the office building, located at 151 Bloor Street West. It’s a short walk away from the intersection of Accordion City’s two main streets and at the west end of the Bloor/Yorkville neighbourhood (also known as “Mink Mile”), which has a lot of posh shops, hotels, restaurants, pricey condos and office buildings.

It’s a sort of homecoming. OpenCola, the last start-up for which I worked, was located on the east end of Mink Mile, a short walk away. Like TSOT, OpenCola was a start-up in an unlikely location.

This neighbourhood is quite different from my old work ‘hood of Liberty Village, which consists of old factories that have been converted into office space. Liberty Village borders on Parkdale, a rapidly-gentrifying neighbourhood that still shows a few signs of its “Crackdale” past, such as colourful neighbourhood characters like “Low-talking Burger King Bible Lady” and “Incomprehensible Pee-reeking Guy on Roller Skates and Ski Poles Who Thinks He’s Running for Mayor”.

There is a similarity between my old and new work ‘hoods: both feature people who appear to be talking to themselves. It’s just that in the new ‘hood, such people are very likely to actually be talking into their Bluetooth headset phones.

The Temporary Office

TSOT’s office, which will eventually be on the building’s 11th floor, is currently under construction. In the meantime, the company is divided between two offices, with the programmers at 151 Bloor West and the management and “biz dev” a couple of blocks away. Being temporary, the current office setup definitely has the classic start-up feel, being sparsely furnished with folding tables acting as desks. I’m getting big-time deja vu.

The developer room at TSOT’s office
The developer room in the temporary office. Sure, they’re folding tables, but the computers, chairs and people are excellent!

My New Gear

When I got into the office, the guys showed me my desk, which had the following arranged into a neat little pile:

  • 15″ MacBook Pro, in its original packaging
  • Extra RAM for the MacBook
  • A Mac OS X “Leopard” install DVD
  • One of those new really flat Apple keyboards
  • A FraternityLive pen and mousepad
  • A copy of Barron’s Speed-Reading for Professionals
  • A Post-It note from CEO Kris White that read “Welcome, Joey! Here is some stuff to get you going. Cheers, Kris.”

15″ MacBook Pro, OS X Leopard DVD and other goodies waiting for me
Here’s what was waiting for me when I showed up. Well, this stuff was still in the original packaging when I showed up.

Now That’s What I Call a Welcome!

Kris White, the CEO, knows that I keep a spare accordion handy at the office and knew that I’d be bringing mine in on Day 1. He decided it would be a good idea to get some small instruments — a cowbell, maracas, drums, a xylophone and a harmonica — from the nearby music store for the other employees, as a “welcome to the club, can we join yours?” gesture. Now that’s what I call a welcome!

Box for OS X Leopard DVD and a toy xylophone
What every start-up needs. Mac OS X “Leopard” and musical instruments.

Perquisites

Among the perks of working at TSOT are some free food from Whole Foods in the kitchen and the programming department’s main room, which features some beanbag chairs, a big screen TV and a Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 Elite.

The game room at the TSOT office
All work and no play makes Joey a dull boy. Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 Elite! Whoo!

So in addition to getting up to speed on the code base and Ruby on Rails development, I’m going to need to work on my Mii and Wii bowling score.

Wii Bowling at the TSOT office
The cornerstone of co-worker bonding: Wii Bowling. I need to work on my Mii.

I think I’m going to like it here.