So yesterday, there was a big snow storm. Most of the East Coast freaked out, which is somewhat reasonable for getting over a foot of snow in about 12 hours.
Today, there was word going around that there was going to be some sort of geek snowball fight. At first glance, I was a little put off – one VC emailing a tech mailing list does not a snowball fight make. I was strong armed by (close friend) Alexandra Klasinski to show up, and so we trudged out of our warm apartment into the very snowy world.
It’s that time of year again: the Steam Holiday Sale has returned (from today through January 2nd) with over 1,000 titles on sale. As is holiday blog tradition, here is my guide to help you maintain some dignity and fiscal responsibility. (Here’s last year’s guide, for reference.)
Nearly fifteen years ago, during a high school band trip to NYC, I was part of a well-reasoned insurrection. We had one goal: to commandeer one of the charter buses on a trip a few miles down the road, where the Metrostars were playing the Columbus Crew in the what was the third week of the opening season of Major League Soccer. Our plot somehow worked, and I remember racing up the steps of the Meadowlands to find my seat behind one of the corner flags and watch actual first division soccer in my home country. The Metros lost 2-0, and my general disappointment ended up turning me into a DC United fan for the remainder of the season.
I am a huge, huge fan of Atlassian’s tools, and I’ve worked pretty hard to make them a part of culture at my office. They’ve just started a series of blog posts on using a wiki for technical writing, and I loved this bit:
Do you feel nervous at the thought of customers adding angry comments on your documentation wiki? Spammers running riot? Here’s the flipside for you to consider: customers answering other customers’ questions in the wiki, external developers adding code samples to help flesh out your document, partners volunteering to write new documentation.
I think that when it comes to implementing any new technology (especially from being inside IT), there’s a lot of fear and belief that someone, somewhere, is going to misuse/abuse it. But we often lose site of the advantages that will come from the tool and clever use by your community.
“But what if…?” is the common thing I hear when talking about new technology, and my tongue-in-cheek response is now going to be “What if there’s bears?”, in due deference to this old Will Hines video:
Stop planning for doomsday. Pre-empt the obvious abuses, and handle the subtleties as they come.
The 2010 Vendy Awards were yesterday on Governor’s Island. It was a perfect afternoon: gorgeous weather, a beautiful setting, and endless amounts of top notch food.
Fifteen years ago today, “Hackers” – a much mocked, yet much beloved piece of mid-90′s cheese – hit theatres. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman gave it a D, declaring it a “dismal mess”, adding “…what’s most grating about Hackers, however, is the way the movie buys in to the computer-kid-as-elite-rebel mystique currently being peddled by magazines like Wired.” Roger Ebert opted to give it 3 stars, calling it “smart and entertaining, then, as long as you don’t take the computer stuff very seriously”.
Everyone has their favorite cult movies; this one is mine. If you haven’t seen it, it’s on Netflix instant queue as of a few weeks ago. You owe it to yourself to watch this fantastical attempt at a technothriller and delight in dialog such as “Turn on your computer. Set it to receive a file.”
Today was National Waffle Day. 2009 Vendy Dessert winner Wafels & Dinges was celebrating the occasion less than a block from my office, so I brought in my camera and spent my lunch hour enjoying the scene. Rain and the NYPD couldn’t stop the crowning of Mr. and Ms. Wafel, and most everyone in line had a crudely drawn picture of the truck to exchange for a free wafel.
Through a process that defies explanation, I have licensed the above 2005 “truck nuts” photo to Comedy Central’s tosh.0 for use as a punchline in the Jet Ski Parking “Video Breakdown”, which aired last week as part of episode 218. (It’s at 0:55 in the clip – blink and you will miss it.)
The check arrived today, and it does in fact read “LICENSE FEE: TRUCK NUTS PHOTO”.
(This differs slightly from the licensing agreement which stated the licensed material was a still photo of “truck with comedic testicular decoration on tailgate”.)
Sometimes I wonder what I did to ensure my life would be so constantly surreal.
Dan Dickinson is a 32 year old living in Jersey City, New Jersey. By day, he works at the intersection of collaborative technologies, education, web development, and medicine. By night, he's a soccer journalist. He loves nostalgia, minutiae, and introspection. This has been his primary (vivid) weblog since February of 2000.
