Thursday, 20 October 2005
There's No French Word for "Geek" but There Sure Is One for "Snob"
As I've mentioned before, I enjoy certain annual rituals - among them, my pilgrimage to Steve Jobs's Apple Expo keynote. This year marked only the second time since I moved to Paris that I didn't see the keynote. Like the first time, it was because it had been canceled.
For me, Jobs's keynote is the high point of the Expo. With it canceled, I didn't even bother to mingle with the masses of Mac fanatics fans. What, pass up being crushed by the great unwashed (sometimes literally)? I must be crazy!
Sarcasm aside, I did miss going to the Apple Expo this year. Apple has in recent years been distancing itself from trade shows to announce new products, instead preferring to create its own "events."
Tuesday, 18 October 2005
I'm Breaking About Half of Them Right Now
Jakob Nielsen has posted his latest Alertbox, dedicated to blogs.
In general (i.e. not just this article) Nielson regularly takes himself way too seriously, but I have to admit that he makes one or two good points (numbers five, nine, and ten). Otherwise, he seems to be placing himself as some serious journalism consultant for a medium that has everything to do with informal writing (number seven). Too many of the points lose their weight outside of a corporate environment.
Just what I needed: Creative tips from a guy who has little room for creative uses of a new medium (number four) - or even and old one (number three). Whatever, Jakob. Oh, and about number seven: were that I had a staff who wrote things ready for my imprimatur. Jeesh.
Monday, 3 October 2005
Disconnect
It's pretty amazing how reliant I've come on having an high-speed, always-on Internet connection. All day yesterday, my connection was down.
I've actually stayed later at the office this evening because I'm not sure if I'll have a connection at home. No other communication channel is this essential to me: not my television (which I never watch), not my phone (well, with the exception of my mobile phone when I go out). I can even do without mail delivery for several days.
It seems like data communications have reached the level of a basic utility in my life. Happily - especially for you, dear readers - my shower still runs and my toilet flushes.
(updated Thursday, 6 October 2005)
I guess it's not exciting at all - and borderline pedantic - but I did get back my connection on Tuesday evening. Hence my blog entry for that night. Turns out that my line had been changed over in expectation for my new ADSL 2+ box.
Now why they didn't wait to change over the line until after I'd received the box, I don't know. At least the outage lasted only two days, or else some real withdrawal symptoms may have manifested themselves.
Sunday, 31 July 2005
The "X" Stands for "Ten"
An article in the New York Times about the discovery of a tenth planet in our solar system. Vagaries about what defines a planet aside, it's kind of cool.
The best part of the article, though, was a quote from Michael E. Brown, one of the co-discoverers:
Informally, the astronomers have been calling it Xena after the television series about a Greek warrior princess, which was popular when the astronomers began their systematic sweep of the sky in 2000. "Because we always wanted to name something Xena," Dr. Brown said.
Good to see the geek sense of humor in the news.
Monday, 6 June 2005
It's the End of the World as We Know It...
Wednesday, 1 June 2005
Fifteen Seconds of Fame
Not that I'm especially vain, but on occasion I do check how "I" rank in search engines. For a long time, I've been beaten by a like-named tennis player, some guy writing quack science articles, and closely followed by a musician.
Last week, after hearing that Google had again updated its ranking engine, I ran my little test. Bingo! I'm number one. And on Yahoo. And at MSN. Three major search engines, all using different data. I win.
(click the images for a larger version)
Check it out for yourself (while it lasts):
- "John Keller," as seen by Google
- that yahoo "John Keller" on... Yahoo
- "John Keller," according to MSN
Cool, huh? And oh, so geeky.
Monday, 9 May 2005
A Whole New Ballgame
If you couldn't tell by the almost total lack of my writing about them, I'm not a big fan of video or computer games. There's only one game that I like - "like" to the point of it completely and utterly consuming what little time I set aside to play it. Otherwise, video games are a spectator sport for me.
Which brings me to a recent discovery. Well, "recent" as in, back in January. The discovery? Filmed video games, or walk-throughs. People record themselves playing and distribute the film across the Internet.
What's new, of course, is the ever-wider spread of high-speed access. That makes it much easier to distribute these videos, a sort of broadcast method. What's interesting is what these films represent: a first-person movie.
Saturday, 7 May 2005
Mirrors Within Mirrors
Living and shopping, as I do, in a clothing-centric neighborhood, I see plenty of window displays. One that I see often, but for get to write about just often, is what I saw again today.
On my way to Picard, source of my frozen goodies, I pass by a mannequin store. So, here is a place that whose window displays are made entirely of the props. What you normally see as support for the product, what usually fills in the blanks and is meant to fade into the background, takes center stage at this store.
I don't know, I think it's oddly cool. Maybe it's odd of me (and certainly not cool) to think of it as "oddly cool," but there you go.
It's food for thought, an appealing way to occupy my mind as I shop for meals for my body. Here is a meta-sales display: the product that is sold is being used as the prop to provide a context for the product.
In other words, there is no background prop. The medium is the message, the supporting character is the star - and vice-versa. In the words of a child, there is no spoon.
And we pass by, separated from this meta microcosm by only a sheet of glass.
Wednesday, 4 May 2005
"'Cause you never know..."
Ever justified something with that little chestnut? Of course you have. I was just thinking it the other day, glad that I closed my windows before I left my apartment for the bright and sunny morning. Because half an hour later, it was pouring buckets.
But the saying is usually completely false. Of course you know - eventually, you always will. At least in the cases where you'd be apt to use that expression.
Problem is, you usually know when it's too late. But you still know.
Ah, the life of a pedantic. You might've thought that I'd have written about something interesting - but you never know, do you?
Sunday, 1 May 2005
Mayday, May Day
Phew. More than two months without an update.
I've been swamped, to the point of being overwhelmed - you know what I mean? You don't? Well, then you're lucky and I'm not going to try to explain it to you.
While you're waiting for updates from me, you can read these stories about - and tips for - dealing with email overload:
- The New York Times covered the detrimental effects email has on focusing on important things. (Naturally enough, the article appeared a the start of February - two full weeks before my last entry.)
- The Harvard Business School gives some tips to master (sic) email overload.
- A COO takes stock of eight years of email.
- Despite his position, Donald Knuth, Computer Science Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, long ago decided to drop email completely. (Maybe I should consider the same.)
Thursday, 24 February 2005
D'oh!
If there's one thing that technology - and my obsession love with it - has taught me, it's that you can never wait too long to buy. Something better is always right around the corner.
And conversely, whenever you do commit to buy one of these precious, precious items, it is fast eclipsed by its newer, faster, better - and cheaper - successor.
Exhibit A: It's less than two months after Heather gave me an iPod photo, at the time the top-of-the-line iPod model. Of course, today Apple updated its iPod line.
Tuesday, 31 August 2004
Turn, Turn, Turn
As I would have already written (had I actually gotten around to writing about the Tour de France), there are certain events that I go to every year. These serve as markers of a sort, representing how long I've spent living in Paris as well as how I've used that time. Like a birthday, these are little, staggered "New Years" that are scattered throughout the calendar.
Today marked the fourth time that I went to the Apple Expo keynote (it would've been the fifth, had the event in 2001 not been canceled after the 11 September bombings). Usually, this is hosted by Steve Jobs, who - along with his reality distortion field - is the main draw for me. Sure, it's cool to see what nifty new toys Apple has come up with, but Paris almost always takes the back seat to the U.S. and so they're almost always a repeat from some prior event. No, this is much more about seeing the computer industry's one true rock star.
Friday, 25 June 2004
Even Monty Python Would Have a Hard Time Making This Funny
I get spam, lots of it. Due to my youthful indiscretions involving where I stuck my email address, every Joe Penis-Enlarger and Jane Horny-Co-Ed now want to be my pals (or bedmates, it's all a bit confusing). Yes, I left my address unprotected, and as a result I'm supposed to Earn Easy Ca$$$h!!! This may or may not be related to helping out most of the population of Nigeria with URGENT BUSINESS ASSISTANCE to the order of ABOUT TWENTY MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLAR [sic] (or "$20 MILLION," in case you didn't understand ALL THE SHOUTING).
And, in the ultimate of insults, I am plagued by spam from vendors who want to sell me anti-spam software.
Yea, I say unto you: I have sinned. I am wracked with the guilt of - gasp! - having put my email address on the Web.
Thursday, 24 June 2004
Geek Ahoy!
Anyone who's read entries from around the time I started my blog (oh, those long-gone golden days of - er, this past February) knows my love-hate relationship with the medium.
On the other hand, the tools - oh, the beautiful, shiny tools - are really pretty damn cool. After conducting a very scientific (and obviously thorough) survey of three of my friends' blogs, I decided to follow their unanimous endorsement and use Movable Type. Note that there's no hyperlink there: by their license agreement, I have to put a link to them somewhere on my home page. I figure that's one too many required linkages - so find it yourself, you grabby little punk.
There's been a recent uproar among the blogging community - faintly audible as a cough among the cacophony of all the world's true miseries - about Six Apart's change in their licensing requirements. I'm not going to get into that here (free software vs. Open Source is probably better saved for when - and if - I write about Linux), but Mark Pilgrim has a pretty good article about it and its effects. For the present, suffice to say that Mark has a great point: Movable Type is "free enough."
No, what this entry is about (or is supposed to be about) is the fun side of things - the geek side, really. Movable Type is pretty feature-complete in itself, but can be made even richer via plug-ins (the term for those little modules of third-party code that extend an existing piece of software, like the ubiquitous Flash plug-in for your browser).
Wednesday, 19 May 2004
In France, They Call It "PQ"
Sitting for a moment earlier today, I had little to do for the present moment but contemplate my immediate surroundings. So I scanned what was in front of me - the walls, the floor, the sink - when my eyes fell upon the package below the chrome-and-porcelain assembly before me.
Toilet paper.
Living in a foreign land as this intrepid adventurer does, one will often encounter reminders of how even the most banal objects take on new twists through necessity - be that cultural, linguistic, or other. Such as, for example, mentioned purely by happenstance, not meant to provoke the more sensible natures of those among you - the "you" to whom I refer when referring to my readers - the plastic-shrouded, neatly-rolled, paper products under my intent gaze.
Toilet paper.
Wednesday, 12 May 2004
Nothing Much: An Exercise in Task Avoidance
Tonight's palette-tickler was lasagnes chèvre-épinards and another serving of those feathered vegetables. After making sure the greens were clear of any errant plumes, I settled in for a cheesy gooey goodness while reading articles on the Web.
Wednesday, 14 April 2004
Happiness Is a Warm Keyboard
I'm typing this on my brand new keyboard, courtesy of yesterday's fun-filled romp with Dell support.
The keys work much better than those on my old keyboard. No excessive rattling, a much more sturdy feel, the edges of my space bar are responsive. The best is that pressing any key in the vicinity of Backspace doesn't flex that entire region of my keyboard. That last one was a killer.
So, zero credit for Dell's support process; kudos to the fact that the fix exists. But then again, why shouldn't I expect a decent keyboard on a € 3,200 portable computer?
It's almost as good as the keyboard on my ThinkPad 390X (bought used, € 420).
(updated Friday, 16 April 2004)
As a special bonus, let me add one more thing that - in the way of all blindingly obvious things - totally slipped my mind.
Tuesday, 13 April 2004
Maybe I Was Talking to the Farmer
I just got off the phone with Dell's support merdique. Almost fifty minutes, at 15 (euro) cents a minute [1] spent justifying why they needed to fix a problem with my putain de keyboard - a problem, I might add, that existed since soon after I bought my portable a year ago.
My troubles stem from poor design, and the company recognized the problem and fixed it a little over two months after I took delivery of my Inspiron. Not that they retroactively fixed computers unless you complained, of course. Bah, "Inspiron" - at times, the only thing it "inspirons" me to do is cram it down Dell's collective throat.
Thursday, 25 March 2004
Explain to Me How That Works Again?
So today our office got a new unbundled ADSL connection. It's almost twice as fast (downstream) as our old one, and we'll get a whole year's access for less than what we were paying for two months at our old provider. The only difference is that there's no uptime guarantee - but considering our old provider had more than one outage that lasted an entire business day, somehow the word "guarantee" doesn't mean a lot to me.
The point is, the new provider sent the modem over by courier once the connection was confirmed (nifty just-in-time service). I had it connected ten minutes later (even a geek has to eat first), took 20 to figure out the Web configuration (static IP via PPPoA, yuck; made a "temporary" setup so that our crufty 192.168/24 internal network can talk to the modem's 10/8 address space; turned off the modem's superfluous default services; blah, blah, blah). A bit under 45 minutes after we'd signed for delivery, our network was using the 1216 Kb/s connection as if nothing on the other side of the firewall had changed. For my final trick, I pointed our extranet's domain record to the new static address.
Tonight, washing it for dinner, I broke my third and last remaining drinking glass.
Monday, 22 March 2004
Nothin' Doin'
Am I the only one who gets like this? Energetic, but more of a nervous energy than anything actually useful? I spent the whole day wanting to get things done, and just about as much time not getting them done.
So, the day pretty much devolved into plowing through my 1000's of mailing list messages and doing some administrative stuff for work. And instead of actually going home at a decent time this evening, I stayed on at the office. Why? My not-so-secret addiction: Freeciv.
I'm not really a game player, definitely not like my brother and absolutely not enough to keep myself from getting laughed at by the average 10-year old with a Playstation. But back in the day I loved Populous, in all its low-res, single-diskette glory. So I guess I'm predisposed to liking a game that gives me godlike powers.
Freeciv is basically the open source version of Civilization. The details aren't important if you don't already know what it is. Suffice to say, it's the kind of game that the geeks played in the dorm study room all night long. I never did understand it, and I definitely thought they were weird.
Well now it's just one more notch in my "ultimate geek" belt, I guess. If you ever see me bleary eyed in the morning, check the day. If it's not the weekend, I don't have a hangover.