My fellow Web 2.0 consultant, Aaron Kim, recently left IBM. Typically when someone leaves IBM, we have a going away lunch where we allow everyone to sign a card wishing the person all the best as well as chipping in for a gift for the person. Now seeing that Aaron has worked with people all around the world, and being that we were both Web 2.0 people, I thought we should take a Web 2.0 approach to things!

Instead of sending around a card, I set up a blog, Aaron Kim’s Leaving IBM Lunch, and asked people to comment/wish Aaron the best on the blog. (As well as providing them with information such as how to get to the lunch). As for a going away gift, using a combination of the ChipIn! service and Paypal, I collected money for Aaron and then transferred it to him after the event.

All in all, it took me less time to do all this than it would have taken to shop for a card! Plus, the benefit was that people from Australia, Japan, Spain, the UK, California in the U.S., and of course Canada, could all participate.

To make it even better, another IBM web 2.0 expert, Jamie Alexander, inspired Aaron to take the gift money and provide it to Kiva. The money raised for the gift is now helping entrepreneurs in El Salvador, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cambodia. You can read more about this at Aaron’s blog.

Best of luck, Aaron. And for people who think using Web 2.0 technology is too difficult…well, as you see, it can be as simple and as effective as this.

Some of the “usual suspects” are there (Byatt, Coetzee) as well as some new authors. If you don’t know what to read these days, you could do worse than starting with this: Man Booker 2009 longlist

You do it more or less like this:

and you get this:

For the details on this, and more clever ideas on growing things, go see You Grow Girl™ – » Toilet Roll Seed-Starter

The title alone was enough to get me to read: The Beautiful Side of New Jersey Corruption in TIME. But once I read the first paragraph, I was hooked, just like the bluefish the author talks about.

Good crime writing often has a wry way of looking at the world. This article is packed with that. And if crime can be tragic, it can also be comedic.  It’s just needs a good writer, like Bill Saporito.

While many ancient cities are no more, quite a number of them around the world that are thousands of years old not only are surviving but thriving. From Damascus and Jerusalem in the Middle East , to Varanasi in India and Cholula in Mexico, the World’s 10 Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities continue to grow. Fascinating.

(Found via kottke.org)

WD-40 is an amazing product. Along with duct tape, it is one of the world’s greatest inventions. While the inventor was Norm Larsen, the man who made it such as success was John Barry, who just died.

It’s worthwhile reading his Obituary at NYTimes.com to see just how smart a businessman he was. WD-40 is a great product, but the path to it becoming great was paved by Mr. Barry. It’s worth reading about him.

This is one of my favourite poems by William Carlos Williams. It’s a bowl of plums: cold, sweet, delicious, simple.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Thanks to Poets.org – Poetry, Poems, Bios & More for this.

You come home hungry and look in the cupboards for something quick to eat and what do you find but…

and this is just one of 14 Strangest Canned Foods  over at Oddee.com. After reading these, that can of chicken noodle soups starts looking alot better. 🙂

Over at TPM is a great smackdown of a Republican Congressman who appears to be supporting the wacko “Birther” idea that Obama was not born in the the US and therefore is not eligible to be president. It is just nonsense, of course, but people are running with it. So Chris Matthews Questions Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) About Birther Bill and does something great: he whips out Obama’s birth certificate! So for all those Birthers out there saying that no one has seen it…well, go see. And then be quiet.

I have been enjoying smackdowns of people like this all week.  All those nuts who said Neil Armstrong never landed on the moon have been taken apart on blogs and forums whenever they popped up and said the moon landings never happened.

It is fine to have serious debates and discussions about contentious topics, but things like this deserve contempt.

I just finished “Koba the Dread” by Martin Amis. Following that, I read this review of it in The Atlantic | September 2002 | “Lightness at Midnight” | Hitchens. It makes sense to read a review by Hitchens: he is minor subject in the book, and he clearly knows the subject matter itself. I think both the book and the review are great: Amis writes much better than most historians, and Hitchens writes much better than most reviewers. I don’t think Hitchens answered Amis’s criticisms of him fully, but he does a thorough job of pointing out the many limitations of Amis’s work. Despite that, I highly recommend you read both.

I brought Sebald into this, however, because I think the critics of Amis make a mistake similar to those made by those criticizing Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction. In both cases, you have superb novelists writing about history. In both cases, the reviewers were criticizing their historical skills. However, I think in both cases, that misses the point. Both Sebald and Amis do not give up being novelists when they are writing their histories. If anything, they are creating a new genre that is the reverse of historical novel. I think that new genre could be criticized, but to not see that this new hybrid and not analyze both aspects of the work is to miss out on a substantial part of it. If anything, it is closer to the New Journalism of Capote, Thompson, Wolfe and others.

I’d be interested to know if people who have read Koba the Dread and On the Natural History of Destruction thought the same thing.

According to New Scientist:

A British girl has recovered fully after spending 10 years with an extra heart transplanted alongside her own.

How can you not go and read the rest of the story?

(Found on kottke.org)

My friend Laurie continue to blog about all things eco-friendly at her blog, Natural Chic (A Style at Home Blog). While there are lots of great things and ideas there, I really thought these were brilliant. It’s this:

… biodegradable cutlery. Made from potato starch, it’s not only biodegradable, you can compost it, too – it completely breaks down in three to six weeks. And while the price is somewhat higher, isn’t it worth it for never having to rely on petroleum-based plastic knives, forks and spoons again? (Available at: http://www.grassrootsstore.com)

I would love to see fast food restaurants adopt these. If you know anyone at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc., please ask them.

Because clearly he despises them. I can’t imagine him praising either film under any condition. No matter. If you want to get a proper review of the film, best head over to RottenTomatoes.com and see what almost everyone else is saying. But if you want a laugh, then by all means, see
his review: Gray Skies in The New Yorker.

It’s Saturday morning. I get my coffee, get comfortable, and read the news section, the sports commentary, the financial news. I learn about events going on in my city. Maybe I get some interesting cooking ideas. So what am I doing: a) reading a newspaper b) going through my RSS feeds via my feedreader? It’s B.

Then I do things I can’t do with a newspaper. I watch movie clips. I blog about interesting articles. I share links on twitter. I might create smart feeds that aggregate or filter feeds to give me *just* the information I want. Perhaps I listen to some music.

So when I read article like, Dear New York Times: Please charge me more than $5 for your web site. » Nieman Journalism Lab, I think they must make sense for people who love MSM and want it to continue. As for me, I used to love mainframe computers. Seriously. I work for IBM, and I used to run and program on mainframes. But the rest of the world wanted PCs and cheap computers. Mainframes? Yes, but not so much.

The world of media is radically changing. MSM needs to start thinking radically different. I still don’t see enough of them doing that yet.

First, this is an incredible video. It reminds me of the work of David Hockney, though of course, it works in a different way than his photographic collages:

By itself, I was impressed very much. But what is interesting about such things is that others can comment on it. For example, it turns out that perhaps the video is not so original, as you can see here at Gizmodo. As well, the site where I found it, molt:n, noticed an interesting life transition in it. All of this to say that the video by itself is great, but the power of Web 2.0 technology that allows others to easily share and converse about the video makes the experience even greater.

Finally, kudos to the people who posted the video here, YouTube – The PEN Story, for acknowledging what others discovered.

According to one of my favourite blogs, Tech Style, Adobe is offering a web based version of Photoshop Express. It will be limited in features, of course, but did I mention free? 🙂 Check it out here.

The good folks at Moggit review lots of design web sites and find some mind bogglingly bad decor. Like this:

Then they present it in a most amusing way! It’s great fun. Just be glad you don’t live in some (any?) of the places that they feature.
Go to Moggit to get the details.

Toronto has introduced a five cent fee for plastic bags recently. I wondered what the effect would be. I did notice that alot of people were bringing their own bags. Well, according to this (Plastic bag use falls 70% at Metro grocery stores), it has made a big difference. It’s good to see.

Whenever I see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform “Zero”, I think of an earlier band, a great band, with a great singer: The Pretenders.
Here they are, live, many years after their debut, but still great, performing their classic, Brass In Pocket

Chrissy Hinde sings “I’m special”, but that goes without saying.

As a proud Cape Bretoner, I am delighted to see that Cape Breton has come in third  on this list: 2009 World’s Best Islands | Travel + Leisure beating out such great spots as Kauai, Maui, and Vancouver Island (up from 10th). All these islands are great, of course. For me, what I love about this is the recognition of how great Cape Breton is.

Shepard Farley, who created the now famous “Hope” image of Barack Obama, has a new image that he is promoting of Aung San Suu Kyi, and as you can see, it is stunning.

Click on the link to get more information on it,  Aung San Suu Kyi, and what he hopes to accomplish.

I liked how the film has no opening credits. I believe Mann did that in “Collateral”, too. (It’s something you don’t realize until you are well into the film.) The opening credits don’t provide any value and disrupt the flow of the movie. Back when films ran continuously, opening credits made sense to tell people that a new film was starting. But nowadays, there are so many things telling you that the film is starting, you don’t need it. I like this: I hope more directors will do this.

Mann is always experimenting with cinematography, and he does this in “Public Enemies” too. I’d be interested in what people who really know film thought of this. Sometimes it is really striking in this film, but I couldn’t get a strong sense what he was thinking by doing this. It didn’t appear symbolic, and it also didn’t appear to be a signifier of something (e.g. a flashback to an earlier era). I also didn’t see any reviewers explain this. (Most of the reviews were synopses with an overall rating.).

In “Public Enemies”, like “Heat” and“Collateral”, Mann pits good against evil and embodies that in the major characters, with the evil character being free while the good character is constrained. The antagonists in Mann’s films tend to be larger than life, while the protagonists often seem diminished, limited. I came away thinking that Mann believes it is important that the good and the good guy succeed, but I feel he is rooting for the bad guy.

In “Public Enemies”, “Heat” and “Collateral”, time is a major factor. Mann uses it to drive the narrative and to build up suspense. This is not surprising in some ways, but Mann really stresses it. In “Collateral”, there is a lot of discussion of how long it takes to get from point A to B. And in “Public Enemies”, there is discussion around the time it takes to rob a bank. I’d like to go back and look for other termporal references. I think they are also there in “Miami Vice”.

Stylized violence is big in “Public Enemies”, just like it is in “Heat”, “Collateral” and “Miami Vice”. Violence is very dramatic. Likewise, the bad guys are very dramatic. They are villains with a capital V. I thought of that because I am a big fan of “Unforgiven” and “Gran Torino”, and in those films, Eastwood appears to be eschewing violence. While he uses it, he reflects on the damage it does to his characters. I don’t get that in Mann.

I rented “Collateral” after seeing “Public Enemies”. What struck me was how similar the recent remake of “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” was with “Collateral”. In both films you have a white antagonist who is supremely confident in conflict with a black protagonist who is downtrodden. In both films the two men form a bond, and the antagonist helps the protagonist with his internal conflict, until ultimately, the protagonist overcomes his internal conflict by killing the antagonist. This also allows the antagonist to relinquish his evilness too: there is almost a relief in both Travolta’s character and Cruise’s character when they are finally dying.

When I watched “Collateral”, “Miama Vice” and “Heat”, what impresses me is how Mann thoroughly incorporates the city into his film. It’s not background: it’s the stage his film is played out on, and he emphasizes the stage. He makes the stage/the city beautiful. I didn’t get that as much in “Public Enemies”. Then again, it is a period fllm, and it is harder to do with those.

One thing I loved about “Public Enemies” is the changing nature of crime and law. The arc in the film is not just of Dillinger and the other Public Enemies, but is also the arc of crime and how crime is pursued. After Dillinger and his kind are arrested or killed, they will be replaced, not just be other bank robbers, but by syndicates and the Mafia. Likewise, the state law enforcement is being superceded by the FBI. Mann does a good job of showing that playing out.

Mann has lots of great detail in the film. One review said there isn’t enough in the film on why Dillinger was popular, but I thought Mann did that subtly, like the time when Dillinger refuses to rob a bank customer, or when the radio is playing in the background, discussing the role of the government at the time. There are other nice details too, like the time when Johnny Depp leaps over a counter in the bank (Dillinger was known to do things like this).

I don’t know if it is intentional, but Mann seems to borrow from the classic film “M”. As in “M”, organized crime turns on the individual outlaws because as individuals, they are threatening the syndicates and the mobs with their actions. Likewise, Mann is saying that the mob also had a hand in doing in Dillinger, since they were bad for business.

Often times (too often) work is only about work. Work work work work work! 🙂 It might seem like a good idea to short sighted bosses, but it’s likely that almost all of your staff will get burned out, and certainly all of your staff will not perform their best. Breaks from work, even small ones, are good. Breaks that make you smile and enjoy yourself are even better.

This is a nice example of such a break here:

I wondered if Obama and his sports gear in the White House were an affectation, a prop for photographers. But I think, instead, that he uses them as tools to shake up and lighten up the office, so his people will work at their best. Smart boss.

See more such images here. From the Official White House Photostream’s photostream on flickr.com.

Over the past year, I have had to get a new passport, a new driver’s licence, and mail a parcel.  In each case I have had to deal with public servants. And in each case, I have had the expectation that the service would be slow and disorganized. What I have found instead is the opposite, with each office being highly organized and fast. The driver’s license took about 10 minutes, with most of that me filling out a form. The passport took less than 30 minutes. For the parcel, I arrived at the post office just before 8 a.m., and at 8, the employee opened the door and dispatched my parcel in a few minutes.

Just now I phoned about getting a new Ontario health card. It took a few minutes to get someone to speak to, but when they did talk to me, they were informed, polite, provided me with everything I needed to know, and then booked an appointment at the office at a time of my choosing so that I can be in and out in a few minutes.

There are many public servants in Ontario as well as Ottawa. I am sure you can find a few bad ones, just like you can at any organization. However, despite expecting the opposite, most of the public servants I have been working with lately have been great to work with. 

YouTube: Persepolis

I mean, it’s comfortable and all, but no doubt after a few days, the guests will start having nightmares about being a Happy Meal and say their goodbyes. 🙂

the mogg blogg: Oh No You Didn’t!

This is Laleh Seddigh. When you think of Iranian women, you likely think: race car drivers, yes? 🙂 No, I didn’t either. That’s why you should check out this blog post at The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan. He has the lowdown on Laleh Seddigh, for starters. Saying “she’s cool” is an understatement. And if you like that,  he also has a number of posts titled “Outing Iran” whereby he talks about aspects of Iran that get past our Western stereotypes of Iran and what it means to be an Iranian. Well worth reading.

I found a LOLCats photo that perfectly explains Morgan Stanley’s recent moves (see blog post below this one). Simply replace “Bugsy” with “Morgan Stanley” and it all makes sense…

Image from LOLcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?

That’s what Bloomberg.com says they are going to do. Why they are able to do this after the recent months is beyond me. Perhaps someone can explain why it isn’t criminally insane. Someone needs to look into this now.

In the meantime, I think this just about captures it:

(Image from icanhascheezburger.com/)

For most people, this IBM press release from the IBM Press room – 2009-06-30 IBM Research and European Union Provide Software Developers with Performance Gains and Faster Time-To-Market – United States that states that…

“IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the public availability of Milepost GCC, the world’s first open source machine learning compiler. The compiler intelligently optimizes applications, translating directly into shorter software development times and bigger performance gains.”

…would be something that would provoke yawns or shrugs.

Yet, it could make a big impact on alot of things you do on a computer:

“For example, when a company wants to develop a new mobile phone, it normally takes application developers many months to get their software running at an acceptable level of performance. Milepost GCC can reduce the amount of time it takes to reach that level by a factor of 10.”

Sometimes it is the boring yet important changes that occur that have a big impact. Not only is the technology speeding up development of new technology — which affects us all — but it is being distributed in a way that many people can get access to it. Good stuff!

N.B. I personally find it very exciting, but that’s me! 🙂 Also, I work for IBM, but I think this would be viewed as important regardless of where you work.

By Bing. Bing sings it so well. (He looks great in that sharp double breasted number, too)

One of my favourite songs.

YouTube – Bing Crosby – Moonlight Becomes You

One of the results of the current garbage strike in Toronto is people stating that the strike shows you how much garbage we needlessly produce. Now it may sound like wordplay, but consumers rarely “produce” garbage. Consumers do throw out garbage. And if you consider that they fill up a bag, then that is a form of production (albeit a very weak one).

The problem with that is it gets companies off the hook, and I think that’s wrong. Really, the ones producing garbage are companies. Companies that sell their products with poor packaging choices cause the production of garbage. I would prefer as little, if any, packaging for the goods I purchase. And of the packaging I do get, why can’t I get it in a form I can recycle? That’s simple: companies don’t want to lose a competitive advantage with what they consider inferior packaging. And there are few penalties for them to produce goods this way. Likewise for the companies that distribute these products.

If a grocer sells me individual fruit and I use a plastic bag to carry them home and then throw away the bag, I am producing garbage. If a shoe store sells me shoes in a recyclable box and I throw it in the trash, I am producing garbage. But for alot of goods, I don’t have that choice. I could not buy them. A better option would be have as little packaging as possible, and of the packaging I do have,  I should be able to reuse or recycle it. 

Cities & The Dead

What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to the ceiling, on every stair another stairway is set in negative, over the roofs of the houses hang layers of rocky terrain like skies with clouds. We do not know if the inhabitants can move about the city, widening the worm tunnels and the crevices where roots twist: the dampness destroys people’s bodies, and they have scant strength; everyone is better off remaining still, prone; anyway, it is dark.

From up here, nothing of Argia can be sen; some say “It’s down below there,” and we can only believe them. The place is deserted. At night, putting your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam.

The news has been relatively subdued coming out of Iran. But things are not over. This article, Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election in NYTimes.com, shows that while the conflict may not be as dramatic in the streets, it is playing out elsewhere.

….what do ads like this say?

Over at the site  Retro Comedy are more such ads that show how our views and values have changed over time.

See Retro Comedy: The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time,

This recipes has coffee AND bacon in it. And smoked cheese! It’s practically nature’s most perfect food! Ok ok…but it is still one delicious looking burger.  Plus, you could use that rub for lots of things besides burgers.  For all the details, see Coffee-Rubbed Cheeseburgers with Texas Barbecue Sauce Photo at Epicurious.com.

And check out epicurious.com in general. It has alot of really good recipes that manage to be fairly easy but with good combinations of flavous.

Really! There is a sensor of some sort in Beijing that is measuring the quality of the air in that city and broadcasting the information via Twitter. (BeijingAir (BeijingAir) on Twitter)

In some ways, this is a set back from a webcam. But in other ways, it is better, because now someone could take this data and do some analysis of it over time, or do a mashup with it.

I expect we’ll see more things like this soon.

Canada is famous for its comedians, and Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as well as the rest of the SCTV crew are up there with the best. One of the bits they used to do on SCTV was portray these two “Canadians”, Bob and Doug McKenzie. in a segment called “The Great White North”. According to wikipedia:

“The Great White North” (originally known as “Kanadian Korner”) was a panel show that played upon Canadian stereotypes. Bob and Doug, two dimwitted beer-swilling brothers wearing heavy winter clothing and toques, would comment on various elements of Canadian life and culture, frequently employing the interjection “Eh?” and derisively calling each other a “hoser.” Among the topics discussed were snow routes, the Canadian-built robot arm on the Space Shuttle, the inappropriateness of bedtime stories about dog fights, flat tires, and “why there aren’t enough parking spaces at take-out doughnut shops.”

The sketch was conceived when SCTV moved to the CBC television network. Each episode to be broadcast on that network was two minutes longer than those syndicated to the United States. The CBC network heads asked the show’s producers to add specifically and identifiably Canadian content for those two minutes. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas thought that this was a ridiculous request, since the show had been taped in Canada, with a mostly Canadian cast and crew, for two years. The request inspired them to create a parody that would incorporate every aspect of the humorous stereotype of Canadians.

The segments were videotaped at the end of a day’s shooting, with just Thomas and Moranis and a single camera operator. The sketches were for the most part improvised on the set, and after doing several such ad-libbed bits, they would then select the best ones for use on the program.

The whole “CBC/Canadian content” request is a very Canadian thing, too. 🙂 But in a way, I’m glad: the result was some very good comedy.

For folks who have never seen this, here’s a taste of the show:

Beauty, eh?