We just finished the “Introduction to Pachyderm” session at MW2005. I had to bail almost immediately afterward to catch a plane (I’m sitting at YVR now - mental note to self: leave more time after presentation next time. you left too many people hanging after the presentation). I was a bit nervous going into the presentation. I’d never presented to a Museum (note the capital m) crowd before. I’ve worked with folks from Museums, and I’m working on projects with these people. But I’d never seen a herd of these people together. I had no idea what their composition would be as a whole. Are they geeks? (some are, some aren’t. more geeky than not, but not coders by and large). Are they interested in the project, or has the hype for the last year started to wear people out? (holy. crap. are they interested! woah. Peter took a picture of the audience’s response to Larry’s question about interest levels. I’ll post that when I get it. Are they interested. hehe…) The presentation is now online in flash format and QuickTime format - some things look a wee bit funky in that form, but the content survives OK. Also, keep in mind that it was meant as a paced backdrop to a more conversational presentation, so much of the meaning which would have been in the narration is not included. Imagine people talking about the stuff on the screens, and whenever you think “huh?” - that was addressed by the presenter, and/or during Q&A. I took a bit of a risk when putting the technical overview presentation together - how do you present something meaningfully when you’re not sure the technical level of the audience? I used some humour to dispel the geek factor a bit. And the people were so into the presentation it was a bit scary. They were asking technical questions before the technical presentation - so much so that I basically took over from Larry ahead of schedule. Going through my part of the presentation (a series of non-bulletpoint Keynote slides, and a live demo of authoring a Pachyderm presentation), I kind of got so into it that it’s really kind of a blur (I was told afterward that the presentation went well - I really don’t remember too much of it). The Q&A session after the end, and the post-session feedback/informal discussions were amazing. People came up to me (line up!) with excellent questions, suggestions, offers to pitch in, etc… Wow. “Does it work with Sakai? Fedora? What is the API for people to build apps to?” - all excellent questions, and all planned for post-2.0 releases. Could you imagine how cool it would be if we had an API that let people write things like iPhoto plugins? Or a desktop application for authoring presentations (ala iDVD?). Rock on. That’s my dream for what Pachyderm evolves into - openly ripping off the cool stuff like Flickr and del.icio.us - and extending it further than any of us can imagine right now. Feedback suggested that we freaking killed in our presentation. The acoustics were so bad that much of the session sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher - but the wah-wah-WAH-wahwah effect was thankfully not present when near the podium (note to self - you move around too much when presenting - makes it hard for a podium mic to keep levels consistent). After that, Brian, Tim and I moved down to the hotel lounge for a quick chill-out before I had to rudely bolt downstairs to grab a cab (had an awesome cab driver that got me to the airport 10 minutes faster than estimated).
The Pachyfolks have been spending much of the day gathering final touches for the Big Pachyderm-o-rama this afternoon at MW2005. We’ve got a pretty slick Keynote presentation (and the non-mac folks in the group now all want to get macs so they can use Keynote 2 :-) )
I sat in on the “Finding Stuff” session this morning. Some talk about search engine optimization (gag), but the stuff the SFMOMA demoed showing their new kiosk (and eventual web) interface to their interactive media was freaking awesome. They kept a pretty tight lid on it, since I talk to these people weekly, and had no idea they were building it :-)
That’s exactly what I’ve been hoping to build for CAREO/APOLLO, but haven’t had any time to address. They’ll be releasing the source for this building block, so that might get me at least partially there…
I’m working on my presentation for Museums and the Web, which runs this week in Vancouver (I’ll be in YVR for just over 24 hours, but am so overbooked I will count myself lucky if I get outside except for the cab ride to/from the airport).
I’m using Keynote 2 to author my part of the Pachyderm presentation - I get to present on the technical architecture of Pachyderm, to a non-technical audience. So, instead of bullet-point-filled screens full of acronym soup, I’m trying to use the build transitions to help construct a framework for me to speak to. Nice layers-of-software diagrams, with arrows and boxes and stuff, rather than just acronyms all over the place.
I just got a couple of popup/popunders for DeVry Institute of Technology - despite the fact that I have a popup blocker installed and activated.
DeVry doesn’t provide contact information on their website (perhaps that’s a sign?), and this is really pissing me off. Do you people realize just what a shitty thing popunders are? They are almost as bad as Casino/Viagra/Texas-Holdem spam! You are diluting any reputation your institution may have had, and further negating the value your alumni may realize due to the crap you fling across the ’net in a desparate attempt to gather new students.
Josh and King are likely sick of hearing me gush about Battlestar Galactica. It’s likely the best scifi series. Evar. Deep stories, without glossing over stuff or throwing in expendable Red Shirts or resorting to transporters or holo-decks. I won’t give any spoilers - just don’t let your revulsion over the resurrection of the ’70s camp original series get in the way. At least watch the miniseries…
The first season actually had plot twists and conflicts that I didn’t see coming, and didn’t feel formulaic or rushed (unlike nearly every other show ever made). It’s way more than the hottie f*ckbots (played by a small-town Alberta girl no less). There’s riffs of spirituality, humanity, politics, ethics, honour, deception, etc… The last episode of the first season completely blew me away. I mean, I was literally stunned. That’s never happened with any other TV show before.
I just tried my hand at rolling a Memory Map using maps.google.com and Flickr. Seems like a pretty powerful way to document a childhood (or a vacation, or whatnot). It would be even cooler if you could link photos in Flickr to notes or locations on another image…
Watching the footage of the Pope’s funeral, I was struck first with how wide a cross section of the planet attended. Not just Catholics, but Jews, Arabs, Hindi, etc. all coming to pay respects for sprituality in general, and a great man in particular. This was followed closely (and sadly) with this thought:
Perfect target for bioterrorism. A vial released in the middle of the 2 million-strong crowd, if it took a week or two to kick in, would be spread undetected into almost every community on the planet within a week.
I saw a post from yesterday, by Michael Heilemann (the guy that created the Kubrick theme for Wordpress). He was advocating against “advanced” spam blockers (like link counters and bayesian voodoo), and was suggesting just using a simple funky-looking-comments-go-to-moderation strategy, as an easy way to let people post comments without interference by well-meaning software.
So, I gave it a shot today. After months of absolutely zero spam on this blog, I turned off my spam blockers, and tried Michael’s technique.
OK. So, assume that AdScam is going to nuke the Liberalminority government, and they don’t have a chance for re-election when it’s called. They’ll be written off (correctly or otherwise, it’s irrelevant now) as a corrupt, mob-riddled bunch of money launderers.
What are the options? NDP? Not likely (at least in a majority government). It would seem as though Liberals would go to them in droves, but the NDP is too expensive to get elected as a ruling party.
I just found out (almost by accident) that the U of C has decided to block ping. I knew ping wasn’t working - hasn’t been for what feels like forever. I just heard today that it was a deliberate move to block the port used by ping - to prevent hacking of unsecured Windows boxes using those ports.
So, let me get this straight. You’ve got a bunch of renegade unpatched Windows boxes on campus. Possibly 0wned. And, instead of, you know, fixing the problem by patching and securing the boxes, you block frigging ping. Great. Because, of course, ping has no useful purpose aside from hacking lazily managed Windows boxes. It’s not handy at all for doing things like diagnosing network problems, or monitoring servers, or whatnot.
