Sunday, October 28, 2007

Red Sox Sweep

I'll admit that we're fair weather fans. We didn't really pay that much attention to the Red Sox this season until the ALCS. But we really enjoyed the drama. And since we're in Seattle, the games played in Boston weren't on too late for the kids to enjoy. There aren't many Boston transplants out here so our neighbors were probably wondering what all the noise was about. It wasn't a curse-breaking win like 2004 but still pretty exciting.
posted by Bob at 10/28/2007 11:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Fake Steve at Microsoft

Yes, it's true, Fake Steve Jobs (aka Dan Lyons) was speaking on the Microsoft campus today. Apparently Hillary showed up too which better explains why there were all sorts of security people milling around.

I didn't see Hillary but Dan Lyons was entertaining. He's promoting his book Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.

One thing he mentioned that I thought was funny was that he didn't invent the tag My Little Pony used in the blog for Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It came from a Sun employee who said that that was how they referred to him internally.

There are IBM folks and Lotus Notes fans who are still mad at Lyons over some articles he wrote for Forbes a couple of years ago. (I'm indirectly referenced in one of them although I wasn't interviewed for it). And Lyons has written articles that are critical of other companies, including Microsoft. I don't read Forbes and don't get worked up about what the press says anyway. I enjoy the FSJ blog in the same way that I like The Daily Show. Well-written satire is often more interesting than what's offered by hard news.
posted by Bob at 10/23/2007 10:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Real Simple Irony

When I picked up the mail today it included what looked like a thick catalog. Flipping it over, it was the latest issue of Real Simple magazine.

It's a 400 page thick monthly. That's 4,800 pages a year on how to make life easier. Have we all become irony deficient?
posted by Bob at 10/23/2007 08:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Sunday, October 14, 2007

SD Cards

I ran into a puzzling issue with a 2GB Secure Digital card . I'd used the card in my Pentax digital camera but noticed that when I inserted it into my laptop, the disk properties indicated that it was 1 GB card. Weird. I knew that there were newer higher capacity SD cards (SDHC) but I didn't realize that there were compatibility issues with SD cards above 1 GB. The card reader in my laptop doesn't handle these cards properly. And, as it turns out, neither does my Pentax. The camera thinks it has the same capacity as a 1 GB card. It's an older camera so I guess that's not too surprising. My son's new Pentax handles the card just fine (as well as SDHC cards).
posted by Bob at 10/14/2007 07:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Dead Products Society

Many years ago a group of employees at Lotus maintained an internal discussion forum that catalogued dead Lotus products (Magellan, Agenda, Metro, Improv, Symphony, Jazz, etc). There also used to be a Dead Products Society at Lotus that met around Halloween so that people could demo dead products that they used to work on.

I learned the other day that another Lotus product has joined the list. This one is personal. Lotus Component Designer (aka Workplace Designer) is dead.

Workplace Designer was my last project at IBM. It started out as a "blue wash" of Trilog FlowBuilder and evolved into much more ambitious product. It was originally intended to be the IDE for IBM Workplace. Since FlowBuilder provided a Notes-like development model for J2EE and IBM was trying to attract Notes developers to Workplace, this seemed like a good match. But when Workplace died, the product was rebranded as Lotus Component Designer and targeted to WebSphere Portal customers. But since IBM has other IDEs for Portal and now with most of the focus at Lotus on Notes/Domino, it was only a matter of time before IBM pulled the plug. C'est la vie.
posted by Bob at 10/09/2007 10:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Sunday, October 07, 2007

SouthPark Studio

Make your own SouthPark character at SouthPark Studio. Here's mine:

Yeah, I kinda look like that before my first cup of coffee
posted by Bob at 10/07/2007 07:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The Human LCD

This video is pretty amazing. A stadium of South Korea boys support their soccer teams using their jackets and shirts to form slogans and shapes in rapid-fire precision.
posted by Bob at 10/03/2007 10:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Wii Tracker

Wii Tracker automatically checks a set of listed merchants on a regular basis to see whether or not they have Nintendo Wii consoles and bundles in stock. (They also have an RSS feed).
posted by Bob at 10/03/2007 08:30:00 AM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined

Great interview with Ridley Scott on the upcoming release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. It's too bad the theatrical release is limited to New York and Los Angeles. So I guess I'll have to make do with the DVD. But which version to buy: Two DVD Special Edition, Five-Disc DVD Ultimate Collector's Edition, Five Disc in Blu Ray or HD DVD? I don't own an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player yet; many titles are exclusively in one format so picking one is difficult. And I don't want to invest in two different hi-def players.
posted by Bob at 10/02/2007 08:00:00 AM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Monday, October 01, 2007

Adobe To Acquire Virtual Ubiquity

Virtual Ubiquity is the Boston-based startup behind Buzzword, a very slick browser-based word processor built with Adobe Flex.

I learned last night that Adobe is buying Virtual Ubiquity. Huge congratulations to Paul Kleppner and Robby Shaver, both ex-Loti and fellow Lotus Improv alums.
posted by Bob at 10/01/2007 09:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?  Subscribe with Bloglines