Walking the Path

I think Christmas and New Year tends to bring out my inner geek, since I spend a lot of time reading and on the net during the holiday season. Here are two interesting links I think you should check out:

• Cory Doctorow reading Alice in Wonderland: the up-and-coming Scifi writer has recorded himself reading Louis Carroll’s classic and placed it online in a free-downloadable MP3 format.
• If you don’t plan to go out on New Year’s Eve then check out Radiohead’s live streaming concert. Information is here on the precise links. For those of you in Asia like me, there’s about an eight hour time difference so you can wake up to this early on New Year’s Day.

Enjoy
J.

I was reading BoingBoing.net this afternoon and I saw this awesome Steampunk Laptop that I had to post the photo of. Steampunk for those not in-the-know is a scifi genre that asks the question what would cyberpunk and modern ideas and technology if it was created in the Victorian Era.

The description from BoingBoing: “This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts.”

You can also check out Steampunk magazine and Wikipedia’s steampunk entry for more.

J.

I spent more time this weekend watching DVDs so here are some more short reviews:

Spiderman 3: Probably the movie that is most like the comic books out of all three movies. It’s set in 2007 but it could as easily be 1987 — except Toby McGuire plays a more arrogant Spidey.

The Office (US Version): Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s a trainwreck, but you can never look away.

J.

For those of you who love the Simpsons — don’t we all? Then you should check out harryshearer.com it is the personal website of comedian Harry Shearer, who is known to those people who didn’t see Spinal Tap or very early Saturday Night Live as the voice of Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner and Otto. If you can’t enough of him at least twice a day on the Simpsons, click on the link and hear his great satirical radio program Le Show. Besides great comedy it also has excellent coverage of New Orleans (one of Harry’s favourite cities and where he’s lived for the last 10 years) after Hurricane Katrina.

J.

When I signed up for Facebook on Wednesday I decided to try a little experiment. I would send out a number of requests to add me to their list on both Facebook and LinkedIn (I sent messages to different people I knew on either network).  Well after four days of testing, I got 20 friends added on Facebook (from eight requests sent out) and one on LinkedIn (from five requests sent out).

Why did I get more friend connections on Facebook? The network there is larger. And I think it’s larger because Facebook is more of an interactive platform compared to LinkedIn. You can really personalize your Facebook space and since Facebook’s source code was revealed, people have been able to produce their own applications to personalize their personal pages. These things are attractive as everybody wants to individualize their space — whether they’re a business or an individual — and that’s the attraction and the best benefit of Facebook. It is truly a Web 2.0 platform.  Facebook users aren’t just consuming they are producing, connecting and individualizing their own content and their own online spaces.

I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on this.

J.

Okay, I couldn’t resist any longer. After signing up for del.icio.us and Twitter, I felt I couldn’t resist Facebook any longer. Anyone looking to add me can find me under John Guise.

J.

If I had to describe the films I watched this weekend to my colleagues in one sentence here’s what I’d say:

• Jesus Camp: A horror movie for non-evangelical Christians where all the children act like they are 35 and Republican.
• Evan Almighty: Noah’s Ark for the Global Warming era.
• Afro Samurai: Violently murderous hip hop anime starring Samuel L. Jackson.

J.

All I have to say about Knocked-Up is that Seth Rogan is a genius and he has great chemistry with Paul Rudd. Go see that movie.

J.