A View from Elsewhere : Amusement

Art

johnmont — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:23:03 GMT

One of my friends, and a former teammate, is Aaron Brethorst. For the longest time I thought of him as the amusing guy from VScore who attended shiproom. It was only later that I realized he was an accomplished photographer. The photograph below is of the Smith Tower in Seattle, one of my wife's favorite buildings.

Technorati Tags: Brethorst

"To Truly Understand What It Is to Be an American You Must Eat Wonder Bread"

johnmont — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:04:15 GMT

Earlier this week, two engineers from Microsoft in Germany (Sebastien Peray and Marcel Tilly) joined the Popfly team to work on adding a feature to Popfly. They invented a clever way to substitute one Popfly block for another a few months ago and were able to come out to Redmond to integrate the code this week.

In any event, I found myself trying to think of things that they should do to get the American experience. I had a long list of fairly normal things -- places to see and so on. But food is a distinct part of any country's culture that always speaks to me and I began to riff on foodstuffs and wound up listing things that I grew up thinking nothing about but seem to amaze and confuse people coming in from other countries. To wit:

I have fond memories of all of these (except Spam). But this list gave way to the headline of this blog post.

Lord knows why I'm writing this.

Technorati Tags: Memories,Americana

Screencasting the Hard Way

johnmont — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:46:00 GMT

With today's update to Popfly, comes a new Popfly screencast. Or kind of a screencast. It turns out that when you leave a development team alone for a few days, they do strange and wonderful things. Like stage a live-action screencast that uses humans dressed up as Popfly blocks to demo how to build a Facebook mashup using Popfly. Evidently it only took two takes.

Technorati Tags: Popfly, Silverlight, screencast, humor

2008 Predictions

johnmont — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:36:00 GMT

I predict that 2008 will have between 300 and 400 days. Most if not all will end in the letter "y." Similarly, here in Seattle most if not all will involve some form of precipitation.
I predict that the US will have an election this year. A democrat will win. Or a republican. In any event, the press will cover it like a horse race because it's simpler to do that than to understand the candidates' positions on anything.
I predict that someone will steal Robert Scoble's identity, then give it back after being deluged with email asking for him to blog about some new product. I predict that Scott "You Have No Privacy On the Internet, Get Over It" McNealy will gloat.
I predict that software will continue to have bugs. Further, I predict that periodically A-list bloggers and reporters will rise up in outrage about said bugs and will somehow lay the blame at the feet of Microsoft regardless of who wrote the OS or software in question.
I predict that, towards the end of 2008, lots of people will make predictions about 2009. Furthermore, I predict that many magazines will have "best of 2008" issues. Coincidentally, I predict that more magazines will lose readership.
I predict that Dave Winer will continue to fall out of love with Apple, then fall back in love, then out of love, then in love. Each change of heart will be Twittered, blogged, and podcasted.
I predict that lots of alpha-programmers will get into arcane language and framework arguments. I further predict that HTML and JavaScript will continue to be the most-used programming languages, despite claims to the contrary.
I predict that this list will have ten items on it.

Technorati Tags: 2008 predictions

We Bought a Pig

johnmont — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:03:00 GMT

Yesterday, at the Pigs on Parade auction we purchased a pig. If you've spent any time around downtown Seattle you've probably seen one of these illustrious beasts hanging around looking porcine. If you haven't spent any time around downtown Seattle, suffice it to say that the they are large (4-foot x 5-foot) fiberglass pigs that local artists have decorated in a variety of interesting ways. The auction was yesterday and, since my wife is a big fan of pigs (insert joke about yours truly here) we decided that we'd buy a pig.

Enter Puerco Vaca, a pig created by local artist Colin Reedy. It's... interesting.

Technorati Tags: PigsonParade, Art, Seattle

Office Hijinks

johnmont — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:16:20 GMT

You go away for a week and you get pwned.

Office Hijinks

Technorati Tags: office hijinks

Coding Best Practice

johnmont — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:32:38 GMT

Courtesy Smalltalk Tidbits:

Technorati Tags: humor, coding

What "Vacation" Means During a Remodel

johnmont — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:38:04 GMT

I took this week off from work. Or I should say, I took this week off from going to the office. So far, in addition to doing quite a bit of email (that's the right verb, isn't it -- one "does" email?) and attending one teleconference (during which I invoked Bruce Willis and The Fifth Element), I have:

Weeded, trimmed, and cleaned up the front yard
Patched, primed, and painted the living room (two colors)
Stained the soffits around the front porch and the front porch ceiling (with my wife)
Patched the wall into the dining room where our idiotic drywaller messed up
Selected 11 sheets of plywood and various other bits of lumber to create a linen closet
Made pancakes twice (from scratch)
Gotten slaughtered at trivia
Gotten my car repaired (thanking my wife for convincing me to get the extended warranty)

There is still more to be done, including stripping the front door and actually using all that lumber to make something. But I'm still having fun.

Technorati Tags: construction, vacation, fun

Maker Faire and Popfly Results

johnmont — Thu, 31 May 2007 07:12:00 GMT

Well, we saw a lot of people at Maker Faire, but the biggest thing we did was the ducks. Sure we gave a lot of demos, but for every demo we gave we had four kids painting ducks. Here are some of the ducks that the kids painted, Popfly-style.

Popfly Humor

johnmont — Sat, 19 May 2007 00:32:50 GMT

Drew Bollman has posted his mashup wish list. He had me at #1.

Maker Faire: Meet the Popfly Team

johnmont — Fri, 18 May 2007 23:58:52 GMT

Tonight a lot of my team and I head down to San Mateo, CA for O'Reilly's Maker Faire. I've never been and am pretty excited to see what people are up to -- things like the Fab@Home look neat. We'll be in the Microsoft Coding4Fun booth giving demos of Popfly and painting rubber ducks.

Probably Old News to Everyone Else

johnmont — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:54:37 GMT

Suddenly, antitrust law all makes sense.

Are You a Dinosaur?

johnmont — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:58:38 GMT

Dinosaur.

I love these guys.

New Encryption Technique Discovered

johnmont — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:53:49 GMT

MARCH 06, 2007, REDMOND -- Microsoft today announced the creation of a new super-secure encryption technique, doubling previous techniques. Dubbed "ROT-26," the new technique applies a complex mathematical algorithm recently created in Microsoft Research. The previous technique (ROT-13) was only capable of half the complexity.

"This technique heralds a new day for customer privacy," said John Montgomery, Person Who Has Nothing To Do With The Invention. "By doubling the complexity of time-honored encryption algorithm, Microsoft has enabled a new generation of software to be created."

Upon hearing of the invention, Bruce Schneier giggled and refused comment.

(Yes, it's an old joke, but it came up again today.)

News: Terrier Alert Raised!

johnmont — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:42:31 GMT

Please maintain your awareness of cute dog photos and (mostly) happy endings.