OK I’ve changed my mind. Japan is off the list, and Russia is on, as the ideal destination of my excess hormones. How absolutely gorgeous is this girl in the photo. I should start learning Russian and packing my bags (just hope Claire lets me out of the house to pick up stray women in foreign countries).
mmm… red hair.
(via photosight.ru)
Every once in a while a quirky film comes out that is strange enough that I get hooked. Last time I got this excited about a film was when I watched the movie “Stranger Than Fiction” which starred Will Ferrell in a serious role. Before that, probably “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind”, which starred Jim Carey. I guess what I’m thinking of is films where you don’t expect too much, then the storyline turns in a different direction and you just sit back and go “Wow… what an amazing idea”.
Anyway, I stumbled across a trailer for Visioneers which fits into this category. I mean, who worries about exploding at work? Killing the boss.. Yep.. Running away to Russia.. Yep.. Exploding while sitting behind a desk.. Not that I can recall. I just hope I’m not setting my hopes too high, because I somewhat understand the plot before jumping in, which could kill it. Ohwell, check it out to see what i mean.
(via ComedyCentral)
It might not be robot or mario brothers cupcakes, but it is still quite nerdy (in a cool way). The guys at Balloon Guys Entertainment have a couple of fantastic and highly detailed balloon creations, including a Mario. How bitchin is that?
(via BoingBoing)
This week we hit a major milestone in the development of software at the place I work. We’ve centralised and streamlined some absolutely key infrastructure. Since we rolled over to the new version, a sense of calm has descended, because the problems we once had with scalability will fade into the background.
Coincidentally the same time, Alex sent me this brilliant email Bill Gates sent to his staff, harrassing about user usability of some of the Windows XP software.
And it made me reflect upon previous conversations that I have had with people on the state of technology that exists today. It made me think about the ability for products and services to exist in perfect harmony without anyone noticing that they even exist.
I’ts no good going any further without giving you an example. Remember a few decades ago when movies had crappy special effects and 3d animation to simulate thing like space, or monsters, or anything that couldn’t be filmed in real life? They were so mediocre that you noticed them, and it’s sometimes so bad that it draws your attention away even from the story being told. At the end of the movie your everlasting thoughts are not of the great storyline, but rather of the bad special effects. It’s much the same for computer games.
Eventually, movie companies got really good with their special effects, and at some point you stopped noticing the effects at all (Was that real filming in Lord of the Rings, or was that scene all CG?). The quality was so good that they even now use them in television adverts, to clean up minor problems with the filming, or to do tricky shoots that are impossible ordinarily. The effects themselves are dissolving into the background to the point you almost don’t even notice them.
So where does the software fit in?
With our older software, the customer, the support staff, and the development team all took turns banging their heads against brick walls. If there was a problem, maybe a delay on one server, we’d have to ring every customer affected, and manually update their configuration… Taking sometimes up to a week to complete. As you can imagine, for a critical service, it’s not a good starting point. And with that, the more technical issues that occur, the more you notice that you are fighting the software (Vista, I’m also looking at you in the naughty corner over there). However eventually, with great amount of engineering work (a big thanks to Mark Hurd) on a well laid out design, the things we banged our heads over were recrafted to a major point.
Now, the software “just works”.
And that may seem like something minor, but when a product is able to pull off the fact that it “just works” all of the time, the user will no longer notice that process that is happening. The software will work the way it should, with the flexibility and control for us to keep it working, and without the customer even realising that the change has happened.
Moving forward, there will be a lot less bruises on our foreheads from all the brick walls.
So much like the brilliant special effects of the modern day, our new centralised services will almost disappear from the users’ thoughts… And hopefully no one will even notice we did any work on it at all.
That’s something I’m happy about. 
I knew I was way before my time. Well it’s for a good cause.
(Aah the days when I was small and skinny…)
World Youth Day sticker, found on a bumper bar in Sydney.
(thanks Claire)
I’m not normally into machinima, but this one takes the cake! Its a good scene from Pulp Fiction as played by the characters from Team Fortress 2. Made me laugh a little…
(via WeGame)
How can you tell when a company is starting to fall apart? I suppose there is no really easy way, but watching how irate the staff have become could be a key indication. Add to that the comments of vocal shareholders, and it starts to paint a picture that management need to take notice of.
This week I read several articles that paint a very depressing picture of the state that Microsoft is in. The most important one is from MSFTextrememakeover, an employee who for many reasons believe that the leadership within the company has lead Microsoft down eight years of wrongness.
Unfortunately even one well written and profound ”raging against the establishment” is not going to change the Borg’s direction. Some will be hostile in defence, suggesting that it is just an opinion of a disgruntled employee. And for those who fear embracing failure as a measure for course correction in a corporate environment, the criticism would be all but ignored. However the reality is Microsoft is not only being critiqued by employees, but also by shareholders and the media.
I’ve been reading the blog of the infamous fake Steve Jobs, while along with recently taking the persona of Jerry Yang (the CEO of Yahoo) has also weighed in on the failing Microsoft. His take on it is that the company is in a bad way when the media and shareholders start talking about it in public. With such contempt being shown for the company as a whole, then the end is near. And it’s obvious. When was the last time we really heard media bashing a major tech company on television? I can’t honestly remember. But it is happening now with Microsoft. And how does Apple manage to attack Microsoft without even such a whimper from the beast? It just doesn’t make sense.
The ironic thing about all of this is that I totally understand their frustration. Working in an IT company that has a corporate directive to model itself after Microsoft, enabling the lack of direction and misguidance within a company has been something that has surprisingly been simple to achieve. It doesn’t take much of a change to take a company that was once a pioneer of an industry and turn it into a sitting duck. Even more surprisingly is how the similarities in the process occur.
Rebranding
The concept of rebranding to the point of destroying the existing brands you own whenever you come up of with new product name can occur with little question, especially if the people responsible for developing the marketing the product are put in the driving seat. Also, if the team responsible for product direction ignore the suggestions of employees working directly with the customers have the end result can head for a crash.
At microsoft, previously .NET, and even more recently the Live brand were used to rebrand a large goup of unrelated products with an overarching category. This was completed even though the products affected were only increments upon their previous versions. It’s a costly change, marketing collateral and websites must be revised, and customers need to be re-educated. As has happened with the company I work, most customers associate us with the product name, not our company name, so it has the potential for doing untold damage within our existing customer base. For the Borg, its a screw up, for a small IT company, it’s a business threatning change.
Product and Resource Misdirection
Another major misdirection that Microsoft tends to do is spend large amounts of money to introduce new products that are defensive products aimed to block other companies in the software industry. The overall process causes a weakening of the R&D allocated to existing products and leads to a large number of sub par products, rather than a select few great products. The end result is the burning of cash moving in directions that are not financially viable in the long term. Once again, the parallel between Microsoft and us is astounding. Chasing incremental improvements in our stock price is done by making counter intuitive deals, which burn both developers and cash, and move the company into an ever unviable direction.
Foresight Management
Finally, one more major fault that Microsoft has employed most often, is the lack of foresight in their product development. When Apple was making moves in the music industry, Micrsoft sat still. When iPods had been sold by the millions, they started to address the issue with the Zune. But R&D takes time, so at that point it was too late. More recently, we saw the OLPC and eePC head into development. Did Microsoft make a move? not at all. It wasn’t until both units were being sold that they decided to make a move to get their OS on to the PCs. Why didn’t the talk to the manufacturers during the conception? Are they that stupid as to think it wasn’t worth the discussion? The stupidity amazes me.
In conclusion, I feel sorry for Microsoft. They have over the years done more things that are good than bad. They’ll take a hit over their misdirection, but their coffers contain enough capital to make mistakes, learn from them, and get their company moving on the right track. For the company I work for, which doesn’t have the same capacity to take a hot, I am not so confident we could survive the same fate.
I was watching the Colbert Report again and was surprised when this guest rocked up. Quite funny.
Me have crazy times in 70s and 80s. Me like the Robert Downey Jr. of cookies.
- Cookie Monster
Claire has been a bit of a GTA IV widow as of late. But me, I’m a little addicted to this beautiful game. I love walking around in such an immersive city, and I don’t believe I am able to appreciate just how much effort it has taken them to build the came.
Never the less, here’s a that has been put together using the GTA engine that replicates the intro to the movie The Naked Gun. Just shows how much you can do with it.
(via Comedy Central)
My dear sister in law has an obsession with jewelery, and when I saw these I realised that I had finally found something that she would not have in her crazy collection. I guess if she owned them, she would get a better sleep on the planes during her travels around the world.
(via Core77)
You can almost smell the tension between the Police and the Storm Troopers in London.
(via BoingBoing)
Charlie and I had “the talk” about how she is going to be a big sister at the end of October. I did a bit of explaining about how I would be holding another baby instead of her, but that it didn’t mean that we wouldn’t care for her any less than we do now…
Suffice to say, she wasn’t too impressed. But I think she will get used to it once she has someone to lick and harrass all the time.
Speaking of cakes, I found this wonderful Star Trek cake that Duff Goldman of Baltimore, USA has created. I’m not all just about cupcakes. Anything nerdy will do.
While on the topic, I saw another Star Trek related thing this week that had me in stitches. William Shatner covered Pulp’s Common People a while back, and some bright genius has gone through old Trek footage and composed a video clip. Blew me away, because I didn’t realise how much love there was in space. And now I know the love was between Spock and Captain Kirk. Wow…. Just Wow. Check it out now.
(via BoingBoing / BoingBoing)
More cupcake goodness. Stumbled upon these cute robot cupcakes on flickr, by someone who seems to have a great fascination with cupcake designs. I so completely impressed.
(via Flickr: hello naomi)
It’s week 22 and the peanut is still growing, growing, growing. Aparently there is just not enough room, so all the body organs Claire has are rather squished and battered. It doesn’t help that as the nights are getting colder, her bladder is getting squeezed smaller.
A week or two ago we had to go to the hospital for some more Ultrasounds. I’m happy to see that the peanut is no longer just a peanut, and now has all the bits of a well formed baby. We got a fantastic view of the bub having a swim, and It’s pretty cool to see so much movement. Unfortunately the bub seems a little too active, so we could have some trouble on our hands.
The ultrasound people at Burnside Hospital were even kind enough to label the parts of the bay we couldn’t recognise. I hope that is a foot.
Overall, Claire and the peanut seem to both be ok. Although I’m not quite sure about the 4am wakeups that end with Claire inventing a meal between midnight and breakfast, which quite possibly could be called ‘midfast’. Charlie isn’t too impressed, but is excited that the amount of hours available to play with us has been extended. Little does she know that she’s going to have much less time in just a few months.
As for what you all really want to know, there’s icecream in the freezer, but its neither strawberry nor blueberry.
Wouldn’t it be humerous if Bush made a speech accusing Barack Obama for appeasing the enemy, only to get on a plane and fly to Saudi Arabia, who supplied most of the hijackers on 9/11 to beg for help in their oil problem. Irony lives in the USA. Genius.
(via Dvorak Uncensored)
For those about to lock! Yeah yeah, bad AC/DC pun. These guitar shaped key covers from Gama-Go are pretty damn cool, even if I can’t string two chords together.
(via BoingBoing / Gamma-Go)
Most people know I’m not to fond of the 80’s. Maybe it’s the bad music, the huge hair, or the even worse fashion. I don’t know. It is weird, considering I grew up through the period. Anyway, I stumbled across this wrist watch, which took my mind right back to my childhood and the crappy cassettes I used to listen to. Don’t ask what was on the tapes, but I can tell you it wasn’t good.
(ia BoingBoing)
