iamcal.com Since May 2000

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• Hello!

Cal said, "jakob's hardly known for espousing sensible viewpoints, but his latest alert box is bordering on stupidity. some of the top 10 design mistakes for weblogs, he claims, are not publishing on a set schedule, writing about more than one topic, or having a blogspot/lj/typad/wp.com blog without your own domain name. right, because having your own domain name somehow makes your blog better."

Dog dammit, Cal, you're right. Who does this wombat think he is, telling me how to write my blog? I damn well don't want anyone to read it. It's crap, for one thing, and for another it's only for my own personal use. I may have to write and tell him what a tit he is.

Cal said, "why isn't the y! cafe open for dinner on fridays? do they not expect people to work on fridays?"

Yes, but maybe they just don't expect people to eat on Friday's. Anyway, from your flickr pics it looks like you Ludicorpers do lunch like the employees of the Sirius Cybernetics Corp used to.

>Y!
yeah cal, you're in san francisco now. speaking from dropjawed experience, no one works before 10am weekdays and no one works friday afternoons. (but they DO command a premium salary for being "silicon valley")

re Nielsen:

i have to agree with both cal and *shudder* the microcephalic macroego(ic?) neilsen.
cal: you appear to be taking the approach that a blog is a blog, that it's the blogger's call, variation is the essence of the genre. and i agree with you.
neilsen appears to be taking the approach of: how do you maximise Traffic. and to that extent, i very reluctantly have to agree with the self-aggrandising idiot. IFF your goal is Traffic: mono-theme blogs win. daily-posting blogs win. (own domain names are easier to find the next day via auto-completion, so can be useful for picking up stray surfers)

i had a pseudoargument with vanessa when i pointed out that she very deliberately targetted higher traffic by very deliberately playing the game by these rules. she got very hot under the collar and denied it etc etc. except then i asked why she made a huge effort to and point of posting daily, and she said well she stopped doing it for a while and (sort of crumpled) her traffic tanked.

you'll note other theme/dailyposters are the only ones to sustain monster traffic. eg. the now altered jonnybillericay.blogspot.com took a thematic (semi-fictional) and daily approach and he shot to the top of the uk bloggerati: you knew exactly what you'd get, it would be enjoyable, and it would be different every day.


as mcdonald's incontrovertibly demonstrates, humans value Comfort (of lack of change, of certainty) above Quality. e.g., to close a major software deal, sell comfort not functionality.

ah HA!
cal is secretly a project manager:
www.beedocuments.com/softwa...

his friend designs nice sites, i wish i could afford her

salty - :)

sue - wha?

Su, If you're talking about Denise, if I chip in can I watch?

www.lealea.net

"always with class and spunk."

The reason my history teacher was fired.
FACT

Cal, him say, "aaron's interested in the oddest things" (A command line application for generating Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification from Resource Description Framework)

He (aaron) needs to get out more ... and Cal needs to stop looking at this kind of thing or he will need to get out more.

Salti says "how do you maximise Traffic?"

This is probably not a realistic option now, seeing as Jim Capaldi (seen here with hand on bonnet) died earlier this year.



And who the hell is Vanessa?

Vanessa

Bloody hell. All this time I didn't know Brock was Saltation.

You had me all interested and stuff and then I saw the word Java and I threw up all over my keyboard. Now I need a new keyboard. Thanks for that.

java is an abomination of the C language. Just my opinion.

C#, baby!

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
- Bjarne Stroustrup

Wow! That blog is great! (Vanessa) She's so eloquent, I am embarrassed that the most eloquent thing I can say is wow. Who is she? I really enjoyed reading her blog.

You have got to read her 'list of 52 disgusting habits' I am so glad I am not the only one who inspects my poo. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, but it's fascinating for some reason. I'm sure Freud has a theory.

I think all that is just a load of shit.

Sorry

Boo

I'm sure Freud has a theory.

I doubt it, he died on September 23, 1939.

I'm sure he has an odour.

Doubt that, too.

"Why do you feel that you doubt that, Mr SuperFun?"

Maybe compared to a smelly frenchman, his long dead corpse wouldn't have a discernible smell?

Just a theory.

rituals gets reviewed in wired, a few months after we stop going there. [via eleanor, messina, et al.]

So why did you stop going there? Too full of geeks? Or was it just so last month, all of a sudden?

Saltation: "We're talking about you, not me."

Do you read Alien Loves Predator, maybe?

warhead: because the wifi always crashed when too many of us went there together

and what happened if you also took your laptops?

sfg: www.manifestation.com/neuro...

That just might possibly be in the list of top ten geekiest jokes I've been witness to. :)

re last linklog: joyce
troutgirl.com
bah

troutgirl.com/blog

sorry: was going for another egregiously geeky joke

re Flock/Flocq:

The browser also facilitates blogging by the user with a "Create a blog post" button located in the main navigation bar. The button launches a sophisticated blogging tool which integrates on a drag and drop level with Flickr

Flockr? Flcqr?

And FlocQ too!

salty: i realised the metasyntatic reference, but was linking up the other folks :)

r

talk like a pirate day was a few weeks back wasnt it?

That it was, lad, that it was.

o

a eer a female eer

arrrrrr

eh, a rop of olden unnnnnnnnn

'eee' an expression used by us ooop north

Salt: www.alienlovespredator.com/...

Cal now says, "aaron dug up a link to sim-daltonism for osx. it's based on colorlab which i'd seen some time ago (years?) but is still fairly useful. i need to take the time to dig in the source and find out whether they're using a matrix, fixed data set or some formulae."

Be sure to let us know how you get on.

just stumbled over milo's color pages again. beautiful

I've tried, I really have, but I just can't get excited about it, particularly this.

I mean, it's a kinda beige block, right?

Not just any beige block, it's #FAFAD2!

Holy crap, if it's not gary with you-know-who (Mariah Carey, just whisper it, OK?), it's milov when you mention one of his colours. The internet is just magical. And/or scary.

What can I say, I ♥ HTTP_REFERER.

Hahahaha!

Don't spoil the magic.

I don't like Angelina Jolie's new film...

/crosses fingers

LOL

Yeah? Yeah? Well brad likes it and that's all that matters.

Brad Pitt likes to shove dominoes up his arse - FACT

Wow, Brock you have an HTTP_REFERER for brad????

True - FUCT

> iamcaltrain.com

and don't even THINK of using it, cal. it takes a couple of hours to make it from central san francisco even to mountain view. i blew a whole afternoon once trying to make a lunchdate (unsuccessfully) -- very pissed off.

cool name, but

But what? I NEEEEED to know!

heh. old queensland slang, shorthand for "but it IS a cool name". and disturbingly easier to say...

I seeeee.

odd link, but

iamcaltrain?

heh
the link is re the capital city of queensland -- brisbane, or "brisvegas" to its inmates due to its hedonistic high-octane high-glam lifestyle.

(a couple posts down, heretic has linked to the googlemaps loc'n for brissie)

bwah hah hah. just found my introductory post on that site:

Diasporadic

Greetings O BrisBloggers! I speek to thee via the great horn of the
internet, on which so many shits have founded in their quest for the
west via eastcpip. Lo! (prices) tho once yea verily and smitily
was I once once one of youse, now has I thrown off the grammar of
yesteryear and travelled via plane of econ.fare to the plane of aircon
-- great granmar Europa, where the entire countryside has been fully
airconditioned for your convenience and frostbite.

No sanity shall I waste, none of mine anyway, but shall immediately
proceed to the end.

The End (part 2)

Once champion of the Indooroopilly Station Road
Manned/Girled/Wimmined/JenerallyGockeyed Wheelybin Races, and chief
deputy nonculprit of the 60 Foot WheelsFellOff Green Scrapemark which
shall remain forever Amusing, I reside now in the surreal town of
England surrounded by Victoriana and Filth yet have been invited onto
your proud Roll as London Correspondent, in a bid to make you all feel
better about your own lifestyles and taste.

News at Ten

  Film at Eleven

    Virgin at Twelve (twice)

      Useless before Breakfast

        Drinking since Then

          Stay Tuned...

re: the queensland link. It goes nowhere but back here, href="". Unless I'm experiencing some anti-ausland filter.

*cough*
^£*&^$@£@$@£$%%
copypasted url AFTER the 2 "s instead of BETWEEN. dur.

hey cool. look at the autolinkage created by changing time

i take the caltrain to work every day. it's 1000 time more reliable than london transport.

?
maybe it runs differently on weekends. i literally blew an afternoon and didn't get more than halfway to where i was going. the locals all said that was normal.

Cal says

noting down these two
books for later - only really availabale in the UK.

And only really of interest to train spotting types. Perhaps Cal was a train spotter in a previous life.

surely that should be "track spotter"?

That's probably just a sub-group of train spotters, which in turn is a 'may item' for the main group, 'anoraks.'

>flock hasve released their (fairly agressive) roadmap »

wiki.flock.com/index.php?ti...



(heh)

i was reminded of this photo the other day when jones came by the office. utter genius. it does sound like something i'd say

I particularly like Brock's flight of fancy regarding Cal's mis-matched eyes.

/me bows

ietab is utter utter genius. it allows you to use IE in certain tabs within firefox, and easily switch between the two. TOO COOL.

Can anyone explain to a doddery old guy (i.e. me) why this is a good thing?

*Bump!*

I'm gonna keep bumping this until I get a reply.

There are some things you can't see with firefox? Dunno. Wild Guess.

because web pages look different in firefox from ie
differnet browsers innit

yeah, I now THAT, I thought this was something exceptional

it is exceptional, if you're a web developer.

or you regularly visit a site that gets all stuffed up in firefox - you can set it to always use ieTab.

i do huge amounts of X-browser testing, and always in FireFoxFirst style (make it work in FFox, do what you have to do to make it also work in IE).
This makes things work niiice.

Fair enough. Thanks. not necessarily of interest to most ordinary mortals then.

you're presupposing that anything on my linklog is...

Interesting point. Some things are, but I suppose the Teflon Heads who drop in here may find some of the other things of interest. This one fell into my 'not sure if this for TH's or OM's' category.

a good guide to washing care symbols

Might this be posted because Cal now has 50 hamster sized T-shirts?

"no bow ties"

"ninjas only"

"caution: ninja kings"

"no smileys"

cal cal cal did you get my email?!

"Wash with Snork"

"Remove legs from Snork before washing"

"Dry in centre of oven"

haha!

cal, why did you post a bunch of washing care symbols?

Because he now has to buy a shitload of new T-shirts and knows that some of us couldn't afford to do the same.

I AM THE 100th POST ON THIS THREAD!!!!111111oneoneone

woo me!

*sigh*

Slow day today.

which makes this... !O!

where is the row-count displayed? just idly interested, not the sort of thing i pay much attention to unless it uses the blink tag

doh
"replies" on the front page.

i think i need to go have a coffee

good symbol interpretations :)

mr messina has started selling his designs in tshirt form. mmm

Hippie 2.0

me want:

TFA 2.0

or maybe:

ET 2.0, ßeta?

(i think the above were definitely obscure -- i just looked blankly at them for a minute before i could work them out myself.
for the record, and the sake of my own future dimnitude:
• tea for two
• et tu, bruté?
)

omg omg omg. next generation mindstorms. anyone know where i can pre-order it?

just pop down your local DIY shop:

"The Land Walker: the world's first 340cm bipedal exoskeleton" -- FACT

The shooting video gets pretty lame but i LOVE the sounds it makes in the opening moves.

shooting vid

walking vid <-- he's inersant!

artist's impression of cal's ipod rushing down to the shops:

cal's ipod took the Dance Dance Revolution world by storm:

3 whistles! it's carnival-ready and raring to go

"The Land Walker: the world's first 340cm bipedal exoskeleton" -- FACT

Fuck that, I want this.

sure you got your verbs round the right way there, wh?

An old lady with a Zimmer Frame could outrun that Land Walker. It looks decidedly wonky to me. 10 points for scary first impression though.

see, THIS is why old ladies need powered exoskeletons.

Little old ladies are quite scary enough, without any artificial aids, thank you VERY much.

There is enough real AIDS in the world without artificial AIDS

as an ardent conservationist, i must warn you that we are running out of AIDS due to people's profligate behaviour. somehow, we need to find more AIDS in order to meet the burgeoning global demand. artificial AIDS are not as good as the real thing (altho the legs are frankly superior and clairely goddess-like), but are a useful weapon in our battle against things that we've decided need battling against.

oooooh thats horrible. Well done. :)


was going to start working on an artificial AIDS for old ladies joke myself but well done you two

as ever, iamcal is one step ahead of the game.

WE SAID:

> omg omg omg. next generation mindstorms. anyone know where i can pre-order it?
artist's impression of cal's ipod rushing down to the shops:

NOW ANNOUNCED:

Just plug your iPod into this KNG docking station and watch the little fella get to work. The right arm scratches away on the wheels of steel while the left arm keeps a steady hand on the headphones.
www.techdigest.tv/2006/01/i...

that's as good as TWO grims!

Pfffft.

There's a bit of mouldy dog shit outside my building that is as good as two Grim...'s. Haven't you a better value rating system?

/giggle

I bet neither of those things would be handy for carrying speakers =/

I was going to do some photoshopping but I cant find that picture of grimothy :(

Aha there he is.

> i need to take a look at the gnupod module to see if i can hook up ipod play counts to lastfm for better stat tracking


ohyeah.podcastfreeamerica.c...

i need to take a look at the gnupod module to see if i can hook up ipod play counts to lastfm for better stat tracking

Would you believe it!11 Jesse S Bangs.

APATHY!

no, wait...

hehe

"From time to time, I (Cal Henderson) talk at conferences and such about web things.
Here's a list of talks i've given and are planning to give.

Any chance of streaming video from any of these events? Your fans want to see you in action.

Yes, we would.

Building Scalable Web Sites : Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web applications - crumbs

LOL
saw the "crumbs" and had been about to post along the lines of "mate, don't let mere declamation by others unsettle you -- you are comfortably world-class, what i call 'first tier', zawinsky-style."
then while bored waiting for the interference here to settle so i could re-connect to my modem, clicked thru the link in the browser window. and it came thru straight away while the Post was still sleeping waiting for another reconnect attempt.

LOL

"you GO, cayl" (say that in a californ I A accent for mild drollity)

let us know if you want more like you, in your class, to pitch in. for the sort of stuff and sort of level you're after, i know one guaranteed (my age- wrote a coldfusion-alike back in the day but had no salesmen -- freakish good while freakish casual*; rewrote all of goldman sachs's** equity trading systems' public system+backbone to run in realtime, in java, in '99 ("15,000 simultaneous connections -- that took a bit of optimising...") ) and one i'm 95% certain of (18yo and was contributing to darwin at 15; just hit uni and bored/wondering; keeps teaching me things i thought i knew) who could meet your skill/focus-on-result-not-shinyshiny requirements.

plus --as much the point-- good people, no politics no malice, and a good laugh for a few beers.


* e.g.: he quit [was: rdbms engine god: multi-os, multi-language] to backpack round the world, hit paris on week 1 with 5 years salary in the bank, cash.
but his travel agent he'd booked this 1 week bit thru had fucked up. they'd booked his hotel starting the next night, not the night he arrived.
rather than pay for an extra night, he slept on a park bench next to the hotel.
"screw that, sal. i paid for a hotel. i'm not going to pay extra just because some idiot can't read a date right. it was warm & dry, my sleeping bag was comfy. [i'm not going out of my way to make up for other people's idiocy if i don't have to]"

** not goldman sachs. at that time, in that instrument, 2nd biggest in the world. and "managers" had declared "java" their "standard".

oh, and pleix.net/films.html rocks/is currently rocking

flickr has taken to calling me names. When I tried to access the login page it says, "Status : 504 Gateway Time-Out" (which is a normal message, as is)"Description : Unable to connect to origin Web server." but then it says, "<font face="

hahahaha! hello fontface!

That threadless sale is all well and good but they only have two of the ones I want in stock and in my size :(

They don't take Switch =[
I don't have Visa.

Cal will be talking at Etech in San Diego on March 6th - 'Designing scalable web applications - How to build flickr'

Isn't this rather like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted?

random ... find - this book review is genius

likewise, this movie review: Snakes on Planes is also genius

>where does aaron find this stuff? some interesting rice krispies recipes
1/ rice krispies? you yankee types don't know how to LIVE!!!

chocolate crackles
the ultimate vegetative dessert.
max. bang for effort-buck.


2/ "this geo news visualization has some nice ideas"
errr, technically: yes; concpetually: no it doesn't. that concept was old in the 60s. what it DOES have is some nicely effortless implementation.
you want a PRODUCT?
let user pick a group of topics they're interested in; let them choose HOW much more they're interested in local news than global news.
two dials of default no-brain possible current-interest, there.
let them choose both off dials.
or maybe a slider how much they're more interested in local than global. 0-1. 0% to 100%.
the input's not different, but the emotional impact (& consequence) of the input's mechanism can be. and that's the essence of flickr's design ethos and consequent success.

show the geographically-presented news as a result.
grey-shade/transparency-shade out the news they're less interested in.
alternatively, for some serious now-economic VC action, pick up a lot of the "simpler" 30s-50s pulp fiction, and consider that you can now easily do what was then "mere" extrapolation.

but yeah, think: new / other news overlaid on/outweighing previous news: not just on Temporality/newness, but on Importance.

e.g. llamagraphics.com

Snakes/Plane trailer!

Meh.

RE: this menu has been translated pretty badly

How do you know it's the translation that's bad? Do you read the native text? It could say exactly what's been translated.

velly good poin

that menu is ace

I call bullshit on that menu.

where was bullshit? i didn't see bullshit on that menu.
did you mean pig livings bowel? or maybe cow silk?

anyway, while you decide what you're having, i'm gonna order the eponymous number 1211.

or possibly the last one.

hmmm...

there's no number, but this one also appeals:
"Salty egg king steams the vegetable sponge"

itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/lan...

Every once in a while, though, there is a presentation of "Engrish" that both amuses and enlightens. Jon Rahoi, an American living in mainland China, posted scans from an exceedingly bizarre restaurant menu — so bizarre that a commenter accused Rahoi of forging the whole thing with Photoshop. But "an anonymous professor of China studies" came to Rahoi's defense by demonstrating exactly how one evocative menu item ("Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk") could have reasonably ended up that way through dictionary-aided word-for-word translation.
:

"Fuck the salt (beautiful pole) duck chin." Words I strive to live by. *sniff*

Take #1313, "Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk." It should read "Hot and spicy garlic greens stir-fried with shredded dried tofu."

stamen's backchannel visualization is beautiful. reminiscent of my irc log cloud perl software which i appear to have lost.

When did you last have it?

Last he remembered having it was in the car on the way back from the shops. Maybe it's with his keys?... I'll check the mantlepiece

a good high-level summary of my webapps tutorial from etech

True scalability somes with MySQL5 and Orcale RAC ($25K per processor). MySQL5 is not ready for prime time.

hmm. MaxDB any good? AFAICS it's a public release of SAP's underlying db, which was pseudo-relational (like Oracle and MySQL) optimised for intra-table Joins, ie for the overwhelming bulk of financial/data-mining work. and ran like shit off a shovel. almost as fast as SAS, but without the interface oddities/disjunctions.

OTOH, doubt flickr really has that much call for joins on large datasets. more like hooking a tiny predicate out of a core table or two, then looking up off that. more row-driven than cloud-driven*. more Train than 4WD (rdbms). flickr doesn't try to go everywhere-- it has specific goals and hence delivery needs.


* not a real term. closest i could come to communicating to non-datahackers the usual info-aggregation perspective when handling complex data via multiple interreacting relationships.

i don't have much practical experience with MaxDB

i'm misquoted in that article - NDB is the Oracle RAC equivilent-ish, not MySQL 5 as a whole

"misquoted"? how is that possible? it's on the internet. it must be right.

> merloc rpg

blast, i had the sound turned down and didn't hear what the chap said in the closing cut-scene. anyone else catch what he says?

omg. heathcote made crumpets. must try (recipe) you can't really buy them here, you see.

Meh. As if you can't afford to have them imported.

i hadn't noticed before, but using the smarty logo requires agreeing to the draconian trademark policies of new digital group. they appear to be quite evil.

I always suspected something like this would happen. I haven't read it, but does it say something like you must hand over all your goods and chattels, and your firstborn?

(my firstborn is not good, so lucky for them they made that distinction)

bookmarked for later - a great resource for canon lens specs

GEEK ALERT!!!

I thought this was going to be a site for spectacles that fire projectiles, a kind of James Bond gadget resource reference, but instead it has a picture of some kind of spacecraft.

want to come work for flickr? ok »

Salty, what about YOU!!!!!!?????????

(Cal, any tea-lady jobs for me?)

;)

well, I would, but it's well known that I suck at the internet.

Perhaps if Syl does the tea, I can do the sympathy.

And, as it happens, I've just got a new job anyway, so it would be churlish to leave so soon.

Have you got a new job, warhead? Have you left the government?

1. Yes I have.

2. No I haven't. (They can't do without me, which doesn't say a lot for them, does it?)

I don't really work for the government, I work for one of Her Majesty The Queen's (Dog Bless Her)government departments. Nor am I in the government, I'm just one of those pen-pushing, tea-drinking, bowler-hatted bureaucrats, biding his time on his way to his index-linked pension.

My 'new' job is actually a free transfer from IT to FM where I will keep an eye on the stock of paper-clips and ball point pens, etc.

FM? Financial Management? Really>

No, it's not Financial, although there will be a financial element to it.

Frequency Modulated?

Facilities Management?

That's is, Frequency Modulated Facilities Management.

Cal, did you get to choose your O'Reilly animal or did they choose it for you? I mean, you could have had The Panther book or something. What is that anyway, a carp?

Edit: WTF?!!1

"Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for:
# Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Jurgen Klinsmann? [Single] [Single]; Audio CD ~ Tonedef Allstars feat Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters"

O'Really? Is that the geek choice these days?

"Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for: A Year in the Life of the Man Who Fell Asleep; Paperback ~ Greg Stekelman"

Hahahahaha! Ace.

Man, it is SO tempting to write some weird and unintelligible review that is so utterly vague that it confuses all and sundry.

......Doc?

I think he chose the fish because it's "Scalable Web Sites" ie Scales? Or am I being a nit-wit again?

*whoooooooosh*

authors don't choose their animals - the creative director choose them all

Cool. If that job ever goes up for grabs let me know. I can flip a coin too.

Serious though, was there a reason for the fish? As syl said, there's a tenuous "scale" link. Though I'd like to think there was a more "A fish can only grow as large as its bowl" type thing going on. That's a quote I made up, btw, but I seem to recall that about fish.

they evolve lungs after a while. you just have to give them time.

i note cal's fish has outgrown its starburst. i think i preferred it IN it. although it always looked too right-ward for full niftiness, to my mind (such as it is).

I really think it's the "scale" thing. It sounds like a "creative" trying to be "lateral" :)

clearly somebody needs a good moisturiser

nope - tortured reference to the way carp grow. they keep growing throughout their lives - they don't stop when they reach adulthood like most animals. so, thing that keeps growing forever. also, it has scales.

wow
that's really um geeky
but obviously in a cool nerdish way

nah nah nah *wooooooosh to you Brock, you mangy minx. ;)

Why not a big picture of human ears? They never stop growing either.

Or noses, apparently.

only in males. the web is gender-neutral.

hey, i didn't realise that cal had set up his own university.

CalAcademy.org

Bollocks to that, don't forget he's got his own fucking train. Now that is class.

that is SoCal

1/ > reflections were neat when apple first started doing it, but they're set to become web 2.0's blink tag

amusingly, nothing shows up reflective-wise on Netscape.
no, i don't use Firefox -- it's not ready for Humans yet. i am all compliments and kudos for its technical architecture, but its user interface SUCKS in a few too many small but critical areas. eg, tabs.

amusingly (not), netscape 7.0.2 is more UI-functional than 7.2. but sadly, can't run the "modern" video etc. codecs.



2/ >want to come work for flickr? ok

well, i'd be well up for it, except that the job descriptions are SCREAMING "we only want meme-players. real workers need not apply."

i had to turn away from the screen with my temples throbbing when i read THIS:

bonus points if the resume can be included in the email or if it is online somewhere and you just send a link (we will accept attachments but we'll be really annoyed by them -- keep that in mind)

, and the actual detailed job descriptions COULD have been indicative of people hiring who actually knew what they were doing, but in context just screamed "Follow the Meme! Follow the Meme!"

prior to these ads, i'd've loved to work there. and the Engineering Manager and Product Manager and Project/Program[me] Manager roles are all roles i've done before at that level, and loved doing.
but these ads are big flashing red&yellow warning signs saying NO.

Jesus. Could Cal cope with the whining all day long?

I think you should reconsider, Sal. I really really do.
(Before someone spots this thread)

He's only really saying "I don't want to work there if they are a bunch of corporate cunts that have no fucking idea how to function properly". If Flickr think that applies to them, then not employing Sal is the least of their worries.

Sure, but that "Corporate" thing is everywhere, you're not going to get away from that today. I think Flickr seems like one of those that is least "offensively corporate." I think Sal should have a chat with Cal first, before he decides not to submit his resume. This may be a great opportunity. Send your CV in, Sal! :D

reflections were neat when apple first started doing it, but they're set to become web 2.0's blink tag

They may have you saying "neat" though, Sal. Cal, they have you saying "neat." Unless you meant tidy and well organised.

i suspect my link to a post riffing on the long-term end-result of that attitude may have thrown people off my intended point. the link IS a bit of a reach, i guess. sorry about that.


point is: they are hiring on meme-conformance, not on ability or attitude or potential contribution. talking the talk, matching the jargons, conforming to the memes -- this is what they're hiring on.

an equivalent is those english ads which effectively read "if you don't worship The Guardian, don't bother applying." meme-conformance. socialgames-winnitude.


at least, that's what comes screaming off the advertisement.

i really like san francisco, and its surrounds, and its people. but i dislike the insulated self-regarding self-feeding sponsored frenzy of much of silicon valley's business environment. or rather: i dislike the effect that can have on people. when i worked there, maybe 1 in 10 people had a clue. (mind you, that 10% was bloody brilliant fun to work with and party with)
i think the main problem i had was that it promised so much and delivered so little, but because of the VAST amounts of money pouring into it many very average people were sufficiently insulated from reality as to start believing their own publicity.
and i haven't seen any real change in the local attitude.

and i haven't seen any real change in "the internet" or "the technology" other than that the costs (time, effort, money, bandwidth) of change are increasingly decreasing, such that previously unfeasible tactics are now feasible. like flickr offering gigabytes of storage (and bandwidth) for free. like Orbitz being written in lisp (!!) .
so what's new and bouncy and foamy-exciting for the people running the hiring process, is for me old old old social games re-run on volume-rather-than-structure variations in tech thereby creating a low low low probability of best outcome.

put it this way:
i did more in a year with 8 UK+Oz coders than my predecessor did in 3 years with 75 silicon valley coders. and i did it by creating exactly the attitude and motivation yahoo're touting in their ads.
but i don't have a hope in hell of getting past even stage 1 of this hiring process because the explicit criteria are quite different from the actual criteria, as implied by the ad. me applying would be a waste of time, both for me and for them. and i've just seen this too many times now not to be be pissed off when someone says they're doing something different but are in fact playing the same old game of PLU.

did i mention i'm in a foul mood?

i'm in a foul mood.


maybe i should trash out the previous post

Heh - You're in a foul mood and I just had Chicken Tonight. The odds?

I think what Salt is saying, is that some "Web 2.0" companies are like teen girl bands on TV who can't sing, and he wished they would both stop fucking meme-ing.

god that was tortured :(

I have an joke in progress involving something about the inventor of annoying internet speak being John LOLgie Baird, if anyone would like to help me out with that one?

Er. No. Thanks, but I woud rather distance myself from that sort of 'joke'.

Jesus. Could Cal cope with the whining all day long?

He copes with you, doesn't he?

Aw. Fair enough, Sal. :(

of course, the 'they' who are hiring and that you're so against are actually, of course, 'me'.

the email/attachment thing is a usual ploy - we care most about people who will take the time to read the instructions, but also people who already have some kind of web presence and clearly 'care'.

It must get tiring counting all those sheep.

/forming opinions for jokes

Found anyone good yet?

*considers applying myself*...

Since when have you ever applied yourself Doc? Slacker!

I have an joke in progress involving something about the inventor of annoying internet speak being John LOLgie Baird, if anyone would like to help me out with that one?

actually i quite liked this one. it had that hideous train of "what? oh. *GROAN* ah, a-heh... LOL"


cal: i read it as yahoo corporate HR hiring for the flickr product responsibilities, rather than flickr still surviving as a separate team and wording the ad to fit corp.std.
hmm. puts a very different light on it.

re the "and clearly 'care' " -- i can see the rationale for it ("show us you swim the web rather than know about it"). but by the same token most CVs need to fit standard HR requirements which mean they have to be closely format-controlled for length considerations. the web's standard markups + normal delivery/presentation platforms (browsers) don't allow this degree of format control. so if you care about getting your CV read, you don't use them: you use the HR standard of MS Word, which can easily be dumped as wider-standard presentation markups: PDF or RTF. (Print As... and Save As... menu options, respectively)

so the difference between me lobbing a PDF or RTF onto my webspace rather than attaching to an email is basically zero.

actually, given that email is better for transferring non-realtime bulk than is web (for the same reason bittorrent and kazaa are: nonrealtime transfer is managed optimisably by intervening schedulers/servers), people preferring to webhost their cv rather than email it could arguably be regarded as a negative signal as to their understanding of networks.
heh.


but (leaping back from my boots into yours) only so long as you know that that IS the motivation/objection.
i guess it DOES serve as a rudimentary filter to block scriptkiddy dross ("yoyahoo! th1s iz ma CV! LOL").
and if the idiot-volume is expected to be huge then the tradeoff with inadvertently signalling a small portion of potential candidates to avoid the job is sensible.
hmm.

Give Salty a go, Cal. He's got the bollocks to be honest about the way he feels. That's a good sign. Another idea, Sal you seem to be passionate about corporate cultures/identity. How about starting a consulting business, giving companies advice on how to develop good ones?

jeez, chyll sil

i have very little chance of getting the job (volume of applicants, plus i don't have recent relevant experience (unless you count recently annoying cal :) ) and i'd have to irrevocably break my enonymity in a corporate environment to get even that slight chance.

ref. the consulting: the only successful versions of those are started out of existing consultancies (for which i have a PLU-failure) by people bailing out with a very large contact database (and usually a pre-existing key contract). not saying i'm not good at it. saying there's zero chance of me earning any money like that.


so cal, what HAS the response been like, in terms of finding useful people?

I offered my services. Waiting for a call back.

I think annoying Cal would be an expected part of the job. ;)

I applied for the job as well. Anyone else coming to Flickr with me and Sul?

I would love to, Sal, but I don't have the skills.

talk like a pirate day was a few weeks back wasnt it?

It's here again, me hearties.

Damn your eyes, btw.

yarr! i've been pushing it at work but no one's really taken the idea on board... i'll make them all walk the plank..
yarrrrrrr!

i LIKE "R"
r is for pirates what mate is for aussies

it's the one-stop-shop of words. all words can become "R" if a smidgeon of bodylanguage and/or intonation is thrown in.

conversations become so much simpler, with no perceivable loss of communication

"R!"
"R!"
"R?"
"R." *gestures down corridor*
"R." *turns and goes down corridor*
"R." *turns back to work*

i wonder if aussie pirates can say "r, mate" without exploding in a shower of self-referentialism

*explodes in a shower of self-referentialism*

nope

That's a bit of a bugger then.

R

Here, Salty have some of my Lithium

YARR!!

OOPS