28 August 2006
Tales of the Office Fridge
Inspired by this Slashdot article I'm reminded of a tale from my heady dot-com days when working 60 hours a week with a 2 hour commute somehow seemed like a good idea.
I was working at AltaVista in mid-1999, and while there are many tales of woe regarding that whole saga I'll stick to this one for now. Like many offices, ours had a little problem with people eating food and drinking drinks that didn't necessarily belong to them. At the time I was coming off of my growing years but maintaining the diet of a 15-year-old. After a bit of "personal growth" in the horizontal sense I decided to try to be healthier in my dietary habits and started buying skim milk from the Trader Joe's across the street to drink during the day. As an aside, I'm aware that milk has a lot of calories but to me I just assumed it was "healthy" and it's still probably ten times better than Mountain Dew.
The refrigerator in the break room was the same one that we kept the half and half for the coffee in and this being Northern California skim milk next to half and half is like, well, sushi next to a Fillet O' Fish. So people started using my milk. At first a quart would last me three days, then two, then finally it would be gone in under 24 hours. I wrote my name on the carton in increasingly elaborate and obvious fashion. I tried out various scripts, colors and placement of "James' Milk: DO NOT DRINK" but nothing seemed to work. In a fit of inspired desperation I tried to use psychological warfare. I made a sign that said the following:
In my mind I had won. I had created a message that would probably gross out the squeamish and perhaps the humor would win the rest over. All was well for the next 2 days or so and a couple people had actually commented on how funny the sign was. I was not to have the last laugh though because once as I came back from a meeting I saw the following written hastily in ball-point pen beneath my stern warning:
I was working at AltaVista in mid-1999, and while there are many tales of woe regarding that whole saga I'll stick to this one for now. Like many offices, ours had a little problem with people eating food and drinking drinks that didn't necessarily belong to them. At the time I was coming off of my growing years but maintaining the diet of a 15-year-old. After a bit of "personal growth" in the horizontal sense I decided to try to be healthier in my dietary habits and started buying skim milk from the Trader Joe's across the street to drink during the day. As an aside, I'm aware that milk has a lot of calories but to me I just assumed it was "healthy" and it's still probably ten times better than Mountain Dew.
The refrigerator in the break room was the same one that we kept the half and half for the coffee in and this being Northern California skim milk next to half and half is like, well, sushi next to a Fillet O' Fish. So people started using my milk. At first a quart would last me three days, then two, then finally it would be gone in under 24 hours. I wrote my name on the carton in increasingly elaborate and obvious fashion. I tried out various scripts, colors and placement of "James' Milk: DO NOT DRINK" but nothing seemed to work. In a fit of inspired desperation I tried to use psychological warfare. I made a sign that said the following:
"To the person or persons who have decided to drink my milk:
Please be aware that I drink straight from the carton!
-James"
In my mind I had won. I had created a message that would probably gross out the squeamish and perhaps the humor would win the rest over. All was well for the next 2 days or so and a couple people had actually commented on how funny the sign was. I was not to have the last laugh though because once as I came back from a meeting I saw the following written hastily in ball-point pen beneath my stern warning:
"So do I"
07 August 2006
Flashy New Sony mylo wifi IM web media thingy.
I guess this is a Gizmodo exclusive for now but this thing looks pretty neat:
There's a Youtube video showing a bit of it in action. It's actually smaller than it looks.
After using a Nokia 770 at 800 x 480 a 320 x 240 screen is a bit tiny but this thing looks pretty cool. I hope they manage AIM support at some point. This looks like a decent Sidekick replacement except for the pretty glaring Bluetooth omission for mobile phone pairing and high price.
It's been interesting watching the handheld space change, it seems like they're punctuated by a lot of false starts followed by a lot of iterative time when people refine good ideas. The design, like most handheld devices will be one of those "gotta hold it to see" things but I think it's a good look and layout. I'm not wild about the 'mylo' [no caps] name but it beats the crap out of Creative-too-many-names-syndrome or iRiver-not letter-number-disease which is refreshing. Finally I am issuing it the Needs More Jog Wheel Award for having what is pretty much the best small UI widget around for dealing with lists and scrolling. It's probably thanks to Apple's dubious patent on jog wheels for portable media devices.
[click for super-huge PR shot with obviously doctored screenshots]
The media player does MPEG-4, digital audio, and pictures. But it also has a WiFi connection and a QWERTY keyboard, for chatting on Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger (No AIM support, sorry.) Wait, wait, wait! It also works as a wireless Skype phone! And it has an Opera browser. And it can wirelessly stream music to other mylo owners in the area, ala iTunes. Without cellular connectivity, its not going to best a Hiptop, but we love the open standard support.
The mylo has 1GB of flash memory, backed by a Memory Stick Pro Duo slot. Its screen is a 320 by 240 pixel 2.4-inch LCD. It'll retail for $350 when it hits the shelves in September.
There's a Youtube video showing a bit of it in action. It's actually smaller than it looks.
After using a Nokia 770 at 800 x 480 a 320 x 240 screen is a bit tiny but this thing looks pretty cool. I hope they manage AIM support at some point. This looks like a decent Sidekick replacement except for the pretty glaring Bluetooth omission for mobile phone pairing and high price.
It's been interesting watching the handheld space change, it seems like they're punctuated by a lot of false starts followed by a lot of iterative time when people refine good ideas. The design, like most handheld devices will be one of those "gotta hold it to see" things but I think it's a good look and layout. I'm not wild about the 'mylo' [no caps] name but it beats the crap out of Creative-too-many-names-syndrome or iRiver-not letter-number-disease which is refreshing. Finally I am issuing it the Needs More Jog Wheel Award for having what is pretty much the best small UI widget around for dealing with lists and scrolling. It's probably thanks to Apple's dubious patent on jog wheels for portable media devices.
01 August 2006
90s Music Video Series #2 "Mindphaser" by Front Line Assembly
Maybe it's because I've been re-reading William Gibson's Sprawl Series lately but I've been in a cyberpunk sort of mood. Most of the sci-fi footage is from the Japanese TV show "Gunhead".
