Where you will find my (documented) thoughts, worries, concerns, and issues
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Senior Developer Shiny Object Syndrome (noun) ˈsiːniə dɪˈvɛləpə ˈʃaɪni ˈɒbʤɪkt ˈsɪndrəʊm A condition wherein a developer, usually far too proud of their own abilities, uses technology and/or tools inappropriate for the …
Several times in the Lethal Weapon movie series, Roger Murtaugh (played by Danny Glover) says: “I’m getting too old for this shit.” I’ve joked about that line on several occasions, especially when …
Tonight, I met up with a very old friend, Duncan. He and I lived together in the basement of a house shared with 4 other students (including my friend Mike, another denizen of the basement) on Albert Street in Waterloo. …
Tired of these yet? So I ran into a weird problem with my V3 site. I decided I had too many pages with no introductory text and it was proving to be awkward to use. Because of the way I had set up the Hugo site, I also …
You might recall that I tried to make a simple photo sharing site. It worked, but … it wasn’t enough. When you’ve built as many websites as I have, you recognize features almost at a genetic level and …
I’m not an egomaniac, let’s just get that clear. I don’t google myself regularly. In fact, I’m not even sure when I last googled myself … it’s been years. Yes, I actually did used to …
A few lifetimes ago, I had a rather sizeable Flickr library. It grew over many years, from many vacations, many photos of my growing kids and extended family, and more than a few company events. I liked what Flickr did …
I started my career as a technical writer. I wrote manuals. I was fairly decent at it, though more than one of my editors would tell you that I was a bit too verbose (yes, I know, shocker). I gave up on technical writing …
A lot of people are concerned about Generative AI right now. We’re looking at a very wide swatch of “intelligent” tools that are taking people’s jobs away. Or at least that’s what …
I had one of “those” meetings with one of our clients today. If you’re in marketing, you know what I mean. We were called out for non-performance: lots of money spent, very little result. The client …
Just over two weeks ago, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. There is no part of this that makes any sense. How anyone can justify a sum of money greater than the GDP of 56% of all (current) nations to acquire what …
I do truly mean this: I hate it when I’m right. I have to give credit to Zuckerberg for trying, I do. But when you are so utterly blind on a vision without understanding the very audience you’re trying to …
Earlier in the month, I attended (virtually) Ad World, a conference about advertising. Yeah, I know, not the most riveting sounding thing, but it had some topics (notably Web3) that I wanted to hear more about. And …
Last night, I was helping Choo Choo with her homework. She’s in Grade 6 and learning about the Iroquois Confederacy, which up until Monkey had run through it three years ago, I’d never heard of before. This …
Ten years ago today, I cut the cord. (Not entirely true, I technically cut it a little over a month earlier, but this was the final slice.) At the time it seemed a little more daunting to my family, especially Alex, …
Let’s be clear on one thing before we begin, here: I’m not advocating for widespread death and suffering. If it were possible to have a pandemic without all the pain we’ve collectively endured for the …
A few months ago, Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of a large audience and declared the presence of the Metaverse, at the same time rebranding his company to “Meta” because it was so darned important. (And …
This morning, I got into a bit of a debate with my friend Duane, the result of a comment about how we need to find a way to tone down the rhetoric and prominence of racist shitheads and state-sponsored lies that are …
This is going to seem like it should be filed under “rants”. After all, I’m taking a contrary position to some thing that’s been popularized and that is, by nature, a diatribe. But I think this is …
You might be one of those unfortunate souls caught in the debacle where a singular developer decided to intentionally hobble open source libraries to spite corporate users. To you, regardless of where you work, my …
Welcome to the Global Plague of 2020, courtesy of COVID-19. The world has not seen something like this in a century, even the polio, cholera, and various influenzas that have struck since then haven’t created the …
Years ago, I started blogging because I had moved away from home and wanted those I knew and loved to know what I was up to, things I’d done, and that I was, in fact, okay. (The grand irony in that belief is that I …
On 8 November 2016, Americans elected their new president, whom I hope to never have to publicly acknowledge. That night, I came to a rather painful conclusion: I needed to abandon social media for a while. In this …
Twenty years ago this month — and very possibly this week, though I’m not 100% certain of that — I entered into the very nascent industry of digital marketing. At the time, the project had been little more than a simple …
I feel like an old man. I can now look at my kids, and say with far too much vigour: “When I was your age…” I refer to, of course, having to get off my ass, walking over to the cathode ray tube-based …
I’ll keep this one short folks, I promise. Do you use the internet (even watching videos on YouTube and Facebook counts)? Do you use an iPod/iPhone/iWhatever? Do you watch downloaded movies? Are you a student (or …
Across the internet, the letters S-O-P-A have inspired a particular level of hatred and vitriol. Beyond the internet, the Stop Online Piracy Act has barely registered any significant presence within mainstream media. The …
For anyone out there trying to do any form of semi-serious work on the internet (notably with websites), you often end up asking yourself: is what I’m doing having any effect whatsoever? It’s an important question — …
As little as a hundred years ago, North Americans lived (generally) in towns and (much smaller) cities, where it was possible to know your elected representatives personally, meet with them, and have a person-to-person …
A year ago, I was a “free agent” of sorts. I had gone self-employed, and had started to live in the world of contracts, invoices, expenses, and running around without adequate amounts of personal injury …
Not so long ago, when I managed a team, I used to coach people in their career directions. (How well I coached people is another matter, and I can only leave it to those people to assess my real effectiveness.) I’d help …
If I were to summarise the last ten years of my career prior, specifically from about June 2000 to June 2010, it would look something like this: web developer, specialised web developer, senior web developer, junior …
For those of you not already following the story, I’ve sworn off Shaw. As much as I am tied — nay, symbiotically attached — to the internet, I would have been quite willing to end the service at home with the continued …
I have a pet peeve with WordPress. (Actually, I have a few, but we’ll get to the rest later.) This one, I’ll admit, is limited to those of us who develop with WordPress. In short, WordPress hard-codes domains in its …
Before we returned to Calgary last December, we did a fair amount of investigation into what services we would get at home. In particular consideration were television, internet, and phone service. (In my ideal world, it …
Back at the beginning of the year, I took a different direction in my career. Until December, I’d been a career man — work for one company. Work your butt off, be the cog in the machine, and do the best you could to stay …
A few years from now, my kids will be old enough to ask me questions that will require a lot of explanation. Like, for example, what the internet was like when I was their age, how I survived without a mobile data …
At the moment, IE6 still holds about 20% of the market (according to today’s metrics from NetMarketShare). That’s far too large a share for a 8.5 year old browser, especially one that has been superseded by successive …
It’s about as official as it gets, now. We leave Costa Rica on 8 December. Which means that on the morning of 9 December, we’re going to be needing a few things. We’re trying to establish as much of that as we can …
As you know, I’m going to be moving back to Calgary in December. The exact timing for that is still being determined, but let’s just go with the broad stroke: we have a lot of stuff that needs to be done as part of …
Okay, so you have a website. But somewhere along the line, you’ve realised you need to change your hosting vendor. It could be any number of a million reasons: Your company got really successful and your old vendor can’t …
I’ve been around this internet thing for a long time, and I’ve set up probably far more than my share of websites (both for myself and my clients). After a while, setting up websites becomes largely a by-rote-memory …
Yeah, Murphy, I’m talking to you. You’ve been dogging me now for 10 months, almost non-stop. You’ve always been there, hiding in the shadows, popping out every so often to cause a bit of havoc only to vanish again. …
Your firewall will explode once your (formerly poor) internet connection is stablised. (Tip o’ the hat to Ginger.)
There’s been a lot of talk lately about people saying you shouldn’t blog anymore. The arguments seem to break into two categories: Don’t blog because you probably have nothing interesting to say and no-one will read it …
Not 45 minutes ago, Google released their latest contribution to the internet: Chrome. This effectively ended years of speculation that Google was writing a browser, that it would throw its hat into the ring and kick off …
I’ve been in Costa Rica for over three weeks now. Three weeks away from Alex and Mi Pequeña Niña. Each day has been a challenge being so far away from them. The longest I’d ever been away before was six days. Six short …
I’ve had a few people tell me about how great it is to be living in Costa Rica, and how much cheaper it is to live here. Some people know from a little bit of experience, but others are making the assumption — it’s not …
We’re slowly getting ourselves up-to-speed down here. But the reality is that things are not happening at anywhere near the speed we’re used to. This was something we were warned about — you need to relax and allow …
So this morning, I’m scanning through my Twitter feeds on Twhirl, and I came across a rather interesting note by Dave Fleet, which said: @cspenn planning to install it tonight. Waiting for the confirmation email. …
Late last month, I had the chance to go to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. On behalf of my co-workers, I blogged notes from the event to make sure that they had the benefit of getting the information in as much detail …
Last session of the conference. And yes, another Schill recommendation. But this one I wanted to go to as well. We always have this problem — how to let people know something is private without the fear of …
Schill suggested I go to this one as well. Again, mostly because Schill knows the guy, but given how this is perennial problem for us as well, it couldn’t hurt to see how Flickr handles the problem. Presenter: John …
Hanging out with Schill today, and he’s giving me some really great suggestions on what to see. Although the CM team did suggest something different, he’s saying we should see this one. Naturally, Schill knows the guy, …
The name partly disinterested me, but I wanted to attend this one because of the needs for social marketing that we haven’t really nailed down yet. Presenter: Ro Choy, rockyou! RockYou! has successfully deployed several …
Not much to report here. It’s a panel, and not a particularly interesting one, sadly. On the bright side, this room has great connectivity!
Definitely not my strong point. But I wanted to go to this given all the working in tagging as of late. Presenter: Duane Nickull folksonomies became powerful quickly because people got tired of waiting for the so-called …
Maybe it’s just me, but running keynotes every single day of a conference seems really silly, and waters down the value of the concept of a keynote. But I digress. Either way, this morning features Tim O’Reilly (again), …
Oy. I can’t seem to get a decent connection to anything anymore. Too many people with wireless connections. They’ve got big-ass routers, but it ain’t helping. Gonna stay offline for reliability. Presenters: Charlene Li …
Room is huge and darn near packed. I get the feeling this is gonna be a good one. I think I’m going to have to type quickly for this one. Presenter: Jacob West (Fortify Software) Jacob runs the security research group …
Debated between this one and learnings from Twitter. Felt that maybe this one might be more … insightful. Gotta learn to stop listening to my gut instinct. Presenter: Gavin Bell Gavin’s background is cognitive …
Last session before lunch. Freaking hungry (no boiled eggs at breakie this morning). Might take off a bit early to get a jump on lunch and battery charging. Presenter: Ryan Sarver Context is about location — what’s …
Only session of the morning. We break for lunch, then more sessions this afternoon. Sorry for all the delays in getting these posted. It seems that while the wireless strength to connect is pretty good (there are hubs …
Unlike other conferences I’ve been to, they seem to have a lot of keynotes. Strikes me as a little odd. The only real person who do a “true” keynote would be O’Reilly, since he coined this term in the first …
Well, wasn’t much of a “crawl”, at least for me. Met up with Jim at the Expo hall, about 20 minutes before they closed the floor. (What’s with closing the Expo hall at 4, anyway?) Skipped the keynote. Went to …
Sigh. I gave in. Communicating at this conference seems to require it.
Just in case you’re following the threads from Web 2.0 Expo, they’re gonna be a little delayed today, folks. First of all, I had my Firefox suddenly kak out and took all my notes from the first session with it. Furious …
And the fun continues. Another morning at the conference, and another day of hard-core typing. I’m also up on Twitter now (le sigh), so you can get some notes as I go along. Presenters: Dawn Foster (Jive Software), …
Being here solo, you can’t help but notice things that go on around you. (Hey, you gotta keep yourself interested/occupied somehow, right?) First off, it’s pretty easy to see who is actually working in the Web 2.0 world …
In the afternoon session today, I’m going to learn what it’ll take to build the next generation of apps. I’m curious to see what they’ve got to say. Presenter: Dion Hinchcliffe Room is about 90% full, compared to …
Notes from the Web 2.0 Expo. This is on the Cross-Cultural presentation. Presenter: Aaron Marcus (Aaron Marcus and Associates) Waiting for presentation, have heard several languages besides English (in a hands-up poll, …
Despite the sobering realisation that I’d forgot to actually register for this conference before coming (this is what happens when you try to do do much before going on a 2.5 week vacation, only to return for one day …
Le sigh. I had this problem [[WordPress 2.2.1 broke my site!|when I updated my WordPress to 2.2.1]]: WordPress and K2 stopped talking. Sort of like a bad relationship. Given, the two products are made by entirely …
Yep, one of my “favourite” buzzwords, Web 2.0, now has a conference thanks to O’Reilly — the same folks who came up with the buzzword in the first place. This is the Expo, not the Summit, which although …
So the other day, one of my coworkers starts laughing about how there’s this video out there, two somewhat-scantily clad women with tinfoil-wrapped boxes on their heads, doing a choreographed “dance” to Daft …
GAH! I already hate BMO’s online security. Now I hate it more, if it is in fact possible to hate something more than “totally”. I just wanted to into my account. Nothing serious. But the password they made me …
Back when I started with Critical Mass in 2000, the browser wars were still hotly contested but it was already clear that Netscape was losing. Standards were slowly (finally) creeping into the mix, and Netscape was on …
Oh. My. Lord. I haven’t been this pissed off in a very, very long time. I actually yelled at the poor person on the phone trying to help me. It’s not her fault. It’s the Bank of Montreal. Who obviously has NO FUCKING …
This was originally posted at http://experiencematters.criticalmass.com. The site is no longer active. We’ve been talking a lot about ideas. But ideas don’t always translate well without examples. Thankfully, the …
I could classify this as “rants”, but I’m not actually feeling the urge to rant. In fact, I’m more feeling the urge to laugh heartily at spam. Namely its ineffectiveness. Yes, I’m sure that there are people …
There are times when your very existence is effectively controlled by someone else. And when that someone else pays you no attention, you start to feel very neglected. Such is my case with Google. But for the record, I’m …
I so love The Onion.
Nurtz. This doesn’t happen often, and until now hasn’t happened at all. But the most recent upgrade of WordPress has officially broken my site. My biggest problem is that I’m using the K2 package, which doesn’t work …
Okay, I know, I’m probably doing something I said I wouldn’t be doing. But I have to admit, this is already pretty cool. When I put out my first post a couple of days ago, I shot to the top of a list of one for …
We’re running a contest here at Critical Mass, to see who can rank the highest for our chosen keywords: Yoshirolla kilomantra. Since I’m a judge, I’m not going to compete heavily. I’m just going to set a bar that I …
Interactive marketing is a branch of advertising that aims to involve people directly in marketing materials, providing an avenue for engagement that’s just not possible with print, radio, or television advertisements. …
I know I’m posting a lot of these acquisition notices lately, but it’s not for want of traffic. This is for honest curiousity. Actually, it leans much more towards the “WTF” end of the pendulum swing. …
Google has bought Panoramio. I have to admit that this doesn’t come as a huge surprise — this is something that Google really needed in their world. For those of you unfamiliar with Panoramio, I strongly recommend you …
A little morning humour for you all. This had me chuckling heartily for a couple of minutes. Google in 20 years. (Warning: Some objectionable language, but when you’ve lost your keys, I’m sure you’ve said the same …
Andre’s got good stuff again. I’d love to know where he finds this. First up, something called The Vader Project, a reimagining of Vader’s helmet. I love the rusty riveted-iron version. Then there’s Pacman’s skeleton. …
A List Apart, one of my fav industry mags (even if it is only on the web) has put together a pretty neat little survey, to try and figure out what our goofy little industry looks like. And to hopefully garner a bit more …
So in all the mayhem that is/was the first three months of the year, we apparently completely missed news about the Web 2.0 Expo. Well, either that or we completely dismissed it based on the name alone. Either way, it …
This one is the current industry buzz. Basically, a slam against XHTML and a suggestion to return to HTML 4.01 in lieu of using XHTML 1.0 (or 1.1). You know I can’t let this go without a comment … or three. 😉 …
[Ed. note: The links in this article no longer work, as Imagini apparently no longer exists, despite being a neat idea. I’m leaving the article, however, as record, even with the broken links.] One of my …
Over a year ago, we started on a brave new project: bring a whole new experience to the Rolex brand. It’s been a tough year. Countless designs. Several prototypes. A lot of lost sleep. (Not to mention some martial …
I’m in the process of updating the IPs for a whack of domain names and realized something about some of the top-level (and second-level) domains out there. Some of them, at least in English, were chosen really poorly: bj …
Grr. So much for local dev and test, and upload to live server. It’s not behaving, which is frustrating me immensely. So bear with me while I make K2 work properly.
It’s taken me a few months, but I’m finally back up and running with something a lot better: a new blog format (and technology) and a new host. Okay, so first the blog… It’s taken me months — literally — to move …
So I’m taking VIA from London to Oakville, saving Alex from another four hours of driving on Ontario’s highways. I’m sitting here with my trusty laptop trying to do some work, using the “Wi-Fi” service …
Sigh. Just when I thought this topic was in the past, to be revisited in the same manner as when historians look at how the Black Plague ravaged Europe. But no, it’s back. I’ve had to don my somewhat dusty Web Practice …
The previous article introduced the idea of creating layers when building a website. It’s not a new concept — similar ideas have existed in computer science for decades. Even in terms of web development, the ideas are …
Websites are a hugely powerful information medium — they can entertain, endorse, educate, even drive a sale. But only if they engage. These are basic elements for anyone in the interactive marketing. Without them, …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The internyet.] Okay, just a general bitch about Russia. Where the hell are all the internet cafes?? Our guides are out of date — we accept that. But do we have to …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Any idea how hard it is to find the internet in Moscow?.] Hard. Really hard. Amy and I got here yesterday morning, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find an …
Way back in early August, I learned the awful truth that Therese and Stuart were moving to Montreal, ne’er to return. (Okay, that’s an assumption. They might, but I ain’t holding my breath.) Needless to say, I suddenly …
I hate monopolies. They generally treat the customer like so much belly button lint. Late last month, Allison and I decided to get Roger’s @ Home (aka “Wave”). For those of you who haven’t heard of it, better …