Matthew Broderick is a sellout

Matthew Broderick you're a sellout!! right about now Ferris Bueller would be scheming a way to kick your ass!!!

- http://fabzing.com/watch/?s=BWtQzFkZ

The Representation of Geek Culture in Media

Recently I wrote a post about Bitcoin appearing in the good wife. This is somewhat uncommon, in the fact that it delves deeply into what many people would classify as the geekier side to tech culture.

But have things really changed? Are geeks and their interests better represented in mainstream media than they ever have been? Has the consumerisation of personal tech with iPads etc changed how people feel about tech?

The answer is probably "sometimes", because what it means to be a geek has really changed, and the vast majority of people have interests that could be classified as such.

Geekery is no longer playing computer games (everyone plays them, whether it's Farmville, Partypoker or Call of Duty), or surfing the internet at all hours. It's not about being into certain sci-fi TV or the "Math Club", because CSI and other shows have drawn in mainstream audiences into science geekery for some time now.

However, while classic geek topics are now the norm for many, it's not that hard to find characterisations of those with geeky interests that are made to look socially backward and weak, and therein lies the problem. The irony is that geeks are not like this; for the same reason any demographic does not contain a million copies of the same personality type.

People are just people, and there's no secret to creating geeky characters, because as time goes on, the word "geek" becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Doctor Who, Fringe, the iPhone, the Wii - how many of these things would we have tagged as geeky ten years ago, and how many of them are geeky now?

How many people are now classed as the "home IT support" person but dont (or didnt) identify themselves as "that guy" with the pocket protector who looks after the IT Systems at the office?


Cheers,
Dean

Monday morning blues

Got the Monday morning blues?


“Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."
-- Muhammad Ali - http://fabzing.com/watch?s=GzYxznrx

Happy Monday everyone,
Cheers,
Dean

Downton Abbey

"Uptown Downstairs Abbey" parody - some amazing celeb cameos in this, something to do with RedNose day but i couldn't see the link.







BTW loving this series but if you do purchase it be sure to have an all region dvd player and purchase the un-edited UK versions from amazon/uk

eg -

Downton Abbey: Series One [Region 2]

Downton Abbey: Series Two [Region 2]

and

Christmas At Downton Abbey


This will bring you up to speed for the Season 3 start on PBS on Feb 19th.

Cheers,
Dean
BTW liked that....check out the "Mean Girls" edit of Downton Abbey - http://youtu.be/pruPAzYPmu0

Peter James, Managing director, Ninefold

Interesting article in The RustReport this morning

What sets NineFold apart from your competitors?

We offer locally stored data, genuine self service and pay-as-you go public cloud computing and cloud storage services; with locally stored data and free local support. We’re scalable, secure and — being local —offer low latency to Australian users. Plus our solid backing from Macquarie Telecom means we have the flexibility of an agile, innovative enterprise, plus the added clout and staying power of a long established telco and managed hosting provider

http://www.rustreport.com.au/issues/latestissue/peter-james-managing-director-ninefold




The better question would have been....how would you have handled a MegaUpload FBI warrant differently to the Virginia based hosting providers.

Peter alludes to "Australian" and "local" several times but doesnt comment on how that makes them different.......

What are your thoughts?


Cheers,
Dean

P.S. is this your first time hearing about MegaUpload? good place to start -> http://techcrunch.com/tag/megaupload/
Then read this -> http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&p=533688

Redditors are just the coolest people

this question
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p0byi/would_it_be_possible_to_survive_an_otherwise/

lead to this
http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/handle/123456789/4257?show=full

love it :)

How quickly we forget

I was checking out the new google earth functionality and their new closer satellite photo sets they've just installed.

I was measuring something and google told me it came to 67'

I thought to myself hmm thats a shame i know for a fact its 62' long so its out about 8% - a minute or two later i slapped myself in the side of the head thinking wtf are you talking about, you are measuring something on a computer from freaking SPACE!!!!

All of this without getting your fat ass out of a chair and looking for a tape measure.

How quickly we forget :)


Cheers,
Dean

Australian bodyguards

lol @Aussie secret service bodyguards......amateurs. Time to go back to bodyguard school for you to learn how its really done.

lol this isn't how its done.

Alternative payment methods

Imagine a world in which all you need before heading out the door to shop, grab a bite or catch a movie is your smartphone. That is right: no wallet, credit cards or cash required, just your smartphone.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/11958.html

Imagine a world when people are going to quit writing articles about how we get to leave slim bits of non-traceable paper and slim plastic magic credit cards that we can charge goods and services with and instead rely on a tax from the phone company.

People writing these articles make out that rfid / pin / mobile app based payment systems are all going to be puppy dogs and rainbows but at the end of the day you still have to pay for your goods, you are still going to have to carry something, and someone is still going to get shafter with the spiv for carrying costs of the transaction.


Cheers,
Dean

Udacity

Thrun told the story of his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class, which ran from October to December last year. It started as a way of putting his Stanford course online — he was going to teach the whole thing, for free, to anybody in the world who wanted it. With quizzes and grades and a final certificate, in parallel with the in-person course he was giving his Stanford undergrad students. He sent out one email to announce the class, and from that one email there was ultimately an enrollment of 160,000 students. Thrun scrambled to put together a website which could scale and support that enrollment, and succeeded spectacularly well..... http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/udacity-and-the-future-of-online-universities

Another pretty good summary of the background here - http://theairspace.net/events/robotic-mastermind/
- I love the red pill, blue pill quote.

Looks like a lot of good links around this at - http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ 

Any thoughts?

Twitter suspends Proxlet

Twitter suspends Proxlet - http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/twitter-proxlet/

I didnt even know this app existed until now and it is exactly what i suggested i would love to have developed in a blog post just last week.

Twitter suspending worthwhile client apps is ridiculous. Time to take back control and make Twitter our bitch instead of the other way around.

BitCoin - The Good Wife

Anyone else find it weird that The Good Wife was based tonight on the mystery behind the creator of Bit Coin?

lol they are definitely using the tried and true "Law And Order" model of taking their storylines from current news topics
- http://www.observer.com/2011/06/bit-omoney-whos-behind-the-bitcoin-bubble/

The only problem was when they started the ghosting theory at the end, I almost barfed.

Came across some really interesting comments at - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/10/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-michael-clear.html
eg
Sometimes a crypto-research is just a crypto dude and not an evil scammer to boot.

> or has a large reserve of Bitcoin he plans to cash out at a later date?
Actually, it's generally believed that Satoshio and a very few far-sighted early adopters have an unknown amount of the earliest coined 1.6m bitcoins, and probably still have most of them (around 1.1m), based on lack of blockchain movements: see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333.0  for the general discussion, and especially https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333.msg458441#msg458441





Cheers,
Dean

Twitter app idea

Cool twitter app idea :)

Twitter client that allows you to read posts via api BUT allows you to block certain keywords eg people/accounts you dont want to see retweeted. eg block me from seeing any twitter posts with the word "Fox News" in it.

Though i think my next Twitter app idea will be a twitter app that allows you to follow people who you dont want to let know that youre following them eg, you get alerts when they post something (maybe even paid version allows you to get alerts for their posts with certain keywords).

What do you think?

Best comment I've ever heard about the TSA

Best comment ever on a TSA article "Where's our trillion dollar war on sharks and bears?"


:- http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/SDTSA-Makes-400K-off-of-Loose-Change-137192398.html


Craig Pitt: TSA is a joke. We're being trained like dogs for the day they implement mandatory body scans and pat downs at schools, stadiums, malls, and anywhere else they feel like. It's a psychological game they are playing to make us bow to our masters. As an American, there's a better chance you'll die from an animal attack than a terrorist. Where's our trillion dollar war on sharks and bears? It's a big phony lie to take your money and shut you up when you ask why they're taking your freedoms. How about spending a trillion dollars fighting cancer? Or not filling our foods with the toxic hormones that kill us off early in the first place? It's all a big joke.

The Hidden brain

The most interesting article you will read today.

- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-hidden-brain

Until recently, our understanding of the brain was based on a century-old idea called the neuron doctrine. This theory holds that all information in the nervous system is transmitted by electrical impulses over networks of neurons linked through synaptic connections. But this bedrock theorem is deeply flawed.

Having just watched Limitless last month it makes you wonder.....

Traces

Saw the Traces performance last night (http://tracesusa.com/), some amazing feats that blew my brain about what the human body is capable of.

Could do with some better choreography (evolved storyline?) but the stunts are first class.

Couldn't begin to imagine how much training over their lifetime these athletes must have done to train to their current level, half of the crew are from Quebec so probably trained at some time of their life with cirque du soleil. Very much worth the ticket price.

Stick Fly

Went to Stick Fly last night.(http://stickflybroadway.com/)

First Act needs work but the Second Act almost saves the play (though with predictable outcomes).

Good acting from Dule Hill though...was just watching him last week as Charlie in The West Wing and now he's all grown up :)

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home.....man that bed is going to feel good in a few hours from now.

LAX customs morons

Lol just got sent for secondary customs search at LAX when I told the customs guy his explanation for the term "gringo" was BS and we were running late.....I smiled at him like "whatever" when i reach across his desk to pick up our passports...... but the shit I got from Jodie was the worst part.

They didn't even open the bags just ran the scanner.

I felt like saying, dude you work on the desk without a computer armed only with a texta, and your job is to say, please continue or please go to Line B..... I dont have anything relevant to say to you after getting off an 18 hour flight ........either let me go or send me to Line B but the etymology of the word gringo is greek and not french for "Green".

What a moron but for $12 an hour should i expect my tax dollars to be doing any better?

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all from Sydney

(Yes Aussies kick butt when it comes to fireworks).