Really immature thought of the day

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Justin

sqlxml logo

I’m so sorry. I would normally hope that my blog postings live up to some editorial standards. Today I prove otherwise with a bit of toilet humor.

I was doing a search and ended up at blogs.sqlxml.org. The logo for the site is a stick figure as the base of a nice green tree. Unfortuantely, it took me a few moments to see that interpretation. When I arrived at the page, my first thought was “Why is their logo a man being killed by a cloud of fart?” The really iconic figure does look like it should be on a warning sign.

Maybe he is running away from the cloud in terror. Maybe he is being eaten by space amoebas. Perhaps this is the alien that bleached Michael Jackson. You decide.

Note to self: get a second opinion before launching new designs.

Edit: I was wrong. The design does not belong to SQLXML. It belongs to CommunityServer2007. The SQLXML blog just runs on it. Community Server is an actual product. *shakes head*

Non-Flash, Flash Ad

Posted on October 17, 2006 by Justin

I’m being haunted by an ad, from site to site. Is it Flash? Nope. Was it made in Flash? Maybe.

bad ad

Notice anything familiar? If the ad were actually Flash and not a badly compressed JPG, I would have been waiting for one of the default audio clips that was included with Flash.

For those that aren’t seeing what is amusing in the ad, it is the blue arcade style button in the picture. If I put on my black turtleneck, I could criticize it in many ways, but there is a pretty simple one. The button is a default asset that comes with Flash, for demonstrating how to make and use a button. For Flash people it is the equivalent of seeing some of the default Microsoft clip art in an ad. Its just strange.

Adobe is 'Green' with envy over AC

Posted on August 1, 2006 by Justin

I didn’t realize until today how shallow of an environmentalist I am. There was an article in the San Jose Mercury News about how the recent heat wave has taxed the extremely green (environmentally friendly) Adobe headquarters buildings in San Jose. In particular, the west tower was the greenest office building of its kind when it first came online and was hit pretty hard in the 100+ temperatures.

My first reaction should have been “I’m so happy that I am going to work at a place that has such deep regard for the environment that they would go so far out of their way to make an ecologically sound office building.” It wasn’t. My actual reaction was “oh crap. I’m going to be in the West tower!” Apparently I need to go see Al Gore’s movie at least 5 times, and go to a painfully unfocused protest in Berkeley to get in touch with my inner environmentalist again.

I was however pleased to note that an enterprising engineer at Adobe convinced everyone to close their blinds and reflect the heat away from the building (apparently saving 300Kw). I wonder though, when I got to work this morning, all of my stuff on the window sills had been moved away, and all of our blinds were adjusted to 45 degree angles. Maybe Yahoo! facilities read the article too.

Cruising with Cruise

Posted on March 21, 2006 by Justin

I just got back to my desk, so I thought I would write a quick summary of the Tom Cruise event.

It wasn’t a bomber, it was a fighter. Specifically it was a P-51 Mustang. No wonder Katie was flying in the other plane!

Once he got there he apologized for keeping us waiting, and clearly seemed to feel somewhat bad about it since he repeated his apology several times scattered throughout the talk. As you might guess, the event was well choreographed, and there were no hard questions. He was there as a favor for Terry Semel (Semel said before Tom Cruise got there that he was not being paid to be there) and to promote his new movie, Mission Impossible 3. You have to admit though that it must have been a lot more about the first reason than the second. Talking to about a thousand Yahoo!’s is probably not his most efficient promotional work ever.

The really fascinating thing was the conversation between Tom and Terry (just got a mental image of Terry Semel as a mouse). They’ve clearly worked together a lot during Semel’s time as head of Warner Movies. The praise went both ways, but then they started talking about their vacations together. Terry told a really funny story about a trip that their two families took several years ago during a break in the filming of Eyes Wide Shut. Apparently Stanley Kubrick who was a genius, but a controlling genius, didn’t want Cruise to go on a vacation during the two year shoot.

Kubrick’s fears ran the gamut from having his star come back with a sun tan, to being attacked while at sea a la the plot of the movie Dead Calm. For those not familiar with Dead Calm, a couple out on a cruise comes to the aid of a ship in distress. They help the person on the other boat who then kills them. After finally relenting, Kubrick let them go on their cruise. A few days into it Terry noticed smoke on the horizon while they were eating breakfast (apparently Cruise is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs) which turned out to be a ship on fire. Terry went on to describe his feelings as Cruise took a smaller boat to check on the passengers of the other boat, and the even stronger feelings as Cruise came back towards the boat with the folks from the other boat.

Some other notable moments were where Cruise made a bit of fun of himself by saying that his excitement about his upcoming child with Katie Holmes (who looks about ready to pop) made him almost want to jump up on the chair (which he then did to the applause and laughter of everybody). Mostly though he promoted his new movie and showed some good clips, and talked about shared stories with Terry Semel. I feel like I learned a bit more in the end about our CEO than I did Tom Cruise, but that is OK, I’m honestly more interested in Semel since he has such a bigger impact on my daily life.

Both Tom and Terry hinted at some exclusive marketing around Mission Impossible 3, but given that this wasn’t really a confidential event clearly weren’t going to get into specifics. It wouldn’t surprise me though. Yahoo! really can offer some impressive advertising possibilities, and movie studios haven’t been shy about using them.

Cruise Crowd Control

Posted on March 21, 2006 by Justin

Doors opened at 10 AM for the Tom Cruise event at Yahoo!. I got to work around 9:45, picked the short line to get into the Urls cafeteria (multi-step pun… 1. think “Eat at Joe’s,” 2. now substitute “Eat at Earl’s,” 3. change the spelling and drop the “Eat at,” 4. chuckle). There was a bit of nervous chatter in the line over just how many seats fit in the cafeteria, and how many of the folks would get in. Some folks even lined up some time last night or in the wee hours of the morning to get in to the event.

The engineers started trying to calculate the number of seats, the PMs are calculating the negative productivity impact of the line, and I just kept trying to wake up. As things progressed, the lines swelled… from the middle. Funny thing with an event at a company you work at. You tend to recognize people in line. This is one of the few lines I’ve been in where I had to physically walk backwards a bit.

Once the lines started moving, everyone got in very quickly. Well provided you didn’t leave your badge on the coffee table (at this point Ray is reading this and dashing to the coffee table to check). I did indeed remember my badge today, though it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for me to forget. Unfortunately for others they were not so lucky and were bounced by Y! security.

This event is closed off to all but Y! badge holders. No friends, families or smuggled reporters, unless you count the see of laptops I see that are probably blogging this too. I’m looking at you Jeremy. Well, not really, but I assume you are in here somewhere.

So here we all sit (10:52 now). The presentation was supposed to start at 10:30. I’m sure he is just being fashionably late, so I’m very happy I have my laptop. I think I will wrap this up for now until he gets here. For now I am going to enjoy how one person standing up to stretch or take a picture gets people thinking that someone has spotted… him.

ActionScript is Pure Poetry

Posted on March 20, 2006 by Justin

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 in ActionScript 2.0. Positively poetic!

More than being a cute project, I think it is also a good example of just how readable ActionScript is. Oh AJAX person… would you be a dear and come over and read this for me? Doesn’t it look hauntingly familiar? It harkens back to your DHTML days of old, but much like English has moved on from the days of Shakespeare, ActionScript has taken ECMA-script and undergone a little linguistic evolution.

Now if you wanted to make a whole play, you might also see how ActionScript has also added the many benefits of object oriented programming. I look forward to AS3 Romeo and Juliet. But I will leave Object Oriented Shakespeare to one that is geekier than I.

iPod Nano… Its like buttah!

Posted on September 22, 2005 by Justin

country crock nano IPod

As a Tivo user I am generally one of the last to see a commercial. Tonight I saw the iPod Nano commercial and afterwords I had an unreasonable hankering for a muffin with way too much butter on it. Apple has always taken interesting approaches to advertising, but re-inventing the old country crock commercials seems avant garde even for them.

The country crock commercial series was this whole obnoxious series of commercials where you just see the hands of this lovey dovey couple. They are always very sweet to each other but fight over the country crock, and always always always use a frightening amount of it in the end. I guess their arteries hardened too far, because their ghosts seemed to be back in the last half of the iPod Nano commercial where it is zoomed in on too hands playfully fighting over the iPod.

Coverwitch

Posted on September 22, 2005 by Justin

Martha Stewart Witch Cover

The editor of Martha Stewart Living apparently likes to live life on the edge. In an era of vanity magazines like O where Oprah is on EVERY cover, what does it say when the the Martha Stewart Living Magazine has a witch for the cover? Ok, is also says Halloween is coming. But really, look at the category and come along for the catty ride with me.

Actually that is really all I have to say about the cover. It was a cheap joke better shared.

I did however get an update from my aunt whose name happens to also be “Martha Stewart” about the show idea the ex-con Martha had for her new talk show where she wanted the entire audience to be women who share her name (the most sharing Martha Stewart has ever done). My original thought that she was getting them all into a room to file a reverse class action lawsuit for trademark infringement didn’t pan out, but I did get some details on the logistics.

Martha does want 150 Martha Stewarts to come to the show. However she does not want it enough to pay any expenses. I think they might get lunch or something but that seemed iffy. Rightly so, my aunt isn’t all that keen to pay to go help boost the ego of the woman that has made her name a bit of a joke.

The Martha Stewart Search

Posted on August 3, 2005 by Justin

Martha on the lookout

So domestic diva (now with street cred), Martha Stewart is looking for other women in the U.S. who have been burdened by sharing her name. Can you imagine the amount of Martha Stewart books and housewares they have gotten as jokes that “never” go out of style? Plus, over the last year there must have been some pretty good jokes around the water cooler for any of these unfortunate women as Martha went off to jail.

Getting 150 of them in a room with the “real” Martha just seems like asking for trouble. I can already imagine the cries of “Thanks to you people assume I’m a controlling bitch that knows 50 ways to make her party guests feel inferior!!” I can only assume that she is starting her new show in the the traditions of Jerry Springer and Geraldo. I’m sure the chairs that will be thrown will be hand-crafted oak, for perfect group-gathering brutality (Its a good thing).

The real reason I am so amused by this though is that my aunt is one of the few, the proud, the Martha Stewarts. I can’t wait to see if she sends in her info.

Trapped by Freedom

Posted on July 4, 2005 by Justin

4th of July Parade

This 4th of July, we celebrated by staying home. Well, to be honest, we didn’t have much choice. The local parade decided this year to make the parade route a two block long loop around our apartment (the blue dot). Luckily we didn’t have much to do so we went out and gawked at the parade a bit.

There were some good marching bands, some really appropriate floats for groups of people that have come to the US who were celebrating the various freedoms they now enjoy, and of course the usual bizarre mix of people that you aren’t entirely sure why they are in the 4th of July parade (Ronald McDonald, the antique car folks, and some random cowboys). After a few minutes I realized it was time to get back in and work on my presentation for Flash Forward, but it was a beautiful day for a parade and all the kids outside looked to be having a great time.