I never knew

Je suis aussi au Apple Store

This is brilliant!!! Clubs in London are having Playlist nights where people turn up with a “set” on their iPod, each gets a turn to be plugged in the sound system and attendees vote on the best one(s). I know at least a couple of bloggers who’d loooove to see something like that in Montréal.

I’m endlessly impressed with how much some morons just don’t seem to realize (and/or care) they are living in a society and pay no attention whatsoever to people around them.

Behind door number one; metro moron with hood over the head, seeing nothing around, backpack stretching two feet behind and free crappy paper held in front while others are pressed together like no human beings should be except when reproducing.

Behind door number two; magazine rack moron laying his reading material on the shelves in front of him, hiding half the tiles displayed and not moving an inch until you push him out of the way even though you’ve been leaning in for 2 minutes, trying to have him take a hint.

Behind door number three; (currently next to me) cell phone moron planning his trip to hawaii for the last hour on the phone, speaking loud enough that I can’t hear the music. Genius. Pure fucking genius. Just go ahead and drown when you get to your frickin’ surf spot, asshole!

I’m seriously considering going to this IA conference held here in Montréal and where quite a few interesting people will be speaking (Jeff Veen, Steward ‘Flickr’ Butterfield, Adam Greenfield, Peter Merholz, Mike Kuniavsky, Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld to name a few). However, even though it’s less expensive than a lot of other conferences, it’s still over $600CA for three days. Anyone reading this have any kind of plug to get in cheaper? I know it’s a longshot but at the same time, consider it passing along the info on a promising conference.

Note: Pricing gets more expensive after the 28th of this month so if you know something, hurry and tell me ;)

Searching the new Google video feature, I used these pretzels are making me thirsty, a favorite quote from Seinfeld. It took Google 0.01 seconds to get me screenshots and dialog excerpts with the quote highlighted and the time it was spoken. Now that is insane.

A superb Flash animation recaps some of the landmarks of the web and seamlessly transforms into a Gibsonesque / Matrixian extrapolation of the interweb from now to the year 2014. Funny, informative in a weird way and quite a bit of it is actually a pretty good guess at a possible future.

Or is it? Why would it even be called a podcast? I don’t like that term anyway. Whatever. Excellent job on this Jon Udell post explaining the use of the umlaut. It’s a flash movie of him talking while showing us what he’s explaining by navigating Wikipedia. Very nice.































































































































[Via dose magazine who’s got some good stuff all the time]

On the off chance that some of my readers are interested in new Montréal blogs but don’t follow Yulblog or subscribe to any of it’s feeds; I just added 13 new ones and made a special entry listing them together so they have the same “time in the sun” as they normally would. (Thanks to Oblivia who seems to be recruiter in chief this year, having “arm twisted” three new ones ;) )

m-c at 3h00pm, Oblivia at 7h00pm.

When traveling I’m usually very interested in what I visit, I haven’t traveled much at all for business so the places I see I know about and want to experience and learn more about. That being said, a good trick I learned a while ago is the scenery suck. When you”re running everywhere, seeing lots of things, sometimes crushed between other tourists. Stop, take a deep breath and take stock of where you are and what you’re experiencing. It’s fun, often helps you appreciate what you are seeing and sometimes constitutes the minute you’ll remember later on.

This morning I came up with something “similar”, the weather suck. When it’s f*cking cold like today. Stop. And through your crying eyes, through the iced up glasses, between the tuque and the top of the scarf; look around, see the naked trees, the dirty snow, the ice, the smoking cars, the people with layers and layers of clothes. Feel your nose going numb, the tears turning to ice on your cheeks, the little needles of cold pinching your knees, your nostrils sticking together, how you’re trying to bunch up, turn in your shoulders and protect from the cold. Hold that moment.

Then this summer, when you’re sitting at a terrasse somewhere, enjoying a cold beer or iced tea, watching scantily clad montrealers walking by, remember that moment and smile. The Weather Suck Summer Smile (pronounce Wuss) is the goal that will get me through this winter.