I never knew

I don’t really have time to write anything else so just a little rundown of the current schedule, starting yesterday at 10h30;

• 3h30 hour long phone meeting. Ouach but it’s consulting, I’m billing ;)
• Work on a couple of little contracts, email 2 designers, answer other emails.
• Head to Yahoo Québec launch cocktail, supposed to end at 19h30, actually miss Yulbizz, head out at 21h30, talk with a bunch of people, including Carl. (wine, discussion, wine, hors d’oeuvre, discussion, wine, etc.)
• Dinner with some more wine and kick ass Pintxos. Home at 12h30.
• Get up a bit late, answer emails, read some news.
• Talk with Martine for the train, fix her blog :-p.
• 1h30 meeting with interesting agency for potential work.
• Lunch with former co-workers some of my best and dearest friends (great burger at Meatmarket).
• Head to Laîka, run into Ella.
• Other meeting for a promising e-commerce project.
• Talk on the phone with Sylvain.
• Other 1h long meeting for something I haven’t done before.
• Quick talk with Hugh as he’s leaving.
• Email, email, email.
• Cfd arrives, head out for dinner.
• Back home at 21h20, finish a bit of work. Read a few things. Post this useless list. Sleep.
• Meeting downtown at 10h00 tomorrow for some “webtwenny” work.
• Quick phone meeting.
• Lunch meeting at 12h on Ste-Catherine.
• Home for an afternoon of actual work.

We are a growing coalition of Canadian music creators who share the common goal of having our voices heard about the laws and policies that affect our livelihoods. We are the people who actually create Canadian music. Without us, there would be no music for copyright laws to protect.—Launch of Canadian Music Creators Coalition’s Site

En tant que gars qui s’occupe de Yulblog, je n’avais pas tellement le choix (dans ma tête) et de toute façon c’est tentant de faire un tour par Québec pour rencontrer du monde donc, comme Martine le dit nous allons y aller old school et se rendre dans le village en train! J’ai jamais pris le train au Canada, j’ai hâte de voir ça. Merci à Martine qui a patenté la chose. On se voit la-bas.

I was wondering about that just last week;

And he happily showed us the computer equipment and the fact the phones are actually operational so when actors are talking to each other, they are doing it for real. The phones had the date January 23, 2012 on them but Cassar said he had no idea. “We avoid date and time references as much as possible,” he said. “We’ve learned not to say, ‘We’ll be back in three minutes’ and just say, ‘We’ll be back soon.’ “—On the set of 24

They skip 1-2 years between most seasons so they’re now 5 year in the future, the stuff they do with computers might start making more sense (damnit!! enhance!) now but they should stop product placements ‘cause they won’t make sense anymore, you KNOW Jack’s going to be using an iPhone the minute it gets out so this season which is in 2012 he should be using an iPhone Pro stuck to his wrist and the phone would be doing all the searches and filtering and stuff, iChloe. He’d also be driving some kind of PriuSUV and the people at CTU would have much much bigger screens.

Lots of powerful robots fusing together to form an even better super-robot works well on Voltron, but I don’t think creative people often work that way. The most fruitful cooperation is probably going to have to remain casual and loose.—Evan in Julien’s comments

I think I was a slow witted moron twice in five minutes today. Great. I blame the cold, it’s the cold I tellsya, it froze me brain.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).—Adobe to Release PDF for Industry Standardization

We havent’ had a good one of those in a while, a long thread of comments and back and forth between blogs. Julien started it with Montréal… Needs… Brains… then Hugh, Robin and Evan joined in.

I actually agree with something Julien said in the comments which is that we don’t get much visibility internationally (whether that’s important is something else). I think he’s wrong in placing the blame for that on local discussions being too limited, on people not collaborating enough, but it’s true that we don’t have much of a profile. Librivox got there, Île Sans Fil and Wifidog got there, Poly9 (Québec city though) got some. In podcasts and blogs Casey and Rudy have a good profile but (to my knowledge) it’s rarely mentioned where they are from and Mocoloco is very well known but, again, mostly “orphaned” in the coverage and neither is a “team building something” as much as my first examples, they are random successful self publishers, not example of collaboration or showcases of local technical knowhow.

I’m sure I’m missing a couple but compare that to Vancouver and we’re wayyy smaller on the web 2.0 visibility bandwagon (I can hear Boris and Karl cringing on that one :-p ). I should think about this for real instead of spewing a post in one go but if I had to point at a reason I’d go more for the “missing Flickr” than for communication.

I think when Flickr was bought they raised awareness and energy in that region and since then there’s been just enough of a rise in VC money to help a few more startups get noticed. Neither here nor there is anywhere near San Francisco but there’s a whole list of differences for that one. I think Austin (and friends) is trying to correct the situation on the Angel / VC front and we will hopefully have a lightning rod “à la Flickr” sometime in 2007.

Voyage en Irlande avec un parapluie

Un beau petit livre qui se lit d’un trait, tout simple et donne le goût de partir en vacances.

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Ftrain for years, the guy’s brilliant both in writing and in coding, he’s also funny as hell and so is Benchley. A great ride along a wannabe rock star who moves to NY, finds an apartmen, a girlfriend, starts a band, record a demo, goes on tour and…

Sure, there was snubbing. Two attempts at conversation failed, and Oliver laughed. But that was just as well, because I needed to get the juices flowing. The charm I have is not like a light switch, but more like a vintage tube amp. You turn it on and let it warm up, and then it sings like an angel. And so it was with Alyssa Illeander, the most pure expression of the feminine in the place, who listened as I told her of my plans, my goals, my life, and who laughed at my excellent jokes and repeatedly poked my shoulder… Then she said, a little drunk, maybe even drooling slightly—but still beautiful—“You love the Postal Service? I have to kiss you” And I gave a secret prayer of thanks to the god of indie rock, which is Lou Reed.

The end of poverty

Man, I was supposed to talk about this soooo long ago. Fantastic book that I thoroughly enjoyed. If you’ve ever heard Bono’s schpiel about dropping the dept for african countries, the fight agains AIDS, etc. Jeffrey D. Sachs is the guy behind much of his thinking and his theories are based on real world experience through years of consulting with many developing countries.

Sachs has developed a framework for analyzing the needs of country holistically, in a way similar to diagnosing a person. Instead of uniform “solutions” offered by the World Banks and others, he believes in reviewing exactly where the country is in terms of development, what is their unique situation, what causes the problems they are facing and in finding appropriate solutions.

He believes that if we concentrate on helping third world countries reach the first rung in the ladder of economic development they can then help themselves and rapidly gain a much better foothold in the world economy. By focusing on the problems those countries face and offering well tailored solutions as well as by finally giving the money we’ve been promising for years (not giving more, just delivering on promises) we can end extreme poverty by 2015.

Sounds like an enormous challenge, and it is but by reviewing with us his experiences in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China and India and by debunking misconceptions and putting a variety of numbers in context, he present a doable path to success. If we only start doing our part honestly in helping the less fortunate.