Archive for December 2007
First three minutes of I Am Legend
I just read that the first three minutes of I Am Legend are available on Yahoo.
Personally, I am really looking forward to this film. The trailers really piqued my interest. On top of that, I have a lot of respect for Will Smith as an actor and as a person. He’s always willing to challenge himself and expand into new roles and new motifs, so you can bet he chose this role for a reason.
So, do you spoil yourself with the first three minutes, or hold off until you get a chance to go see it? For those of you that want to spoil yourself, go check out those first three minutes.
Credit: Cream Filled Blog, via digg.
How Japan deals with “Bad People”
Since guns are illegal in Japan, how do people defend themselves against knife-wielding hooligans? They use a sasumata, a way of telling the bad guy that you’d only touch them with a 10-foot pole… literally!
Now, Japan is the cheesiest place on Earth, but you have to respect a society with such high rates of social obedience, and such disapproval of public malfeasance. Contrast this to the United States where gun ownership is rampant, and crime rates orders of magnitude more frequent, despite (or because of?) the argument that guns protect people from other people with guns.
It may be unfair to compare the social environment of Japan to that of the United States, but there’s a lot to be said about a society that has matured the point where it can say, we don’t need guns to protect ourselves from each other.
Mad respec’, Japan, mad respec’.
Read all about the sasumata (mirror).
Credit: from digg.
More Office Space
As a follow-up to my previous post on the office of the future, BandwidthBlog has a story (mirror) showcasing the workspaces of some of today’s Internet companies.
Looks like there’s a good mix of both dedicated workstations…
…and wide-open spaces…
…but nary a cubicle in sight!
Read the full article (mirror) at BandwidthBlog.
Credit: From digg.
Open-concept workspace the “new wave”?
Every once in a while you hear about the new office paradigm that is going to replace the dreaded cubicle farm. You hear that the notorious cubicle farms that house engineers and otherwise, all over the world, are finally going away and we’ll be ushered into the bright, open future of glass offices or lounge-style workspaces.
This time, ecommercetimes.com has a piece on the “End of the Cubicle“, reporting that companies like Intel, Cisco and Sun are following the example of industry trend-setters Google and VMWare into the land of the cubicle-less.
Things sure have changed while I’ve been away!
I’ve been away from blogging for a while as things had been quite busy at work. But, I’m back now and with a fresh look to the blog.
I have to commend WordPress on their excellent blogging platform, and for consistently adding new features.
Last time I browsed through the WordPress themes catalogue, you weren’t allowed to edit the CSS template of your theme nor change the title graphic without paying for these features. I’m glad to see that has changed. Now anyone can modify the CSS and title graphic of their blog. I’m still using the default graphic, but I plan to change that in the near future.
Not only have I not blogged in a while, but it’s also been quite a while since I’ve watched the market. I used to perpetually keep an eye on my Google Finance page while at work, but haven’t done that in over a month. So, speaking of change, imagine my surprise when I took a look after all this time and saw it was a brutal day:
Wow, what a brutal day for that financial sector! I knew the mortgage crisis had hit the market pretty badly, but this is a whole new level of hurt!
Things sure have changed while I’ve been away.
Update: Apparently you still can’t change the CSS template without paying for the feature, though it appears that you can change the title graphic. I would love to see custom CSS for free, but regardless, I still think the WordPress platform is wonderful.
