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Before you click, please note that I can no longer guarantee the integrity of the following links... That's the nature of the web, baby! |
Monday, February 26th, 2001: See what I spent last Saturday night doing here. Prepare to be underwhelmed...
And some general housekeeping: For anyone who's been unable to send me email, my domain mail forwarding service decided last week to start sending all of my messages to some dude on the @Home network. As of this morning, the problem has been fixed. As of tomorrow, I'm looking for another service!
Wednesday, February 21st, 2001: I'm deep in nerd territory now, learning Unified Modelling Language, which is about as interesting as it sounds. A breath of fresh air came with a surprise visit from Bill Buxton, my new hero if for no other reason than our shared loathing of lazy engineering and bad software design. I'll use his example, as it pertains to me:
Bell Canada stores my voicemail and, through Sympatico, my email. Both are ultimately digital files, and last time I checked there was no shortage of text to speech or speech to text software. So why can't I get my voicemails through the Internet, or email notification on my landline phone?
Are you listening, Bell?
Tuesday, February 20th, 2001: I've uploaded a video of my latest nerd school assignment...
Monday, February 19th, 2001: Not all new media is good media; I just don't know what to make of this.
Sunday, February 18th, 2001: Went to the Autoshow today... For me the one thing that stood out from the sea of Ginos trying to decide on their next 905-mobiles (if you didn't get that, well... It's a Toronto thing) was Feel Good Cars, solving two environmental problems with one nifty ride!
Saturday, February 17th, 2001: What's it like to be CEO of huge tech company? I think I've got some insight into that...
It started off with an assignment to develop a theoretical prototype for an Internet interface. Luck of the draw made me head of a three-person company, and we quickly came up with Bubbles, the birth fish. You can read more about that on my video page.
After the prototype presentation our phony venture capitalists pulled us aside, telling two other company leaders and myself that they were interested in all our prototypes, but only if our companies merged! Somehow in the ensuing chaos I got appointed CEO of the merged company, to which I applied my relationship skills with mixed success.
It's certainly been a very intense week, and if nothing else I've learned this: Never, ever, go straight from team building event to a family dinner and unleash a hurricane of personal power if nobody asks for it!
Wednesday, February 14th, 2001: Our Valentine's Day present was a visit by some New Media folks, and their insight into this whole leadership thing. My favourite was robot guy Graham Smith, whose company invented Pebbles.
Tuesday, February 13th, 2001: I found out from my Firo-B Questionnaire that I crave inclusion and affection in social groups... Like anybody doesn't?! Tonight's homework was to complete the Conflict Management Survey. The emerging pattern in my test results is my growing hatred of standardized tests!
Monday, February 12th, 2001: A former Second City student passed on a link to some photos of a class performance. Check 'em out!
Well, one day of nerd school and I'm exhausted... Our first learning module is Leadership Development. We spent most of the day doing various trust exercises, no biggy for a touchy-feely actor like me. What is a biggy for a touchy-feely actor like me is that all this week we're starting at the ungodly hour of 8:30am, and I actually have homework!
My assignment for tonight was to complete the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test. Here are my results:
"For ENTJs the driving force in their lives is their need to analyze and bring into logical order the outer world of events, people, and things. ENTJs are natural leaders who build conceptual models that serve as plans for strategic action. Intuition orients their thinking to the future, and gives their thinking an abstract quality. ENTJs will actively pursue and direct others in the pursuit of goals they have set, and they prefer a world that is structured and organized."
More famous folk who share my type include Bill Gates and Margaret Thatcher (?!)
Saturday, February 10th, 2001: Want to know a secret? I ghost-wrote the first entries for The Comedy Network's online newsletter. See if you can guess which ones are mine!
Friday, February 9th, 2001: I just received my nerd school online handbook. The very first thing I did was check out the bios of my fellow residents. How is it that from the thousand or so who applied for this program, they managed to pick two Andrews and an Andreas?!
For anyone who took offence to the crack I made about resistance to Internet Explorer being futile, I'm no longer using that browser's propriety "marquee" thingy. So fans of Explorer, Navigator, Lynx, you're all welcome here!
I've uploaded some new photos, marking my last days with the comedy community before I start four months of nerd school. Everyone is telling me how intensive the nerd schooling will be, so I will attempt to keep an online diary of the experience right here. Check back often!
Wednesday, February 7th, 2001: Last night I got my first taste of being a new media guy at the Film Centre's Interactive Arena. The speaker was Justin Hall, who, despite being barely old enough to drink, credits himself with having one of the very first collections of links on the web. His site now offers, among other things, intimate details of his dating history. It nonetheless inspired me to keep this thing current, and more specifically, to rip off his layout :-P