I do web application design and development. My main tool of choice is the Ruby on Rails framework. I am looking into implementing new and innovative ideas.
I opened Adium yesterday evening, and 1 minute afterwards, I had a message from a friend who asked right away if I knew something about the habs
I don’t know anything about hockey, but I do know how to find information, and after searching a little bit, I had clues on what was going to happen. What was funny was that I saw how so many people were browsing the web or asking others (twitter or any other communication medium) what was going on. Many wanted to know, right away, before they’d go to bed. God knows why.
Anyway, this brings Roberto Rocha’s poll on how one would pay for good journalism content. I’m not sure if content is the key. I do know though that if i had the right info yesterday, and if there was a way to “reveal” it to all those fans, I could have managed to have a couple of thousands dollars in bank. So here it is, people would pay for:
personalized
customized
exclusive journalism
This would be equivalent to Yahoo! Answers but with payable answers and journalists selecting questions they are able to answer.
The author explains that mirror neurons in our brain creates the sense of empathy, self-consciousness in ourselves. To the extreme, when those mirror neurons are hyperactive, we have extreme empathy, entire selfishlessness, and experience “blending” with the cosmos, thus the religious experience. To the other opposite end, autists, whose mirror neurons are deficient don’t have empathy and have no experience of self.
Drugs which can fool neurons can also change the activity of those neurons, making humans enter meditative/religious state or bluntness.
I haven’t done any neuro-science, yet I know it must be true. I also find funny Ramachandran who confesses to be an absolute skeptic and also religious devout, all at the same time.
This is where you see that you need to be (a little) bit crazy to be a technology entrepreneurs.
Altough seriously, there are a few points:
- build on sales (as in traditional salesmanship), that’s how businesses are built, end of the story
- differentiate smart people vs smart asses (the guys from McKinsey)
- care about good people,
Yesterday was the peak, with Barack Hussein Obama elected for president of the USA. I thought it didn’t involve me, but finally it does.
See the video above. It empowers & inspires us to do new things. A little magic in the air. As if we were asleep previously and now is the time to wake up, brace up, and build things. For me, personally, it’s believing that I can also change and change things. And you?
This is a short movie about a lighthouse keeper about to fail; but gets back beautifully on track thanks to fellow villagers and spontaneous help from his community.
A neat video that made me smile, and somehow struck a special chord, since I’m doing Montreal Tech Watch and its upcoming new community website.
Je me rappelle avoir lu que les artistes nous rapprochaient de Dieu (ou des dieux). L’auteur de l’expression n’y mettait aucune signification religieuse; mais voulait dire ainsi que les meilleures oeuvres artistiques faisaient entrevoir un idéal perdu, ou une Vérité qui nous échappe que trop facilement dans la vie de tous les jours. Quelque part au fond de nous, quand on voit un chef d’oeuvre d’un artiste, on aperçoît ainsi dieu, à travers la quasi-perfection d’un trait, à travers des paroles dont on connaît d’avance la vérité, à travers l’élégance d’une expression.
Même si cette explication est complètement arbritraire, et d’une certaine façon futile, elle me vient en tête en écoutant Grand Corps Malade. Dans le clip vidéo par exemple, il y a une sincerité vraie, que l’on ne trouve nulle part ailleurs, ainsi que d’une voix qui touche. Des détracteurs diront que ce n’est pas de la musique, que ce n’est pas engagé, que c’est simpliste, que je suis bien impressionnable, que des fois il se répète, que c’est juste l’expression d’un temps et que ca va donc sûrement se démoder dans quelques années; ils ont peut-être raison, mais qu’empêche … vous comprendrez maintenant pourquoi j’écoute maintenant en boucle son album “Enfant de la Ville“.
un jeu persistant massif (MMO) - on verra si ce sera purement HTML+javascript, ou si je peux faire un client Flash,
Blitzweekend, un camp pour créer des produits en 48 heures. Ce qui est intéressant, c’est le coté compétition entre équipes.
Avec d’autres montréalais, j’ai aussi 3 projets en cours:
un gros projet pour créer un portail sur montréal, avec un annuaire, des cartes etc. rien d’extremmement innovatif, mais ca va prendre néanmoins beaucoup de travail
j’ai aussi un projet sur les microformats. je ne sais pas si ca va marcher encore, mais on verra tres bientot (en mars) si ca “poigne”
Bien sûr, ce sont juste les projets web, ruby on rails, à Montréal… question de rester focusé sur un sujet.
A photo of my mother, about 30 km from the capital
I received this photo by email today. I don’t know why but I found it so cool. It somehow revives childhood memories, and scream “real” to me — after a weekend talking about MVC, ruby arrays, and other virtual stuff.
I wanted to present something at democamp, and it was OpenSpace.
But that was last month, which seems like an eternity for me, and I have moved on. This doesn’t mean that OpenSpace is dead but I think I would need to overhaul it to make a great demo. I have learned my lessons and am planning new design features that would make it more interesting.
For democampMontreal3 I will be presenting a _small_ web application I have been using locally for a few weeks and that I think will have some potential. It’s called workcruncher, it’s not ready for public testing yet, but it’s definetely more interesting than OpenSpace.
Sorry for hijacking the event In return I promise I will write a full post about it on this blog, just after/during democamp
In return I promise I will write a full post about it on this blog, just after/during democamp
