Truth be told, I’d wish I’d come up with this list myself:

There, I Fixed It is a hilarious photoblog that catalogs kludges, jury rigs and hastily-improvised duct-tape repairs and modifications to everyday objects. The photos below are a sample of some of the quick fixes shown on the site, each one somewhere on the spectrum spanning “clever and thrifty” to “cheap, shoddy and frightening”:

(Regarding the photo in the right column, second one from the bottom – the piece of paper attached to the pencil sticking out of the computer says “Pull to turn on”. It’s a jury-rigged replacement for the power switch.)

Sloppy work like this isn’t limited to the physical world. I’ve seen (and okay, sometimes I’ve written) code that could’ve been a candidate for There, I Fixed It, and chances are you have too:

• Some of my hacks were a little more elegant and useful in the long-term, as long as you weren’t going to be too fussy about aesthetics. They were the software equivalent of the CD-ROM drive installed below the car radio and attached to it with a cable with 1/8” stereo jacks. They weren’t pretty, but they were solid, reasonably maintainable and viable in the long term.
• Others were terrible kludges that were originally intended to be temporary solutions that forgotten and lived much longer than they should have. They were like fixes shown in the two photos on the bottom (the hasty bridge repair and the car exhaust held together with zip-ties).
• I’ve also copped out by glossing over bad user interface design with some explanatory text or dialog box instead of actually correcting the design. This is not unlike labelling a doorknob “hard to open” or a hastily-improvised switch “pull to turn on”.

Be sure to check out There, I Fixed It. They’ve had some pretty hilarious pictures lately, and perhaps it’ll inspire (or shame) you to eschew the quick fix or kludge in favour of putting some time and thought into writing better code and building better user interfaces.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Here’s Linux creator Linus Torvalds, taking a break from the Japan Linux Symposium to pose at a store where Windows 7 was on sale:

[Thanks to Stefan Arentz for pointing me to the picture!]

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

[Found via Certified Bullshit Technician.]

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

I have no idea if WIND Mobile is going to be able to deliver what they promise – a mobile phone company that listens to its customers and provides better service than the sad players in the Canadian mobile phone oligarchy – but they’ve got the right ideas and some rather funny videos that perfectly illustrate what the Canadian mobile customer has to contend with.

What if Toronto’s hot dog vendors had a pricing model like Canadian mobile phone companies? Buying a hot dog would be like this:

Canada is the only country in the world where mobile companies lock you into three-year contracts for mobile service, and this situation is illustrated in the video titled Bike Lock:

I always look at the service packages offered by U.S. mobile companies with envy. Here, the mobile companies love nickel-and-diming you:

WIND is a new entrant into the Canadian mobile phone market and a branch of Globalive Communications, who already have a presence in Canada in the form of Yak Communications, an alternative phone and internet provider. They seem to be taking a very “social media” approach to their marketing, what with the “viral” YouTube videos and a “conversational” website in which readers are encourage to actively participate in online discussions.

They look like an interesting company to watch, and hey, if they can get me a better deal than Rogers, I’ll switch.

Recommended Reading

Tom Purves has been one of voices leading the battle cry against Canadian mobile companies for the past couple of years. Back in 2007 at DemoCamp 17, he gave what I consider to be the best ignite presentation ever given at a Toronto DemoCamp, The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks. Here’s the slide deck from that presentation:

He recently revised his presentation for 2009 when he presented it at the FITC mobile conference in September, which mentions WIND mobile:

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

One of the features at the TechDays cross-country conference is the “Ask the Experts” booth, which is staffed all day by speakers (when they aren’t speaking, naturally) and other local tech experts. They’re there to answer attendee questions about Microsoft tools and technologies, tech trends, the industry in general, the local job scene and so on.

While riffling through the photos I shot over the past couple of weeks, I found these ones I took when I passed the “Ask the Experts” booth at TechDays Toronto and saw the trio of Sean Kearney, Steve Syfuhs and Mitch Garvis. I took one look at them, said “Uh-oh, Trouble Incorporated!”, and snapped these pics. I thought you might enjoy them:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Give this to your non-techie friends and relatives who keep hitting you up for tech support:

Chances are, as a reader of this blog, people ask you to explain Twitter to them. If that’s the case you might find this video in which Ben Stiller explains Twitter to Mickey Rooney amusing:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

While I do hope and believe that Microsoft can get their mobile strategy right, there are days when I worry that Windows Mobile 7 is going to be like this:

For more comics like this, see www.slowwave.com.

If you’ve worked with CSS and multiple browsers long enough, this mug will make you laugh (or cry):

At US$12.95 (available at Zazzle.com), it’s a pretty good “Secret Santa” gift for the web developer or designer on your team.

It’s a busy, meeting-filled day for Yours Truly down at the local headquarters for The Empire. Here’s a (slightly edited) photo that I took at our big Evangelism team meeting around 3:30 this afternoon:

Another internet meme made the big time today – today’s edition of CNN’s “American Morning” ended with anchor Kiran Chetry announcing that they would be “played out” by “Keyboard Cat”. In case you haven’t yet seen them, Keyboard Cat videos all follow the same formula:

• They all have the name “Play Him/Her Out, Keyboard Cat”
• They begin with a segment in which someone humiliates or hurts himself or herself
• They cut to a strange video featuring a cat playing a tune on a cheesy home keyboard

This is my favourite Keyboard Cat video, in which a guy learns an important lesson in nunchuk safety:

This one, featuring a guy whose parents are trying to convince him that it’s bad idea to broadcast his meltdown online, is a close second:

And now, we can find out about the origin of Keyboard Cat and how he turned into an internet meme, thanks to this story in the Los Angeles Times.

I started my presentation at WordCamp Toronto 2009 yesterday – Better Living Through Blogging — with this slide, which got a lot of laughs. A number of people have requested it, and I’m only too happy to oblige. Here you go: share and enjoy!

Click the photo to see it at full size.

The image comes from a Worth1000 Photoshopping contest – here’s the original.

When using your company-assigned laptop to make presentations, remember to disable your pornographically-themed screensaver (and yes, the video below is not safe for work):

Cracked asked its readers to show them what the world would look like if everything in it was made by The Empire. Of the images they submitted. the one below is my favourite – I’ve joked in front of audiences that we make too many versions of Windows and am anxiously awaiting the release of Windows 7 Tartar Control Edition:

What, no “Can of Peas Ultimate” and “Can of Peas Team System”?

I’ll admit it: I like typing out the phrase “assless chaps”. Here are a couple more photos of me showing off said assless chaps in the speaker’s room at Saturday’s Toronto Code Camp (which I wrote about in this post).

Here I am holding up the assless chaps prior to donning them:

…and here I am modelling them for the nerd paparazzi:

Don’t get the joke? Know Your Meme does a fine job explaining the XZIBIT “Yo Dawg” meme in this article as well in the video shown below.