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HackLabTO’s Lisp Machine Keyboard

After years of sitting in storage, my deadbeat ex-housemate’s old Symbolics XL1200 Lisp Machine has found a new home: HackLabTO, located in Accordion City’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of its keyboard, which is a little different from the ones we see every day.

lisp_machine_keyboard_1

The keyboard is bristling with modifier keys. Yes, we’ve all got shift and control, but most of us don’t have hyper, super, and meta keys. I have a guess as to what the network and local keys do.

lisp_machine_keyboard_2

Well before the Sony Playstation, Lisp machines had square”, “circle” and “triangle” keys:

lisp_machine_keyboard_3

And here’s a look at the right side of the keyboard. Today’s keyboards have an auto-repeat feature, which made the repeat key obsolete:

lisp_machine_keyboard_4

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Flying the Freak Flag High at TechReady 8

Joey deVilla at TechReady 8, holding up an "IronPython, IronRuby and DLR" sign

White collar conservative flashin’ down the street
Pointin’ their plastic finger at me, ha!
They’re hopin’ soon my kind will drop and die but uh
I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high!

— lyrics from If 6 Was 9 by Jimi Hendrix

Yeah, C# is pretty decent, but if you really want to hold the freak flag up high, the Dynamic Language Runtime and IronPython and IronRuby are where it’s at, baby!

Joey deVilla at TechReady 8, holding up an "IronPython, IronRuby and DLR" sign

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What Passes for Legroom on United Airlines

I’m 5’11” (180cm) tall, and here’s what the legroom in United Airlines’ economy class is like once the guy in front of you has reclined his seat. He’d originally reclined his seat all the way, but I was able to talk him into doing it only halfway:

Legroom on United's economy class

As you can see, my knees are touching the seat in front of me. If you’re 6 feet or taller, you’ll probably want to get upgraded to what United calls “Economy Plus”, where you get a little more legroom – about as much as other airlines’ economy class seats.

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We’ll be in Seattle This Week!

Seattle skyline

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Starting tonight (Pacific Coast Time), John Bristowe, I, and a few other folks from Microsoft Canada’s De veloper & Platform Evangelism team, will be in Seattle all next week to attend Microsoft’s 8th TechReady conference. TechReady is a Microsoft internal conference where ‘Softies from all over the world gather to get briefed on upcoming releases. The coming months promise a bumper crop of Microsoft goodies – Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, Visual Studio 2010 and Azure to name a few – so the sessions should be very interesting. (I think I’ll actually be taking a lot of notes during the presentations rather than checking my mail or looking at that video of kittens riding a Roomba.)

We’re going to try to take advantage of this gathering to get some interviews with  some of the big brains at Microsoft from Redmond and all over the world, as well as show you some of the sights and sounds of Seattle. Watch this blog for updates!

Are you in Seattle? Want to catch up? Talk about Microsoft, software development, accordions. Zardoz or anything else? Drop me a line or give me a ring (416-948-6447)!

[Seattle photo by Andrew “papalars” Larsen and licenced under Creative Commons. Click here to see the original.]

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The “Star Trek” Plotline Flowchart

If you watch the Star Trek original series, you’ve probably already internalized what’s in this flowchart created by Stephanie Fox for the sci-fi blog io9.com:

"Create Your Own Trek Adventure" flowchart
Click the chart to see it at full size.

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Global Game Jam (January 30th – February 1st)

Header graphic for "Global Game Jam"

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’re a developer who’s either into building games or has been meaning to try out game development, you’re in luck this weekend. From Friday, January 30th through Sunday, February 1st, the Global Game Jam will be held in various cities all over the world, giving people a chance to collaborate on the design, building and presentation of a videogame in a single weekend.

The participating Canadian cities and their Global Game Jam venues are:

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Leah’s Tattoo

Leah Culver shows off the new tattoo on her arm

At CUSEC 2009, some of the attendees attempted to psychoanalyze the speakers out of concern for what seemed to be obsessions. The IRC backchannel during my presentation expressed concern for what they believed to be my fixation on butts, what with mentioning the movie Deliverance and showing the “Bottle Rocket in the Butt” video from my blog entry Assrockets and Opportunities.

Other speakers had their own obsessions. Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman’s twin obsessions were with the level of lighting in the room and his “Four Freedoms” ethics. Pownce lead developer/co-founder and now Six Apart developer Leah Culver (who was on the conference’s other end of the scruffy/slinky spectrum) was obsessed about getting a tattoo based on designs created by the enigmatic Rubyist known only as why the lucky stiff (or _why for short). Leah somehow managed to contact _why – who is notoriously J.D. Salinger-esque in his reclusiveness – to commission him to create some tattoo designs, which she showed me at the CUSEC speaker dinner last Thursday night.

A message on Twitter from _why has confirmed that she did indeed get the tattoo. Here’s a close-up:

A close-up of Leah Culver's tattoo

The blank word bubble above the cartoon character is there to let her fill it in with whatever she feels like having it say for the day.

“Late binding for tattoos!” I said, regretting that uber-nerdy statement mere moments later.