Sorry buddy. There are a couple of dozen, possibly even hundreds of stars within 25 light years. Alpha Centuari is something like 4.1 lightyears away. So, sun excepted, it takes a hair over 4 years for light from the nearest star to reach us.
Second. What does the difficulty of getting to Saturn have to do with making sense of radio signals?
What a letdown to discover alien RF signals and find out their message was "ping". It would be undeniably cool to discover them, but if all we discovered was RADAR signals there would be no message to decypher.
He speaks wisely. Listen to him and listen well. Apply for the damn jobs and don't sweat the requirements. If you think you can do it, make sure you explain why in your cover letter.
But I've said this before on Slashdot and I'll say it again. Sending out a one or two page document to some stranger is a piss poor way of getting a job.
If you rely on job postings and resumes, you'll look forever, end up with a mediocre job and less money. Network. You know people and they know people. I said it before, but your aunt's nieghbor's butcher should know who you are, what kind of job you want and that you're available. People who you'd NEVER think of asking for a job suddenly say things like:You know, my brother Carl works at a technology company, you should call him. Then you freaking call Carl! Seriously.
It works faster and gives you better jobs that pay more. At my last job (in tech, I'm out of the biz now) people would hear my background and my experience and ask how the hell I got the job. Well, 5 years before at a party I had met someone who worked for the company I wanted to work for. I called the host of the party, who I didn't know well at all, got the name of the guy and his number. Called him at home and spoke to him for five minutes.
In my opinion, resumes and job postings are a suckers game.
My brother and I have a theory about a guy named Benny that works for the current crop of Star Trek writers. Benny is a security guard or maybe a janitor or something, but once a day, at exactly 4:15PM he runs into the room where the writers are working and shouts:
I've got it! Time travel!
The writers sit up suddenly energized and with a burst of creative enthusiasm finish the episode they're working on. I think they need to fire Benny.
It seems that for some strange reason I've been using the word "Orwellian" allot in the last three and a half years. I'm not going to venture a guess as to why...
Seriously though, it's funny how utterly apathetic people are these days. People bandy about the term "freedom" but as long as they have the "freedom" to buy things people don't seem to care about the rest of it. A minority talk about what rights are slipping away, but still cast the valiant few who take to the streets as hippies and whackos. It's sick really.
What is it going to take for it to be too much? Seriously, stop and think about what exactly the government would have to do for you to be willing to do more than talk. Then think about how effective your protest will be if it gets bad enough for you to protest at all. Will you wait for a total suspension of civil liberties? Mass arrests? Until there are turrets on the street corners and "papers" required to move across state lines? Seriously. I want to say that people need to do something now, but the truth is that people needed to do something a year and a half ago. I'm not talking about revolution or anything... just make the dissenting voices impossible to ignore by adding your own.
The current administration isn't ready (yet) to start ignoring elections and the army wouldn't follow orders from people who lost elections. So go out and freaking VOTE! And then make it clear to the people you get put in that they're there to fix things. Politicians want job security because it takes more than a couple of terms in office to really secure the personal fortune. Make them fix things or throw the buggers out.
He used to get around 50-100 resumes a week even when he didn't have a job posting up or any availabilities. Basically, IF he looked at them at all, he wouldn't spend more than 3-5 seconds with any given resume. The layout has to be clean and really easy to follow. There's very little that can be interesting or eye catching about a resume, but that said the good stuff has be OBVIOUS.
Basically though, in this job market, resumes basically resemble spam. Sending companies resumes is not really an effective way to get a job. Start calling people at the company, and don't be afraid to be a little pushy. Don't be afraid of approaching the same company multiple times, especially if you can talk to different people. Network like crazy. Everyone in your life up to and including your aunt's neighbor's mailman should know you're looking for a job and what kind of job you want.
A good resume is really a springboard for the kinds of questions you want them to ask you in the job interview.
As for the basic format considerations, go for information density on a single page. Bold key terms that you want people to notice right away, but embed them in sentences so they're not just looking at lists. I don't like lists of just words, but used to have a section titled "Other Technical Skills" where I put the stuff I wasn't emphasizing.
If you're really convinced that you're doing everything else right and it's the resume that's holding you back, go hire a service. They're cheap and they do decent work. Or do what I did, look at like 20 other people's resumes and steal the format of the best one.
One other thing that a friend did that was a little weird, but worked. She got the name of a manager at a company in her field, called him and sold him the following line. "I understand that you're not hiring right now, but it's a lean market and I want an edge on my competition. Do you have a project that I could be involved with as an intern? I understand that you probably couldn't pay much if you can pay at all, but at least I can start building up experience and if you love me, and trust me, you're going to, you can offer me something when it comes up." It was ballsy but she pulled it off and later parlayed it into a job with one of their competitors.
Maybe it's not for everyone, but the moral of the story is that a one or two page piece of paper is a weak way to job hunt. Start thinking about what else you can do and don't sweat your resume.
Oh god! I had that arguement when I was 15 and the Trek fan I was teasing picked me out of the chair by my t-shirt and was about to pound me one for what I said about Kirk. (Funny enough, a 5 foot nothing skinny girl who was surprisingly intimidating jumped to my resque.) Ironically, I later turned into a Trek fan myself and agree that what I said about the good captain was out of line.
Still, that Trek fan guy was surprisingly strong. And although I played Devil's advocate that day, the Enterprise (any of them, except possibly the NX-1) would crush a Star Destroyer.
I was hard, but it wasn't impossible. Once I learned how to actually play, I finished the game in around a week and a half. Sure, it was hard at first, and fighting the second boss on horseback, or the first time you fight the fiend chick were freaking crazy. But it's just a steep learning curve. Once I finished it, it unlocks a third "Very Hard" option and a secret costume. Pure bliss.
There is a market for really hard games, and if you don't want to play them - don't. But personally, it would have pissed me off to have finished Ninja Gaiden in 6 to 7 hours and it would have pissed me off if the same strategies worked against every enemy. What I loved about that game what that you had to learn how to actually fight within the context of that game. You had to learn to exploit an enemy's weaknesses, you had to learn how to use the terrain to your advantage, when to use your Ninpo and when to save it. In the end, it was one of the best games I ever played - if it had been easier... it would have just been eye candy.
People who want easy games should buy easy games.
Picked up a SIP PhoneCall-in-One and I've got to say, I'm really impressed. It does exactly what they say it'll do, it does it well and it does it cheap. Living in Madrid, until now, meant I was sort of cut off from my brother. Now, I call him whenever I want, talk as long as I want and it doesn't cost me anything other than the bandwidtch charges for the DSL connection that I was already paying. Definitely impressed.
Also, we've been using the SIP Minutes thing to make calls to Canada, Chile and and a couple of other countries - all to PSTN numbers - and we're really happy with the cost (cheap as dirt and no monthly fee or anything stupid like that), the sound quality and ease of use are excellent.
My only complaint is that they won't hurry up and set up Virtual Numbers. I'm thinking of starting a small business and being able to have a local number in Paris, NY, Toronto and Vancouver would really help me out. Having all of those numbers ring through to the same phone... beautiful.
Played a little with Skype (litterally, we were roleplaying and brought a friend in from another town) and I wasn't as generally impressed. Sound got wonky too often for my tastes although it could have been a bum mic.
Also, been toying around with this and I have to say this just makes my SIP Phone better. Friends from all over can call me, leave me a voice mail if I'm not there (which gets emailed to me of course) or, with this, I can (and have) set up some cool conference calls.
One of the big outfits for online groceries in Canada is Grocery Gateway. At my last job I worked with them for a couple of weeks (mostly looking at some of their IT systems - they run a tight ship and have good IT people if that matters) and got a good understanding of their business from the inside.
Essentially, they started out as, and still are, a shipping company. They don't just ship groceries, but pretty much anything that you would normally think to pack into a truck and ferry off somewhere. They partnered up with some grocery supply companies and basically inserted themselves as a delivery company and website. They don't really charge much for delivery, but they don't have to to stay profitable. Bulk buy directly from the wholesalers and distributers, mark up items so they're competitive with the grocery stores and charge a nominal fee for delivery and bang, you've made money.
As for the quality of the foods, they partner up with Sobey's for much of it, and the produce is about the same quality as what you'd get off the shelf in a good Sobey's. (For non Canadians, or people who don't live near a Sobey's - Sobey's is a grocery store that can definitely boast well above average quality produce.) I'm not a shill for these guys, and I don't work with them any more, but I can say that the quality isn't bad at all.
One of the other things I've done is try out Green Earth Organics and Fresh Piks. (No link because their site is down. Fun fact: When it couldn't find the server, M$'s built in auto search suggested www.Fleshpics.com as an alternative. Not the best suggestion when looking for an organic fruit and veggie delivery company. Probably a fun site though.) Both provided better produce than anything I ever bought in a grocery store, it was delivered and since I didn't want to waste anything I ate more fruits and veggies, and cooked more than I ever did at any other point in my life. If I weren't living in Spain now (where restaurants prominently feature recognizable animal parts where they cut the meat from and many don't serve salads at all) I'd still be getting a weekly delivery from these guys.
Someone has to pick stuff out and ship it to the store, why the hell not have someone pick it out and ship it directly to me. They know that if they drop the ball on quality I'll take my business elsewhere so they do better than the grocery store does. Anyway... I think that this is something that was a long time coming...
Couple of things. First off, if you're a publicly traded company go score points with your managers by suggesting that you should talk to the Risk Management and Comp Sec guys at your accounting firm. They'll give you criteria that the project should meet (usually very low impact to implement early but nightmarish to implement later) if you want the data to meet financial disclosure and Sorbains Oxley (SOX) criteria. If you're publicly traded and you don't meet SOX criteria at (or by) the end of this fiscal year then you stand to pay HUGE fines and possibly get de-listed. (Trust me, not meeting SOX criteria by the end of this year would be BAD.)
Business Intelligence and many widespread corporate reporting tools are often subject to SOX regulations. The Risk Management guys will usually have an opinion about the portability vs performance issue for you. (Also, these guys are way way way too busy this year to artificially create more work for themselves. Every publically traded company in the US is trying to get these guys to sign off before the year end.)
Second, look into some of the XML data portability ideas and solutions out there... I can't name anything off the top of my head, but there are companies out there with enterprise and off the shelf data portability options. Also, if you're a flexible development team you probably have someone who can cobble together something good using XML. Google XML Data Portability and you'll get started on pointers.
I got a copy of Ninja Gaiden right before I left for Europe for a year and since I was planning to leave my XBox behind I had 10 days to either finish it or leave it alone. I finished it, and man it was worth it. Once you master the game, you realize how good you are and it becomes just plain old fun. There is a certain satisfaction in kicking a boss' ass because you know YOU kicked his ass. The progression from button mashing to (pardon me here for a second) mad skillz is part of the fun.
I don't always want something like Ninja Gaiden, but getting to the end, unlocking the secret costume and playing the first few levels on the unlocked "Very Hard" setting... well worth it.
Thinking about it for a second, it really seems like a no brainer - sex sells so sex in video games sell video games. But personally, I don't agree. Sure titles like Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball pretty much used titillation to sell - that's really not the same as sex IN the game.
Titillation in a movie, hot steamy sex scenes or outright pr0n is all fine. I don't really mind (and often deliberately seek out) that sort of thing... When I'm watching a movie, I don't feel at all connected to what is happening on the screen and I don't care so much because I'm observing, not interacting. If I were playing a game that involved the same thing though, the rules change. Suddenly, instead of going over to my girlfriend's house and seducing her, I'm what - getting my virtual video game avatar laid? That's pretty much just going to depress/annoy/frustrate me, and more so if I were single at the time.
Second, video games are often a communal activity, something I do socially. But I assure you, the people I have over to play video games are not the people that I would have over to act out sex scenes with. Basically... if I want to play a little Ninja Gaiden with my little brother, I don't want to have to explain why I'm choosing a particular position or why I'm "licking her there". It's really just kind of creepy.
Most of all though, if I wanted that sort of titillation - if I wanted to see breasts, sex scenes etc I'm sure as hell not going to pay $50 or more for the privilege. There is so much good quality free or really cheap porn out there, I just don't need it in my video games. Nor do I want it. If I found out that the new Splinter Cell or Half Life 2 game had explicit sexuality or graphic depictions of something, I would immediately question the game? Why? Is it there to sell the game? Is it there because the game sucked and they wanted some hook? What?
Long and short, I play games at least in part for pure visceral fun and if I want pure visceral sex fun there are better outlets for it than my XBox. I'm sure there's a HUGE market for people who want interactive sex video games, but hopefully they won't touch my mainstream releases...
Strange, I just finished writing all of that and I just thought of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. There isn't any explicit sex in the game, but it is definitely implied. Farah and the Prince definitely 'have a moment' although it isn't explicitly laid out that they have sex. It didn't really bother me as it was tasteful, in a cut scene and really had more to do with what passed for character development than any need to titillate. Did it bother me? Hell no. Did it add to my enjoyment of the game? Not really. When I excitedly tell people how great that game was am I thinking of that scene at all? Nope. I only remembered it because of this post. They added a super sexy female character, a sex scene - hell they even had the hero slowly lose his clothes throughout the game. Did any of that affect anyone's purchase of the game? Probably not. Did it affect my enjoyment of the game? Not at all. Sex may sell in some things, but I really do think it's marginal in video games.
But amusing none the less. I have a friend who attended a wedding where the groom's friends had a running inside joke that he was the cheap, miserly type. The wedding reception was typically lavish with all the trimmings except that at each place setting, under the silverwear - where McDonald's napkins. Got a good laugh out of everyone who knew the joke. The rest of the guests were a little perplexed though.
As for true geekdom at a wedding - closest thing I've seen is some of the groom's roleplaying buddies getting drunk and taking the microphone to tell anecdotes that happened in game. That was mortifyingly geeky but really had more to do with alcohol than actual geekdom.
Indeed. Both of them can be refined or even dismissed due to empirical evidence. The "just a theory" mantra is probably the single greatest barrier to scientific understanding among the general populace.
Yes! This drives me crazy!.
My mother is a religious nut and she drags quite a few other religious nuts into the house. However, they're just plain vanilla Catholic nuts so they're not too wacky - ie accept that evolution happens even if they think there is a purpose behind it etc... But I end up getting into quite a few atheistic world view vs. religious debates which I enjoy thoroughly.
But the "well, it's just a theory" thing drives me insane. I didn't study science in university, and I didn't go to any special high school or anything, but I do know the difference between a scientific theory and what a detective on TV means when he says, "I have a theory about those murders...". It's partially the fault of these "creation science" nutters and partially the fault of the churches in general shrieking ""God! Evidence of God!" whenever scientists run into something they can't instantly explain, but sometimes it seems like it's a wilful confusion. I sometimes get the sense that people who know better deliberately confuse others... Anyway, it's personal pet peeve and frankly, unless you're trolling, if you're posting to/. and you don't know the difference go read a damn book.
I wanted to leave out the sex for in game favours stories, but if you're a DM and you've played with girls you're attracted to...
However, in my case I wouldn't really call that an economic transaction since all three times I've exchanged in game bonuses for sexual favours it was a pretext to doing stuff we hadn't figured out another way to initiate. And yes, I know, there are cute D&D chicks.
Except that a piece of art is not entirely arbitrary - it requires time and effort to make. If they wanted to, the developers could produce any number of these items in effectively zero time and effort.
Which would have the exact effect of flooding the market with forgeries of a piece of art. If the developers for a game flooded the market with push button virtual swords, they would tank in value. Either they would break their own game and loose players or they would have to sell the mass produced swords for next to nothing.
Really, a virtual economy is in pretty much every way the same as a non-virtual one. Really it's not a "virtual" economy, it's an economy in a virtual world. The basic difference being that there are costs incurred in keeping the world running, and non labour costs of things in the games (ie the costs of the materials, costs of the virtual locations where they need to be built etc) are arbitrary. So in one game resources might be infinite, but not the labour to gather them. In another, resources might be scarce etc. It's still an economy, and since these virtual worlds touch on real ones, there is going to be trade. Hence non-virtual money for virtual items. Possibly even eventually virtual money for non-virtual goods or services.
Actually... here's a personal example. I used to play allot of pen and paper RPGs (I still would if I hadn't moved away from my players.) Once while at the bar a player lamented that he was really close to leveling and gaining a new power that he really wanted for the next session. I jokingly said, "Buy me a beer and I'll give you the experience." He promptly got up and bought me a beer. Then did the math and said, "So I can buy experience points for $4 a pop?"
I laughed and told him sure, but pointed out, "You are aware that I can just make up as many as I want." He didn't care and bought me a couple more beer "for the experience points". I had to put a stop to it because too many and I would have broken my own game, but I managed to get nicely drunk by selling nothing more than the right to mark down something on a piece of paper.
Pretty much. Get some good XML documentation and make up your own markup to your own standards. It's stupidly easy to get working and the learning curve for XML is about as quick as anything even remotely technical out there.
Also, using something you made up yourself will let you customize it faster when you figure out that your specs contradicted each other or some other normal technical hurdle comes up.
I've got an astigmatism in both eyes and have problems with declining vision (just as a result of aging unfortunately) and eye fatigue from looking at monitors. Other than the obvious - wear my glasses when using the computer, take breaks away from the computer etc - I set up my sight lines to have various things at different focal depths.
I put up a number of pictures on the walls near the monitor and I make a point to look at them every few minutes (a Kandinski, a Renior and a picture of Liv Tylor in a school girl outfit... sigh... a couple of minutes pass...). Anyway, by looking up every few minutes it allows my eyes to focus on things at different depths. I also look out the window as often as possible. When I use my laptop, I arrange it so I have a view.
Its simple but I find it helps. The anthropologist in me can't help but point out that from an evolutionary standpoint, the muscles in the eye were not designed to focus on one plane of depth all the time. Complex environments (forest, savanna etc), constantly moving around and generally not looking at something three feet in front of you for 6 to 16 hours a day probably created a eye muscle that can adapt quickly, but probably didn't create one that is designed for endurance - holding a single plane of focus for hours and hours. Not that I'm siting a reference here - pun;) - this is just off the top of my head.
But the differing focal depths thing works. I do it when I read too.
Re:Partially discredited
on
Three Headed Frog
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Can you supply some references? Because who it's been discredited by and who paid for the studies (assuming you're siting studies) matters in these things. Frankly, I don't buy it. There are frog mutations all over (not just in England or MN) and dramatic increases in them that coincide with the rise of toxins in the environment. I'm going to go dig up the article I read about it and post a link in a bit. Got to get back to work now though.
True that an exception to being poisoned is part of the Green platform... and just saying that out loud makes me feel weird... I mean, who's for being poisoned. Just that the "Green" ideology embraces much more than a strong objection to toxins in our environment.
Not that I disagree with most of it - most of what the environmentalists say makes sense on at least some levels. But that doesn't mean that that's the core of my politics and I believe that sometimes other things do take precedent over conservation. I'm not a Green. But that doesn't mean I like the whole toxins in my food, air and water thing.
I take clean food, clean water and clean air fairly seriously - and more than most. I'm a vegetarian, I drink distilled or at least filtered water and as often as possible, I eat only carefully washed organic fruits and veggies. These are dietary habits that are typically found in the hippy/green/environmentalist but that doesn't mean they're exclusive to them.
Not to offend you, but it's a fairly simplified worldview that summarized entire and diverse political movements or ideologies in a single sentence or a few words. Some Libertarians could give a damn about the size of the government or the extent of the government's role in their life as long as the rule of law and the role of government is still devoted to personal freedom in the strict John Stewart Mill sense.
Canaries in the coal mine baby!
on
Three Headed Frog
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Frogs are more sensitive to environmental pollutants and toxins because they're able to absorb many of them directly through their skin. They're developmentally simple animals so mutations show up more easily in their external morphology. Interestingly, since frogs eggs are separate cells and the membrane (which also absorbs toxins) would probably prevent three developmental frogs from sticking, this is one frog that has developed three frogs - not some sort of conjoined twin thing. (Although the difference there is a matter of degree, not kind.)
This is the most dramatic example of what I've seen yet but frog mutations are extremely common. Check out this, or this (warning more gross pics). Does anyone but me wonder why we tolerate this level of contamination in our environment? I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.
I go camping all the time actually. But that's different. It's easier to unplug when you're out in the bush or on vacation somewhere because you're out of your routines. If it weren't for weekends spend hiking or summer canoe trips, I'd go mad. But what I was talking about was different.
When you unplug but still do everything else normally - you start to notice things that you wouldn't normally. You talk to people in your house more, you clean more and feel better about it. I find that I cook way more, and really enjoy it. When I get home from work (where I have no choice but to be connected to everything) 99% of the time the first thing I do is switch on my pc upstairs, check my messages and then turn on the tv to catch the Simpsons. Hell, if you looked in my journal right now you'd see that I'm griping about my home IP being banned from/.
But for that one week, I don't do any of that. I come home, stand in my living room feeling confused for a minute and then go to the market and buy some fresh veggies for dinner. Or I clean the kitchen and then break out a book. Or something. It's weird. And it's a totally different kind of relaxing than camping or hiking. I've never been deer hunting but I go fishing so I think I get what you mean. It's great, it's relaxing and it's a vacation from life but it's not what I'm talking about.
It's all about willpower and the ceremony of the thing. If you turn something off, it's too easy to turn it back on based on pure reflex. If I make a big deal out of it, and make cheating a huge pain in the ass, I can spend my time doing other things. It's like a dieter living in a house full of candy. There are too many "on" buttons.
Also, at the end of the week when I get everything back, I'm so used to enjoying the quiet that I don't put it all back right away. I fish my cel phone out right away, but the tv remote languishes for a few days, the network cards and powercords come out, but the PDA and the game controllers sit a while longer.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry buddy. There are a couple of dozen, possibly even hundreds of stars within 25 light years. Alpha Centuari is something like 4.1 lightyears away. So, sun excepted, it takes a hair over 4 years for light from the nearest star to reach us.
Second. What does the difficulty of getting to Saturn have to do with making sense of radio signals?
What a letdown to discover alien RF signals and find out their message was "ping". It would be undeniably cool to discover them, but if all we discovered was RADAR signals there would be no message to decypher.
He speaks wisely. Listen to him and listen well. Apply for the damn jobs and don't sweat the requirements. If you think you can do it, make sure you explain why in your cover letter.
:You know, my brother Carl works at a technology company, you should call him. Then you freaking call Carl! Seriously.
But I've said this before on Slashdot and I'll say it again. Sending out a one or two page document to some stranger is a piss poor way of getting a job.
If you rely on job postings and resumes, you'll look forever, end up with a mediocre job and less money. Network. You know people and they know people. I said it before, but your aunt's nieghbor's butcher should know who you are, what kind of job you want and that you're available. People who you'd NEVER think of asking for a job suddenly say things like
It works faster and gives you better jobs that pay more. At my last job (in tech, I'm out of the biz now) people would hear my background and my experience and ask how the hell I got the job. Well, 5 years before at a party I had met someone who worked for the company I wanted to work for. I called the host of the party, who I didn't know well at all, got the name of the guy and his number. Called him at home and spoke to him for five minutes.
In my opinion, resumes and job postings are a suckers game.
It seems that for some strange reason I've been using the word "Orwellian" allot in the last three and a half years. I'm not going to venture a guess as to why...
Seriously though, it's funny how utterly apathetic people are these days. People bandy about the term "freedom" but as long as they have the "freedom" to buy things people don't seem to care about the rest of it. A minority talk about what rights are slipping away, but still cast the valiant few who take to the streets as hippies and whackos. It's sick really.
What is it going to take for it to be too much? Seriously, stop and think about what exactly the government would have to do for you to be willing to do more than talk. Then think about how effective your protest will be if it gets bad enough for you to protest at all. Will you wait for a total suspension of civil liberties? Mass arrests? Until there are turrets on the street corners and "papers" required to move across state lines? Seriously. I want to say that people need to do something now, but the truth is that people needed to do something a year and a half ago. I'm not talking about revolution or anything... just make the dissenting voices impossible to ignore by adding your own.
The current administration isn't ready (yet) to start ignoring elections and the army wouldn't follow orders from people who lost elections. So go out and freaking VOTE! And then make it clear to the people you get put in that they're there to fix things. Politicians want job security because it takes more than a couple of terms in office to really secure the personal fortune. Make them fix things or throw the buggers out.
He used to get around 50-100 resumes a week even when he didn't have a job posting up or any availabilities. Basically, IF he looked at them at all, he wouldn't spend more than 3-5 seconds with any given resume. The layout has to be clean and really easy to follow. There's very little that can be interesting or eye catching about a resume, but that said the good stuff has be OBVIOUS.
Basically though, in this job market, resumes basically resemble spam. Sending companies resumes is not really an effective way to get a job. Start calling people at the company, and don't be afraid to be a little pushy. Don't be afraid of approaching the same company multiple times, especially if you can talk to different people. Network like crazy. Everyone in your life up to and including your aunt's neighbor's mailman should know you're looking for a job and what kind of job you want.
A good resume is really a springboard for the kinds of questions you want them to ask you in the job interview.
As for the basic format considerations, go for information density on a single page. Bold key terms that you want people to notice right away, but embed them in sentences so they're not just looking at lists. I don't like lists of just words, but used to have a section titled "Other Technical Skills" where I put the stuff I wasn't emphasizing.
If you're really convinced that you're doing everything else right and it's the resume that's holding you back, go hire a service. They're cheap and they do decent work. Or do what I did, look at like 20 other people's resumes and steal the format of the best one.
One other thing that a friend did that was a little weird, but worked. She got the name of a manager at a company in her field, called him and sold him the following line. "I understand that you're not hiring right now, but it's a lean market and I want an edge on my competition. Do you have a project that I could be involved with as an intern? I understand that you probably couldn't pay much if you can pay at all, but at least I can start building up experience and if you love me, and trust me, you're going to, you can offer me something when it comes up." It was ballsy but she pulled it off and later parlayed it into a job with one of their competitors.
Maybe it's not for everyone, but the moral of the story is that a one or two page piece of paper is a weak way to job hunt. Start thinking about what else you can do and don't sweat your resume.
Oh god! I had that arguement when I was 15 and the Trek fan I was teasing picked me out of the chair by my t-shirt and was about to pound me one for what I said about Kirk. (Funny enough, a 5 foot nothing skinny girl who was surprisingly intimidating jumped to my resque.) Ironically, I later turned into a Trek fan myself and agree that what I said about the good captain was out of line.
Still, that Trek fan guy was surprisingly strong. And although I played Devil's advocate that day, the Enterprise (any of them, except possibly the NX-1) would crush a Star Destroyer.
I was hard, but it wasn't impossible. Once I learned how to actually play, I finished the game in around a week and a half. Sure, it was hard at first, and fighting the second boss on horseback, or the first time you fight the fiend chick were freaking crazy. But it's just a steep learning curve. Once I finished it, it unlocks a third "Very Hard" option and a secret costume. Pure bliss.
There is a market for really hard games, and if you don't want to play them - don't. But personally, it would have pissed me off to have finished Ninja Gaiden in 6 to 7 hours and it would have pissed me off if the same strategies worked against every enemy. What I loved about that game what that you had to learn how to actually fight within the context of that game. You had to learn to exploit an enemy's weaknesses, you had to learn how to use the terrain to your advantage, when to use your Ninpo and when to save it. In the end, it was one of the best games I ever played - if it had been easier... it would have just been eye candy. People who want easy games should buy easy games.
Picked up a SIP Phone Call-in-One and I've got to say, I'm really impressed. It does exactly what they say it'll do, it does it well and it does it cheap. Living in Madrid, until now, meant I was sort of cut off from my brother. Now, I call him whenever I want, talk as long as I want and it doesn't cost me anything other than the bandwidtch charges for the DSL connection that I was already paying. Definitely impressed.
Also, we've been using the SIP Minutes thing to make calls to Canada, Chile and and a couple of other countries - all to PSTN numbers - and we're really happy with the cost (cheap as dirt and no monthly fee or anything stupid like that), the sound quality and ease of use are excellent.
My only complaint is that they won't hurry up and set up Virtual Numbers. I'm thinking of starting a small business and being able to have a local number in Paris, NY, Toronto and Vancouver would really help me out. Having all of those numbers ring through to the same phone... beautiful.
Played a little with Skype (litterally, we were roleplaying and brought a friend in from another town) and I wasn't as generally impressed. Sound got wonky too often for my tastes although it could have been a bum mic.
Also, been toying around with this and I have to say this just makes my SIP Phone better. Friends from all over can call me, leave me a voice mail if I'm not there (which gets emailed to me of course) or, with this, I can (and have) set up some cool conference calls.
One of the big outfits for online groceries in Canada is Grocery Gateway. At my last job I worked with them for a couple of weeks (mostly looking at some of their IT systems - they run a tight ship and have good IT people if that matters) and got a good understanding of their business from the inside.
Essentially, they started out as, and still are, a shipping company. They don't just ship groceries, but pretty much anything that you would normally think to pack into a truck and ferry off somewhere. They partnered up with some grocery supply companies and basically inserted themselves as a delivery company and website. They don't really charge much for delivery, but they don't have to to stay profitable. Bulk buy directly from the wholesalers and distributers, mark up items so they're competitive with the grocery stores and charge a nominal fee for delivery and bang, you've made money.
As for the quality of the foods, they partner up with Sobey's for much of it, and the produce is about the same quality as what you'd get off the shelf in a good Sobey's. (For non Canadians, or people who don't live near a Sobey's - Sobey's is a grocery store that can definitely boast well above average quality produce.) I'm not a shill for these guys, and I don't work with them any more, but I can say that the quality isn't bad at all.
One of the other things I've done is try out Green Earth Organics and Fresh Piks. (No link because their site is down. Fun fact: When it couldn't find the server, M$'s built in auto search suggested www.Fleshpics.com as an alternative. Not the best suggestion when looking for an organic fruit and veggie delivery company. Probably a fun site though.) Both provided better produce than anything I ever bought in a grocery store, it was delivered and since I didn't want to waste anything I ate more fruits and veggies, and cooked more than I ever did at any other point in my life. If I weren't living in Spain now (where restaurants prominently feature recognizable animal parts where they cut the meat from and many don't serve salads at all) I'd still be getting a weekly delivery from these guys.
Someone has to pick stuff out and ship it to the store, why the hell not have someone pick it out and ship it directly to me. They know that if they drop the ball on quality I'll take my business elsewhere so they do better than the grocery store does. Anyway... I think that this is something that was a long time coming...
Couple of things. First off, if you're a publicly traded company go score points with your managers by suggesting that you should talk to the Risk Management and Comp Sec guys at your accounting firm. They'll give you criteria that the project should meet (usually very low impact to implement early but nightmarish to implement later) if you want the data to meet financial disclosure and Sorbains Oxley (SOX) criteria. If you're publicly traded and you don't meet SOX criteria at (or by) the end of this fiscal year then you stand to pay HUGE fines and possibly get de-listed. (Trust me, not meeting SOX criteria by the end of this year would be BAD.)
Business Intelligence and many widespread corporate reporting tools are often subject to SOX regulations. The Risk Management guys will usually have an opinion about the portability vs performance issue for you. (Also, these guys are way way way too busy this year to artificially create more work for themselves. Every publically traded company in the US is trying to get these guys to sign off before the year end.)
Second, look into some of the XML data portability ideas and solutions out there... I can't name anything off the top of my head, but there are companies out there with enterprise and off the shelf data portability options. Also, if you're a flexible development team you probably have someone who can cobble together something good using XML. Google XML Data Portability and you'll get started on pointers.
It's worth it.
I got a copy of Ninja Gaiden right before I left for Europe for a year and since I was planning to leave my XBox behind I had 10 days to either finish it or leave it alone. I finished it, and man it was worth it. Once you master the game, you realize how good you are and it becomes just plain old fun. There is a certain satisfaction in kicking a boss' ass because you know YOU kicked his ass. The progression from button mashing to (pardon me here for a second) mad skillz is part of the fun.
I don't always want something like Ninja Gaiden, but getting to the end, unlocking the secret costume and playing the first few levels on the unlocked "Very Hard" setting... well worth it.
Says I, anyway.
Thinking about it for a second, it really seems like a no brainer - sex sells so sex in video games sell video games. But personally, I don't agree. Sure titles like Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball pretty much used titillation to sell - that's really not the same as sex IN the game.
Titillation in a movie, hot steamy sex scenes or outright pr0n is all fine. I don't really mind (and often deliberately seek out) that sort of thing... When I'm watching a movie, I don't feel at all connected to what is happening on the screen and I don't care so much because I'm observing, not interacting. If I were playing a game that involved the same thing though, the rules change. Suddenly, instead of going over to my girlfriend's house and seducing her, I'm what - getting my virtual video game avatar laid? That's pretty much just going to depress/annoy/frustrate me, and more so if I were single at the time.
Second, video games are often a communal activity, something I do socially. But I assure you, the people I have over to play video games are not the people that I would have over to act out sex scenes with. Basically... if I want to play a little Ninja Gaiden with my little brother, I don't want to have to explain why I'm choosing a particular position or why I'm "licking her there". It's really just kind of creepy.
Most of all though, if I wanted that sort of titillation - if I wanted to see breasts, sex scenes etc I'm sure as hell not going to pay $50 or more for the privilege. There is so much good quality free or really cheap porn out there, I just don't need it in my video games. Nor do I want it. If I found out that the new Splinter Cell or Half Life 2 game had explicit sexuality or graphic depictions of something, I would immediately question the game? Why? Is it there to sell the game? Is it there because the game sucked and they wanted some hook? What?
Long and short, I play games at least in part for pure visceral fun and if I want pure visceral sex fun there are better outlets for it than my XBox. I'm sure there's a HUGE market for people who want interactive sex video games, but hopefully they won't touch my mainstream releases...
Strange, I just finished writing all of that and I just thought of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. There isn't any explicit sex in the game, but it is definitely implied. Farah and the Prince definitely 'have a moment' although it isn't explicitly laid out that they have sex. It didn't really bother me as it was tasteful, in a cut scene and really had more to do with what passed for character development than any need to titillate. Did it bother me? Hell no. Did it add to my enjoyment of the game? Not really. When I excitedly tell people how great that game was am I thinking of that scene at all? Nope. I only remembered it because of this post. They added a super sexy female character, a sex scene - hell they even had the hero slowly lose his clothes throughout the game. Did any of that affect anyone's purchase of the game? Probably not. Did it affect my enjoyment of the game? Not at all. Sex may sell in some things, but I really do think it's marginal in video games.
Bookmarking thread
But amusing none the less. I have a friend who attended a wedding where the groom's friends had a running inside joke that he was the cheap, miserly type. The wedding reception was typically lavish with all the trimmings except that at each place setting, under the silverwear - where McDonald's napkins. Got a good laugh out of everyone who knew the joke. The rest of the guests were a little perplexed though.
As for true geekdom at a wedding - closest thing I've seen is some of the groom's roleplaying buddies getting drunk and taking the microphone to tell anecdotes that happened in game. That was mortifyingly geeky but really had more to do with alcohol than actual geekdom.
My mother is a religious nut and she drags quite a few other religious nuts into the house. However, they're just plain vanilla Catholic nuts so they're not too wacky - ie accept that evolution happens even if they think there is a purpose behind it etc... But I end up getting into quite a few atheistic world view vs. religious debates which I enjoy thoroughly.
But the "well, it's just a theory" thing drives me insane. I didn't study science in university, and I didn't go to any special high school or anything, but I do know the difference between a scientific theory and what a detective on TV means when he says, "I have a theory about those murders...". It's partially the fault of these "creation science" nutters and partially the fault of the churches in general shrieking ""God! Evidence of God!" whenever scientists run into something they can't instantly explain, but sometimes it seems like it's a wilful confusion. I sometimes get the sense that people who know better deliberately confuse others... Anyway, it's personal pet peeve and frankly, unless you're trolling, if you're posting to
I wanted to leave out the sex for in game favours stories, but if you're a DM and you've played with girls you're attracted to...
However, in my case I wouldn't really call that an economic transaction since all three times I've exchanged in game bonuses for sexual favours it was a pretext to doing stuff we hadn't figured out another way to initiate. And yes, I know, there are cute D&D chicks.
Really, a virtual economy is in pretty much every way the same as a non-virtual one. Really it's not a "virtual" economy, it's an economy in a virtual world. The basic difference being that there are costs incurred in keeping the world running, and non labour costs of things in the games (ie the costs of the materials, costs of the virtual locations where they need to be built etc) are arbitrary. So in one game resources might be infinite, but not the labour to gather them. In another, resources might be scarce etc. It's still an economy, and since these virtual worlds touch on real ones, there is going to be trade. Hence non-virtual money for virtual items. Possibly even eventually virtual money for non-virtual goods or services.
Actually... here's a personal example. I used to play allot of pen and paper RPGs (I still would if I hadn't moved away from my players.) Once while at the bar a player lamented that he was really close to leveling and gaining a new power that he really wanted for the next session. I jokingly said, "Buy me a beer and I'll give you the experience." He promptly got up and bought me a beer. Then did the math and said, "So I can buy experience points for $4 a pop?"
I laughed and told him sure, but pointed out, "You are aware that I can just make up as many as I want." He didn't care and bought me a couple more beer "for the experience points". I had to put a stop to it because too many and I would have broken my own game, but I managed to get nicely drunk by selling nothing more than the right to mark down something on a piece of paper.
Pretty much. Get some good XML documentation and make up your own markup to your own standards. It's stupidly easy to get working and the learning curve for XML is about as quick as anything even remotely technical out there.
Also, using something you made up yourself will let you customize it faster when you figure out that your specs contradicted each other or some other normal technical hurdle comes up.
I've got an astigmatism in both eyes and have problems with declining vision (just as a result of aging unfortunately) and eye fatigue from looking at monitors. Other than the obvious - wear my glasses when using the computer, take breaks away from the computer etc - I set up my sight lines to have various things at different focal depths.
;) - this is just off the top of my head.
I put up a number of pictures on the walls near the monitor and I make a point to look at them every few minutes (a Kandinski, a Renior and a picture of Liv Tylor in a school girl outfit... sigh... a couple of minutes pass...). Anyway, by looking up every few minutes it allows my eyes to focus on things at different depths. I also look out the window as often as possible. When I use my laptop, I arrange it so I have a view.
Its simple but I find it helps. The anthropologist in me can't help but point out that from an evolutionary standpoint, the muscles in the eye were not designed to focus on one plane of depth all the time. Complex environments (forest, savanna etc), constantly moving around and generally not looking at something three feet in front of you for 6 to 16 hours a day probably created a eye muscle that can adapt quickly, but probably didn't create one that is designed for endurance - holding a single plane of focus for hours and hours. Not that I'm siting a reference here - pun
But the differing focal depths thing works. I do it when I read too.
Can you supply some references? Because who it's been discredited by and who paid for the studies (assuming you're siting studies) matters in these things. Frankly, I don't buy it. There are frog mutations all over (not just in England or MN) and dramatic increases in them that coincide with the rise of toxins in the environment. I'm going to go dig up the article I read about it and post a link in a bit. Got to get back to work now though.
True that an exception to being poisoned is part of the Green platform... and just saying that out loud makes me feel weird... I mean, who's for being poisoned. Just that the "Green" ideology embraces much more than a strong objection to toxins in our environment.
/green /environmentalist but that doesn't mean they're exclusive to them.
Not that I disagree with most of it - most of what the environmentalists say makes sense on at least some levels. But that doesn't mean that that's the core of my politics and I believe that sometimes other things do take precedent over conservation. I'm not a Green. But that doesn't mean I like the whole toxins in my food, air and water thing.
I take clean food, clean water and clean air fairly seriously - and more than most. I'm a vegetarian, I drink distilled or at least filtered water and as often as possible, I eat only carefully washed organic fruits and veggies. These are dietary habits that are typically found in the hippy
Not to offend you, but it's a fairly simplified worldview that summarized entire and diverse political movements or ideologies in a single sentence or a few words. Some Libertarians could give a damn about the size of the government or the extent of the government's role in their life as long as the rule of law and the role of government is still devoted to personal freedom in the strict John Stewart Mill sense.
Frogs are more sensitive to environmental pollutants and toxins because they're able to absorb many of them directly through their skin. They're developmentally simple animals so mutations show up more easily in their external morphology. Interestingly, since frogs eggs are separate cells and the membrane (which also absorbs toxins) would probably prevent three developmental frogs from sticking, this is one frog that has developed three frogs - not some sort of conjoined twin thing. (Although the difference there is a matter of degree, not kind.)
This is the most dramatic example of what I've seen yet but frog mutations are extremely common. Check out this, or this (warning more gross pics). Does anyone but me wonder why we tolerate this level of contamination in our environment? I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.
I go camping all the time actually. But that's different. It's easier to unplug when you're out in the bush or on vacation somewhere because you're out of your routines. If it weren't for weekends spend hiking or summer canoe trips, I'd go mad. But what I was talking about was different.
/.
When you unplug but still do everything else normally - you start to notice things that you wouldn't normally. You talk to people in your house more, you clean more and feel better about it. I find that I cook way more, and really enjoy it. When I get home from work (where I have no choice but to be connected to everything) 99% of the time the first thing I do is switch on my pc upstairs, check my messages and then turn on the tv to catch the Simpsons. Hell, if you looked in my journal right now you'd see that I'm griping about my home IP being banned from
But for that one week, I don't do any of that. I come home, stand in my living room feeling confused for a minute and then go to the market and buy some fresh veggies for dinner. Or I clean the kitchen and then break out a book. Or something. It's weird. And it's a totally different kind of relaxing than camping or hiking. I've never been deer hunting but I go fishing so I think I get what you mean. It's great, it's relaxing and it's a vacation from life but it's not what I'm talking about.
It's all about willpower and the ceremony of the thing. If you turn something off, it's too easy to turn it back on based on pure reflex. If I make a big deal out of it, and make cheating a huge pain in the ass, I can spend my time doing other things. It's like a dieter living in a house full of candy. There are too many "on" buttons.
Also, at the end of the week when I get everything back, I'm so used to enjoying the quiet that I don't put it all back right away. I fish my cel phone out right away, but the tv remote languishes for a few days, the network cards and powercords come out, but the PDA and the game controllers sit a while longer.