The Heretech

Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Pancakes...In 3-D!

Since it's almost the weekend, I'll share something frivolous. I'm planning on seeing Avatar finally this weekend...IN 3-D!

Whoa, sorry, didn't expect to be shouting. It's just that every time that I've seen a poster for a movie in 3-D, the "in 3-D" part was always really, really big.

While I'm keen on seeing the 3-D version of Avatar, a little part of me still can't help associating 3-D with gimmicky B movies. Which, perhaps, Avatar is exactly that, a big-budget, really well-done B movie, much like Cameron's other films.

So, for anyone who has ever seen one of the old 3-D movies from decades ago, I give you a spoof of them from the old SCTV show.

Mad Men and PM

Not completely off-topic, last night's season finale of Mad Men was excellent. What's the connection to this blog? Most of the reviews of the series have focused on the relationships of people outside of work (husband, wife, lover, child, etc.), but at least half of the show is really about relationships at work.

And about work itself. Without giving anything away, last night's episode featured, in a big way, what it takes to run a good business.

(In the middle of this season, I was annoyed at the series for the slow pace, in which lots seemed to be building, but little was actually happening. Boy, did that change in the last two episodes.)

Back from a break

I gave the little grey cells a vacation, for the most part, last week. I'm back to blogging, podcasting, and general yakking today.

Frivolous Friday: Dinosaurs love updates

Today's Dinosaur Comics edition must be shared.

I'm a ramblin' man...

I've been out of town for a couple of days, during which blogging and micro-blogging have been on hold. I hope to return to my blabby self tomorrow.

I'm Don Draper, and you're not

Completely off-topic, the new season of Mad Men starts this weekend. I'm a huge fan of the show, so it was fun taking the "Which Mad Men Character Are You?" quiz. Being Don Draper is great, and Roger Sterling would have been OK, too.

A grave matter

Unfortunately, this will be my only useful contribution to the blog today.

I'm coming to the end of one of this week's major projects, for which I need some PowerPoint diagrams. After finishing several of them, I said to myself, "Man, I'm dead tired." At that moment, two unrelated thoughts had a head-on collision in my brain.

Thought #1: Product managers spend way too much time using PowerPoint. If they're building diagrams, they usually include boxes and arrows.

Thought #2: If you added up all the work in your adult life, PowerPoint diagrams will appear throughout. So, when you're dead (not just dead tired), why shouldn't your tombstone feature a pithy PowerPoint diagram for those who don't have the time to read the particulars of your life?

There's no reason why this approach to headstone usability should be limited to product managers, by the way. Yea, though I, like many other knowledge workers, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy bullet points and thy custom animation, they comfort me.

Where science breaks if something's awesome enough

Totally off-topic, but if you share my sense of humor, you may find this edition of Dinosaur Comics hilarious.

Coolest technology of the day

Researchers are working on "programmable matter," material that can shape itself into whatever tool you need at the moment.

Bite the wax tadpole

Through the power of Google Translate, you too can garble the titles of Forrester research documents.  Just build a chain of translations, from one language into another, and see what emerges at the end.

For example, if you translate A Go-To-Market Prescription For Economic Maladies from English to Estonian to Thai to Japanese to Arabic to English, it becomes Tried To Describe A Disease Of The Market Economy. Following the same chain, B2B Digital Marketing: A Deep Dive Into Hardware Decision-Makers becomes Business, The Digital Market: Deep Sea Diving In The Information Technology And Equipment Decisions - That.

To be fair to Google Translate, most of the time, the chain of translations works amazingly well. Only a few results are as garbled as these.

The "Life During Boretime" gallery

Since I won't be copying the posts from my Forrester Research blog over here, I thought I'd revisit the "Life During Boretime" graphics that I regularly insert into my blog posts. See if you can spot yourself, or your company, in these pictures. My personal thanks goes out to the world's worst film directors, for their tireless efforts to provide the best grist for the humor mill.