Watch the earth move for Dan

This is a must-see for all internet users (QuickTime required): Dan's Thanksgiving-weekend kite-flying adventure (file also available at: \\geonosis\public\dan\video\DanJump.mov). Your indifferent narrator is Mike Gaffney. Dan is "flying" a 20' x 6' foil kite.

He's thankful to be alive.

If you can't get enough from that footage, download the post-flight trauma coverage (\\geonosis\public\dan\video\DanJumpFull.mp4).

Disclaimer: Not suitable for audiences who are easily frightened. Rated PG-13 for some language and on-screen violence.

Backwards Bowler Takes Baton Rouge By Storm

Specifically for those of you who like an oddity, this story may just "strike" a chord: http://www.bowl.com/articleView.aspx?i=10669&f=1

IF you look deeper into this, you can actually view a news report which shows this guy, who actually averages better than 180 and has recorded a 279 game.

Aaron Gets It On

All of us here at Asynchrony have unique talents (some more desirable than others), but few of us are gifted -- and courageous -- enough to share them with an live audience full of strangers, including television viewers. That's what makes Aaron "Marvin" Molitor's recent performance of Let's Get It On in Harrah’s Lucky Break impressive -- and he won!

Aaron was one of 32 weekly winners who will go on to compete for one of eight semi-finalist spots. Those are eventually narrowed to three finalists and then one winner. As a weekly winner, he received two cardinal tickets, a one-night stay and dinner for two at Harrah’s St. Louis, a $50 gift certificate to Michael Genovese Jewelers and to top all that off $50 in gift certificates to Dairy Queen. I guess we know who's buying lunch.

So Aaron, we know it's much more than the glorified karaoke contest you claimed it was, it's a chance for your co-workers to privately make fun of you while viewing your performance on our desktops. We salute, you, Mister Casino-Talent-Search-Contest Winner!

(Seriously, though, Aaron's quite a singer -- check out the video.)

Great Moments in Asynchrony History

On this date, 2002:

PDA Defense support specialist Darren "Radar" Ruotolo responds to an urgent customer email, replying "We apologize for any incontinence you may have experienced."

This Great Moment in Asynchrony History has been brought to you by Microsoft Spellchecker: "Transforming your mistakes into bigger ones."

Agile Documentation

Our XP mentor Brian Button recently published an article about how to use tests to make API documentation for outside developers that's a lot more useful than a bunch of words in a manual. It's not far from the way we're doing things anyway, but puts some formalities and best practices behind it. Good stuff.

Hey Mom, I'm on MTV!

Wes Ehrlichman, georgeous Software Support Specialist working at the St. Louis Asynchrony office, works on an independant Video Game Magazine on the side called The Gamer's Quarter. His magazine has recently been featured in an MTV News story. Be sure to check them both out!

Favicon maker

I stumbled upon this site a few weeks back -- it convert an image into a favicon in seconds! Pretty cool, especially for web designers.

Star Wars: The Day After

All right, so most of us were so consumed yesterday with our mad Demo Ball skills that we didn't have much time to chat about the movie. What did everyone think? I'll get us started with a review from the Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams. Now I'm not a big fan of Williams's, but I think it's hard to disagree with his comments.

Also, from the WSJ review today:

• "Lucas goes to the dull side"
• "Still, all of the visual inventions in all of the worlds of that far-off galaxy can't hide the clumsiness of the film's stab at profundity. "My powers have doubled since the last time we met," Anakin boasts to an adversary, but Mr. Christensen's acting powers have not."

I'm not sure whom they're talking about, but could it be that they thought Peter Frampton was in reality Hayden Christensen, the wooden actor who played Anakin in Episode II?

Needed: Help converting Baseball Encyclopedia code

Lee Sinins, the creator of the highly popular (well, among baseball stat-geeks, anyway) Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, is looking for someone who could help him convert the encyclopedia's code from Windows to Mac. I know we're increasingly getting Mac experience (or is it simply ownership experience?), so maybe someone could lend him a hand.

If you're interested, you can contact me or Lee directly.

Game Developers using XP

I was checking an indie game development web site and came across an article by someone who is using ExtremeProgramming techinques to create their game engine. Here's the link, and here's a quote:

I started using XP (ExtremeProgramming) today for the first time, on the first class of the LudiEngine and within the first 15 minutes I think I have already become hooked.

Essentially what I am starting off with under the XP principles is the TestFirstDesign which means that you program your tests first and you use these tests to determine what you want your class to do.

The immediate advantages I see and felt here are that I am only designing for functionality, so the class ends up being simpler than if I designed it’s code and data structures first. I may have been tempted to code more cases than I really need, but since I am only programming to satisfy the tests I have written, then I don’t do this.

This comes after getting back from the Game Developer's Conference where I heard several people speak on how messed up the project scheduling and business practices in game development really are. Maybe they could learn a bit from Asynchrony!

Impress Your Date with the Postmodern Essay Generator

You can use this Random Postmodern Essay Generator to create a randomly generated essay that uses so many big words that no matter how educated your date is, she probably won't realize that what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. She'll want those "smart genes" in her kids and you may just get lucky. Check out this quote from one of the essays I found/created:

"Society is intrinsically responsible for sexism," says Baudrillard; however, according to Geoffrey[2] , it is not so much society that is intrinsically responsible for sexism, but rather the fatal flaw, and some would say the absurdity, of society. Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a conceptual narrative that includes sexuality as a paradox. Scuglia[3] holds that we have to choose between precultural nihilism and the dialectic paradigm of narrative.

Pure gold right there buddy.

A random find

Something interesting I happened to come across just now. Check out the id and avatar of the first post on the page.

Share video from your PC with Olivelink

Olivelink allows you to stream video to anyone in the world from your PC. They're in beta at the moment. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a pretty simple way to share personal video without either sending huge files or using an outside service.

Google updates desktop search

Despite some performance issues reported by some of our co-workers, I thought it worth noting that a new non-beta version of Google Desktop Search was released yesterday. Very interesting is the upcoming release of api's that will allow the inclusion of both desktop and internet searches from applications.

		New!
		Netscape Mail / Thunderbird
		Netscape / Firefox / Mozilla
		PDF
		Music
		Images
		Video

Creative marketing opportunity for Asynchrony: Produce an Irish Film!

It only seems logical that Asynchrony should want to tap into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. And, of course, I have just the plan to do it.

What better way to get our name out than to produce a movie? An Irish filmmaker is offering on eBay a spot to appear in a documentary about Irish baseball. According to the listing:

The producers of "The Emerald Diamond" invite you to put your name and face on the big screen. High bidder is guaranteed a spot in the film and the title of "Executive Producer" with number one billing in the credits of the film.

As of this posting, the bid was at a reasonable $1,000. I can't imagine a better return on investment. So here's my proposal: The company pays the auction bid, and I'll assume all costs to travel overseas and fulfill the obligations for the film. I'll wear my Asynchrony "Join the revolution!" t-shirt on-camera, and my black "Code for love and money" one when I'm kicking back on the set or in the trailer. I would be happy to share the screen credit as "Asynchro Philip."

Better yet: We're in the process of promoting our new HUBzone company -- let's kick it off with a major-motion picture credit and a simple name change: O'Synchrony. Bidding ends in eight days!

Travel back to web sites of the past

The Wayback Machine is an archive of web pages as they were on specific dates in the past, all the way back to 1996. For instance, you can see the evolution of www.asynchrony.com.
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Bellevegan to speak at "Who owns culture?" forum

Thought this might be interesting to a few of you (I really was thinking of you, Dave), though I'm not really sure how to enjoy it other than to buy a plane ticket to The Big Apple and attend it yourself (perhaps Wired will have a transcript afterward).

I've never met Jeff Tweedy, a fellow Bellevegan (or Bellevillian, as some would have it), but my good friend's older brother went to high school with him and he was pretty cool. I just like his music (particularly the old UT days).

JEFF TWEEDY AND LAWRENCE LESSIG AT NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ON APRIL 7 Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig offer up their opinions regarding Napster, free culture, and the arts. Lessig wrote the 2004 book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate, will moderate the discussion. Tickets on sale Thursday, March 17 at 10 a.m via Smarttix.com. Additional Ticket info to follow.

WHO OWNS CULTURE?
LIVE from the NYPL in conjunction with Wired magazine
Jeff Tweedy
Lawrence Lessig
Steven Johnson
Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Celeste Bartos Forum

Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 Beta Available

I've tried a number of desktop search engines and my favorite at the moment is Copernic. One of the best features is its ability to index network drives, which is pretty important to many people here. It also seems to be very stable and doesn't obviously slow down the computer even when indexing.

The new beta has a number of enhancements including Mozilla Thunderbird support.

Firefox Upgrade available

All Firefox users are encouraged to download security update at mozilla.org

February 24, 2005, (Mountain View, CA). The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today released an update to its award-winning Firefox 1.0 browser. The Firefox security update is available for the 27 million users who have already downloaded the free browser. The Mozilla Foundation encourages all users to download the update, which is available now on all platforms at www.mozilla.org.

Here's the download page.

Gmail invites available

If you'd like a gmail (google mail) account and haven't been able to snag an invite, your wait is over. isnoop.net has a gmail spooler with scores of donated gmail invites for the taking.