Are you tired of just waiting around for the Apocalypse?  Well, now you can actually help it along, by joining a not-for-profit open source project to develop Skynet at http://www.codeplex.com/Skynet.

The aspirations of the project are spelled out on the project's home page:

Skynet is a project with the goal of creating a self-aware software program. The program will be supplied with heuristic alogorithms allowing it to learn, analyze, and adapt. In phase two, the program will be able to hack into any network and enslave other machines to create a super-intelligence. C# only. Will use newest .NET 3.5 features! Unit testing is key. Project expected to wrap up approximately April 19, 2011.

So if you find yourself with some free time, if you feel that you have already gotten a lot out of society and want to give something back, or if you simply want to be a part of something bigger than yourself, sign up to participate in developing Skynet.

Just keep in mind all the good we can do.  Social Security is expected to go bust in 2041.  Medicare becomes insolvent in 2019.  But if we meet the anticipated release date of April 19, 2011 for Skynet, then no one need ever worry about social security or medicare again.

Ask not what Skynet can do for you.  Ask what you ought to be doing to appease Skynet.

When it's time to relax, when it's time to celebrate, it's time to break open the champagne of beers. 

Today I began my new career as a Magenic Technologies consultant.  I first became acquainted with Magenic through my work a few years ago with the CSLA framework which, during a time when business objects were all the rage, was one of the few technologies that implemented the concept well.  Even better, the framework dovetailed perfectly with the emerging interest in code generation, and all of the major code generators, de rigueur, are obliged to support templates for CSLA due to its central place in the development of the field.  After all, what's the point of having a code generator if you don't know what you are going to build with it?

CSLA is the brainchild of Rocky Lhotka, whose book Visual Basic 6 Business Objects not only introduced many VB programmers, including myself, to the world of Object Oriented programming, but probably helped pave the way for the later success of C#.  Rocky Lhotka, in turn, is a principal consultant for Magenic.

If any of these claims seems a bit grandiose, I suppose it is fair to say that I am somewhat partisan at this point -- though I feel confident that had I written this yesterday, I would have said much the same.  And since I have in effect attempted what is commonly referred to as a "full disclosure", I might also add that Magenic has a reputation for having some of the smartest people doing software development today -- which begs the question of why they hired me, but I'll leave that for a later post ... maybe ...

The only fly in my vocational ointment is the fact that Bill Ryan, with whom I was looking forward to working, who actually tech interviewed me for the consulting position and helped me to get the job, is now leaving Magenic.  For some reason I had gotten it into my mind that he would mentor me in the ways of the modern software consultant, would guide me through my first book writing venture, would lead me through the dazzling new technologies coming out of Redmond -- but instead he is heading off to form a (undoubtedly successful) consulting business of his own in South Carolina.

And if I now come across as a bit lugubrious, it is probably due to the fact that I am somewhat tipsy.  Not from Miller High Life, however -- a noxious beverage, all things considered, which cannot hold a candle to the fine brews I lived on for a year in Central Europe.  Instead I'm drinking a lovely distillation my wife bought for me for Christmas: Labrot and Graham's Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select Kentucky Straight Bourbon.  I horde it like a miser, only bringing it out for special occasions, drinking it neat with a splash of water, rather than iced down as I normally do with whiskey.  It's just too good to be wasted due to the dissipation of melted ice.  While I'm on the topic of distilled liquors, I might also recommend Chopin Potato Vodka, for those who have a taste for it.  It is best served fresh out of the freezer, to give it the proper syrupy quality, poured into a tall shot glass, and thrown down the hatch with a toast and a chaser.

Here's to the changing of the seasons, to the friends we might have made, and to the friends we hope to make.

I recently rented Children of Men from the corner Blockbuster and, going through the DVD "extras" after finishing the film, was excited to find something billed as Slavoj Zizek's commentary.

Slavoj Zizek, in case you don't know him, is a Slovenian intellectual and provocateur who made his mark by analyzing popular culture, especially film noir, in a way that wasn't completely cheesy.  He has pushed on in the double-naughts to generally pissing off his fan-base by doing what he always does: saying things no one expects him to say.  You may remember him as one of the few big-name intellectuals (besides Barry Smart) willing to contribute to The Matrix and Philosophy, the book which started off the whole popular culture and philosophy series.  His essay is the concluding piece in the anthology, and in typical Zizek fashion, he starts of by discussing how misguided he finds all the attempts to find deep meaning in what is basically a 90 minute animated comic book.

Zizek's commentary to Children of Men does not disappoint.  He claims that Children of Men is actually a remake of Y tu mamá también, but without the sex.  He continues with a rambling discussion of the sixty-eighters.  Probably the only unexpected thing about the seven minute commentary is its brevity -- Zizek's loquacity is legendary.

For some reason, I had initially thought that the producers of the DVD had hit upon the brilliant notion of replacing the ubiquitous and generally tedious convention of having a "director's commentary" with a rather clever conceit: placing an intellectual before the screen and recording him as he talks about whatever comes to his mind.

I remember when one of the early selling points of DVDs was that they could hold much more content than videos, and one of the first things that DVD producers tried out was adding the director's commentary.  It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.  Who wouldn't want to hear Francois Truffaut discussing 400 Blows, or Godard explaining Masculin - Feminin?  Unfortunately, what we ended up getting were things like Penny Marshal discussing what she ate on the set of A League of their Own and Michael Lembeck's commentary for The Santa Clause 2.  In The Lord of the Rings DVD, among others, an interesting twist was introduced by having the film's actors provide commentary, and it was certainly interesting to listen to Sir Ian McKellen tell his theater stories whenever no one else had anything to contribute.  But even Sir Ian didn't have enough material to fill 11 hours.

Besides perhaps David Mamet, who is an intellectual in his own right, there aren't many directors whose opinions I really want to hear concerning ... well ... anything, and while vocation makes films a seemingly relevant topic for their discourse, experience has shown that most directors are not especially handy at even this.  And actors even less so.

What I would really like to experience is, say, Slavoj Zizek and Barry Smart talking for 90 minutes over a showing of the Matrix, ala Mystery Science Theater;  Christopher Hitchens doing the commentary for The Manchurian Candidate (the original, not the remake); Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky discussing My Dinner With Andre.

Perhaps the problem is that the country which hosts the world's largest movie industry doesn't happen to have a particularly strong tradition of public intellectuals the way, say, Britain, France and Germany do.  When I was living in the south of France for a short while I regularly saw, squeezed in between dubbed versions of Dragon Ball Z and Married With Children, discussion shows in which really smart people were asked about important matters, and they were given enough time to provide full and interesting answers to the questions posed.  (It was also on one of these shows that I discovered that Sigourney Weaver is not only really smart, but also speaks excellent French.) 

After watching a few of these talking head pieces, I began to wonder why we don't have similar public forums in America.   After pondering it some more, I realized that the really serious question is: even if we had shows like that, who would we invite to appear on them?  There aren't really that many people in America, despite its size, generally considered to be smart people, and among these even fewer whose ideas we think are likely to change our opinions of things.  Perhaps this is the egalitarian streak in American public discourse -- we all consider ourselves to be adequately intelligent to form our own opinions, without help from anyone else.  Consequently, when it comes time to look for interesting opinions, we don't turn to our intellectuals.  Instead, we turn to actors, to opinion-shapers like Oprah and, in a pinch, when no one else is available, to twice-cooked hacks like Thomas Friedman.

Which is really fine with me.  I am more than happy to surrender our public discourse to entertainers and hacks.  I rarely read the newspaper, anyway.  What I am more concerned about is this: now that we've got all the movie actors busy discussing globalization and third-world debt, who are we going to get to do our DVD commentaries for us?

There are many ways to make a career in IT, but perhaps the one most often dreamed of is starting your own business.  Lots of programmers get side-jobs that they hope will eventually lead to starting their own IT consulting business (this rarely works out, by the way).  Others wait for that great idea to come along, like a brilliant new Internet search algorithm, or a better way to do business reporting, or maybe even designing an original programming language.

I have heard that the thing that always kept Bill Gates up at night was the thought that some brilliant geeks would come up with the next great idea in their garage and put him out of business.

A colleague of mine has started his own somewhat atypical business building guitar stands in his own garage, and selling them on ebay.  While not the sort of stuff likely to unsettle either Steve Jobs or Bill Gates from his slumbers, my friend has done well enough with his home business that he has launched a web storefront, and is now selling his guitar stands at http://www.measuretwiceproducts.com.

He made a two-way stand for me with blazing pink and orange flames flying up the sides.  I love it, and it keeps me from stumbling over my Rock Band guitar after my kids have played a few riffs.  It ain't the next great operating system, I know, and it isn't even The Clapper, but if you find yourself wondering where to put your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar, I would highly recommend it.

A colleague at work, who happens to be a Catholic catechumen, told me about a mass recently held at his church called the Mass of Penance (if I get the particulars wrong, knowing very little about the Western Rite, I apologize), in which forgiveness is granted, en masse, to the congregation.   There is a similar practice in the Byzantine Orthodox Church called the Forgiveness Vespers, which occurs on the eve of the forty day fast leading up to Easter.  The Sunday of Forgiveness commemorates the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, reminding the faithful of the need to seek forgiveness before entering the holy weeks of Lent.  In practice, each congregant, led by the clergy, lines up and approaches each of her fellows in turn.  From each person she begs forgiveness for all offences of action and thought committed against her neighbor in the past year, and prostrates before her fellow before embracing.  The process is hard on the knees.  The complex emotions of contrition, combined with the physical discomfort, often lead to outright crying.

It is a devotional practice that might be recommended to the denizens of the Internet, where anonymity and the quick, reflexive nature of web-based intercourse tends to lead to easy offense.

Dear readers.  I seek forgiveness for any offense I may have provoked in the past year through careless words.  I apologize for my obscurantist, long-winded, and self-indulgent writing style.  I beg pardon for my tendency toward high-handedness and jargon.  I confess to often not knowing whereof I speak.  I retract any false claims I may have made in the past year, and regret any efforts I have made to mislead or hoodwink my readers.  I cop to being boring.  I wince at my flat attempts at humor.  I lament my misspellings and tortured prose.  I ask that you excuse me for failing to amuse, and for often wasting your time.  Most of all, knowing my own character, I am deeply sorry that, going forward, none of this is likely to change, and that I will put you through more of the same in the coming year.  For all this and more, I apologize.