The Brain of Shawn

Yesterday, Linux Journal let me go crazy with an April Fool’s Day joke. I came up with the idea to switch our focus to an old operating system, BeOS, and pretended to seriously report on things pertaining to BeOS. The whole LJ crew got into the fun, and we ended up with quite a round of shenanigans throughout the day.

The downside is that I started working at Linux Journal a couple years too late. April Fool’s website spoofs aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, so the word didn’t get out like it might have even as little as one year ago. Still, it was incredibly fun, and for the most part was taken well by the audience. I particularly enjoyed writing the absurd little “articles” that posted on the front page. They’re very short, and linked below if anyone wants to see them:

• Video explaining the editorial shift
• Go Purple for Pentium Pro
• BeOS - The King of Recycling
• Antiquated Hardware Revitalized, Not Happy
• Bloggers are Bonkers for BeOS!
• BeOS Cluster Goes Live
• Sony Rumored to Buy BeOS
• NYC Subways Embed BeOS
• Operating System Programmers Flock to BeOS

The funniest part of the day was that a comment on the youtube video appreciated my humor, and thought my geeky hairdo was “staged” for the spoof. Uh… That’s just how my hair looks.

Thanks to all that played along, and thanks to Linux Journal for allowing my idea to overtake the website.

You have to be a geek to appreciate this…

Change your website’s color to purple today, to support the Pentium Pro!

For more information, check out Linux Journal!

There’s so much to say about the trip to Houston, but I’ll try to stick to pertinent information, and leave things like wearing a “Feeling Lucky” shirt at a restaurant on gay night out of the story.

Linux Journal flew me out to Texas for a meeting. I wasn’t entirely sure what the meeting would involve (I suspect part of it was just “played by ear” on their end too.) They actually flew a couple other people out as well, including Jill Franklin and Mitch Frazier. (Carlie Fairchild, Katherine Druckman, and Mark Irgang were already there.)

The specific details of the meetings aren’t terribly interesting, but part of the outcome is this:

Which is, you know, pretty cool. I will continue to be the video Gadget Guy, and we might come up with other cool things for both the website and magazine. They’re all such a great group to work with, I expect awesomeness in the future.

I’m also still working full time at the school here in Michigan, and have no intentions of changing that. Who knows what the future will bring, but I really love my job at the school. I expect I’ll do some more traveling than I’m used to, but that’s actually pretty exciting.

So there you have it. Linux Journal is awesome, the people are awesome, and unless I do something really dumb, I should be working with them for the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned later for a podcast. I’ll probably talk a bit about the trip there too.

I got to talk to the family this morning with Skype’s video chat. Video really does make it more personal. And Skype works so darn well that the process is painless.

If you commute, do you Skype with your family? You should try it…

And I’m at work. Because there’s work to be done. And that’s what I do.

UPDATE: 10:30 — still here.
UPDATE: 11:30 — uh hu. Still here.
UPDATE: 12:24 — going home. Gotta work in a few hours!
UPDATE: 12:56 — OK, I forgot a server that needed to be updated. Really going home now…

Remember a while back I mentioned I was going to be on television as a caller on The Lab with Leo Laporte? Well, episode 157 aired on Thursday, and I snagged myself a copy of it today. It only airs in Australia and Canada, but they offer torrents of the show after it airs, so I don’t feel bad about downloading it. Also, I posted the snippet with me on YouTube. Here ya go:

Next time, I’ll GET that Apple Butter…