Gaspartorriero.it

In English, for Sharon’s sake!

Sharon made me think about big guys and small guys. At the end of a lovely email she wrote me today:

Noticing the trend of ‘the big boys’ to be on everyone’s blogs and us little guys to be on only a few, I’m hoping that we can continue to promote each other. I love the idea of the blogroll, as that is what builds a community.

Which caused me to wonder: is blogstardom to be actively seeked? Shall we blog for fame and glory?

Yes, there are some blogs that are more popular, more cited, more blogwhored than others. What makes them relevant to me, and relevancy is a totally subjective perception, is their voice. I like their tone, and find their subjects interesting, inspiring, provocative, amusing.

But they cannot force their popularity upon me, nor buy their way to blogstardom. If they stop saying interesting things, or if I stop finding interesting what they say, they are no longer popular with me.

So I looked in awe at the logs of my site, showing almost 1000 different readers of this page in the last two months, which means a lot of people I never met, and asked myself:

a) is unemployment running this high?

b) do I care?

c) should I do something?

My answers are yes, yes, and no. Just a suggestion:

Vai trabalhar, vagabundo!

Voto Online?

Blackholebrain segnala questo interessante articolo su come Microsoft abbia cercato di modificare il risultato di un online poll che poneva questa domanda: “Nel 2002 svilupperete in Java o in .net?”.

I logs del sito dimostrano come i voti pro .net, arrivati massicciamente da un certo punto in poi, vengano tutti dal dominio microsoft.com. Primo indizio della prossima guerra commerciale.

What do they do?

Interessante thread su FuckedCompany.com sull’ennesima dotcom che sta per andare a gambe all’aria. Un lettore commenta:

I find that most of the companies in FC have sites that don’t tell me what they do in 10 seconds or less. I could see if you had a really complex product, but these products are all usually “simplify buisness operations” types. Well how does your product do this? When car tires are sold they don’t say “will increase your frictional coefficient during high velocity non-linear accelerative differentials” the say “These tires will keep you and your children on the road better then anyone elses!”

Le due risposte a questo commento sono una sarcastica:

Well, of COURSE they have to go into obsessive detail. There’s that little thing about the Emperor’s new clothes. If you knew right off the bat what these morons were selling (namely “We’re going into business so the CEO can get rich and get hair implants to replace all of the hair he burned out on bad cocaine in college”), you wouldn’t have anything to do with them, right? However, if the explanation of “What We Do” is buried in enough jargon that your eyes glaze over within the first few sentences, they have a better chance of selling their services and “alliances” to fellow MBA geeks who want hair implants themseves. Does this make sense now?

e l’altra pessimista:

We all seem to learn how to read this male bovine post processed excreta. There isn’t much simple language left in marketing. But that is hardly news. Even the barrels on the highway are formally known as “impact attenuation devices”. We should all be issued a shovel (excuse me, lever action effluent transfer device) at birth just to make our way through the world.

That, however, is not the worst of it. The worst of it is actually the internals of the tech world. That is where they put all the people who flunked english and have them create concepts which they describe with metaphors. I actually found to my horror some years ago that I understood an IBM manual. A clear signal the mind had burned too many of its bridges.

Required reading nel corso “Web Communication: speak with your own voice“.

Le mie Nike personalizzate…

sono finalmente arrivate! Ordinate il 27 novembre, spedite il 13 dicembre con UPS dalla Germania, consegnate l’8 gennaio a Como. Non male. Mi ritengo a pieno titolo “cliente insoddisfatto“, senza però arrivare a certi eccessi.

La ciliegina: ieri pomeriggio telefonano in casa (io non c’ero) per dire che l’autista UPS non ha fatto la consegna perchè sul campanello c’era scritto “Cavadini – Torriero” invece di “Gaspar Torriero” come da bolla di consegna. Me lo immagino, davanti al portone, assalito da un dubbio mortale: citofono? non citofono? meglio scappare!

Sono stato a Vienna per le feste di fine anno: c’ero già stato d’estate ma d’inverno l’atmosfera è sicuramente suggestiva e particolare: elegante, velatamente nostalgica e romantica, offre la possibilità di trascorrere dei giorni veramente speciali. Il tempo ci ha accompagnato con deboli nevicate, un vento fortissimo e un freddo micidiale; siamo sopravvissuti!!!

Ora che sono tornato posso dedicarmi alle mie gare e ai miei allenamenti; oltre alle “solite e classiche gare” quest’anno mi sono iscritto anche a queste: Die Super-vier; mi sto allenando in previsione della prima e ieri mentre mi allenavo su una delle piste del circuito mi sono reso conto che (rigorosamente in ordine:)

1. Ho un ginocchio che sta per cedere (e come inizio non c’è male…)

2. Bisognerà avere un bel coraggio per lanciarsi nell’impresa (ma quello è l’unica cosa che proprio non manca…)

3. Bisognerà avere una bella preparazione (questa invece è rigorosamente in ritardo…)

4. Si parte sempre per vincere ma in questo caso si spera di arrivare… vista le piste, gli avversari e i tempi dello scorso anno!!!

5. Nonostante tutti questi piccoli particolari le farò tutte una in fila all’altra e si vedrà!

Vi racconterò.

Andy