Episode 19 - Lordy Lordy Look Who's......

Robin, Isabelle (pinch hitting for Ken) and I got together the other night to talk user interfaces, usability and the internet. We started by talking about Windows 7 and Ubuntu and the horrible product that Isabelle was using in a French class she teaches at the University.

We then realized the internet was forty years old this week, which means it will leave its wife for a younger woman and buy a sports car... This lead us into a discussion of the history of huge communication changes, and Robin came up with what I thought was the best one of all, the invention of writing.

We talked a little sci fi of course as well.

We missed Ken this time out, hope you can be back next time buddy.

Enjoy episode 19 (just changed the web provider, hoping that this helps).

Episode 18 - Remembering the Interrupted Creativity

Well this is the final episode before the coming academic term at Algoma University, where we all work. The topic turned, not surprisingly, to education. (A note, the SD card that I use on the recorder ended up filling up so we end abruptly around 59 minutes or so, perhaps this is some sort of sign to shorten the damned episodes a little...)

We talked a bit about our experiences in education, including one from Robin where he talked about a prof whose name I edited out at Western. The key, you should not complain if the course materials are in Arabic...

Of course we talked a little about education in the past, and some sci fi, though not much. We also talked about the importance of memory vs creativity in learning.

Then Ken told us about blowing stuff up with the Canadian Armed Forces...

Enjoy episode 18

Episode 17 - Searching For Evergreens

Yeah, we have all been talking about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal and Bing and google and what have you, but have you ever thought about the searching you do, and have done well before there were search engines? I am talking here about library searching. Yes of course, Ken and Robin are our library guys here at Algoma University, and if you have ever listened to TC at all you know that we talk a lot about libraries, but this is a very special episode.... (cue cheesy music).

We were joined by Art Rhyno of the University of Windsor and Dan Scott and Kevin Beswick of Laurentian University, librarians all, ok Kevin is sort of a poser librarian, but well, I was outnumbered by the librarians. Happily, later Maddie and Isabelle showed up. These guys are setting up an open source catalogue for our libraries. This is VERY cool, even for me, captain psychology. Evergreen, the open ILS system is now used all over the place, even Armenia!

Now there are times in this episode where I have no idea what the heck they are talking about, but for the most part they made it clear. The key thing here is that they are doing this open source, and this is the opposite of the way it usually works.

We did not talk too much Sci Fi in this one, and only a little history. The history we did talk about was about the Library of Congress, that apparently was started out by a donation from Thomas Jefferson, who knew? OK, like all the library guys knew and I am an idiot... I think the Dewey Decimal System is a scam, as Kramer mentioned in Seinfeld. Apparently Dewey is not open, whereas Library of Congress is. This just reinforces the point to me.

Many thanks to Art (who has a community newspaper in Essex, ON) Dan Scott (who has a fine blog called CoffeeCode and self confessed library nerd in training Kevin Beswick.

Oh and Dan has the best radio voice ever.

I hope you enjoy episode 17.

Episode 16 - Google Wave of Mutilation

It has been a while for sure. Ken, Robin and I often got together on the weekend during the last few months, but it was usually to talk about and watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Well, much to the delight of Josh from Israel, the hockey season is over, and we are back with an exciting new topic. Man what a lame sentence... Anyway, in episode 16 we talked about the new Google Wave initiative, that is explained here.

Robin and Ken did their homework and explained it to me. Wave seems to be a mashup of a wiki, all of your social networking and social media stuff, google docs, and email. Oh and twitter... This may replace email, but we were all quite skeptical.

Both Ken and Robin are not twitter people, though, I am. They claim not to have enough time in the day for all of this social networking, damn it I say, make time!

We discussed communication tools that have changed the world, such as printing presses, the telegraph, the phone etc. Robin feels this wave thing is just the phone coming back at us with more content, and he is opposed to phones. I am with him on this.

Both Robin and I remembered the ABC tv after school special called, The Wave from about 1981 or so. It was creepy..

We ended by talking about how many times we had met Prime Ministers, Premiers or the Queen. Both Robin and I figure she is not our leader, as we did not have a chance to vote against her. Ken believes this makes us traitors...

Shout outs to Jim from Fort Worth, and Josh and Esther from Israel. Thanks for the feedback guys.

Enjoy episode 16

Episode 15 - The GhostNet (and the virus) in the machines

This episode, we congregated beyond the confines of Dave's and Isabelle's comfy basement and returned to stately Hernden manor, which was last heard of in Episode 7 - Olymtech for those of you keeping score at home.

Without Battlestar Galactica to keep our motley crew talking, we turned this week to two separate yet tangentially related occurrences: the release of the report documenting the discovery of GhostNet by researchers at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto and the InfoWar Monitor as well as the imminent activation of the Conficker.c virus on April 1st. Heady times indeed!

We also took time out at the beginning of episode to read listener email from Joshua in Israel (hi Josh!) and raise him to the pantheon of minor Internet celebrity-hood (the fame clock is now ticking...).

GhostNet reads like it is right out of a fictional TV show like 24 (hat-tip to Christine): a suspected cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries, 30% of which are high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. Conficker.c is yet another of these pesky viruses that make IT types sweat and talking heads on TV lick their lips in anticipation of reading news that hopefully will be sexy and apocalyptic.

This led us to talk about cool hacking topics like social engineering which interestingly enough has less to do with modern, l33t code than it has to do with good 'ole fashioned confidence schemes. Conficker.c reminded us of very ancient biological viruses and what these have meant in human history and medicine. Along the way Ken plugged cyber-punk author Richard K. Morgan whose superlative creation, ex-UN Envoy Takeshi Kovacs, watched his comrades tear themselves apart after being infected by a Rawlings Virus strike at the Innenin beachhead.

We wrapped with the lovely Isabelle playing word association with us in the segment we like to call "Them Guys is Smart".

As a bonus, Dave interviewed guests at Alanna's house the next night, asking them about computer viruses.

So, a big shout again to Josh and we hope you enjoy Episode 15.

Episode 14 - So Say We Four, Part Deux, or, It's Not the Alcohol It's the Vodka

Last Friday was the finale of the amazing sci fi show we have talked so much about, Battlestar Galactica. I was out at the psychology honours thesis conerence but I made it home in time to hang with Maddie, Isabelle and Ken and watch the end of the show.

(By the way it is pretty good that Maddie is getting all of this podcasting experience, as she is taking over for Isabelle on Broca's Area soon).

Once the show ended we all started talking, and we figured we ought to record this episode, even without Robin. He actually asked us the next day 'what are we going to do on Fridays now?"

It was cool to see a resolution of the show (and there are spoilers here in the episode). We talked about colonization in general, and New France in particular a bit. Then, out of nowhere, I got the hiccups. Isabelle blamed it on the alcohol, but I am pretty sure it is the fault of the vodka, not the alcohol (which may be a subtle distinction...) I used my grandmother's old cure of drinking a glass of water upside down, and I was fine!

We hope you enjoy episode 14.

Episode 13 - It's My Duty 2 B 1337 LOL

So, we are pumping these things out like crazy eh? Robin is quite the motivator, as is his choice of Scotch for this week. The three of us went to the Algoma University Senate meeting as we do each week and before the meeting Robin told a story about not getting the proper sort of documentation that he needed for a project. As the story unfolded it was pretty clear this was about nothing other than a bad email, so our topic: communication.

Communication has changed a great deal in the past few years what with email, IM, twitter and the like.

I lamented the lack of communications problems in Sc Fi, but frankly, what are you going to do, the stuff has to be readable, watchable.

Historically one wonders if people were lamenting the decline in language when the phone came out, or when wax tablets started being used.

This episode features the debut of our new segment "Them guys is smart" moderated by Isabelle. When you hear that bit you will understand the title.

Enjoy episode 13.