Practicalmadness

The last update to this Practicalmadness weblog was on March 7. Now, I’m no time expert, but it would appear to me that today is March 23 — which is a date more than two weeks after March 7. My hypothesis, which of course has yet to be fully formed or completely tested, is that it has been more than two weeks since this web site was last updated. However, more study is needed before we can say that with any certainty. After all, I don’t think anyone predicted the breach of the levees.

So what’s up, blog? I’ll tell you something that’s new with me: I will be speaking at the First-Ever International Rails Conference, to be held here in Chicago during the weekend of June 25.

My talk, titled “Meanwhile, In The Rest of the World…”, will be about designing web applications for a general audience, and avoiding certain assumptions one makes when you assume that everyone on the planet knows how to use del.icio.us-style “tags” just because you and your nerdy friends do. My audience will be up to 500 Ruby on Rails developers, and after I offend and insult them with my half-baked ideas about the user experience, you will find me carrying the Practicalmadness banner and fighting for truth, justice and the American way — in the hotel bar.

Meanwhile, on the rest of the internets:

• Some guy attended ShoWest and blogged about seeing the new Pixar movie Cars. And I’m glad to see Pixar is continuing their grand tradition of recruiting voice talent from public radio: we can look forward to hearing the Car Talk guys playing the talking race car protagonist’s sponsors in Cars. (As for me, I’m sorry, but they lost me at talking race cars. Even if they do look like Micro Machines.)

• The headline of the day on Newsvine: Doherty Pleads Guilty Then Kicks Reporter. We refer here, of course, to Brit rocker Pete Doherty, who you may remember was a supporting character in the Kate Moss cocaine scandal last year, and who reportedly did heroin and crack cocaine during a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

You may have noticed that I’m doing a lot of Wikipedia linking of late. I am, in fact, doing a lot of Wikipedia reading of late, because I can’t think of any other website that is as likely as Wikipedia to have content about Micro Machines, Crystal Pepsi and the political structure of the Iranian government, or whatever other thing I happen to be interested in this hour. This should not be taken as an endorsement of Wikipedia’s accuracy, its mission or even of wikis in general. This should instead be understood by you, Reader, as an acknowledgement that any website with such a plethora of obscure pop culture nonsense is a website that I will read and enjoy.