Caffeinated Coder

As I mentioned in this last post, the Austin Alt.NET conference last fall was one of the best conferences that I had ever attended. Nevertheless, I liked the second one in Seattle this last weekend better.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. Alt.NET has finally been defined - There was quite a bit of time spent at the first conference and in the news groups afterwards arguing about fundamental issues like what Alt.NET meant and whether or not the name was too divisive. Although these questions were important to hash out in the beginning, the topic quickly grew stale for me and I certainly didn’t relish the idea of listening to even more debate about it. Apparently I wasn’t the only one that felt this way because the only mention of it was a topic suggestion done in jest about renaming Alt.Net which was promptly greeted by groans and eye rolling. No longer having to deal with this mental baggage meant that there was much more time to focus on substantive technical issues. For example, I was pleasantly surprised when the opening night fishbowl immediately delved into a top notch discussion about whether or not polyglot programming is a desirable industry trend.
2. Open Space Format No Longer an Issue - Another roadblock that caused the first conference to get off to a slow start was the skepticism regarding the Open Space format. While everyone eventually warmed up to this approach, I remember quite a few sarcastic barbs the opening night that were funny but ultimately detracted from the quality of the discussion. The fact that the organizers didn’t really have to waste any time explaining or converting people to the Open Spaces philosophy this time around was another contributing factor to how quickly discussions became productive.
3. Better Mix of Geek Celebrities, Alpha Geeks, and Regular Geeks - Expanding the participant list to 150 and reserving 50 spots for invitation only celebrity geeks was a stroke of genius. The mix at the first conference was great, but the mix at this one was even better. In my opinion, the biggest threat for future conferences in terms of “jumping the shark” would come from altering the number of participants or unique geek ratio too much.
4. Microsoft Employees No Longer on the Defensive - In Austin, I definitely got the sense that Microsoft employees were either walking on eggshells or else (often legitimately) defensive. Since then, I believe that the ALT.NET group has collectively decided that the ideology\movement is ultimately grounded in .NET and thus the purpose of the group is to push Microsoft into improving the current development experience rather than trying to instigate a mass exodus of developers to other platforms. I think this shift in mind set made a huge difference in how productive conversations were and how willing prominent Microsoft employees were to attend. Some of the more notable Microsoft attendees included Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, Brad Abrams, John Lam, Dustin Campbell, Glenn Block, Howard Dierking, and many more.
5. More Focus on Positive Examples of Microsoft Technologies- Instead of focusing too much on canonical examples of tools and technologies that Alt.NET’ers have traditionally criticized, such as the Entity Framework, Enterprise Library, or SSIS, many of the discussions focused around technologies that are being received more warmly, such as the MVC Framework, IronRuby, IronPython, and F#. Besides demonstrating how scary smart he was by diagramming out some of the internal implementation details of the DLR, John Lam impressed many Alt.NET’ers by mentioning things like his regular IM conversations with the head of the JRuby project or his team’s painstaking efforts to move towards passing 100% of the Ruby community test suite. Phil Haack enjoyed similar kudos for the efforts that he and his MVC team have made to solicit and incorporate community feedback into their product as well as learn from existing MVC frameworks in the industry and even openly release the source code.
6. Leadership - I hesitate to even mention this one because Scott Bellware contributed so much to the first conference and he was so relaxed and agreeable this weekend. But let’s face it, as a conference leader, David Laribee just doesn’t have the same baggage to contend as Scott Bellware, whose publicly confrontational demeanor tends to cause friction at every turn. Despite poking fun at him from time to time on my blog, I respect Bellware and wish he was still blogging, but I have to admit that I’m glad that Laribee took over the organizing reigns for this conference. By the way, be careful about complimenting Laribee on how well the conference was organized or he will try to rope you into helping organize the next one…:-)

So what about a future Part 3 to this conference series?

I heard about 3 different potential follow up Alt.NET conferences this weekend that would take place in Canada, Austin, and possibly Boston. I’m not sure which one will emerge as the next viable option, but I’m definitely going to stay alert for any news.

I don’t know if the next conference will be as good as this one, but the odds are that it will still be much better than the passive, spoon fed material that you can expect from traditional conferences.

The regular panel of judges used to select the monthly Caffeinated Codey winners are all far too hung over to competently decide the overall winners for the year, so I’ve decided to let the nominees fight it out pollDaddy style and then actually award the survivors real prizes for a change.

Rules

I have selected 4 categories with 5 nominees per category. All the nominees were either previous Caffeinated Codey winners or else featured in one of my review posts this year. For now, all of the categories revolve around humor, but perhaps if I can secure some proper sponsorship then I will do a second iteration that is slightly more technically focused.

In order to choose your favorites, click on the Vote link next to each category below. I apologize for not embedding the polls directly in this page, but the Jeff Julian and Subtext project team were wise enough to prevent me from entering script tags in the source page, so I had to settle for low tech polldaddy links instead.
The nominees with the most votes in each category as of 8 am on January 10th will be declared the official winners and receive full bragging rights for the entire year. But that’s not all…

Prizes

The four lucky winners will also each receive gift certificates to one of my favorite shopping destinations, Despair, Inc. I’m not sure about the exact amount of the certificates yet because I am trying to get some official sponsorship from this most excellent site, but if all else fails I’ll at least hook the winners up with the cheap-bastard $10 gift cards so they buy cool stuff like this.

Ok, enough with the chit-chat. Let the games begin.

…and the Nominees are…

Best Blog Post Title [VOTE]

1. Evan Hoff for Off-the-Shelf RAD is for Pimps, Hookers, and Johns–not Marriage [Sept CC]
2. Justice Gray for Javascript raped my dog, and other falsehoods. [Sept CC]
3. Roy Osherove for Do you like Boobs? [Sept CC]
4. Ben Sheirman for Don’t Make Squirrel Burgers [Oct CC]
5. Max Pool for Don’t Unit Test? Start Counting Your “Oh Shits!” [Nov CC]

Best Technical Satire [VOTE]

1. Philipp Lenssen for What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? [Nov CC]
2. Sean Hederman for Review: Windows XP. [Dec CC]
3. Anonymous author for Alt.NET Pursefight round-up for 20 December [Dec CC]
4. Fake Steve Jobs for (Daniel Lyons) Breakfast with an Apple lawyer [Dec CC]
5. Justin Etheredge for The Programmer Dress Code [Dec CC]

Most Fun with Multi-Media [VOTE]

1. Justice Gray for Audio highlights of .NET Rocks with Jeffrey Palermo & the MS MVC [Audio: Dec CC]
2. D’Arcy Lussier’s for If Book Publishers Were Smart 2 [Photo (Book Cover): Aug CC]
3. Rory Blythe for Neopoleon Goes YouTube - The Neopoleon Thanksgiving Special [Video: Nov Post]
4. Anonymous Alt.NET pursefight authors for Weekend round-up for 22-23 December: Alt.Netcracker Edition [Photo (Oren & Laribee dancing nutcracker suite): Dec CC]
5. Russell Ball for Scott Guthrie Gets an Image Makeover [Video: Oct post] - Sorry, I just couldn’t resist slipping this one in.

Best Blog Humor [VOTE]

1. Scott Hanselman for Caught in the Act [July CC]
2. Justice Gray for What DevTeach 2007 is missing at DevTeach 2007 [Aug CC]
3. Eric Sink for What Microsoft Doesn’t Want You to Know about WPF [Aug CC]
4. Mark Miller for My Last VSLive Session Ever? [Oct CC]
5. Rory Blythe for A New Religion - A Neopoleon Religion [Nov post]

I hope everyone enjoys rereading these nominations as much as I did.

A special thanks to all the bloggers who were nominated for helping to lighten up a sometimes overly serious profession. Good luck to you.

It’s time for the next installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards, where the link love flows for my favorite posts from the month.

1. For Most Obsessive Blog Comment Recovery Operation…Eric Sink for his post Be My Support Group. After losing a lengthy blog comment due to a random Firefox error, Eric describes his multi-hour effort to recover the data using a packet sniffer and some url-decoding. Eric has long since joined the dark side of the force (business and marketing), so can you imagine what he would have been like back in his hard core developer days?
2. For Best New Anonymous Blog Satire Site Devoted to a Single Mailing List … the collective monthly posts on the ALT.NET PurseFight site. Besides being a fine piece of satire, this site also serves as a decent Cliff Notes for those of us who can’t find the time to read all 56,000 emails a day that are generated by the hoards of geek prima donas lurking on this monstrous mailing list. Please God…let the anonymous author of the site be Scott Bellware. I promise I’ll stop playing kitten bowling if you mess with everyone’s reality in such a deliciously ironic way.
3. For Best Placenta Humor…Rory Blythe for his post Video: Burfday Sucks - A Expose of Birfday Suckage by Rory - Part One. Rory does another brilliant YouTube comedy schtick on the meaning of birthdays. This guy REALLY hates any acknowledgement of his birthday, which is why I am going to personally organize a nation wide letter-writing campaign to declare Rory’s Birthday a national holiday next year. I have also already completed the tech specs for a state-of-the-art birthday bot that will spam him with cheerful birthday clichés in every language over every known communication channel next year. There’s no need to thank me Rory.
4. For Best Virtuoso Display of Sarcasm… Sean Hederman for his post Review: Windows XP. I was left in awe of Sean’s superior sense of sarcasm after reading this biting parody on Microsoft’s latest operating system. By pretending that Vista preceded Windows XP, Sean artfully makes his point that Vista has some serious issues while simultaneously causing Maalox sales to soar in Redmond.
5. For Best Christmas Hoax…Fake Steve Jobs for his series of posts that culminated in Breakfast with an Apple lawyer. In order to highlight the recent ThinkGeek controversy, the fake Jobso pretended that he was being threatened and bribed into shutting down his blog by Apple legal goons. His Christmas Eve confession sparked much spirited debate between the embarrassed duped readers and the smug know-it-alls on whether or not he had pushed the boundaries of satire too far. I know I was personally devastated as I watched hoards of Venture Capitalists suddenly lose interest in my brilliant new business plan.
6. For Best Journalistic Researching Effort...Rob Enderle for his post Is Apple Rotting from the Inside Out? Rob was one of the people who took Fake Steve Job’s post a little too seriously and posted some harsh public accusations against Apple without first “checking his sources”, which is a nice way of saying that he posted his diatribe two days after FSJ publicly confessed to it being a hoax. I guess professional journalists aren’t held to the same researching standards as hobbyist bloggers. The comments on this site are brutal, but thoroughly entertaining. You know you’ve screwed up big when you’re last name is combined with tard to form a new popular word (i.e. only an Endertard would do something that irresponsible).
7. For Best Audio Cliff Notes…Justice Gray’s post Audio highlights of .NET Rocks with Jeffrey Palermo & the MS MVC. After several pleasant months of relative silence, the “Master of Metrosexual Mischief” has once again emerged on the blogging scene to accost us with his unique brand of humor. In this post, he distills a one hour dotnetrocks episode on the MVC framework into 7 second remix of truly inspirational narcissism. Well played sir.
8. The Personal Hygiene Exposé… Justin Etheredge for his post The Programmer Dress Code. It provides disturbing virtual photo album of some of the most influential computer scientists in our field. After reading this post, I’ve decided to stop bathing and doing laundry as part of a concerted effort to enhance my professional credentials.
9. For Most Frightening Glimpse into the Potential Future of GeeksWithBlogs… D’Arcy Lussier for his post An Open Letter to Jeff Julian: Please Review My Expectations. D’Arcy causes mass hysteria with this post when he threatens to ban me for life from GeeksWithBlogs. The state department is currently leaning on the Canadian government to deport D’Arcy to Turkey so he can languish in a prison as proper punishment for his heresy.
10. For Best Web 2.0 Holiday Cheer… James Dellow for his post Christmas 2.0: An interview with Barney Twinkletoes from Santa about Enterprise Web 2.0. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without elf social networking sites and mashups involving Elf! Maps and the CRM Naughty or Nice database. You’d better be good this year or your name will appear in Santa’s naughty RSS feed.

Once again, congratulations to all the winners. Hopefully we’ll meet someday so you can claim the alcoholic or caffeinated prize beverage of your choice.

In case you’ve missed the prior award ceremonies, you can find them here.

Ok, maybe not in a bar…but I would definitely listen to DotNetRocks here and there.

In fact, I’ve listened to most of the 300 episodes of this popular tech podcast over the last few years. I don’t burn through quite as many shows now that my commute time has been dramatically reduced, but I still listen while driving, running, vacuuming, grocery shopping, painting, mowing, and shoveling.

I am especially grateful to the show for helping to keep me in the good graces of my spousal unit, since I am much less likely to neglect tedious household chores as long as I have one of their episodes loaded on my mp3 payer. For that, I promise to hand deliver each of them a good bottle of scotch the next time I am able to make it to a conference that they are attending.

If you haven’t already listened to the 300th episode in which Carl Franklin interviews his co-host, Richard Campbell, I highly recommend it. Richard is a talented story teller and shares over 30 years of some seriously geeky and entertaining stories.

I especially liked the story of Goliath, the 1972 20MB Hewlett-Packard Hard Drive that spews forth deadly flying disks and giant car eating magnets. I was so absorbed in this episode that I missed my turn on the way home and finally threw in a few gratuitous errands so that I could finish listening to it.

Kudos to Carl and Richard for consistently producing such high quality content. I sincerely hope that they make another 300 episodes.

It’s time for the next installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards, where the link love flows for my favorite posts from the month.

1. For Most Likely to Cause My Co-Workers Grief…Jeff Atwood’s post Don’t Forget to Lock Your Computer where he talks about the wonderful world of goating. Don’t get excited, you’ll have to go elsewhere for your daily dose of bestiality. However, this post does offer plenty of good ideas on how you can punish your co-workers the next time they leave their computer unlocked. I can’t wait to replace someone’s desktop with a screenshot of a desktop or replace their screensaver with the the bluescreen screensaver.
2. For Most Persuasive TDD argument…Max Pool for his post Don’t Unit Test? Start Counting Your “Oh Shits!”. I had to quit counting my own exclamations after a few hours because I ran out of fingers and toes, but otherwise it is a very solid suggestion. It effectively drives home the point that the time wasted on tracking down stupid “collateral damage” bugs usually far outweighs the time it takes to simply write the unit tests that would catch those bugs for you automatically.
   
3. For Best Thanksgiving Parable…Rory Blythe for his post Here’s how we’re doing this thing… As you can tell from some of my recent posts, I’ve become a big fan of Rory’s unique style of creative humor this last month so I had a hard time picking out my favorite. This winning post covers a wide gamut of deeply philosophical issues including Captain Bark-Bark’s defecation habits, the unfortunate cultural demise of tar and feathering, innovative reading systems based on hydrochloric acid being injected into eyeballs, turkeynog, and traditional thanksgiving parables involving backstabbing, duplicitous sandwiches. For his award, I have special ordered the new turkeynog flavored blend of coffee from starbucks.
4. For Most Compelling Reasons to Hire a Software Repo Man…Steve McConnell for his post on Technical Debt. The iconic author of the classic tech book, Code Complete, explains how to distinguish between good and bad technical debt and suggests ways to make debt more visible to stakeholders as well as how to gradually start paying them down. Finally, a voice of reason that suggests an intelligent way to balance both the goal of staying in business with the desire to avoid software maintenance hell.
   
5. For Best Rant Directed at Non-Developers…Karle Moore for his post I’m a Software Developer, but I don’t work with computers. If you’ve ever hesitated to admit that you’re a software developer for fear of being asked to solve all forms of computer and electronic problems, then you’ll appreciate this rant. My family and friends now all think that I am an adult video store clerk, but at least now I can blissfully focus on screwing up my own computer for a change.
   
6. For Best Mort Mugshot...Paul Vick for his post Is It Time to replace Mort?. Paul attempts to singe-handedly heal the collective VB.NET inferiority complex by attempting to replace the toothless, unkempt hillbilly version of Mort we all know and love with a Ben Franklin-like persona. Before any of you VB.NET programmers rush out to embrace this new Mort 2.0 image, let me ask you this. Who would you rather party with? Which Mort is more likely to have a spare bottle of Jack Daniels to help ease your pain after enduring another three hour HR meeting?
   
7. For Most Effort Spent to Make Fun of Microsoft…Philipp Lenssen for his post What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? Philip pokes fun at Microsoft’s questionable design sense by showing screen shots of GMail that he gradually transforms into something truly hideous by progressively adding some classic Microsoft design and usability touches.
   
8. For Best School of Hard Knocks Lessons…Scott Watermasysk for his post 7 of the Hardest Things I Learned About Writing Software. Scott offers some excellent and concise advice that covers some of the bigger mistakes that developers tend to make in their quest to create software. Pay attention, because these are the “oh crap, I just wasted 10 months of my life on something that nobody cares about” types of mistakes that you’ll probably think are trivial until one of them swoops down and knocks you on your butt some day.
9. For Best Developer Origin Story…Oren Eini for his post Geek Scripture. Have you ever come back the next morning after a truly inspirational day of programming and you couldn’t figure out what the heck you were thinking? I’m still waiting on my first truly inspirational day of programming, but as soon as it happens I will no longer feel bad when I come in the next day and can’t figure out what I did. All you geeks who figure out how to procreate can now retell Ayende’s parable to generations of your socially maladjusted offspring.

Finally, I am breaking tradition and giving out an award to a non-blogger for his truly inspired idea.

1. For Best Captcha Implementation…Frozenbear (I guess only bloggers give out their true identity) for his website hotcaptcha.com. I am seriously going to lobby John Alexander and Jeff Julian to consider using this HotOrNot-based safeguard against spammers for geekswithblogs. Just think of how many more comments would be left on bloggers sites if they got to choose hot looking women each time instead of typing in those stupid abstract letters every time they wanted to read a comment! I know the number of comments that I personally leave on my own blog would skyrocket.
   

Once again, congratulations to all the winners. Hopefully we’ll meet someday so you can claim the alcoholic or caffeinated prize beverage of your choice.

In case you’ve missed the prior four award ceremonies, you can find them here.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to watch a stand-up comedy routine filmed in infrared? If you haven’t already watched Rory’s creepy YouTube Thanksgiving tribute to spiders and pretentious amateur film-makers, then grab yourself a set of ear-phones and get ready for ten minutes of well-edited and quirky hilarity. I particularly liked his spirited impression of spiders and his dire warning against abusing mouth wash towards the end.

Warning, if you watch this video, then you’ll probably want to find yourself a securely fitting mouth net before going to bed tonight.

For an added video bonus, check out this spoof on 24 that explores what the my once favorite show might have looked like if it took place in the golden era of internet technology that was 1994. Many thanks to Rob for sharing this gem.

…he’d definitely want in on some of this action.

I clipped some quotes from the comment section of a recent post by a popular blogger. See if you can guess the blogger’s identity and topic of the post based on the comments below.

• Commenter: I think you weren’t hugged enough as a child.
• Blogger: I think you lost your virginity to an uncle.
• Commenter: codeeliterer.com is still open for you to start your own pseudo-intellectual negativity community.
• Blogger: Oh aren’t you the clever little anonymous blog coward.
• Commenter: ……he inspires, you turn people off and come off as miserable.
• Blogger: Take another handful of blue pills and go back to sleep…Now go away and let the grown-ups handle the grown-up stuff. You’ll be of age soon enough and then you can carry the fight.
  
• Commenter: Honestly I think this negative outlook will discourage people from finding their passion and running with it.
• Blogger: I’m all for discouraging people from running with scissors.
• Commenter: Is there a specific person you are referring to?
  
• Blogger: Dude, this isn’t Survivor. If you’re addicted to over-dramatized bitch-on-bitch slap fests, pop yourself some corn and sit yourself in front of the other glowing screen. I’m not here to satisfy the blood lust that you’ve allowed to take hold of you through lack of diligence and discipline.
• Commenter: Finally you just came out and said it. You’re gold, we’re all shit. We get it.
• Blogger: …your say is transparently not much more than a mano-a-mano, craven attack from an anonymous lurker.
• Commenter: Douchebag…Can we get a feed that excludes
  “Look at me, I’m controversial and I have something to SAY!” rants? We get it. You’re special. Conformity is bad. Nothing that comes from a large corporation is good. Very clever…Do you think that you’d have many readers if you left
  .com and went out on your own?
• Blogger: If I could get rid of neolithic commentary like this as a result, it might be worth it.

Was anyone able to guess the topic of the post? I would tell you, but I can’t actually remember anymore. I was too busy being entertained by “Yo mamma’s so ugly” contest going on. I vaguely remember there being some good points thrown in there between the flying chairs though, so if you’re interested you can check it out here.

You have to give it to the Scott though… he has a certain flair and sense of creativity when it comes to the game of insults. It probably helps that he gets so much practice.

If you’re not a regular reader of Rory Blythe’s blog, then you may have missed his recent Neopolean Creation Story series of posts.

Here are some questions to help you decide if you are ready for the experience:

• Are you a fan of Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian”?
  
• Have you ever found yourself bemoaning the fact that last three page blog post you read was too short?
  
• Have you ever wondered what happens to a blogger when they suddenly find themselves with a lot of free time on their hands?
• Have you ever used the words “back-stabbing”, “opportunistic”, or “duplicitous” to describe a sandwich?

If the answer was yes to these questions and you are in the mood for a slightly surreal but definitely funny reading experience, then I recommend checking out the first four days of Rory’s Seven Day Creation Story.

Still not sure? Here are a few random quotes to whet your appetite.

Day One

• “I kicked Jerry [the Sycophant] right through the goal posts of Death, and watched as My first creation was undone. I saw that Death would make a good wastebasket for My first few tries at creating living things, and I thought it was good.”
• “I didn’t really know what I was doing. Creationism doesn’t come with a manual. I had screwed up on My second Jerry…and I suddenly had a sandwich to look after. It was demoralizing…”

Day Two

• “I got up a bit late on the second day. I knew this because I had created Time on the first day. It had been causing Me grief ever since.”
• “Yes, sandwich… Yes. I shall create a thing to separate work from Home, and the thing I create, It shall be called the World.”

Day Three

• “I looked back again to see if I could talk the bear out of trying to eat My nose, but it was totally unnecessary…sandwich had already made it to the back of the cage, domesticated the bear, trained it to effect the appearance of anger for the purpose of motivating the giraffe rather than actually trying to bite noses…”
• “All the running around that day was starting to wear Me out. I dare say I was getting irritable, but I kept My cool because, as God, it was important to My creations that I lead them and fill them with confidence. Still, the pressure was getting to Me. I counted to ten and made a mental note to invent Yoga sometime.”
• “The workers hoisted sandwich up on their shoulders and paraded him around, eventually marching off into the sunset in a cloud of dust and happiness.”

Day Four

• “My world came crashing down because of a device French people clean their bottoms with.”
• “I was beginning to think that the whole event had been a sign from me. The message was that, even if sandwich doesn’t come home, and even if you burn Home to the ground because of a bomb/bidet mix-up, that from the smoking cinders and obsidiate slag, one can find hope in an obstinate, indestructible, and totally inedible breakfast food.”
• “No need for any hard feelings, as long as somebody could provide a satisfactory explanation for this *** nightmare of a how-do-you-do perpetrated by an opportunistic backstabbing duplicitous sandwich.”
• “I thought, God help us, but then I remembered that God was a very bad sandwich, and I knew… I knew that the only hope this world had was a deposed god dressed in drag with vomit on his face, a hangover, Glop in a papoose on his back, and his vehicle, a chariot that was literally fueled by adrenaline….Ok. That was terrifying, too.”

Disclaimer: I hereby relinquish all responsibility for any psychological damage that may occur as a result of reading his blog.

* If you want some more background into the origin of this series, check out the post, A New Religion - A Neopolean Religion.

Dru first introduced me to ted.com the notion of the “Big Think”, but I had forgotten about the site until I saw a link to one of the site’s presentations referenced in one of Ayende’s recent posts. 

After watching the presentation I was left with the following thoughts:

• I need to start making my way through the other 70 plus presentations on technology hosted on Ted.com. I have a feeling that the signal to noise ratio on this site is phenomenal. Ted, the creator of the site, appears to do an excellent job of finding people at the top of their fields who have truly unique ideas and are able to convey them very effectively.
• In my own future presentations, I think I will try experimenting with the innovative visual style of Larry’s presentation, which often only has one or two words per slide displayed at a fairly rapid pace. It’s a stark contrast to the traditional PowerPoint slides, but when done correctly, I think it does a much better job of emphasizing the main point and keeping the audience’s attention.
• We are entering a new Read-Write (RW) era. Larry asserts that our culture has made an historical pendulum swing during the last century from a passive back to a more interactive social existence. TV and radio were primarily passive or Read-Only (R)  mediums, but the democratization of publishing that has been driven by blogging, mySpace, and YouTube are reversing that trend and making people much more engaged with each other again. From my own personal experience with working on this blog and regularly following other people’s blogs, I know I have felt more invigorated, creative, socially engaged than I ever have before.
  
• I need to download some video editing software and take up video remixing as a hobby.He showed a few hilarious remix videos clips as an example of how people are able to creatively transform existing content into something completely new, which is something that existing copyright laws don’t take into consideration. I recently dabbled with some video fun with the help of jibjab on these two posts, but it was nothing compared to the creativity and video editing magic that went into these three videos he showed.
  
  • Politics: Bush and Blair Love Song- An “Endless Love” duet by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.
    
  • Religion: Jesus Christ - The Musical - The Messiah singing the 70’s classic “I Will Survive” with a twisted ending.
    
  • Pop Culture/Anime: Muppet Hunder D - Anime set to the old muppet song “Manah manah”.

Happy viewing!

It’s time for the next installment of the monthly Caffeinated Codey awards, where the link love flows for my favorite posts from the month.

1. For Best Software As RoadKill Analalogy…Ben Scheirman on Don’t Make Squirrel Burgers. The next time your boss tries to haggle you over the estimate, just pull out Ben’s squirrel burger story. If that doesn’t work, you may want to just feed your boss a squirrel burger when he’s not looking, thereby earning you a several day deadline extension as he recovers from getting his stomach pumped.
2. For Best Hate Mail Magnet Post…Rob Conery for his post Imploding Rails, Jesus DHH, and the Uncle Ben Principle. Note to self: Calling DHH, the creator of the uber-trendy Rails framework for Ruby, a “foul-mouthed, prissy Dane” is apparently not the best way to win friends and influence people. Nevertheless, an excellent software debate on dynamic languages, the scalability of Ruby, and the role of DHH in the future of the language emerge through this provocative post and the hundred plus heated comments that it inspired.
   
3. For Most Productive Meeting Day Dream…Mark Miller for his post on Test Bot Kicking Ass. Everybody daydreams during meetings about being attacked by rocket launcher toting killer robots and then slicing their heads off with a crack shot from their steel blade shooting gun, but it takes a true genius like Mark Miller to turn it into the inspiration for an innovative testing solution. You have to admit, the idea of a software bot continually downloading the latest version of open source projects and running thousands of unit tests against them is pretty slick.
   
4. For Best Inspirational Speech…Fake Steve Jobs for his post My Message of hope for the Borg. Since reading this post, I’ve tried to fit the phrase “I’d rather make love to a bag of broken glass” into as many conversations as possible. The post provides excerpts of a speech that he gave on the Microsoft campus, where he tells it like is to the Microtards like only the Jobmeister can.
5. For Best Advice on How to Comment Code…Phil Haack for his post The Greatest Compliment A Developer Can Receive. Phil offers a perceptive rant about every developer’s propensity to be overly critical of other people’s code. I have to admit that I have never heard someone say that they just inherited a code base that was well written. Ok, perhaps the extra space between the if and parenthesis doesn’t make the code totally worthless…
   
6. For Best New Start-Up… Rory Blythe for his post A New Religion - A Neopoleon Religion. Pass around the collection plate, because there is a new religion in town. Rory has gone on a divine hiring spree and with the help of some questionable recruiters has already amassed an impressive head count in his quest to create a “religion with more gods than any other religion in the history of religions”. I’m personally putting in a request for a mighty espresso bean god that has a twitching stat of 99 and that smites Folgers drinkers with a terrible caffeinated vengeance.
7. For Most Long-Winded Title for a Post Advocating Minimalist Writing…Raymond Chen for his post The most important choice in writing is not what you say, it’s what you dont’ say. All kidding aside, it is solid advice with a helpful before and after writing sample. It reminds me of the saying, “I didn’t have time to write a short article, so I wrote this long one instead”.
8. For Most Valiant Mort Defender…Oren Eine (a.k.a. Ayende) for his post ALT.NET and the Enterprise. For a lazy 9-5′er, poor Mort has been busting his tail this last month being a favorite topic of conversation in the blogosphere. This post sparked one of the more lively debates on the true capabilities and value of average Joe developers in the software food chain. Whether you’re a Fascist Mort Hater or a Commie Mort Sympathizer, you’ll find food for thought here.
9. For Most Egregious Geek Blasphemy…Jeff Atwood for his post Why Does Software Spoil?. Jeff challenges the typical geek compulsion to automatically upgrade at the drop of a hat and makes an interesting argument that new versions of software are often worse than their predecessors because of decreased usability and performance due to feature bloat. It will make you think twice before agreeing to that next upgrade.

Finally, in the category of posts that I read in October but were technically written in September.

1. For Most Diplomatic PowerPoint Slide…Mark Miller for his post My Last VSLive Session Ever? I can’t imagine why has been black-listed from conferences before. I also can’t figure out how people who fail the first prerequisite are able to sit down in the first place…
   

Special Announcement about Awards- Once again, congratulations to all the CC recipients for winning this most prestigious award. Unfortunately, the squirrels drank all the prize beer that I had set aside for awards this month. Perhaps Rory can retrain one of the out-of-work Norse gods to replenish my home brew stash so I can give each of these talented bloggers their proper recognition.

Until then, happy blogging.

* No squirrels were harmed in the making of this blog post.

** In case you missed them, here are the prior CC winners for September, August, and July.