HACkers blog

Today, 3108, is Blog Day!

In commemoration, I've listed five blogs below that you might like to visit:

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Thursday is Blog Day. For those who don't know, Blog Day is the day that Bloggers all over the world post a recommendation of five new blogs. The idea is to use the opportunity to open up new spaces, new links - blogs that are somehow different from the kinds of links you'd normally post on your blog, blogs that push the envelope and whatever other piece of stationery needs pushing, blogs that expand your horizons that little bit more.

Blog Day arose when Nir Ofir noticed that the date 3108 looked the word Blog, and is commemorated by Bloggers worldwide. FAM3001S Bloggers will be commemorating Blog Day on Friday, a day late, given that we have class on Wed and Fri, but everyone else on the Blogspot is encouraged to take the opportunity and mark the occasion appropriately.

I was surprised to learn, via a letter in the Cape Crimes, that 791 people had been killed in the last year by toasters.

Toasters! I had always considered toasters to be a benign technological presence. Now, I could understand a large scale massacre of humans by washing machines, by hi-fis, or by kettles; and no more malevolent presence could be conceived than a PC running a Microsoft Windows operating system... but toasters?

I slept very lightly, my hand tightly clenched around a claw hammer, just in case. One never knew when these things would attack, and preparedness was everything.

In the cold light of morning, I snuck into the kitchen and scouted around. Everything lay exactly as it had been left the night before. The toaster was obviously biding its time. It occurred to me that perhaps the best strategy was a pre-emptive strike - if I slew the toaster first, it would not be able to slay me. Perhaps I should organise a world-wide toaster cull, I thought, as my civic duty?

Just then, the fridge began spluttering. My previous fridge had died on the same day as Susan Sontag, a fact I marked down as Significant at the time, and I was concerned that this one was following suit - and wondering which other Profound Thinker would have to die to accompany the soul of my fridge to heaven... when I realised that it was probably all a plot, and if I slew the toaster, the geyser would probably commit suicide, and incite the microwave to explode or the oven to melt. Great conspirators, domestic appliances.

I decided that this was all a bit much for a Sunday, and left it. But I've left the hammer beside my bed, just in case....

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It's Friday afternoon - well into drinking time. My hotwater bottle has chilled to Clifton-on-a-cold-day, and outside it's looking decidedly damp and grey. I have a distinct feeling I should be elsewhere. Warm.

I've only just noticed the time, because... I've been busy. Housekeeping - a new semester, a new class - and lots of exciting new blogs! Some of which have already gathered a few posts - beyond the initial "hello world" tentative steps - and a few hits, and a few comments. Like Nieuwoudville erupting into flower after the rains, the student blogspot has burst into life.

But the truly disturbing thing... each time I click back onto the Student Summary Page - there are more posts. More comments. The hit count has gone up. Somewhere, hidden from view, there are students sitting typing away at their, or others', blogs - reading, posting, commenting. Has no one told them it's Friday? Has no one taught them the concept "weekend"?

It's wonderful that they have opinions, it really is. But wouldn't it be great if they also had lives....?

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A couple of weeks ago I attended an event aimed at communicating the progress of a large scale project to parties with a direct interest. A number of people presented progress reports - leaders of various workgroups with specific foci within the larger project.

One after another they stood up and announced how long they'd been at the University, which started off at around four years and went upward from there... and how small a proportion of the people present they knew. Which hovered around five percent.

I was startled. It was a communication event. These were workgroup leaders, people of some seniority, rather than worker trolls changed up in dungeons under the ground. They have access to email, telephones, and their offices are not padlocked. They're free to walk outside to get a cup of coffee or post a letter. Yet... they didn't know people who worked in their own, or related, fields, often in buildings whose shadows chilled their smoking corners.

Recently another invitation crossed my desk - an invitation to a Khuluma workshop. In the text was stated that the intention was to compile workshop groups which had some diversity, and were not merely a group of people who all knew each other. Yet, of the two dozen or so names of the addressees, only about two were unfamiliar (this despite organisational level, location, work focus and probably every other grouping factor indicating a wide spread). Inevitable, perhaps, that such a group would consist largely of "the usual suspects". But illustrative of something else.

When it comes to work, it seems, one can go for years without ever meeting anyone beyond your very direct organisational unit. In fact, doing so might even be subversive, given that the University is structured into Business Units whose relationships to each other are of competition rather than cooperation.

When it comes to human matters, like Transformation, however, the opposite dynamic is at play. Communication and networking beyond one's organisational entity are obligatory, and one finds common purpose and alliance with others scattered all over the institution. People actually *talk* to each other.

Change Management, and Transformation, both involve change, but only one involves communication. Interesting, that.

I was interested to read that (at least in Science) at CalTech they have no Departments, only Divisions. I'd seen Divisions before, across at Med School, where Departments (like Cardiothoracic Surgery, GIT, General Surgery, etc) were clustered into cognate groupings, called Divisions. Though it seemed to me more of a multiplication than a division, except perhaps in the sense of setting up rival cultures between those whose work involved the spilling of blood, and those whose did not.

The CalTech Divisions, however, seemed premised on a fluid reading of - though the word is nowhere mentioned in the article - the impact of The Market on those timeless entities we hail as Disciplines... an altogether more instrumental perspective and one which, here, would separate the proverbial sheep from the goats. Or the Real Universities from the "universities" of Technology.

Dispensing with Departments provides an interesting counterpoint to a suggestion made recently that the way to save the University (at least, this one) from itself would be to dispense with Faculties, and rather have a centre which related directly to Departments.

Which, of course, would involve the untangling of what is fondly referred to as "devolution" - however little it resembles the concept - and the centralisation or decentralisation of functions, staff and structures located at this middle level. Many of which, the proponents argue, would simply disappear as they serve no purpose beyond self-justification.

Perhaps the logical approach would be to decide what kind of University we want - a collegial university, in which a flatter structure would assist; or an entrepreneurial university, where the flexible CalTech model would allow for rapid response to market opportunity; or any of a myriad other possible organisational models - some with interesting names like "network" and "clover leaf" - swelling the pages of management journals like SMR and HBR.

But then, agreement on this matter is unlikely.

Or any other matter, beyond that parking is a problem...

A new tradition was established at last Thursday's Faculty Bored - pimping new staff. As an income-generating activity, however, it might not quite make up the budgetary shortfall, and so perhaps including slightly second-hand staff at a reduced rate might be necessary.

Though, as has been pointed out, if one is merely marketing to ones colleagues, income is likely to fall short in any event, given salaries reeling under dual shocks of petrol price and interest rate increases.

On the other hand, a visit to the student parking areas reveals some serious pockets of affluence. "Would they buy, though?" I was asked sceptically. Well, take a look here....

After years of effort wasted on bringing stupid inventions to market (anyone watched Verimark ads lately?), someone is finally working on something potentially useful. An anti-stupid pill!

So far it's just being tested on fruit flies and mice - albeit with promising results. But then again, if we're talking stupid, there's not that much difference from a fruit fly, is there?

According to news reports, iTunes will now be carrying cartoons and news in addition to its current offering of music and tv show episodes. The news will be CNN (yawn...!) but the toons will be from Cartoon Network and [adult swim].

So, for those VSPs who are getting just a little bored of fiddling with their smartphones and their PDAs in meetings - don't dispair! Take along your iPod and watch Johnny Bravo instead.

Or, if you're desperate to catch up on your lost sleep, there is always the entire Friends back catalogue...

What do US students rate better than sex, behind only beer and iPods? According to The Guardian, it's a social networking netspace called Facebook, which is slowly taking over the social lives of students at elite UK universities too.

Only available to students whose universities join up, it offers students an institution-specific sort of "MySpace" of "LastFM", with profiles, groups - and relationship status indicator, for those wishing to explore its matchmaking potential.

Facebook is slowly being rolled out beyond its current base in the US, and the current UK universities at which is it established. In fact, it's already available here in South Africa, at a single university.

This one.