Author: Darcy Casselman

At WorldCon 2009 in Montreal. [Paul Krugman](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) and [Charlie Stross](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html) were debating technology and the future from a more economic perspective.

Here, I’m paraphrasing from memory. They were videotaping, but I’m not expecting the conversation to show up on YouTube anytime soon (although it should).

> **Krugman:** Look at the kitchen. In thirty years, it’s not likely to change that much…
>
> **Stross:** Ah, this is something I’ve been looking into lately. [[wiki:People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals|PeTA]] did a very stupid thing this year. I mean besides trying to get people to call fish “[sea kittens](http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/about.asp).” They are [offering $1 million](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/us/21meat.html?_r=1) to the first person who can produce vat-grown meat.
>
> What they don’t seem to realize is how close we are to doing just that. There’s a considerable amount of investment and research going into producing a particular kind of meat: [long pig](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Long%20Pig). The biotech industry is working long and hard to produce human organs for transplantation.
>
> I have a story idea I’m working on right now, that involves ladies who lunch… on each other. They’re using this technology to produce their own meat. And then there’s the very confused policeman who’s trying to decide what, if anything, he should charge them with.
>
> So I think in thirty years it’s likely we might see some big changes in the kitchen.
>
> **Krugman:** *(after a long pause, looking slightly shell shocked)* You’re saying we’ll all be Polynesian?
>
> **Stross:** We’ll all be poly-something.

[Linqpad](http://www.linqpad.net) is a great little tool that one of the guys at Miovision introduced me to.

Linqpad does three things, each of which is kind of useful. Put them together and you have a colossally useful tool.

1. It lets you browse data, query databases, xml, etc.
1. It’s a great tutorial for LINQ, which is tremendously powerful, but not terribly intuitive.
1. It’s a fully featured .NET code snippet interpreter.

I’d often find myself in the SQL Management Console testing out SELECT statements that I’d then turn into LINQ queries. Linqpad lets me skip the translation step.

Plus, it comes with tonnes of code samples from the O’Reilly [C# 3.0 in a Nutshell](http://www.albahari.com/nutshell/) book, which you can look at and play around with to figure out how to do whatever strange join you’re trying to do.

Finally, if you’ve used Python or Ruby for any length of time, you come to see how useful it is to have that interpreter there to just *try things out* without a lot of overhead.

Very handy. If you’re working in C# on Windows at all, give it a try.

At [DevHouse Waterloo](http://devwaterloo.pbworks.com/) on Monday, [Jesse Rodgers](http://whoyoucallingajesse.com/) and [Joseph Fung](http://www.josephfung.ca/) broke from the usual software demo format and opened up a round-table discussion about how to build an online identity, a community, visibility, engagement and excitement around Waterloo.

The longer I live here, the more I can sense the *potential* of this place. Particularly when you hang around with high tech folks all the time. But right now it’s mostly just potential. True, there are lots of exciting things going on that few people know anything about, but it feels like a lot of the energy here is being dissipated on the wires.

Jesse and Joseph are mostly talking about the local startup community, and there are particular needs there. Finding mentors and peers, getting funding, and promoting your idea are all fundamental to getting a startup off the ground, and nobody outside of Silicon Valley seems to know how to do those things well.

But more than that, we need to build spaces and groups for people to meet and co-mingle, online and offline.

Offline, there’s plenty of cool stuff going on. Meetups and Tweetups, camps and clubs. It was pointed out, though, that they all seem to exist in silos. It seems to be hard for people to find out about them and there’s very little cross-over between groups. There’s also a lack of decent meeting space. Waterloo casts an envious eye at Guelph’s [eBar](http://www.bookshelf.ca/): a pub with decent atmosphere, free wifi, and a predisposition towards hosting meetups.

Online, as [James pointed out](http://waterloowellingtonblogs.org/2009/06/on-building-a-waterloo-wellington-bloggers-identity.shtml) there’s a lot of building to do to bring together a cohesive community. I signed on to the [Waterloo Wellington Bloggers Association](http://waterloowellingtonblogs.org/) because I think it’s a step in the right direction. (If you haven’t already, get your blog in the aggregator there). People are piling on Twitter these days, and you can find out a lot of great stuff that’s going on locally there too. But there’s still a long way to go. We don’t have nearly the online resources of places like Toronto or San Francisco. There’s lots of stuff going on in town that I only find out about *after* the Record posts a review. For a town that’s supposedly tech savvy, we really ought to be able to do more.

So I’m going to redouble my efforts and do more. This is a great place to live and an exciting place to be, and people ought to know about that.

As of today, I am unemployed. [Miovision](http://www.miovision.com/) is a great company, and I wish them all the luck in the world. But the economy is kind of crappy and small companies need to be able to change direction quickly. No hard feelings.

I’m still reeling a bit from the news. Not exactly how I expected to start my week. I’ve already got some things to follow up on, though, and I guess I’ll need to update the [[resume]].

Job searching is pretty far from my favourite thing in the world, but I’m feeling pretty positive this time. Wish me luck.

Previous years when I folks were promoting the [Commuter Challenge](http://commuterchallenge.ca), I felt a little left out, since I walked to work pretty much every day and setting aside a special *week* as a challenge seemed a bit silly. Where was *my* prize?

Well, now that work is a bit beyond walking distance (unless you consider a three hour walk walking distance–I’ve tried it once…), and I’ve been driving to work nearly every day. It’s not a bad drive: 15-20 minutes on the Expressway. But now I’m one of those horrible, planet-killing commuters, driving a single-occupant vehicle back and forth to work every day. Exactly the sort of person the Commuter Challenge is meant to… er… challenge.

So I figured I should take up the challenge.

Sunday: While not technically a commute, we had a Pathfinder game and since the place is about half-way to work, I figured I’d warm up and ride my bike there. It was a success, and I managed to figure out the detour around the construction on William Street.

Monday: Bus to work. I live near the McCormick [iExpress](http://www.grt.ca/web/transit.nsf/DocID/B556123DFF6AE13E85256B210066A182?OpenDocument) stop. So I could walk there and catch the bus. I missed the first one and had to wait 15 minutes for the next, throwing off my plan carefully crafted with [EasyGo](http://192.237.29.245/hastinfoweb/). As a result, I missed the connection at Fairway and had to walk the rest of the way (or wait 20 minutes for the #12 bus, which came out to about the same time). Total time to work: about 1.5 hours.

The only good thing about taking the bus is I can catch up on podcasts.

I caught the right bus and made the connection on the way home, so the trip home was closer to an hour.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Biked. I have to say, it’s a really nice ride into work. Total time: about an hour. I’m still not quite in shape enough to make it effortless. The ride home is a little harder, with a couple uphill slogs and more headwind. I think I might ride to Fairway on Friday and take the bus home.

I get to take the [Trans-Canada Trail](http://tctrail.ca) pretty much the entire way to work. Mind you, someone decided that in lieu of an actual trail, they should call Courtland Ave. and Manitou Dr. a “trail” for 3km despite being heavily trafficed motorways with barely a sidewalk. It’s not so bad, though, since I decided to take a detour along Vanier Drive through the residential area there. Most of the ride along the [Laurel Trail](http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=laurel+trail+waterloo&m=text) and [Iron Horse Trail](http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=iron+horse+trail+kitchener&m=text) is lovely and well worth the effort. Much nicer than driving, even if it does take four times as long.