the flying squirrel

Ellen and I had been planning the trip to [Worldcon in Montreal](http://anticipationsf.ca/English/Home) for two years, and I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a short bout of unemployment stop us. Fortunately, I got the offer for a job at [Open Text](http://www.opentext.com) the Thursday before we left for Montreal. Which was a huge relief, but led to some scrambling to deal with all that paperwork while I was trying to relax at a little bed and breakfast in the McGill ghetto. We managed to sort all that out fairly well, though. Thanks to Dawn and Dan and David who put up with my desperate requests to track down someone to witness contracts for me. Especially David, who was gracious enough to sign even though he’d just driven in from the Maritimes. I owe him lunch sometime.

Ellen went to Worldcon in Toronto in 2003 and loved every minute. She was really the driving force behind us going when it came to Montreal. A bunch of our friends initially made plans to go but ended up selling their tickets for one reason or another. I might have done the same, if it were just me. But I wanted to go to this thing with her, hang out, go to panels and readings and so forth and just share the experience.

Plus, I really needed a vacation. I hadn’t had an actual vacation since 2007, and I hadn’t taken two solid weeks off in… I can’t remember how long.

Two weeks in Montreal: time enough to settle in before the con and to give us time to recover afterwards. We stayed at [Castel Durocher](http://users.openface.ca/~durocher/), a lovely little place Ellen had stayed at before, when she was in Montreal for an EWB conference. They were very accommodating and brought me croissants and chocolate.

Worldcon itself was an experience. Unfortunately, we ended up missing out on a lot, since the building it was in didn’t agree with Ellen’s allergies. But we did get a pretty good taste of Worldcon, I think. Ellen bought lots of books, I got to go to a couple parties and see the Hugo awards. We went to readings and panels and got to sit at a table and chat with [[wiki:Mike Resnick]] and [Paul Cornell](http://www.paulcornell.com/). I greatly enjoyed it, and would happily do it again, particularly with Ellen along. I don’t think we can make it to [Australia](http://www.aussiecon4.org.au/index.php?pageNum=0&pageID=hom) next year, tho.

Upon reflection, Worldcon strikes me as being more or less like [Ad Astra](http://ad-astra.org/), except about ten times bigger and with more authors you’ve maybe heard of.

Anyway, the second week in Montreal was mostly spent looking for food, exploring the city and generally relaxing. I got to meet up with [Dan](http://clone-army.org), chat about what he’s been up to and check his place out. And then we had to go. I wish we had more time, and I’m now wondering why it took me so long to visit Montreal.

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.