Back when people were still walking around with Treos and BlackBerrys that looked like they were fresh out of a Tamagotchi factory, Jobs and his pirates were taking every manufacturer to school with Apple's  iPhone line, leaving the rest of us dizzy over the mere implications of the technology. And he did it again with Apple's tablets, the iPads, a few years later, always opening the trail.

We have a lot to be grateful for from Steve Jobs. He was a truly brilliant man - the kind that surface two or three times in  your lifetime. A ferocious and determined businessman - a true a visionary who shepherded society itself into a concrete bigger and better future for everyone. Steve's legacy most certainly lives on, with over 100 million iPhones, 300 million iPods, nearly 10 million iPads and 10 million Mac computers sold every month, it's safe to say his influence will still cause ripples for exciting years to come...

Thanks Steve.

Back in the days, @replies would simply be another tweet. The user you were replying to would see it appear in its @mention and the whole process was pretty much client-side. About two years ago, that changed. A lot of you "social media experts" apparently weren't around then. The way @replies work now is much better. When you @reply to a user, only that user will see it in its @mention tab, whether he follows you or not. Everyone else that follows you will not see it. That's a great implementation to avoid having your stream filled with customer service replies, among other things. The kicker here is that everyone that follows you and the user you're replying to will see it as well. It promotes discussion and people jumping in to comment on a "private discussion" you were having.

So please. If you want to reply to a specific user, the first thing in your tweet should be a @reply. Not a "Hi @user". Got it?

If you claim to be a social media expert, don't let anyone catch you doing this or this. Thanks.

So seeing as I've got nothing to say, I'll just wish you all a happy new year. May 2009 bring you everything you desire!

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

So there, it was basically a big meeting of select people who have a marked interest for that specific event. It was organized by Austin Hill and the profits generated from ticket sales were given to Montreal Children's hospital. We raised around 4000$ so it can't be considered a bad thing. It was pretty nice actually, we had plenty of room to talk and meet people. I'm guessing that the fact that it was held on a Thursday night kind of slowed things down a bit, but then again people weren't going clubbing, they were socializing. With that in mind, I have a few deceptions. First of all, most of the attendees were Twitterers. I walked in there with the feeling that I knew everyone, but that I couldn't identify anyone. Name tags with Twitter usernames would have been great to identify people. I didn't meet everyone I wanted to meet, mostly because I had no idea who they were. However the whole thing was organized in what, 2 weeks? So I'm considering it a success anyway. Also, people didn't really hang around. By midnight there were about 50 of the 150 people that were there at 10 that were still there, and when the bar closed I can safely say that we were two left. Are geeks early sleepers? Or was it because it was Thursday? Or because everyone was keeping their party stamina for the Station C party the next day? Well, whatever it was, I met three people, which is disappointing.

But I had fun, and we raised 4k$ for kids. Can't be bad.

See the Twitter tag and the Flickr tag. For an accurate tweet-recap of the party in two nice animations, head over to Michelle's blog and have a chuckle on me.

If you've notice, there's a few additions to the site. I've been playing around with WordPress lately, and I made some modifications to this blog. Among them is the lifestream, which pretty much aggregates all my activity from social networks. If you want to stalk me, that is the perfect tool as I keep those network pretty up to date. You can read more about social networks on the lifestream page, and you can see the archives over here. I've also made it mandatory to register in order to comment, so go ahead and do that.

I've also created another blog-like site. I'm going to use it to post lyrics that I like, since I'm a huge fan of lyrics. It'll also be pretty much music related, so if you're a fan of lyrical music, check it out. I've called it fusi0n lyrics.

You're a great guy...
One day you're gonna make a deserving girl very happy
You're smart, funny, generous, kind, good looking, you dress well, have great taste... you can cook, clean are independant, and you like cats.

Thanks Z!

The first week was a bit unsettling though. Movember was in full swing, and it was rather scary to be surrounded with hairy people. You can get your dose of fright on the CloudRaker Movember site, but be warned, it's hairy and alive. However, the awards are out and the mustaches are off, which is a relief! I'm strangely looking forward to participating next year, I'll have to meditate on the motives for that. Either way, my hat is off to the CloudRaker, Taxi and Toxa for not being afraid to look ridiculous for a good cause.

In other news, I've finished reading The Pact by Jodi Picoult. It was a great read, really moving. I'm hesitating between two books for my next read. I get to choose between Stephen Lawhead's Taliesin (Book I of the Pendragon Cycle) and Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. They're both fantasy, although having read the first three tomes of the Pendragon Cycle, I can say that it has a more historic background, if you consider Atlantis and the Legend of Arthur history.

Also, my latest tattoo has stop hurting and is now scab-less. I'm considering getting another. I'm happy to be able to wear white shirts again without getting tattoo cream all over it and put on my coat without looking like a one-armed dude.

That's it for now, I've run out of things to say. December's around the corner, and I wish you all a great holiday season!

"... there's a specific term for the kind of relationship that had developed between Chris and Emily over the years"

"What's that?"

"Fusion." He smiled at the jury. "Just like the physicists. It means that two personalities have bonded together so strongly that a whole new personality is created, and the separate ones cease to exist."

Jordan raised his eyebrows. "Could you run that by me again?"

"In plain English," Dr. Karpagian said, "it means that Chris and Emily's minds and personalities were so connected there really was no distinction between them. They grew up so close that they couldn't function without each other. Anything that happened to one of those kids was going to affect the other. And in the case of the death of one of them, the other one literally would not be able to go on living." He looked at Jordan. "Does it make more sense?"

"It's more clear," Jordan said, "but it's hard to accept."

Dr. Karpagian smiled. "Congratulations, Mr McAfee. That simply means you're mentally healthy."

Nuff said.

I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.

On another note, I've been playing quite a lot with WordPress lately, namely, this WordPress. I've installed a few plugins and made some modifications of my own. If you intent to browse around, I'm sure you'll come across many of them: AJAXed WordPress (AWP), cformsII, and OpenID. They've all turned out pretty nice so far. Also added two pages (up top) - Links and Contact. One is a feed from my newly created Delicious account, the other allows you to contact me.

I've also been playing a lot with Zend Framework lately for a project I'm working on. I'll probably be posting snippets of code eventually, stuff that might be useful to the general public, so stay tuned.