I had a most shocking experience today. It started quite innocently. I applied for volunteering at a two-day event, got an e-mail with my schedule (7 hours’ shifts both days, I thought it was a little bit too much but I wanted to attend the event anyway so I thought OK, no problem), shifted my other scheduled stuff around to free up these two days. I turned up on time, sat at a reception table and everything went well until, about three hours later, the person in charge told me that they don’t need me anymore and would manage on their own.
Here’s our further dialogue:
- So, shall I come tomorrow morning?
- No, we don’t need you.
- But I can still attend the conference tomorrow, right?
- No, sorry.
- But you gave me the schedule, I freed up these two days…
- It’s enough that we allow you to stay today and mingle with the attendees; we normally do not allow the volunteers to do that.
I was completely astonished. I have had volunteered at around 20 events in Toronto so far, and it is common understanding that, when a volunteer is not on duty, he or she gets to walk around at the event, attend any sessions if there is room enough, talk to whoever he or she pleases, etc. This is actually why people volunteer: to exchange some of their time for the right of attending an event and everything that comes with it (a networking opportunity, etc.). The concept of a volunteer being low caste and not allowed to touch the regular attendees lest he soil them with his impurity is entirely new to me. Now, I totally understand that sometimes the resources are limited and the volunteers do not get invited to a final reception or something. But this really takes the cake. I am probably lucky they allowed me to use the washroom at the venue and did not send me to a McDonalds up the street for that purpose.
Categories: general
Tagged: events, rant, some people are jerks, toronto, volunteering
The Ontario Self Employment Benefit (OSEB) Program has been suspended as of October 9th 2009. The people who have entered the program still go on with it, but the new applications are not accepted until April or so. Rumour has it that the funds have been redirected to the Second Career program.
Categories: business · education
Tagged: SEB
I wonder why Facebook developers suppose I have only one friend.
my friend's wall
Categories: education
Tagged: apostrophes, English language, grammar, rant
I read this essay by Paul Graham, and suddenly it occurred to me that most of what he says about hackers is applicable to translators as well. What we do is hack words, or with words, to achieve meaning.
Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the sciences, but among other kinds of makers. What else can painting teach us about hacking?
One thing we can learn, or at least confirm, from the example of painting is how to learn to hack. You learn to paint mostly by doing it. Ditto for hacking. Most hackers don’t learn to hack by taking college courses in programming. They learn to hack by writing programs of their own at age thirteen. Even in college classes, you learn to hack mostly by hacking.
Because painters leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing. If you look at the work of a painter in chronological order, you’ll find that each painting builds on things that have been learned in previous ones. When there’s something in a painting that works very well, you can usually find version 1 of it in a smaller form in some earlier painting.
I think most makers work this way. Writers and architects seem to as well. Maybe it would be good for hackers to act more like painters, and regularly start over from scratch, instead of continuing to work for years on one project, and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions.
The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Scientists don’t learn science by doing it, but by doing labs and problem sets. Scientists start out doing work that’s perfect, in the sense that they’re just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. Eventually, they get to the point where they can do original work. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it’s just very bad. So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.
The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.
Writers do this too. Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce them. Raymond Chandler did the same thing with detective stories.
Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs– not just at what they do, but the source code too.
The complete text of Paul Graham’s essay is here.
Categories: personal · translation
Tagged: translation
The $10 million Open Screen Project Fund, announced by Nokia and Adobe, awards grants to help developers create exciting new applications and content over the next two years up to December 2010. The fund also provides marketing and educational support for the Open Screen Project, which aims to establish cross-platform runtimes, remove development and distribution barriers, and innovate through industry collaboration.
More information here
Categories: business
Tagged: free, funding, mobile, software
ENTERPRISE TORONTO
SMALL BUSINESS FORUM 2009
METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE
255 Front Street West, North Building, 100 Level
October 19, 2009 — 9am to 4:30pm
Small Business Forum 2009 brings together entrepreneurs and business development experts, all levels of government, and business product and service providers.
ADMISSION IS FREE BUT YOU MUST REGISTER TO PARTICIPATE
Categories: business · networking
Tagged: entrepreneurship, events, free, small business, toronto
I have completed translation of Terry Pratchett’s Nation (it is now being edited), and have started The Children’s Book by A.S.Byatt. It is huge – 600 pages, about the same size as Iris Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil which I have translated last year. The Children’s Book was shortlisted for Booker prize. Translators from half a dozen countries are working on it right now, and I have been included into a mailing list for The Children’s Book translators worldwide, with participation of A.S.Byatt herself. By the way, this Wikipedia article says that A.S.Byatt was actually influenced by Murdoch, and that the novelist Margaret Drabble is her sister, which I did not know before. I read something by Drabble and I thought she writes, in fact, very much like Murdoch, but more… drab. The pun is intended. In my opinion, The Children’s Book is not like anything by Murdoch at all, at least I very much hope so. I will not survive another 600 pages of dark and depressive stuff like The Philosopher’s Pupil. The Children’s Book story is not all roses either, but at least it’s less… existential? and more lifelike. The work on it will be pure joy, anyway. Life is good.
Categories: Russia · books · personal · translation
Tagged: A.S.Byatt, literature, Nation, Pratchett, Russian, The Children's Book, translation
Interested in learning more about entrepreneurship? Looking to start a new venture? Wondering what can be done for your career during this recessionary climate? Look no further! Sponsored by CIBC, MaRS offers a free, non-credit introductory course on entrepreneurship that introduces you to the nuts and bolts of building a business.
http://marsdd.com/mars/Events/Event-Calendar/Ent101
Categories: general
Tagged: business, entre, entrepreneurship, events, free, MaRS, startup, toronto
MIT Open Course Ware (thanks @davidcrow for the links)
Categories: general
Tagged: courses, entrepreneurship, free, innovation, MIT
