I just made a little Yahoo Pipe that extracts all the info from the IMDB Top 250 list. There were already a few of thee out there but none of them just took all, and just all, the info and outputted it as a pipe.
So here it is, but keep in mind that it’s mostly useful as RSS, JSON, or PHP object.
Paul Downey :: On The Vanity of Demanding Attribution – PSD has a nice article on the vanity of demanding attribution for your work. It includes some references to my "problem" with the BBC last week when they published my photos without any proper attribution. I left an interesting comment that sparked some new ideas.
Melinda and I attended a live recording of an episode of the third season of The IT Crowd yesterday. We both love The IT Crowd and had been trying to get tickets for a recording ever since we moved to London.
For those of you that don’t know The IT Crowd, it’s a Channel 4 series about the IT support team at “Reynholm Industries” (a not so real company in central London). The tech part of the team consists of Roy and Moss, two typical geeks that are well overqualified for solving everyone’s idiotic computer problems. They are accompanied by Jen, a newbie that was apparently randomly assigned to lead the IT department even though she lacks the required tech nor managing skills. The show highlights geek culture very much from the geek perspective, with a very well though out set filled with little details like ORG posters, space invaders, and many iconic geek accessories. Although the show often makes fun of the socially inept geeks, it does balance this out very well with very well thought out geek jokes, often referring to quite obscure geek trivia.
One of their most iconic scenes is the following:
So yesterday we set out to see a recording of the third series of what we for now will call “The Episode with the Calendar”. We set out extra early at 3pm (doors would open at 6pm, with the recording starting at 7pm) and had a bit of a panic when we couldn’t get a cab at Uxbridge station. We eventually got some very nice seats at the front row on the left side, just good enough to get a good view of the set and the actors. Things got a bit “weird” though when we met our studio host, Ray Peacock.
You probably know that studios often hire comedians to warm up and entertain the audience before the recording, and in between the parts of the recording. You also probably know that comedians in general like to make fun of people on the first row. So here I was, sitting on the first row, and Ray had already made some fun about my lack of hair. He was telling some joke when he was interrupted by the floor manager and when we got back, he looked at me and I made a quick move along my head as if I had hair. This is when the “shit” hit the “fan”.
He decided to ask what my name was, so I said Cristiano. He laughed and asked what my real name was. So I said, “Cristiano”. All things got funnier and funnier, with him trying to donate me some hair, when he came up with the idea that everyone should add me on FaceBook. Someone then made the suggestion of making a FaceBook group about me, which led to Ray assigning some FaceBook group officers, etc, etc. So here I was, laughing my ass off while the joke that started out so innocent got totally out of hand. I in the mean time was hopping for Ray to ask me what I did for a living so that I could tell him I was a “FaceBook App Developer”. This would have got him rolling on the floor I think but unfortunately he never asked.
In the end though, when we got home, I ended up with about 15 people actually adding me as a friend, and an entire FaceBook group dedicated to me, with 84 members and counting. I also got the studio photographer to make a nice photo of us to remember it by. I must admit, Ray looks a lot scarier in real life than he does in this photo.
So I start at my new job tomorrow. All excited and looking forward to gain some experience at a web agency, working in a team, doing things I love. It still all feels a bit like stepping into the unknown, which is why I chose this photo of a sunset as the image of the day. Tomorrow will be a new and exciting day full of new possibilities and opportunities.
So I am starting a new job tomorrow at Nudge London. Wonder how I got that job? I can tell you that it did not include putting my resume on a trillion job search websites, then sending it out to unsuspecting companies in a hope that they notice me. No instead I got my new job through a combination of factors, including a lot of luck.
Networking
Probably one of the most powerful things anyone can do is networking. And with that I don’t mean social networking, but actual real life face-to-face networking. Attending events, building up a list of people that know you and respect you greatly improves your chances for any possibilities in the future. Also, don’t start with networking when you NEED an opportunity, but do the networking in the good times when you have time and money to spare. With me it was attending all the geek events in London in the last few years, and probably eventually the organising of the London Geek Dinners.
Twitter
My networking lead to me having loads of people on Facebook, Twitter, etc. So I gave a shout 2 weeks ago that I was looking for a job and quickly got quite a few people forwarding my details all over the place. I eventually got a plug by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK to put my resume on their CrunchBoard. Clearly this was mainly a good plug for TechCrunch, but that didn’t matter to me at all.
The ad on the CrunchBoard lead to about 12 emails from companies that where looking for a web dev, after which I had a total of 4 interviews with the ones that fitted my needs. Some of these companies knew me personally, others where attracted to my resume.
Personal Statement
The thing that actually attracted one of the companies that asked me in for an interview was a special part of my resume: the personal statement. My friend Carlo had me add this extra bit to my resume after he read my original version. A personal statement is a little paragraph that explains in human terms what you stand for and what core values you think make you valuable to the employer. Often companies only look at that little paragraph which makes it a very important piece to write.
Luck
I think in the end one of the things you might need is a bit of luck. I had a bit of luck that in this economic down time Mike decided to further promote the TechCrunck UK CrunchBoard, and then that people actually read my CV instead of putting them up on a big pile with all those people from eBay that recently got put on notice.
More than a year ago Moo announced their StickerBooks, and shortly after that I started the Flickr group for this little funny stickers. Now we have over 400 photo entries and 150 members. It’s not the most active group but sometimes it can be quite funny to see what people do with the Moo Stickers.
John Resig – Color Profiles in Firefox 3 – Apparently FF does not do proper color profiles by default, making my images look different in Safari than in Firefox! This little trick explains how to turn them on.
Cristiano on Tech/Life 
