connecting*the*dots

I met John Ford at the Greensboro Web Design Meetup he was running last month. Over the following week, we traded emails and eventually decided to share portfolio and application ideas over a six-pack in my home office. After going through some work and chatting up each of our killer app ideas, we ended up discussing how we make software, going back and forth between Getting Real and Cooper’s Goal Directed methodology.

As John was about to go on a month long trip to Asia and Australia, I gave him my copy of The Inmates are Running the Asylum to enjoy on the trip, but under one condition: he had to take a few pictures of it at various exotic locals on his trip.

C’mon John, one more!

What the fuck is going on in Sydney? From the AP via Aljazeera:

[…]

On Sunday a mob of 5,000 white men, many of them drunk, attacked men they believed were of Middle Eastern descent in retaliation for the assault a week earlier of two volunteer lifeguards.

Youths of Lebanese descent were alleged to be behind that assault, but police say there was no apparent racial motive. (Full story)

Police arrested 16 rioters and said 31 people were injured, including a man stabbed in the back by an assailant officers said was a man of Arab appearance.

Prime Minister John Howard called the violence “sickening” but denied it was underpinned by a vein of racism running through Australian society.

“I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country,” he said.

[…]

The rampage will compound shock expressed Monday at Sunday’s rioting, which police said was organized by mobile phone text messages and fanned by Neo Nazi groups.

“What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in Australia and perhaps we have not seen in Australia in any of our lifetimes. And that is a mass call to violence based on race," Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.

[…]

I’ve a few readers down under; Jack are you feeling the vibe down there? How organized are these hate groups?