I went to speak at a conference at Notre Dame last weekend. it was great fun.. the talk was well received, which was all good. In fact, I had been quite terrified of being grilled by hordes of angry biochemists. Quite to the contrary, it went across very well.
A few points to note, though: I use open office because it transits almost seamlessly between by Linux and my Mac. Go OO!! (very few people will understand the hidden connotation). But what really gets me is when evil video systems fail to cooperate with my Mac, just 'cos they are all Windows optimized and evil. Also, I tend to backup my presentations in .ppt, .odp, .sda, .pdf and .jpg formats, and keep them in two separate emails, and on a disc and on a flash drive (which is formatted to be readable across any OS). People may think that I am being paranoid. Far from it. Things have a way of collapsing when you least expect them to. Hence backup as much as possible. I hold true to this, and I think so should others. People who walk around without taking precautions are just asking for trouble. Having said that, I probably get more than my share of trouble in this context anyway.. but then, I try hard to solve those problems.. sort of like Rincewind.. I include here, for your edification and amusement, an excerpt from the wikipedia page on Rincewind, "In fact, Rincewind has the dubious privilege of being the Chosen of the Lady, the Discworld's most mysterious goddess. It is for this reason that he is constantly finding himself embroiled in unpleasant situations and coming out more-or-less on top. However if he ever realised this, much less acted as though nothing could seriously harm him, then she would instantly lose interest. Besides, having the favour of the Lady, in addition to being unreliable, also means having the very reliable enmity of Fate. People have said that the gods smile on Rincewind (due to his continued existence despite all odds.) Rincewind feels that, although he knew they were definitely doing something to him, he had never considered it to be smiling."
Ayan Paul, my friend from collegeis working on his PhD in high energy physics at ND. We got to hang out after a really long time.. which was awesome, as we had some six years worth of catching up. Ayan took me to this party hosted by a bunch of phys/math people. Awesome party.. the kind I have missed for way too long.. and proceeded to introduce me to his friends as '.. he used to be a physicist'. Hmmm... Anyway, I learned a little about this bloke's work: logic theory, I cracked, and got laughs for a few Erdos jokes, and I learned how to be very rude in German. Altogether, time wonderfully spent.
And then, I got back.. and happened to watch David Lynch's very very strange film 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with me'. Now, Mike, our media library bloke once gave me Blue Velvet to see, because 'I was seeing to many strange films', as he put it. Why would you do that to someone, unless you wanted to weird him to hell and back? David Lynch paints a very surrealistic, yet beautiful canvas filled with strong, arresting, performances. In Blue Velvet, Isabella Rosallini's performance is lovely.. yet so utterly weird. Fire Walk is stranger still... and this will take another couple of views to go down properly.
A few points to note, though: I use open office because it transits almost seamlessly between by Linux and my Mac. Go OO!! (very few people will understand the hidden connotation). But what really gets me is when evil video systems fail to cooperate with my Mac, just 'cos they are all Windows optimized and evil. Also, I tend to backup my presentations in .ppt, .odp, .sda, .pdf and .jpg formats, and keep them in two separate emails, and on a disc and on a flash drive (which is formatted to be readable across any OS). People may think that I am being paranoid. Far from it. Things have a way of collapsing when you least expect them to. Hence backup as much as possible. I hold true to this, and I think so should others. People who walk around without taking precautions are just asking for trouble. Having said that, I probably get more than my share of trouble in this context anyway.. but then, I try hard to solve those problems.. sort of like Rincewind.. I include here, for your edification and amusement, an excerpt from the wikipedia page on Rincewind, "In fact, Rincewind has the dubious privilege of being the Chosen of the Lady, the Discworld's most mysterious goddess. It is for this reason that he is constantly finding himself embroiled in unpleasant situations and coming out more-or-less on top. However if he ever realised this, much less acted as though nothing could seriously harm him, then she would instantly lose interest. Besides, having the favour of the Lady, in addition to being unreliable, also means having the very reliable enmity of Fate. People have said that the gods smile on Rincewind (due to his continued existence despite all odds.) Rincewind feels that, although he knew they were definitely doing something to him, he had never considered it to be smiling."
Ayan Paul, my friend from collegeis working on his PhD in high energy physics at ND. We got to hang out after a really long time.. which was awesome, as we had some six years worth of catching up. Ayan took me to this party hosted by a bunch of phys/math people. Awesome party.. the kind I have missed for way too long.. and proceeded to introduce me to his friends as '.. he used to be a physicist'. Hmmm... Anyway, I learned a little about this bloke's work: logic theory, I cracked, and got laughs for a few Erdos jokes, and I learned how to be very rude in German. Altogether, time wonderfully spent.
And then, I got back.. and happened to watch David Lynch's very very strange film 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with me'. Now, Mike, our media library bloke once gave me Blue Velvet to see, because 'I was seeing to many strange films', as he put it. Why would you do that to someone, unless you wanted to weird him to hell and back? David Lynch paints a very surrealistic, yet beautiful canvas filled with strong, arresting, performances. In Blue Velvet, Isabella Rosallini's performance is lovely.. yet so utterly weird. Fire Walk is stranger still... and this will take another couple of views to go down properly.
1 comment:
Maybe you should consider adding http://slideshare.net to your backup arsenal.
Also, I like to use the "Expected value of shit happens" napkin-math; i.e. isolate failure cases into independent events and undertake efforts based on likelihoods. My recipe is PPT + PDF in gmail, laptop, and USB, plus a print out sometimes.
Of course, this doesn't take care of a key failure point: the audience -- a rabid but stupid spectator is probably worse than any systemic mishap. Backup solution: Free Long Island Ice Teas right before the talk!
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