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Microserfs
''Microserfs'' is an epistolary novel by Douglas Coupland published by HarperCollins in 1995. It first appeared in short story form as the cover article for the January 1994 issue of ''Wired'' magazine and was subsequently expanded to full novel length. Set in the early 1990s, it captures the state of the technology industry before Windows 95, and anticipates the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. The novel is presented in the form of diary entries maintained on a PowerBook by the narrator, Daniel. Because of this, as well as its formatting and usage of emoticons, this novel is similar to what emerged a decade later as the blog format. Coupland revisited many of the ideas in ''Microserfs'' in his 2006 novel '' JPod'', which has been labeled "''Microserfs'' for the Google generation". Plot The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project. The novel begins in Redmond as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian novelist, designer and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He has published 13 novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. He is a columnist for the ''Financial Times'', as well as a frequent contributor to ''The New York Times'', ''e-flux journal'', ''DIS Magazine'', and ''Vice''. His art exhibits include ''Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything'', which was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, now the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, and ''Bit Rot'' at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, as well as the Villa Stuck. Coupland is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JPod
''JPod'' is a novel by Douglas Coupland published by Random House of Canada in 2006. Set in 2005, the book explores the strange and unconventional everyday life of the main character, Ethan Jarlewski, and his team of video game programmers whose last names all begin with the letter 'J'. ''JPod'' was adapted into a CBC television series of the same name co-created by Douglas Coupland and Michael MacLennan. It premiered on January 8, 2008, and ran until its cancellation on March 7, 2008, leaving the series with a permanent cliffhanger. The first thirteen episodes of the series aired in the United States on The CW. Plot ''JPod'' is an avant-garde novel of six young adults, whose last names all begin with the letter 'J' and who are assigned to the same cubicle pod by someone in human resources through a computer glitch, working at Neotronic Arts, a fictional Burnaby-based video game company. Ethan Jarlewski is the novel's main character and narrator, who spends more time involved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and London and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scotland, Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 in Glasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain. HarperCollins operates publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life After God
''Life After God'' is a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, published in 1994. The stories are set around a theme of a generation raised without religion. The jacket for the hardcover book reads "You are the first generation to be raised without religion." The text is an exploration of faith in this vacuum of religion. The stories are also illustrated by the author. Several critics have suggested that this publication marks an early shift in the stylistic vocabulary of Coupland and, according to one critic, he was "excoriated presumably for attempting be serious and to express depression and spiritual yearning when his reviewers were expecting more postmodern jollity". However, the short story would later come to garner more praise (see below) though critics and academics have paid little attention to the publication in terms of academics' articles and commentary. Stories These are the stories that appear in the book, in the order of appearance: (Note: All stories are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polaroids From The Dead
''Polaroids from the Dead'' is a collection of short stories and essays by Douglas Coupland. The theme is that each story is written from a collection of old Polaroid photographs that Coupland found in a drawer. It is an attempt to describe the 1990s, a decade that "seemed to be living in a 1980s hangover". Topics of the stories include a Grateful Dead concert (source of "The Dead" in title), a post-mortem letter to Kurt Cobain, Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge, and an homage to James Rosenquist's painting '' F-111''. The book's ends with a longer essay on Brentwood, California, home to Marilyn Monroe's grave, and the O. J. Simpson murder case. The essay is in part a collage of menus, scraps of conversation, and postings from bulletin boards. Synopsis The book is split into three parts. The first part is Polaroids from the Dead, which is a collection of short stories inspired by a series of Grateful Dead concerts. The second is Portraits of People and Places, which is a collection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legoland Billund
Legoland Billund Resort (also known as Legoland Denmark), the original Legoland park, opened on 7 June 1968 in Billund, Denmark, Billund, Denmark. The park is located next to the original Lego factory and Billund Airport, Denmark's second-busiest airport. Over 1.9 million guests visited the park in 2011, and 50 million guests have visited the park since it opened. This makes Legoland the largest tourist attraction in Denmark outside Copenhagen. The Legoland parks that have since been built are modelled upon Legoland Billund, most noticeably the Miniland area, which is made up of millions of plastic Lego bricks. History The Lego company, led by Ole Kirk Christiansen, introduced plastic toys alongside their existing wooden toy line in 1949 after purchasing one of the first injection moulding machines in 1947. One son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (GKC), was named the managing director of the family business in 1957 shortly before his father died and just two years later he bought ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lego
Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Assembled Lego models can be taken apart, and their pieces can be reused to create new constructions. The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minecraft
''Minecraft'' is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus Persson, Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java (programming language), Java programming language, the first public alpha build was released on 17 May 2009. The game was continuously developed from then on, receiving a full release on 18 November 2011. Afterwards, Persson left Mojang and gave Jens Bergensten, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten control over development. In the years since its release, it has been Video game port, ported to several platforms, including smartphones, tablets, and various video game consoles. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft (franchise), ''Minecraft'' intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for billion. In ''Minecraft'', players explore a procedurally generated, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels. Players can discover and extract raw materials, Glossary of video game terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denmark
Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous administrative division, autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the north Atlantic Ocean.* * * Metropolitan Denmark, also called "continental Denmark" or "Denmark proper", consists of the northern Jutland peninsula and an archipelago of 406 islands. It is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, lying southwest of Sweden, south of Norway, and north of Germany, with which it shares a short border. Denmark proper is situated between the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the east.The island of Bornholm is offset to the east of the rest of the country, in the Baltic Sea. The Kingdom of Denmark, including the Faroe Islands and Greenland, has roughly List of islands of Denmark, 1,400 islands greater than in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coming Out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, because the consequences may be very different for different individuals, some of whom may have their job security or personal security threatened by such disclosure. The act may be viewed as a psychological process or journey; decision-making or Risk, risk-taking; a strategy or plan; a mass or public event; a speech act and a matter of Identity (social science), personal identity; a rite of passage; liberty, liberation or emancipation from oppression; an wikt:ordeal, ordeal; a means toward feeling LGBT pride instead of shame and social stigma; or a career-threatening act. ''Coming out of the closet'' is the source of other gay slang expressions related to voluntary disclosure or lack thereof. LGBTQ people who have already revealed or no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stream Of Consciousness (narrative Mode)
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which is disjointed or has irregular punctuation. The term was first used in 1855 and was first applied to a literary technique in 1918. While critics have pointed to various literary precursors, it was not until the 20th century that this technique was fully developed by modernist writers such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. Stream of consciousness narratives continue to be used in modern prose and the term has been adopted to describe similar techniques in other art forms such as poetry, songwriting and film. Origin of term Alexander Bain used the term in 1855 in the first edition of ''The Senses and the Intellect'', when he wrote, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousnes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding is the practice of Resistance training, progressive resistance exercise to build, control, and develop one's skeletal muscle, muscles via muscle hypertrophy, hypertrophy. An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. It is primarily undertaken for aesthetic purposes over functional ones, distinguishing it from similar activities such as powerlifting and calisthenics. In competitive bodybuilding, competitors appear onstage in line-ups and perform specified poses (and later individual posing routines) for a panel of judges who rank them based on conditioning, muscularity, posing, size, stage presentation, and symmetry. Bodybuilders prepare for competitions by exercising and eliminating non-essential body fat. This is enhanced at the final stage by a combination of carbohydrate loading and dehydration to achieve maximum muscle definition and vascularity. Most bodybuilders also Sun tanning, tan and shave their bodies prior to competition. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
