jPod is the latest Douglas Coupland novel about programmers since Microserfs . It centers around a group of mildly autistic programmers in a video game company in Vancouver who all sit in the same area of the company because their last names begin with the letter "J" and in particular the lead character's life, Ethan Jarlewski. While there are some interesting and thoughtful moments in the book, it unfortunately comes nowhere near the calibre of Microserfs due to the following reasons. 1) Wildly outrageous plot lines: I won't go into too much detail about these, but suffice to say where Microserfs was at least plausible (if slightly unrealistic), Coupland relies on ridiculous events to keep the story going in this case. Not only that, the characters are able to navigate these plot points virtually unscathed and unscarred (where as in real life these kind of things would require months of therapy). 2) Too many non-story devices: There is one part of the book where th
This is my technical blog where I note things I have developed that I want to remember.