You might say, and you might not be completely incorrect, that I work for Pygmy Software. It would be slightly more accurate, however, to say that I am Pygmy Software. Pygmy is a name that I’ve put on my software for the past six or so years, with the sole purpose of seeming more important than I am.

I’ve just finished redesigning Pygmy Software’s Web site, which was satisfying in itself (static this time — I’ve had enough dynamic sites for a while), but the real highlight here was some shameless nostalgia-wallowing. I did a bit of research and wrote up a pretty-much-comprehensive history of the “company”. If you’re into reading others’ therapeutic musings on their pasts, why not check it out? Otherwise, it would most likely be no more than another very poor way to waste your time. And who doesn’t need one more of those?

Other people (that’s you) probably will not share my fascination with the subject of this post. Please consider yourself forewarned.

Recently, while in Boulder, Colorado, I had a chance to visit the headquarters of the Celestial Seasonings tea company. I took a tour of their offices and factory, and was asked explicitly not to take any pictures, please, while I was on the tour. I could not, however, resist the temptation to take a shot or two from behind pillars and such, especially of a contraption referred to as the robotic palletizer. It was an autonomous machine responsible for picking up sets of boxes of tea and employing a camera to place them onto pallets for delivery. For some reason, I was struck by how awesomely futuristic and even slightly creepy it managed to be. I took a short, haphazard movie clip (728k MPEG-4) of it in operation, which some like-minded people might enjoy as much as I do.

My sincerest apologies to the person the back of whose head features prominently in the clip.