by Joey deVilla on January 31, 2006
New comic series typically take months before they produce a strip that makes you sit up, take notice and say “hey, that’s interesting”, and that goes double for webcomics. So when I discovered that the Home on the Strange strip shown below is only the fourth one in the series, I was completely surprised. The first four panels appear below; click the image to read the whole thing…

More later…
by Joey deVilla on January 31, 2006

Blogstravaganza in full swing! From left to right: Andrew Coyne, John Bowman, Yours Truly. Photo from A North American Patriot.
Let me begin with a shout-out to all the attendees of last Friday’s Blogstravaganza…
(If I missed you, let me know!)
My thanks to Bob Tarantino and Jason Cherniak for putting the whole thing together. It was good to catch up with old friends from previous gatherings and meet some new ones as well. The success of this event shows that the blogosphere is alive and well here in Accordion City.
It’s also compartmentalized.
Echo Chambers
If you’re a regular reader of this blog or a regular attendee of the GTABloggers gatherings, there’s a strong possibility that many of the blogs listed above will be unfamiliar to you. Likewise, this blog was unfamiliar to the bloggers whom I hadn’t met at previous gatherings of the local Vast Right Wing Conspiracy bloggers, despite recent links from a number of Technorati Top 100 sites and recent mentions in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Macleans. One attendee didn’t know who Andrew Coyne was, despite the fact that he’s one of Canada’s highest-profile newspaper writers, while another lamented that Toronto seemed to have more right-wing bloggers than left-wing ones, even though attending a GTABlogger party might make you think the opposite was true.
This sort of thing is to be expected. After all, the term “community” has the same root as the word “common”, as in “sharing some trait or quality”. There’s a natural tendency towards gravitating towards those who share your interests, and in these politically-charged times, towards those who share your politics. There are some advantages to this, not the least of which is that a community can often do what an individual cannot.
This also has its downsides. Consider the “echo chamber” effect, in which the voices of a community serve to amplify voices from within the community and diminish outside voices, forming a self-reinforcing “feedback loop”. This can lead to all sorts of problems, from a “tunnel visioned” mindset to a lack of new ideas within the community to the demonization of other communities based on stereotypes and prejudices.
I think that Bob and Jason did a very good job at attempting to reach Toronto bloggers of all political persuasions. Perhaps it’ll take a few more of these gatherings to bring out more local bloggers whose politics are “centre” and “left”.
Your opinions, please…
by Joey deVilla on January 30, 2006
by Joey deVilla on January 30, 2006

(* That’s “Happy new year” in Cantonese.)
It’s been a busy weekend, with Blogstravaganza on Friday, a Chinese New Year’s party on Saturday and a big Chinese New Year family outing on Sunday. Today is turning out ot be a very busy day, It’s a busy day today an busier day, so today’s posting is a simple one in honour of Chinese New Year: a summer 1999 photo of a dog sitting in a Montreal apartment window, not far from the corner of Milton and Durocher, a location for many of my youthful indiscretions.
by Joey deVilla on January 27, 2006
The Google logo has a powdered wig and a musical staff today because it’s Mozart’s birthday. Happy birthday, Amadeus!

Falco and Mozart — together at last!
I don’t have any Mozart here at the office, and it was much easier to find an MP3 of a fan remix of Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus [7.3 MB MP3] than it was to dig up a measly sample of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik [266K MP3], which is a shame. Once I started uploading Rock Me Amadeus, I couldn’t help but post Help Me, Dr. Zaius [268K MP3] from The Simpsons.