ICT, Meet the TTC
The DemoCamp brain trust and I attended a presentation put on by ICT Toronto, a committee formed by the City of Toronto to boost Toronto’s profile as a leading city of infortmation and communications technologies.
I should pleased at this development, but something really worries me: it’s being run by the City of [...]
Monthly Archives: April 2006
Apr
24
2006
On the TTC and ICT Toronto
Apr
21
2006
Cities and Messages
Paul Graham
Paul Graham is a programmer (he made a lot of money writing the program that eventually became Yahoo! Store) who spends his time these days running Y Combinator, a company that gives seed money to tech start-ups and writing essays. Many of his essays are primarily of interest to computer programmers, but a few [...]
Apr
20
2006
Notes from Last Night’s ICT Toronto Event
A wide-angle shot of the MaRS Centre, where the event was held.
I caught last night’s ICT Toronto gathering at the MaRS Centre, where ICT Toronto announced the release of their “cluster development strategy” paper — a plan to boost the competitiveness and standing of Accordion City’s information and communications technology sector over the next five [...]
Apr
19
2006
Accordion City Report Says: Boost Our Infotech! [Updated]
Only moments after finishing my blog entry covering 5 high-tech gatherings taking place here next month, I went to the kitchen to grab a drink when I spotted the front page of the Business section in today’s Toronto Star. The headline reads: Boost infotech in GTA: Report.
It turns out that Toronto has the third-largest [...]
Apr
19
2006
Upcoming Geek Events in Accordion City
Lots of things are happening in Accordion City’s high-tech scene over the next month:
DemoCamp 5.0: Tuesday, April 25th
DemoCamp is Toronto’s monthly gathering in which people from the high-tech community demonstrate their projects in front of their peers. You’ve got ten minutes and a “no PowerPoint, just demo” rule to make your presentation, after which [...]
Apr
19
2006
Drink Your Own Pee Dot Com [Updated]
The marketing team here at Tucows has informed me that domain names are increasing in value. People are forking outbig money for them again. I hear that domain names ending with the word “world” — for example, “pantsworld.com”, “steakworld.com”, “accordionworld.com” — are highly prized.
(If you’d like to know more interesting facts about domain names, [...]
Apr
19
2006
A Student Government Suck-Fit
No matter which university or college you attend, student governments are preety much the same. They’re comprised largely of proto-wonks looking to have a taste of power, pad their resumes, have their own offices (and office sex) for the first time, make a few thousand bucks while doing so and most importantly, validate their own [...]
Apr
18
2006
Last Night’s Rails Pub Night
Another sign of Accordion City’s evolution into the next big high-tech centre: the turnout at last night’s Rails Pub Night, a monthly gathering of developers who use Ruby on Rails. From my count, we had 39 people at peak, not to mention 14 squishy cows and one accordion. There was the usual tech banter, but [...]
Apr
18
2006
"Active 18 Association" Meeting Tonight
If you live in Accordion City’s Ward 18 (I work in the area, but live in High Park), you might be interested in tonight’s Active 18 Association meeting taking place at The Great Hall at Queen and Dovercourt. There’s a lot of hubbub about the developers building in the Queen West Triangle and if you’d [...]
Apr
18
2006
"And Suddenly I Heard a Big Boom"
For most of us here in North America, Israel’s one of those places that we often talk about but haven’t visited. Even among Wendy’s and my immediate families — remember, her family’s Jewish — I believe only my Dad has been there. He went there as a young man in the early 1960s and probably [...]
Apr
17
2006
Happy Belated Easter!
Following up a couple of Passover dinners at friends’ places, Wendy celebrated her first Easter yesterday. She seems seems to have enjoyed it. As she wrote, it was a medium-sized gathering for my family: me, Wendy, my sister and brother-in-law, their three kids, mom, two aunts, an uncle, a cousin and her son. Nothing too [...]
Apr
17
2006
More on PowerPoint Breakups
Vincent Marianiello, on his blog My Hypertextual Life, takes the idea put forth in my article The Breakup Style of PowerPoint (whose name is based on Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint) and runs with it:
Go check out Vincent’s “breakup” slides. They have this “funny because it’s true” quality. I know a couple of guys [...]
Apr
17
2006
From the Archives: The Harness at "Money", May 2000
This Is London
Back in 2000, I made a little extra pocket money with the accordion thanks to a club booking agent named Joa. Joa worked for a club called This is London, a “meet market” for the investment bankers, Andersen consultants and the like, and the women who wanted to hook up with them.
Joa hired [...]
Apr
17
2006
Rails Pub Night Tonight!
Tonight, the second monthly Rails Pub Night gathering will take place. These nights, organized by Pete Forde and the gang at the web development company Unspace, are meant to stimulate a healthy Rails developer community here in Accordion City by bringing together people who work with Rails, who dabble in it, who hope to dabble [...]
Apr
13
2006
Passover
Passover began yesterday, and Deenster invited Wendy and me to Seder over at her mom’s place. The lamb was excellent, the company doubly so, and since I’m fond of Jagermeister, Manischewitz doesn’t taste so bad to me.
In honour of Passover (which very closely coincides with Easter this year), here’s the latest Shabot 6000 comic…
