February 2011

Anyone harebrained enough to molest an alligator is going to ignore this sign.

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The next issue of Spacing, the magazine about life in Accordion City and how to make it and other cities better places, should be available soon. The cover story is about winter and the city; for the most part, I think that although winter is always something to contend with, Accordion City generally gets off relatively easy with winter.

As always, Matthew Blackett and the other fine folks behind Spacing are holding a release party to coincide. I’m thinking of going – it’s at the El Mocambo (464 Spadina, just south of College, and really, you should know where the ElMo is) and the fun starts at 7:30 p.m. Cover is $5 for Spacing subscribers, $10 for non-subscribers. If you’d like to attend, let them know by RSVPing on the Facebook event page for the party.

If you attend:

• You’ll get the new issue of Spacing
• You’ll dance to the music of the Track Meet DJ crew
• If you’re wearing a Pinko button, you can get a free back issue of your choice
• You’ll be able to participate in the paper snowflake contest – best ones win prizes
• There’ll be Crayola markers for you to draw your own subway/LRT routes – sort of like the way our new mayor, Mayor Griffin – er, I mean Mayor Ford – seems to do his transit planning
• You’ll meet loads of great urbanists for conversation

Sound like fun – see you there!

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Someone who goes by the name “TheArcticEcho” digitized all the Jeopardy episodes featuring Watson playing against champion players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter and uploaded them to YouTube. As an added bonus for people who like to see behind the scenes, VentureBeat uploaded the practice match.

I’ve been in Seattle all week for Microsoft’s TechReady conference, so I haven’t had a chance to catch Jeopardy on TV. I probably won’t get a chance to watch the YouTube videos until after I return from Seattle on Sunday night, so I decided to gather all the videos in one place for convenient viewing on Family Day – enjoy!

The Practice Match

Day 1, Part 1

Day 1, Part 2

Day 2, Part 1

Day 2, Part 2

Day 3, Part 1

Day 3, Part 2

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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Funny because it’s true.

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Have a good one, everybody!

The Golden Girls picture I posted for Valentine’s Day 2008 is getting a lot of hits, and I figured it was worth reposting below. Enjoy!

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Here’s a photo I took during my flight from Toronto to Seattle (where I’ll be for the bext 10 days), getting as much geek mileage as I can. That’s The Social Network playing on the in-flight entertainment system (until yesterday, I still hadn’t seen it), and below that is me getting screenshots for an upcoming Windows Phone 7 development article on my Dell Latitude XT2, my phone- and touch-development demo machine.

I suppose I could’ve geeked out more by pulling out my other computer – the Dellasaurus – but it’s a 17” beast (Quad core i7 chip! 16 gigs RAM! 1 gig video! Orange!) that doesn’t fit on an airline tray table and I don’t think the person in the seat beside would’ve appreciated it.

While going through security to board the “puddle-jumper” that would take me from Vancouver to Sea-Tac, the security people asked me to prove that my accordion was indeed a musical instrument. I played the refrain from Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling as proof and got a “standing O” at the end.

Here’s a photo I took from my hotel room early this morning. It’s actually sunny in Seattle! Better still, it’s balmy in comparison: 6 degrees C here, versus –10 back home. I’m going to enjoy the next ten days here!

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The question is “name something that gets passed around”; hilarity ensues.

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I’m going to be in Seattle twice this month: I leave today and will be there for TechReady, the internal Microsoft-employees-only conference, where I’ll be doing a presentation, doing a lot of networking and learning, catching up with lots of people and, as is the Microsoft Canada tradition, winding up at Kells Irish Pub by the market, where I will doubtless end up playing Wild Rover on accordion.

I’ll return to Accordion City on the 20th and will fly back to Seattle on the 27th to help out at Microsoft’s MVP Global Summit, the annual gathering of Most Valuable Professionals. MVPs are non-Microsoft employees who’ve been awarded for their community leadership and for providing expertise to users of Microsoft tools and technologies.

I’m sure some interesting stuff will happen while I’m there, and you can be sure I’ll write about it here. Watch this space!

The title of this article is a reference to the theme song from the TV series Frasier, which took place in Seattle. If you’ve ever wondered what the seemingly nonsensical lyrics of that song mean, you might want to check out this page.

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What better way to start the working week than by showing you ways to throw a wrench in your productivity? Here’s The Procrastination Flowchart (provenance unknown; a reader sent it my way), showing you how it’s done. Click it to see it at full size:

Click the flowchart to see it at full size.

As you can see, you can put a lot of work into avoiding work. Being a practitioner of what I like to call “enlightened laziness”, I much prefer this much simpler version:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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Normally, my coworkers at Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team are scattered across the country – many of us are here in Accordion City, but we’re also in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal. Twice a year, we get together to have a two- or three-day long “offsite meeting” where we get a lot of work done, but we also get a lot of play done.

Yesterday, once we’d gotten through all our planning meetings, brainstorming sessions and other assorted business, we made our way to Cirillo’s Cooking Academy where we were split into two teams to compete in an cooking competition. I was the leader of one of the teams while Rick Claus led the other. The dishes were:

• Three types of tapas: chorizo and onions, calamari with olives and tomatoes and a vegetable casserole
• Chicken breasts stuffed with red peppers and rice
• Molten chocolate cake

In the end, my team was the first to complete their assignments, but Rick’s team edged us out on flavour (they weren’t shy with the salt) and getting their cakes to rise a little higher. Perhaps I should’ve done my Gordon Ramsay impression and yelled a little more (NSFW, swearing).

My coworker Julie James took some photos; they’re in the slideshow below and well as in this Flickr photoset:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I also shot some photos — they’re of my team putting together their food. You can see them in the slideshow below or in this Flickr photoset:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I had a great time and great food with great coworkers, and yes, I broke out the accordion. Even Gladstone Grant – he’s the Developer and Platform Evangelism Lead – took the accordion out for a spin:

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As this College Humor video shows, some things are best not shared on the internet.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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The snowstorm that hit us overnight has been given names like “Snowpocalypse”, “Snowmageddon” and my favourite, “Snowtorious B.I.G.”, but I think the better name is “Snownoyance”. I don’t think we got more than 10cm (4 inches), which is something that anyone in Canada who’s been through a winter or two should take in stride.

My trip this morning from home in High Park to Microsoft HQ in Mississauga wasn’t terribly challenging; in fact, it was quicker than usual thanks to the number of lightweights who were scared off the roads and didn’t bung up Highway 401. The reaction of a lot of people in Accordion City to the snow reminds me of the Snow in Toronto segment from Rick Mercer Report from a couple of years ago.

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Both my parents are Asian doctors (as are my sister, brother-in-law, and a good selection of aunts, uncles and cousins), so I have more than passing familiarity with the whole “Tiger Mom” mindset. I chuckled when I read the controversial excerpt from Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which the Wall Street Journal gave the headline Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

As expected, the internet, which is teeming with Asians and Asian fetishists, was bound to respond with a LOLmeme, and it’s produced some real gems. You can catch them all at Tiger Mom Says, and if you think you’ can come up with a better one, the Tiger Mom Meme Generator awaits your creative genius.

The Tiger Mom meme has a less successful predecessor: High Expectations Asian Father.

It caught on for a while, but unlike Tiger Mom, it wasn’t buoyed by a controversial book.

As for Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua, you might want to watch this video, in which she responds to the uproar about her book:

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