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Joey deVilla

That’s a Little TOO Neighbourly for Me!

by Joey deVilla on November 6, 2009

While biking down to the Hacklab (which I use as a day-to-day workspace) on Dundas Street West this morning, I noticed this ad at the Landsdowne bus stop’s shelter:

Bus shelter featuring the ad "My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken"

“My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken” might sound like the sort of situation that would make for a pleasant freshman year in a dorm, but in this case it refers to the Jamaican style of cooking in which you dry-rub meat with jerk spice. It’s pretty tasty, and I recommend trying it if you’ve got a Jamaican restaurant in your neighbourhood.

Speaking of restaurants in your neighbourhood, that’s what these posters are all about: encouraging you to support your local businesses. There are plenty of great ones around my place – Sweet Flour, My Place, Bloor Meat Market and Crema Coffee come to mind – and I’m sure that there are plenty of businesses in your ‘hood that deserve your business.

If you look closely at the bottom of the poster, you’ll notice that they were sponsored in part by Tabia, the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas:

Closeup of the "My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken" poster

A little farther east on Dundas, I stopped to take a picture of a less racy poster in the series:

Another poster: "My Neighbour Saved My Marriage"

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Happy Guy Fawkes Day / Birthday to Me!

by Joey deVilla on November 5, 2009

Joey deVilla playing accordion, with a Guy Fawkes mask and a cake superimposed over his face

Since it’s both Guy Fawkes Day and my 42nd birthday, I should download Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony; it’ll let me celebrate both since it’s both a videogame and an excuse to blow up buildings:

Scene from "The Ballad of Gay Tony": Helicopter shooting up a Liberty City street

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Just Us Cafe logoThis afternoon (Wednesday, November 4th) from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Atlantic time, I’ll be holding a Halifax edition of “Coffee and Code” at Just Us Cafe on Barrington (1678 Barrington). My coworkers Damir Bersinic and Rodney Buike will be joining me. Come on down and chat with us about Microsoft, the tech industry in general, the job market, accordions, whatever!

(If you’re a developer who’s interested in building a cloud computing-based application on Windows Azure, you might want to come down for this one, as I might have an offer that you might find difficult to resist. Just sayin’.)

There may be plans for dinner and accordion-and-beer-fueled mayhem this evening, so if you’re into that sort of thing, drop me a line.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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combat knifeThe amount of work people do in order to avoid work never ceases to amaze me. If there’s a prize for this sort of thing, we might have to award it to Aaron Siebers, 27, of Denver, Colorado, a Blockbuster employee who didn’t think that simply calling in sick was enough. Here’s the report from the UK paper The Telegraph:

Facing a night shift at a Blockbuster video store, Aaron Siebers, 27, took a serrated knife and stabbed himself in the leg. For good measure he then slashed his own face and stomach.

Mr Siebers then told the video store in Denver, Colorado, that he had been attacked by three men dressed in black on his way to work.

After stabbing himself, he was hospitalised with a deep puncture wound to his lower leg.

But his ploy sparked a large police manhunt with officers and sniffer dogs combing the streets for his attacker.

CCTV near where the incident was supposed to have taken place showed no attack and, after repeated questioning, Mr Siebers eventually admitted that he had made it up to get out of work.

He has been charged with false reporting and obstructing police.

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Clipping from Fox News site: "GOP SWEEP: McDonnell cruises to victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race as Christie upsets incumbent Gov. Corzine in New Jersey; Democrat Owens takes closely watched NY congressional seat."

Two out of three races is pretty good, but it’s not a sweep.

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Algoma University’s Unusual Ads

October 31, 2009
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I saw these posters for Algoma University yesterday:

There’s always been an implicit promise of freedom in going away to university, but this is the first time I can recall where it’s been used as an actual selling point.
I don’t think that this campaign is a good idea. Algoma’s got some things going for [...]

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Headline of the Day: “Police Seek Serial Groin-Kicker”

October 30, 2009
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There’s a woman in or around the area of Langley, British Columbia who’s going around kicking men in the groin. One was hurt so badly that one of his testicles had to be removed.
This case will probably spark two types of conversations, editorials and online commentary:

One will be some persecution fantasy among men [...]

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Very True

October 30, 2009
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Here’s a piece by the artist known as 9 0 0 0 that I rather like:

You can see the original (and more) in 9 0 0 0’s Flickr photostream.

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Halifax Bound

October 30, 2009
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TechDays, Microsoft’s cross-Canada conference for developers and IT pros took a break in October, but returns in November to complete its tour of the five remaining cities. As leader of one of the conference tracks it means that I’ll be on the road, hitting these five cities over the next couple of months:

Halifax: November 2nd [...]

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“Hey Jude” Flowchart

October 29, 2009
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…and if you were wondering: oh yes, I do own the deluxe edition of The Beatles: Rock Band:

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Spider-Man on Chat Rooms

October 29, 2009
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This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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R.I.P. Hank Young, the “Gladstone Cowboy”

October 28, 2009
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Hank Young, country-and-western musician from Halifax turned Gladstone Hotel character-at-large, died of a stroke this past weekend at the age of 68. I first met him at the Gladstone during its grungy pre-renovation days at its karaoke night, where he was known for his rendition of Hey Good Lookin’. When the hotel underwent its [...]

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Hip-Hop Video of the Day: Deuce Poppi’s “My White Friends”

October 28, 2009
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Accordion City is often referred to as the most multicultural city in North America, if not the whole planet, and we generally get along. If we ever decide that we need a city anthem, I would recommend that we simply adopt Deuce Poppi’s My White Friends:

[Attention Carson T. Foster and Wil McLean! You need to [...]

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Slice of Life: Going After the Dungeons and Dragons Market

October 26, 2009
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While going out for brunch with our friends Liz and Keith and their kids on Roncesvalles, I saw these signs promoting Kennel Cafe’s services. If you never played Dungeons and Dragons, the jokes are totally meaningless, but if you have, they’re pretty amusing:

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The “High-Brow/Low-Brow” Chart

October 23, 2009
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I don’t know when this chart classifying the spectrum of tastes from high-brow to low-brow was createded, but the graphic style puts it sometime in the “Mad Men” era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. You can click the chart to see it at full size:
Click the chart to see it at full size.
I [...]

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