Last night, the Ginger Ninja and I attended Cory Doctorow’s reading of his new novel, Little Brother at the Merrill Collection (the collection of sci-fi books located in the upper floor of the library on College Street just east of Spadina). Little Brother is Cory’s first foray into writing a “young adult” book (memo to [...]
Category Archives: Geek
Star Wars Hijinks at Global Nerdy
May 1, 2008 – 10:39 am
My tech blog, Global Nerdy, is largely focused on computer technology and programming, but it also covers nerd culture, of which Star Wars is a significant part. Right now, I’ve got some Star Wars fun on its front page:
Slave Leia Pillow Fight: Six women. In the “gold bikini outfit” from Return of the Jedi. Having [...]
“Grand Theft Childhood” Authors: Kids Who DON’T Play Videogames are at Risk
April 17, 2008 – 3:47 pm
Grand Theft Childhood is a new book written by Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team who co-founded the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. In the video above, Drs. Kutner and Olson talk with X-Play’s Adam Sessler about some of the findings from the study documented in their [...]
b5media is Looking for a New Director of Technology
March 26, 2008 – 11:59 pm
Farewell, Aaron
It’s official: Aaron Brazell, the Director of Technology for b5media (where I hold the title of Nerd Wrangler), is leaving to pursue other projects. When he joined the company, it was a startup literally operating out of a garage and running on shared hosting. We’re now a blog network of over 300 blogs with [...]
The “Random Harlot Table” from the Original Dungeon Master’s Guide
March 5, 2008 – 12:13 pm
The table below caused much snickering amongst my Dungeons and Dragons-playing peers in high school:
Is it a description of Jarvis Street south of Carlton at night, or perhaps a random sampling of H&M’s clientele? Actually, it’s the Random Harlot Encounter Table from the Dungeon Master’s Guide, First Edition, written by the late Gary Gygax. It’s [...]
The “Dungeons and Dragons” Skit
March 4, 2008 – 3:56 pm
In memory of Gary Gygax’s passing, here’s a classic video poking fun at Dungeons and Dragons that we used to watch all the time at OpenCola:
Gary Gygax: 0 HP
March 4, 2008 – 2:46 pm
I’ll have you young whippersnappers know that I only played the first edition of AD&D, the One True Version of the game.
E. Gary Gygax, who as co-creator of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, died this morning at the age of 69 at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. As a former dungeon master, I [...]
DemoCamp 17 Covered in the National Post
February 27, 2008 – 12:12 pm
I am extremely pleased with the way DemoCamp 17 went. We had some great demos and Ignite presentations at the Toronto Board of Trade dining room, followed by one of the best post-DemoCamp after-parties at the Duke of Westminster. My thanks to all the attendees, the presenters, Jay Goldman for doing a lot of the [...]
How ICT Toronto Sees the Local Tech Community
February 17, 2008 – 4:12 pm
ICT Toronto is a City Hall initiative whose goals are, in their own words, to make Toronto a place that “will become, and be acknowledged globally, as one of the 5 most innovative, creative and productive locations in the world for ICT research, education, business, and investment by 2011″. They’ll be lucky if they manage [...]
Responses to “Ideas to Steal from Silicon Valley and Seattle”
February 17, 2008 – 3:49 pm
A couple of articles have already appeared in response to Ideas to Steal from Silicon Valley and Seattle:
Chris Ragobeer: An Open Letter to Toronto’s Technology Community
Over at The Toronto Marketing and Technology Blog, Chris Ragobeer wrote an article titled An Open Letter to Toronto’s Technology Community. In the article, Chris lists these things:
Things that Toronto [...]
Scenes from Last Night’s Ruby/Rails Project Night
February 13, 2008 – 11:13 pm
[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]
Sean Connery’s character, “Zed” from the movie Zardoz has become the unofficial mascot of my Project Night opening monologues.
In spite of yesterday’s all-day snowstorm and sub-freezing temperatures (-10 C / 14 F), about a couple of dozen people still showed up for last night’s Ruby/Rails Project Night, TSOT’s [...]
TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Night: February 12th
February 10, 2008 – 1:09 pm
Here’s a photo to remind you that TSOT’s Second Ruby/Rails Project Night is just over a day away:
For more details about Ruby/Rails project night, see this blog entry.
DemoCamp 17: February 25th
February 10, 2008 – 1:00 pm
Here’s a photo to remind you that DemoCamp 17 — the “show and tell” gathering of the bright lights of Toronto’s tech community — is just over a week away:
For more details about DemoCamp 17, see:
My earlier blog entry on DemoCamp 17
David Crow’s blog entry on DemoCamp 17
Radiant Core’s blog entry on DemoCamp 17
Leila Boujanane’s [...]
Toronto Gatherings for Rails Developers
January 21, 2008 – 12:59 pm
If you’re a Ruby on Rails developer, there are a couple of events you might be interested in…
Tonight: Rails Pub Nite at The Rhino
The fine folks at local development company Unspace have hosted the monthly Rails Pub Nite for nearly two years now, and the event is going strong. It’s a meet-and-greet event where you [...]
