From the category archives:

Life/It Happened to Me

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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Halifax Coffee and Code This Afternoon – Just Us Cafe on Barrington

by Joey deVilla on November 4, 2009

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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Halifax Bound

by Joey deVilla on October 30, 2009

halifaxTechDays, 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 and 3rd
  • Calgary: November 17th and 18th
  • Montreal: December 2nd and 3rd
  • Ottawa: December 9th and 10th
  • Winnipeg: December 15th and 16th

If you’re a programmer or IT pro who works with Microsoft tools and technologies or is thinking about doing so, you’d do well to check out TechDays. You can find out more at the TechDays site, or you can always drop me a line.

If you’re in Halifax and would like to catch up, I’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Just Us Cafe (1678 Barrington) on Wednesday, November 4th from 2 to 6 p.m. Come by, have a coffee and a chat!

I’ll be landing in Halifax this weekend, and chances are I might be looking to do something on Saturday night…

This article also appears in Coffee and Code.
Related articles appear in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.

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Slice of Life: Going After the Dungeons and Dragons Market

by Joey deVilla on October 26, 2009

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:

Kennel Cafe sign: "Cats add a +5 modifier to all persuasion and intimidation skill checks. Adopt a cat!"

Kennel Cafe sign: "Cats provide 15% base mana cost reduction for all spells -- even Lay on Hands!!!"

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Slice of Life: Me and Steve B.

October 22, 2009
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I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op [...]

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Reporting From the Canadian Windows 7 Event

October 21, 2009
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The official launch of Windows 7 doesn’t happen until tomorrow, but we’re having a big launch event with Steve Ballmer today in Toronto! I’ll be blogging and tweeting all day from the launch venue – Toronto’s Harbour Castle Westin Convention Centre.
For the full skinny on the event, follow the #cdnwin7 (short for “Canadian Windows 7”) [...]

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One Year at Microsoft

October 20, 2009
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I knew that I might be a little too busy to write an anniversary blog post with my work schedule this week. That’s why I wrote that article last month to mark having worked at Microsoft for 11 months. My schedule was a little less hectic then. Go and read the article if you like [...]

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Dragonette Live

October 14, 2009
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I caught Dragonette at the launch party for MSN.ca a couple of weeks ago and was pretty impressed. I’m fond of their synth-pop-cut-with-guitars sound and am going to have to get my hands on their new album.
I took some shots of their performance; you can either check out this Flickr photoset or watch the slideshow [...]

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Scenes from the Windows 7 Hardware Media Event / Appearing Tonight on InnerSPACE

October 8, 2009
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Here are some photos I took at Monday’s Windows 7 media event showing off the latest Windows 7-compatible computers from six vendors:

The participating vendors were:

Dell
Hewlett-Packard
Lenovo
LG
Sony
Toshiba

The whole day was a non-stop demo from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with journalists both mainstream and tech, associated with an organization or independent, [...]

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Slice of Life: Where I am Today

October 5, 2009
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I’m working out of the building known as “The Richmond” today, participating in a showcase of Windows 7-ready hardware for the media. As of this writing, I’ve done demos of Windows 7 on an HP TouchSmart computer hooked to a Sony Bravia TV equipped with DLNA for a number of journos for various media outlets [...]

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Slice of Life: It’s Beer O’Clock

September 30, 2009
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A couple of photos from the bar after last night’s FailCamp:

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How to Get to FailCamp Toronto 3 from Union Station

September 29, 2009
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Most of you will be heading to FailCamp via public transit, and many have asked how to get to FailCamp’s venue, the South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, from Union Station – here’s how!
First, go up to the main level of Union Station, which looks like this:

On the west end of the [...]

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Slice of Life: Oooh! Kosher Hot Dog Vending Machine!

September 29, 2009
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Take a gander at this – it’s a Maven’s Kosher Foods vending machine. It will cook and serve a kosher hot dog – the food of my in-laws! – on the spot for you, in exchange for five dollars:

There are a couple of these at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where I’m spending the [...]

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11 Months as a Microsoft Man

September 21, 2009
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While Kris Krug was taking photos of me for TechDays, his assistant Danielle was holding up a light reflector and remarking that I seemed to really love my job. I hadn’t yet told her that I really loved my job; I was just doing my thing, running my track of the conference, chatting up [...]

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