Author: Joey deVilla

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

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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.

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:

Photo courtesy of Certified Bullshit Technician.

Mine was pretty nice, and nothing like the pic above: just dinner at Madras Masala followed by drinks at The Rhino with my friends Maria and James.

Despite the cold, there were lineups aplenty outside many establishments on Queen west of Dufferin, which Accordion City long-timers should find a little surprising. Only a few years ago, that stretch of Queen Street was a ghost town after dark.

If you’re looking to fatten up your music collection and you don’t exist solely on a diet of top 40, check out the Best Songs of 2010 list at the indie/alternative MP3 blog Said the Gramophone. It lists what they consider to be the 100 best songs of 2010 and for a little while longer, you’ll even be able to download them (they won’t stay up forever, so download them – and yes, buy them eventually – before they expire).

You can download the complete set of 100 songs in two parts:

• Songs 1 – 50: here or here
• Songs 51 – 100: here or here

I listened to this collection while laid up in the hospital earlier this month.

Yes, it’s likely that you’re not familiar with many of the artists in the list (although they did include a couple of pop baubles such as Cee-Lo’s Fuck You, a song so incredibly catchy that it melts even the most hardcore of indie sensibilities) and you’re not going to find much in the way of jump-on-the-table-and-make-the-devil-sign anthems, but you will hear good music. And you’ll most likely discover a few great artists you’d have otherwise overlooked.

Do check Said the Gramophone from time to time. They update regularly with new songs, and it’s one of the places I go to discover new music.

For the past few days, my street has become the new home to a gaggle (or perhaps a few gaggles – I can’t tell one from the other) of Canada geese. At certain times of the day – typically in the morning and mid-afternoon, you can see them, just hanging around.

Fun fact: Gaggle is the term used for a flock of at least five geese not in flight. A flock of geese in flight is called a skein.

It’s not unusual to see geese in nearby High Park, where there’s plenty of greenery, the lake is nearby and car traffic is low. It’s considerably more so to see them wandering about on a residential street and in driveways:

Here are a couple of shots of them walking down the street, Reservoir Dogs style:

Their visits might have been brought about by people feeding them. For the past couple of days, I’ve noticed that someone’s been dumping piles of bread crumbs near High Park subway station, and the geese have taken to dining and even lying down there:

If you’re in the Toronto area and have been thinking about getting into game development, whether for “stationary” devices like desktops, laptops and consoles or “mobile” devices such as tablets, slates and phones, you might want to go attend this weekend’s Board Game Jam, which takes place in Toronto this weekend.

Once the sole province of enthusiasts, game are very popular these days. Console sales are doing very well, the Kinect is selling extremely well, gamer culture has found its way into popular culture as evidenced by chiptunes and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and events like GamerCamp (which took place in Toronto in November) are attracting more than just the hardcore nerd crowd.

When people talk about games, the first thing that comes to mind is videogames. After all, they’re big business, and people are playing them everywhere – at home, at work (who hasn’t snuck in a quick round at the office?) and now, with mobile devices, whenever they’ve got some downtime. Videogames are great, but there’s more to gaming.

Board games are currently enjoying a renaissance. According to The Economist, board games sales in 2008 exceeded USD$800 million and have been growing 20% each year. Settlers of Catan, which was once for the Dungeons and Dragons crowd only, is now a hipster hobby, there’s a very healthy selection of board games at Toys ‘R’ Us and there are crowds at Toronto’s board game café, Snakes and Lattes. Just as videogames have their own special charms, so do board games – they may be made of plastic and cardboard instead of pixels and data, but in both, it’s the gameplay that makes or breaks them.

Gameplay is what Board Game Jam is all about, and since it’s about making board games rather than videogames, this gathering will make game design accessible to just about everyone. As the organizers say, “On a mechanical level, it’s simple arts and crafts.” The bigger point of Board Game Jam is to explore the gameplay aspects of game development. What makes a game fun? How do you balance challenge, playability, simplicity, complexity and sociability? Can you build a game by taking a classic and applying a little twist to it, or would you rather build something completely different?

If you’re thinking of building games for the PC, phone or Xbox, you could learn a lot at Board Game Jam. As the organizers put it:

Most of the time, we’re talking about videogames. Because videogames are awesome. But it’s easy to forget that the principles that underlie good game-making don’t necessarily involve realistic physics engines, or even good control schemes. Much of game design has to do with abstract rules and mechanics that don’t have anything to do with technology.

Here’s what’s happening at Board Game Jam:

• Saturday
  • Morning: A crash course in board game design
  • Afternoon and evening: Make a board game
• Sunday
  • Morning and afternoon: Finish those board games
  • Evening: Board game party – the public plays the games built at Board Game Jam!

(The full schedule for Board Game Jam is here.)

Board Game Jam takes place this Saturday and Sunday, January 29th and 30th at the George Brown School of Design, 230 Richmond Street East, Toronto. The early bird price is no longer available, but the “late bird” price is still a mere CAD$20. If you’d like to attend (I’ll be there, at least for the crash course in board game design, where I plan to take copious notes and blog them), you should register for the event at their EventBrite page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.