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This year, in addition to blogs such as The Farm and Tucows Developer,

I’ll also be publishing different kinds of content and holding online

events, such as podcasts, white papers, primers and “Ask Tucows” chats.

To find out more about what these are and when they’ll be published or

take place, I suggest you take a look at the Tucows Developer 2006 Editorial Calendar.

If you’ve ever wondered how idiots, morons and imbeciles rank against each other, this sample from an old book shows you:

So where does “dumbass” fit on this scale?

[Update: Here’s the source of the image — Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity, a book on the eugenics movement in the U.S. in the early 20th century.]

This year, Tucows will be hosting a series of “Ask Tucows” IRC chats

in which I and a number of Tucows employees will be available to answer

questions, take comments and suggestions and generally talk about

Tucows. The first such chat will take place on Thursday, March 23rd at 1:00 p.m. EST (10:00 a.m. Pacific / 6:00 p.m. UTC).

Since

my position is largely concerned with developer relations, questions

about developing on the Tucows platform are the type I’ll best be able

to answer. That being said, I’m sure that my boss, Ross Rader, Director

of Research and Innovation will be joining me, and he’ll be able to

cover a good number of questions I can’t. I plan to gather a number of

other Tucows folks to join in order to get a representative group with

whom you can chat.

Here are the technical details of the “Ask Tucows” chat:   

• Chat type: IRC

   

• IRC server: irc.freenode.net

   

• IRC channel: #asktucows

Watch this space for more details about the chat, and if you’re not familiar with online chat via IRC, I’ll also post a “how-to” article.

[via David Crow] First, a quote from Nat Torkington, an editor at O’Reilly and program chair for the O’Reilly Open Source Conference:

“Ruby on Rails is astounding. Using it is like watching a kung-fu movie,

where a dozen bad-ass frameworks prepare to beat up the little newcomer

only to be handed their asses in a variety of imaginative ways.”

Which in turn inspired this little bit of Photoshoppery:

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about Accordion City, Ruby on Rails and our lively tech scene. Ryan McMinn from Unspace posted to the Rails mailing list (which I really should join) about having a Toronto Ruby on Rails pub night on Monday March 13th at 7:00 p.m. at the popular local brew pub C’est What (located at 67 Front St. East). Here’s what the posting says:

Spread the word! The inaugural Toronto Rails pub nite will be an opportunity to meet the folks

working on Rails in your community. There will be plenty of opportunity to discuss projects you’re

involved with, recruit talent, and even find out what all of the fuss is about!

Unspace wants to support the growing Rails community here, but we felt that a user group was too

formal, stuffy, and intimidating to those that are new to Ruby and Rails. Instead, the best opportunity

for advocacy is something where people can make friends and have fun in an informal setting.

We also welcome people who are working with other, similar technologies. If you are open minded and like

to discuss how we can all create better sites, come share a pint.

In

case you can’t make this one, it looks as though it’s going to be

monthly happening — the next one’s already been scheduled for Monday,

April 17th.

While I do like the increasing graphic realism of today’s videogames, the games of old (by which I mean the 1980s) had a clunky charm all their own that required you to use a little more imagination. Consider the arcade classic Burgertime (you can play a decent Flash version of the game here):

Those cheesy, low-resolution graphics required you to use your mind’s eye to add to the game’s “story”. Of course, the results will vary from person to person, and sometimes they aren’t so pretty, as the painting below — a rather disturbing interpretation of the game — will show:

You do not want to see this guy’s interpretation of Dig Dug. Trust me on this one.