Imperial Parking (a.k.a. “Impark”) parking lots now let you pay by cellphone. Cool!
Hey, if you’re in the Toronto area, be sure to check out Better Living Centre, Marc Weisblott’s and Brett Lamb’s blog on all things Accordion City!
The latest article — in which the local media freaks out over New York
City’s attempt to take away the film industry that we took away from
La-La Land fair and square (oh, how the free market boosters turn into
protectionistas when things go sour!) — includes the Better Living Centre’s first foray into comments. Read the article, form an opinion, type. What could be easier?
It’s at my house. I still have the karaoke mic. Special out-of-town guest Min Jung Kim.
In case you need more convincing, check out last year’s party, in either album or slideshow version.
And yes, Wendy’s first visit to Toronto included last year’s GTABloggers party. I wish she could be here, but she’s got her hands full helping organize next week’s Internet + Society Conference at Harvard.
Wendy and me, in the rock star wigs that we keep handy at my house.
Want an invitation? See this entry in the GTABloggers blog.
Categories
R.I.P. Pierre Berton
SvenGolly asked if it would write some kind of elegy for Canadian journalist/historian/author/television personality Pierre Berton. As I mentioned earlier,
my schedule today is rather packed, but let me say that one of the
things I admired most about Pierre was his ability to challenge and
confront other people in a genial, gentlemanly way.
If you want a good elegy for Mr. Berton, allow me to point you to Colby Cosh, who provides an interesting writeup; after all, he’s a new-school conservative who’s writing up an old-school liberal.
And for your enjoyment, I’ve enclosed a video that you’d never see a
similar American figure take part in; it’s of Pierre Berton explaining
how to roll a joint.
(The video is included with this article as an enclosure.)
In the words of Louis Riel, “What you need is a fatty boom-batty blunt!”
Categories
Christmas and Chanukah Songs for You!
I’m a little busy at the moment, so in the meantime, why not download
these lovely holiday tunes that I’ve attached to this entry? They are:
- Sarah Silverman: Give the Jew Girl Toys
Quite possibly the best Christmas rock/pop song in a long time. I dedicate this tune with a shout-out to Wendy.
(Note: Sarah Silverman was Star Trek: Voyager’s cutest guest star, IMHO.)
- Adam Sandler: The Chanukah Song and The Chanukah Song Part II
These have already acheived classic status.
- Stryper: Winter Wonderland
The premier Christian hair-metal band of the 1980s take on this classic carol; everybody loses.
On what day did the Lord create Stryper, and couldn’t He have rested then?
(Podcast-type people: the MP3 files are included in this entry as enclosures.)
Categories
Programming for Cities
[This was also posted on The Farm.]
Cities is one of those events that made me wish
I had some kind of teleporter device:
“Programming
for Cities” is a
workshop that reinforces a long existing link between
code and
architecture. Many fine buildings can be reduced to a few lines
of
code, and a quick glance backward in time shows that is a consequence
of architectural theory.
This workshop will
start with a short but broad overview of this longstanding
connection
between programming and architecture. After this the basic
elements
(about 6 of them) of programming will be discussed. The main
part of
the workshop will be consisting of a hand-on approach to design
a
city from code.
Technical skills are
not needed for this workshop. No Computers will
be used. This
workshop is ideal precisely for those people who think that
programming is not for them.
Apart
from making people familiar with code, which might break the ice
in
actually learning a more conventional programming language, the
purposes
of this workshop is to show a method of design that is
driven by internal
logic instead of the ‘one damn bit after another’
approach more commonly
used.
If you’re in Amsterdam tomorrow and you have the time,
Programming for Cities is being held at:
Friday
December 3rd, 3 pm
Public Space
With A Roof Overtoom 301
1054 HW
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Bonus reading material: If the concepts of programming and urban
design
appeal to you, I believe you’ll find Paul Graham’s article, Made in USA, quite
interesting.
Categories
My Semi-Regular Plug for "The Farm"
The Farm: The Tucows Developers’ Hangout
is the blog that I’m paid to write (or, more accurately, it’s part of
what I do at my job). It’s for programmers, and while it’s an official
Tucows site, I do try to imbue it with the “voice” and “personality”
for which The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century is known. Last month, The Farm got a record number of pageviews — over 300,000 — and I hope to get us up to the half-million mark sometime next year.
There’s lots of good stuff in today’s entries,
including a number of announcments of new language versions, grants for
teams who want to write Ruby libraries and a monthly .NET programming
contest.