Categories
It Happened to Me

Nominated for Weblog of the Year!

The 2004 Bloggies site

is really hard to access at the moment, and I suspect that’s because

everyone’s hitting it to see who the nominees are. It took a half-dozen

tries, but I finally managed to get through.

I was just angling for “Best Canadian Weblog”, and was a little

disappointed to find that this blog wasn’t one of the nominees. I

shrugged my shoulders and continued down the list of categories,

reaching “Weblog of the Year” at the end. I almost scrolled right past

it when I saw this sliver of a graphic:

I’d been aiming for “Canadian” and you guys ended up nominating me for

the big hell killer Kahuna category. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

For those of you who’ve just come here from the Bloggies site, welcome!

Please note that I switched blogging tools (and URLs) back in July —

entries earlier than July 2003, dating back to November 2001, can be

found at my old blog at http://kode-fu.com/shame.

Now that the nominations have been announced. it’s now time for voting.

Voting is done by you, the weblog-reading public at large. All the

nominees are listed on the Bloggies page. Just so you know, the

nominees for “Weblog of the Year” are:

  • BoingBoing: The uber-blog! The blog that got me into blogging, and co-edited by my friend and former boss and co-worker, Cory Doctorow.
  • Tenth-Muse.com: A very nice personal blog by Joelle.
  • John Howard: Prime Minister: A funny political site that purports to be the blog of Australia’s prime minister.
  • Dooce: Heather Armstrong’s blog. She’s got some pretty astounding stories.
  • Weblog Wannabe: Firda Beka’s blog

and lastly:

  • The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century: Some fool with an accordion who gets into all kinds of trouble. Who does he think he’s trying to fool?

Voting is open right now at the Bloggies page and runs until 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5) on Saturday, January 31st (which happens to be the day I was thinking of throwing another GTABloggers party — more about that later).

Some of my esteemed competition have decided to adopt a “business as

usual” stance — no campaigning, no “vote for me” pleas, no

out-of-the-ordinary posting.

Rest assured, I will not take this route. I’m going to go all-singing,

all dancing, threatening-your-productivity blog wild, because I want to

win, and I want to do it by earning your vote. From now until the 31st,

it’s Bloggie Sweeps Fortnight here at The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century!

Keep watching this blog for all sorts of interesting stuff.

Categories
In the News

“Longing and Shorting” in The Globe and Mail

My Longing and Shorting post from December was adapted for the Saturday edition of The Globe and Mail.

It’s the first time that anything I’ve written has been published in a “real” newspaper (that is, a paper that isn’t a student publication).

I’d like to thank Carol Toller, editor of the Our Town section, for making it possible.

Categories
Uncategorized

I shall now wedge a song very deeply into your brain

Well, I can’t unless you:

a) have Flash installed on your machine (very likely)

b) go and listen to the song Badger Badger Badger

Listen to this song for one verse, and it’ll be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mush-room mush-room!”

Categories
It Happened to Me

New Photo Albums!

I haven’t captioned all the photos from the Ashley and Turner Wedding Extravaganza, but here they are:

I also have photos from a recent rehearsal session of the band I just joined, stilllife.

Categories
Geek

I am not the point of Jack’s movie

Screen shot: Tyler vs. Jack in the upcoming Fight Club videogame.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. This is a screen shot of the upcoming videogame based on Fight Club. Here’s the description of the game:

Immerse yourself in this gritty, visceral world of bare-knuckle fighting, with action, story elements and environments true to the Fight Club movie. The extreme realism of the game will make you feel every punch and kick by delivering shocking visuals, untraditional moves, and special effects in fully interactive environments.

If you’ve seen the movie or better yet, read the book, you’ll know that in Fight Club — unlike space operas like Star Trek or Star Wars or sword-and-sorcery epics like The Lord of the Rings — the fighting is only an incidental aspect of the story. Hopefully, Vivendi Universal Games will realize this and add equally nonsensical bonus rounds in which players have to beat themselves up, pee in soup, test their tolerance for pain, splice porn scenes into regular movies, park an explosives-laden van in the basement of the TRW building, swap the safety cards on airliners with terrifying homemade ones and best of all, have mad monkey sex with Helena Bonham-Carter.

My own personal feeling is that Chuck Palahniuk novels are better suited to first-person adventure games, and preferably text-based ones. Something in the spirit of the oh-so-terribly-wrong web-based Brad: The Game (text only, but may not be safe for work).

[ Once again, thanks to 0xDECAFBAD for the link! ]

Categories
Geek

Matz wants to create Babel-17. Or hack your brain. Maybe both.

I link to it over on The Farm, the developer blog I write for Tucows: Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto’s very interesting slide show, The Power and Philosophy of Ruby. It’s an interesting presentation on the “why” of the Ruby programming language. Whether you’re a programmer or someone interested in how language influences thought (or get turned on by the phrase “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”, and hey, who isn’t?), it’s a great read.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m feeling extra-nutty today.

[ Much thanks to 0xDECAFBAD for the link! ]

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Listening to Toronto

One of the planks of Accordion City’s new mayor, David Miller, was that

he would “open up City Hall”. It looks like he’s taking one step

towards fulfilling that promise by means of a series of town hall

seminars called Listening to Toronto.

Unfortunately, I found out about this a little too late — all

seminars, save Toronto East, are booked solid. The easiest session for

me to attend would be the Toronto South one, which would probably be

occupied by other people who live in the core area of the city.

On the other hand, perhaps I should attend the Toronto East one, for the following reasons:

  • To still be able to catch one of these seminars
  • To be able to give the city core perspective to attendees from the burbs
  • To get the burb perspective, especially in a burb where I’m not from (I grew up in and regularly go to the west end burbs)

If you live in the Toronto East area and are interested in

participating in city politics, you might want to attend. It takes

place next Tuesday, January 20 from 6:45 p.m. – 10 p.m. at L’Amoreaux

Community Recreation Centre (2000 McNicoll Ave).