The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

It’s a lovely and sunny spring day in Accordion City, so I’m running outside to play. I’ll come back with pictures.

This pair of photos is a long time coming. Matt “Black Belt” Jones, International Man of User Experience, came to visit Accordion City a few weeks ago, we took him out on Queen Street West. At long last, I’m finally posting the photos as promised.

I gave New Girl the electronic obscurity treatment so when you finally see her being chased and tackled on Cops, you’ll recognize her.

Matt, do you always scowl for the camera?

Earlier this week, Jonathon “Dishmatique” Delacour sent out an email message to everyone on Shelley “BurningBird” Powers’ blogroll. Shelley’s popular blog, BurningBird, consumes about 12 gigabytes of bandwidth every month — something I’ve only been able to do once, as a result of the New Girl story — and that’s not cheap.

Shelley’s finances have taken a beating this year, and she’s had to think about cutting back on non-essential expenses, which include webhosting. I think losing BurningBird would be terrible: it’s a terrific blog for matters both technical and personal, and she’s been quite an influence on my writing. Her blogger webring — Bloggers with Attitude — was the first one to accept me into its fold, and she’s been nothing but encouraging to me. Finally, without Shelley, we’d lose a rare female voice in the world of technology, a world that really could use a good deal more.

I know what it’s like to have your finances drained through unemployment and deadbeats. I’ve been lucky. Thanks to a little help from the folks, living in Canada (it’s better to be rich in the U.S., but it’s better to be poor in Canada), the “Save Joey’s Christmas” sale and for a short while, the accordion actually covering my groceries, I’ve been able to get by without giving up less essential things like internet hosting.

(A good thing, too, because BLOGS SAVE LIVES!)

Jonathon’s set up a PayPal fund for Shelley. As a way of spreading the grace/karma/good mojo around, I donated the $20 I made from a kind stranger as thanks for playing the Hokey Pokey for a little girl to Shelley. I know Shelley well enough to know that someday, she’s going to pass it along too. If you’re a reader of BurningBird, how ’bout throwing a little extra cash Shelley’s way? Just click on the logo below:

Yesterday morning, my sister gave birth to this little fella:

Unfortunately, the hospitals are under quarantine because of the SARS situation (which isn’t as bad as everyone outside Accordion City makes it out to be), so I can’t visit Eileen and Nicholas. I’ll have to wait until she goes home, which should be either Sunday or Monday.

Eileen’s given me a special task: I’m to help Aidan get used to the idea of having a younger sibling. You see, I have experience in this area.

I wonder how the little guy’s going to handle it.

I had some trouble getting to Blogger yesterday. I couldn’t connect to it at all yesterday — my computer was able to “find” Blogger but not connect to it (Techie note: ping resolved Blogger to its IP address, but I got 100% packet loss). It was probably some kind of glitch with my Internet service provider. Hence a lack of postings.

But, as George Constanza from Seinfeld would say: “I’m back, baby, I’m back!“

Interesting techie tidbits in my recently-revitalized techie blog, The Happiest Geek on Earth:

• Ben and Mena Trott are now heading the “Monsters of Blogging Tour”! (Well, sort of)
• Bob Frankston’s notes on implementing the grand-daddy of spreadsheets, VisiCalc