The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Illustration by Zac Gorman.

I still have days like this. In fact, they happen more often these days.

Creative Commons photo by Shubert Ciencia.

I’m going to be in New Orleans from Thursday evening to Monday morning! I’ll be there on behalf of Shopify to catch BarCamp NOLA, the New Orleans edition of the unconference that’s changing the tech, creative and business worlds and to catch some of the sights, sounds and nightlife of the town whose motto is Laissez les bons temps rouler!

I haven’t been there in something close to 20 years, and my memories of that trip are studenty, boozy, fuzzy and rushed. I purposely set things so that I’d have Thursday evening and Friday during the day to look around — and I’ll be doing so with my co-worker Edward Ocampo-Gooding — so if you have suggestions for anything we should check out, please let me know in the comments!

I’ll close this article with one of my favourite new New Orleans musicians: Trombone Shorty, doing a live version of his song, Backatown. Unfortunately, he’s on tour in Germany this weekend, so there ain’t no catching him while I’m there:

It’s short notice, but I’m declaring it anyway: Shopify is holding another pub night this Wednesday in Ottawa’s ByWard market at Peter Devine’s. Here’s the quick info:

• What: Shopify Pub Night, an informal get-together with people from Shopify
• When: Wednesday, July 13th, from 5:30 on
• Where: Peter Devine’s (ByWard Market, 73 Clarence Street at William)
• Why: To get people together. Show up early and I’ll buy you a pint.

A scene from the last Shopify Pub Night, featuring some Shopifolks: Cody, Clara and Liz.

This is an informal gathering for techies, creatives and businesspeople of all stripes to get together, meet the Shopifolks and talk about programming, ecommerce, startups, design, beer, the weather, music…whatever! It’s about enjoying the summer, catching up with friends and getting to know the local community. And food. And beer. Perhaps a lot of beer.

We’re putting out a special invitation for Ottawa’s local security gurus — this gathering will also be a local security meetup! Hence the photo above, from Hackers. I was willing to suspend disbelief on a lot of things in this movie, from Penn Gilette and Angelina Jolie being infosec experts to "The Gibson", but trying to portray rollerblades as cool? That was just too much.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Simple, low-carb and hey…bourbon!

This one’s for the final flight of the space shuttle program! Europe’s The Final Countdown was a bit too obvious and I used it recently for my departure from Microsoft [5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1], so the song I’m dedicating to Space Shuttle Atlantis is Black Sabbath’s Supernaut, in many forms. Here’s the original:

The lyrics aren’t really about astronautics, but psychonautics, but what the hey. I watched the launch with 1000 Homo DJs (essentially the industrial group Ministry, rearranged) as background music. I think it should be the background music for space launches in general:

The 1000 Homo DJs version had Minsitry’s Al Jourgensen on vocals (under the pseudonym “Buck Satan”). The original vocalist was Trent “Nine Inch Nails” Reznor, whose arrangement with his record label TVT didn’t allow for his version to be released. Here’s the version with “Der Trentster”:

And finally, a 2010 cover by Finnish folk metal group Turisas, who feature an accordion player among their number. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that the accordion is a true metal instrument:

Yeah, I’m on it. But I’m sending out invites as they’re made available to me!

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

What I saw when I got off the elevator at my floor. I reminds me of some of the better loft-o-miniums I’ve seen in Toronto.

Microsofties get sweet hotel deals from Fairmont. When I was one, I’d get charged something in the mid-$100 range per night where ordinary schlubs would get charged something closer to the mid-$200s or even mid-$300s. I’m now at Shopify, which isn’t a Fortune 50 company buying tens of millions of dollars of hotel bookings, so I don’t have access to The Empire’s hotel booking system. I have to go hunt bargains like a chump again.

A table in the hallway at Hotel FIVE. Right angles are sooo mainstream.

I went bargain hunting a couple of weeks before flying to Seattle for BarCamp. Among the so-so choices that Expedia offered was an unusual little gem: Hotel FIVE. The photos looked intriguing; unlike the others, it wasn’t a cookie-cutter lodging, but something that seemed a little funkier. I like my hotels offbeat (see my writeup on the aLoft in Minneapolis) and I’ve managed to deal with dumps (such as Hotel Cecil, which I called “A dump with a future”), so I said “Why not?” and booked it.

The door to my room.

Hotel FIVE is on the corner of 5th and Blanchard, or as I like to say, “The corner of 5th and Top Pot”. For me, being next door to Top Pot Doughnuts is a big plus. The hotel was close enough to Seattle’s Westlake Station that I instead of taking a cab from the airport, I took the light rail. That’s $2.75 versus about $40 with tip, and given the way traffic can be, it’s almost as fast.

Approaching maximum hipsterness!

The room’s pretty nice. It’s a decent size, with lots of rooms for bags, and if you have one, an accordion. The decor is considerably funkier than Ramada standard; if you changed the colour palette to something brighter with more pink, green and baby blue, it could pass for an aLoft. I can’t remember the last time I stayed at a hotel with hardwood floors. The bedsheets are comfier than you’d expect.

And yes, there’s wifi.

Pretty funky for a recovering Ramada.

There are outlets aplenty, a decent-sized TV (they could stand to add Comedy Central to their cable package), a workable desk and one of those iPhone/iPod docking station alarm clocks. As a Microsoftie and especially as a designated Windows Phone 7 champ, that docking station was useless to me, but as a new iPhone user, it’s now almost a must-have.

There’s a Keurig coffee machine in the room, but I didn’t use it, as Hotel FIVE is across the street from Top Pot, which was my coffee source while I was there.

In case you wake up wondering where you are, just look at the roll-down blind.

Here’s the bathroom sink. I want one of these at home. The bathroom’s nice, but could stand to be better-lit.

I like looking at art when I’m pooping:

Here are the bathroom shelves. The soap’s really good: a lot of people commented on how good I smelled, and I’m sure it’s not just because I was at a conference full of nerds, whom I’ll admit set the bar pretty low.

The room had what I might have to declare as the best damn hotel shower I’ve been in in the past few years. I’m talking better than any Fairmont or W I’ve been to in recent memory. There’s only one way to improve it: it needs actual shelves or someplace to put the shampoo and soap.

One last quibble: the closet is an nook in the bathroom without a door. If you don’t like getting your clothes steamed from the shower, you’re not going to be all to keen on it.

Hotel FIVE has the sort of small but usable gym that you’d expect: a couple of multi-exericse weight machines, an exercise bike, an elliptical machine, a water cooler and TV set.

Expedia got me 5 nights at Hotel FIVE for about $150 a night, and the hotel gave me 5 $20 vouchers for the breakfast restaurant (it’s a “breakfast restaurant” because it closes at about 1 p.m.). The restaurant’s a good deal: nothing’s above $12, and they make a very nice chicken fried steak. It’s staffed by cute women from Capitol Hill who dig accordions, which always gets top marks in my book.

I’m likely to come back to Seattle soon, and I’m very likely to stay at Hotel FIVE again.