a programmer who works with the Ruby programming language
looking for work
available to get down to Toronto’s “West Queen West” neighbourhood soon
you might want to do what I’m doing in a couple of minutes (as of this writing): heading down to the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West, at Dufferin) to get a look at employment.nil, which bills itself as “the first Toronto Ruby job fair”.
Organized by the fine folks at Unspace, who are also organizing the upcoming FutureRuby conference and FailCamp (where I’ll be the MC), employment.nil isn’t your typical computer programmer job fair. No computers are allowed! They’re going to be strict about it – even the use of iPhone applications is verboten. Bring printouts of your resume and some scratch paper to do “live coding”. I’m going to bring my mini-whiteboard and dry-erase markers.
For years, I’ve been singing the praises of Accordion City, which some of you like to refer to it by its nickname, “Toronto”. Yes, it’s a little short on the kind of attractions that make it a big tourist destination, but as my friend Cory Doctorow says: “It may be short on things that make it a great tourism spot, but it makes up for it with things that make it a great place to live.”
And he’s right. Things like solid, stable banks, the fact that everyone bikes, same-sex marriages, the salmagundi of ethnicities, cultures and cuisines, contributions to medicine, community-mindedness, quirky locals and the fact that our film festival saved Slumdog Millionaire from direct-to-DVD purgatory are hardly the stuff of breathless tourism pamphlets and travelogues. But if you’re planning to stay here for a stretch longer than the typical vacation, you’ll soon discover that this city is North America’s unrealized gem, one of the world’s best places to live, work and play.
I plan to write more about this great city in an upcoming series of guides for people coming to town to attend the FutureRuby conference, but in the meantime, Toronto Life is picking up the slack with the cover story of their current issue, titled 50 Reasons to Love Toronto Right Now. If you don’t feel like shelling out ducats for the dead-tree edition, you’re in luck – the article also appears online.
One of the nice things about my job is that they actually ask me to incorporate the accordion into it. Yesterday, we shot this video featuring me on accordion promoting the upcoming Make Web Not War event happening next week right here in Accordion City. Think of it as another of my contributions to Accordion Awareness Month:
There’s only one mistake in the video – “accordion” is misspelled. If you’d like the follow me on Twitter, the correct ID is AccordionGuy, not AccordianGuy.
It’s a busy, meeting-filled day for Yours Truly down at the local headquarters for The Empire. Here’s a (slightly edited) photo that I took at our big Evangelism team meeting around 3:30 this afternoon:
If you’re a developer or IT Pro based in Canada, my team at Microsoft Canada – the Technical Audience Team – would like to pick your brain in order to find out how to better serve you. The full details are in my tech blog, Global Nerdy.
Back in 1989, Tom Torriglia – formerly of the band Those Darn Accordions and now a member of Bella Ciao – established the month of June as Accordion Awareness Month, making this June the 20th anniversary. The purpose of Accordion Awareness Month is to let the world know that the accordion’s making a comeback and invite people to understand the true musical (and in my case, life-changing) potential of my favourite instrument. In honour of this very special month, I’ll be posting stories about accordion as well as other accordion-related news, as well as doing some performances all over town (the Roller Derby was just the beginning).
This year, we want you — our humble, accordion-loving readers — to help promote the virtues of our favorite instrument. Sit on your porch and play some tunes for your neighbors, attend a show on our accordion event calendar, fill up your coworker’s iPod with Flaco Jimenez songs when he isn’t looking, tell all your friends about Let’s Polka… the possibilities are limitless. Me, I’m going to sit on my balcony every night, directly above a pizzeria, and serenade patrons.
To encourage you, we’re giving away over $100 worth of accordion-related goodies to readers who pledge to promote the accordion this month. To make your pledge, write a comment on this post and tell us how you plan to celebrate Accordion Awareness Month — doesn’t matter if it’s something small (making a YouTube video) or big (writing an accordion concerto). One lucky, randomly-chosen pledger will receive a prize package packed with accordion CDs, books, and more. (Prize details coming soon!)
Happy Accordion Awareness Month! Let the squeezing begin!
Me and "Lunchbox” of the Gore Gore Rollergirls. Photo by Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan.
The Anthem
I’d only seen roller derby on TV – hidden deep in UHF-land — and never in real life, so when I got an invitation from “Lunchbox” of the Gore Gore Rollergirls to play the national anthem at the start of the first roller derby match of the season, I jumped at the opportunity.
The Ginger Ninja and I showed up early at George Bell Arena so that I could meet the organizers and get an advance look at the setup. We had a look around the arena and hung out in the beer room for a while. While there, I played some Nine Inch Nails at a friend’s request, which was a good warm-up for my performance.
Game time rolled around, and after Crankypants, Toronto Roller Derby’s master of ceremonies introduced the teams – the Gore Gore Rollergirls and Chicks Ahoy! – he introduced me to the audience as “Joey deVilla, the Accordion Guy”, and led to me to the dual-microphone setup.
Me playing the national anthem, as seen from the stands. Photo by Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan.
I decided that since we were in a hockey arena, it was only fitting that I played both the unofficial and official national anthems. I started the original Hockey Night in Canada theme, which I thought would please the crowd. I was right – they cheered so loud that they drowned out the final notes. I followed up with O Canada and was joined by the players and referees, who sang with great pride and gusto. I closed with the classic hockey fight chords, took my bows and then joined the audience to catch the match.
Here’s the video of my performance:
The Scene
You can watch the game from the stands, which a lot of people did…
…but if you really want a nice close-up look at the action, there’s an area right on the rink called the “Suicide Seats”. I highly recommend it:
I knew that roller derby players took on a nom de guerre, and but I didn’t know that they could also take on oddball numbers, such as 7-11, the Roman numeral XVIII, or <3. One player even had the mathematical expression e raised to the power of pi times i, which is the left side of Euler’s formula.
Not only do the players take on names; the refs do too! Here’s one of them, “The Big Leboutski”:
Here’s another one, going by the name of “Lou’s Yer Daddy”:
All local hockey arenas have a sort of time-warp feeling to them. The architecture, signage and seats always make you feel as though you’ve stepped back into the late 1950s. I kept half-expecting to see the Hanson brothers waiting for some ice time. The crowd was a friendly, interesting mix; it was as if the families and friends of Junior A hockey and Queen West tattoo shop customers teamed up to throw a party. The overall vibe is an odd combination of small-town charm and big city “alternative”. It occurred to me that roller derby would make a great setting for a film, but a little searching revealed that Drew Barrymore had the same idea and ran with it.
In case you’re:
Me and "Lunchbox” of the Gore Gore Rollergirls. Photo by Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan.
