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Toronto Coffee and Code This Friday!

davisville_station
Davisville Station at night.

This article originally appeared in the Coffee and Code blog.

Yes, there’s going to be a Coffee and Code in Toronto this Friday, March 13th, and this time, it’s going to be midtown. I’ll be holding it at the Starbucks at Yonge at Davisville (1909 Yonge Street, right by Davisville subway station) from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m..

Map picture

This particular Starbucks branch is pretty big, with a large second floor. A number of local groups, such as the Toronto Spanish Group, the “Mompreneurs” and other business networking groups have used it as a meetup location. The WiFi isn’t free, but if you have a Starbucks card with at least a $5 balance, you get two hours’ worth of wifi access at any wifi-equipped Starbucks every day. I myself have 3 such cards.

If you’re a telecommuter, come and hang out for the day! If you work in a nearby office, drop by during your coffee break! I’ll be handing out installer DVDs for the beta version of Windows 7 and ready to talk about Microsoft, programming, technology, the industry in general, accordion, music, whatever! Who knows – we might even start a video chat session with the Calgary Coffee and Code, which will be taking place at the same time out west.

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The Ultimate Toilet

Those of you with (ahem) digestive issues might want to install a toilet with Quattro flushing technology in your bathroom. Marvel at the promotional video below, in which all sorts of stuff gets flushed down a Quattro toilet: 2.5 pounds of carrots, 4 sets of plastic chess pieces, 3 pounds of gummi bears. 18 large hot dogs and all sorts of other stuff that would render an ordinary toilet non-functional. If I had one of these, I’d be flushing all kinds of weird stuff all the time!

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Dan Meth’s “Trilogy Meter”

Here’s an interesting visualization of cartoonist Dan Meth’s ratings of the movies in various film trilogies. Do you agree with his assessments?

Bar charts showing Dan Meth's ratings of the various movies in various film trilogies

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Watch Where You Step!

Rake with an axe attached to its handle

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It’s Daylight Saving Time Again

…which means it’s time to post the official photo of what the first day of daylight saving time feels like:

A penguin about to wake up a polar bear with cymbals.

For those of you who commute by car, be careful out there tomorrow. That missing hour of sleep tends to lead an increase in car accidents.

Maybe someone can answer this question: Why don’t we stay on daylight saving time permanently and not go through a disorienting time change twice a year?

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U.S. Politics as an Airplane

Here’s a political cartoon by Jim Day:

hoping_the_captain_will_fail

Thanks to AZspot for the find!

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What Place Names Mean

Accordion City’s other name, Toronto, is a native word for “meeting place”. Chicago is supposed to mean “stink onion”, in reference to the marshland onions that grew there well before the “El” and Wrigley Field. The Atlas of True Names presents the world with its place names translated into their meaning, turning the Sahara into the Sea of Sand, Paris into the City of Boatmen, Hong Kong into Fragrant Harbour, Grozny into “The Awesome” and Great Britain into Great Land of the Tattooed.

I’ve posted a collage of maps from the Atlas of True Names below. Click on them to see them at full size:

Samples of maps from the Atlas of True Names