The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Short of Rick Astley pulling this off at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration next year, this is the ultimate Rickroll:

Over at CBC’s Search Engine, Jesse Brown asks an important question: Is Canada Becoming a Digital Ghetto? I’m reproducing the article in its entirety below.

Here are three things that suck about being Canadian right now:

1. Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small Internet Service Providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference.
2. In last week’s throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a “slightly different” version of the bill.
3. Twitter has just announced that they are killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpedalled). Cell phone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.

This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet.

With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto.

[Thanks to Mark Relph for pointing me to this article. This article also appears in my tech blog, Global Nerdy.]

Whether you’re having a traditional turkey, stuffing it with a duck and a chicken, or going with the option pictured below, have a safe and happy holiday!

Andy Brice has created some t-shirt designs for software developers and selling the shirts online for a good cause. The proceeds from sales of the t-shirts, some of whose designs are pictured below, will go to two worthy charities: jaipurfoot.org and sightsavers.org.

If you’ve got a programmer on your holiday list – or even if you just want one of these shirts for yourself, please buy one. The money’s going to some very good causes.

About the Charities

This organization pioneered the “Jaipur foot” (also known as the “Jaipur leg”) – an effective and easy-to-fit prosthetic lower limb that can be produced for a little as $30 and is provided for free by the charity. The prosthetic was first developed in the 1960s by an orthopedic surgeon and a sculptor. Since then the charity has provided over 300,000 limbs in 22 countries. In the television program a young boy arrived at the clinic hopping on one leg and left running on two, beaming. It was moving to watch. You can read more in this Time magazine article.

Sightsavers works to alleviate sight problems around the world. Last year Sightsavers and their partners treated more than 23 million people for potentially blinding conditions and restored sight to over 244,000 people. It only costs:

• $0.10 to protect someone from river blindness for a year.
• $10 to pay for eyelid surgery for trachoma.
• $35 for an adult cataract operation.

[This article was also posted on my tech blog, Global Nerdy.]

If you’ve got a colour printer with decent paper, scissors and glue, you can make these papercraft HAL 9000s:

You can download the kit here. The instructions are in Japanese and “Engrish”, but you’re smart people. I know you can figure it out.

[This article was also posted on my tech blog, Global Nerdy.]