I’d like to wish Mark Kuznicki, Accordion City’s greatest policy wonk, organizer of events like Metronauts and member of the Toronto Tech Community in good standing, a very happy birthday! I’ll see you at the SummerCamp party tonight, Mark!
Here’s a photo of the line outside my local EB Games (the Runnymede/St. Clair location in Toronto) for Grand Theft Auto IV, taken last night at midnight:
The 30-car parking lot behind the store was full of cars that I could’ve sworn were lifted right from the previous game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: small sports cars painted in bright colours with lowered suspensions, chrome wheels and obnoxiously loud exhausts and stereos driven by guys in hoodies. The male-female ratio was high, but there actually were some teenage girls in line, which is a good sign: why should guys have all the realistically rendered fun in a virtual New York?
The door to the store is a few paces past the “no left turn” sign in the distance. I waited in line for about an hour and managed to get one of the last non-pre-ordered copies for the XBox 360.
A trailer for Grand Theft Auto featuring my character’s cousin Roman.
After getting back home, I played the game for about an hour, soaking up the the visually gorgeous opening sequence, running errands for my character’s cousin, Roman, shopping for clothes to impress a lady and beating up Albanian loan sharks. I’m going to have to jack a car and explore the city, as it’s so gorgeously rendered that it feels quite real. While the “San Francisco” segment of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gave me the feeling of deja vu (I lived there for a year), Grand Theft Auto IV made me feel as if I was in Brooklyn right now.
Here’s a video of the opening of the game, featuring the title sequence and the first few minutes of mise en scene:
The first 10 minutes of Grand Theft Auto IV.
I’ll post more details as I play the game.
These billboards produced by the Montana Meth Project are pretty striking. The question is: are they going to convince people not to do crystal meth?
I took the photo below in High Park station this morning:
This photo is a sign of two things:
Here’s a video that does a pretty good job (and funny!) of summarizing what happened with Accordion City’s transit system and their strike. As an added bonus, it provides a breezy baedeker for Canadian and Toronto politics:
I give this video bonus points for its consistent message of “Nobody listens to the NDP” (and with good cause!).
Accordion City is waking up this fine Saturday morning to…a transit strike!
For those of you not from here, here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening:
Friday is what PR people call “Take Out the Trash Day” — it’s a good day to make unpopular announcements, especially late in the day, because it’s when people don’t pay attention to the news. Many people were caught by surprise — on TV, they’re showing interviews of people who were stranded downtown last night. The unexpectedness of the strike, coupled with the union’s earlier promise of 48 hours’ notice, is not going to endear the union to the public.
I get the same expression on my face whenever I see Hillary:
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.