Month: March 2005

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Reminder: PUBLICity This Thursday!

Graphic: Poster for PUBLICity. 

The launch party for PUBLICity,

a five-week photo exhibit featuring the work of the city’s top photobloggers, takes place this Thursday, March 17th at the Toronto Free Gallery (660 Queen Street East, a block and a half west of Broadview). The works will be on display through April 23rd. The featured artists are:

PUBLICity is a presentation of the Toronto Free Gallery and Spacing magazine, the fine folks who brought you those Toronto Subway Buttons mentioned on BoingBoing and other prominent sites written by dashing and devastatingly smart people. Spacing — whose motto is “Whose space is public space?” — is a magazine devoted to Accordion City’s

urban landscape and covers issues such as the increasing

corporatization and privatization of public space, the senseless

anti-postering bylaw and the city’s hidden gems and secret pathways.

I’ll be there. Since it’ll be St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll be very easy to spot; I’ll be the drunk guy with the accordion.

Categories
Uncategorized

Gun Safety Lesson Gone Wrong

In the attached video featuring a DEA officer talking about guns [1.9

MB, Windows Media, attachment], you know something bad is about to

happen when he utters the line “I’m the only one in this room

professional enough to handle a firearm”. Still, I think he makes an

excellent point (even if not quite in the way he intended) and he earns big kudos for continuing with the lecture.

Bonus: here’s the Orlando Sentinel story behind the video.

Categories
Uncategorized

Benjamin Kenobi, Space Knight!

Here’s a treat for you Star Wars fans: The Continuing Adventures of Benjamin Kenobi, Space Knight of the Future! is a trailer for the upcoming Revenge of the Sith

— if it had been made as part of one of those old black-and-white

sci-fi serials in the 1950’s. It uses footage from the trailer for

Revenge of the Sith with the colour removed, overlaid with retro trailer graphics, a cheesy

Republic/RKO pictures score and funny 50s-ish reworkings of the characters,

such as :

  • Sammy Jackson Jnr. as Negro Space Knight!
  • Boris McDiarmivoch as Dr. Sidious, Evil Sith Lord from Mars!
  • …and introducing Harry Chryshner as Faithful Sidekick, Kit Skyranger…or is he?
  • Battles using the Space Kinghts’ weapon: the indestructible Lazer-Sword™!

It’s about 7 MB and in QuickTime format.

(This could get popular, so I’m linking to the file using the YouSendIt

service for now. I’ll set up a torrent later. If you can, please share

this file on your weblog!)

Download area 1

Download area 2

Download area 3

Categories
Uncategorized

Mark Cuban Longs Us

Photo: Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mr. Blog Maverick and dude with a billion dollars) recently posted an article in response to “too many emails” asking what his positions in the market are. Notable among his “Longs” list is the company for which I hold the position of Technical Community Development Coordinator, Tucows:

TCOW.OB: Good management, low PE, sells to growing market segment.

And let’s not forget kick-ass Research and Innovation team.

For the curious investor looking to hitch his or her wagon to a star, here’s the Yahoo Finance page on Tucows.

Photo: Cows playing basketball.

There is a dearth of images on the internet depicting cows playing basketball.

Big thanks to George “Ol’ Pal Hotchner” Scriban for the tip!

Speaking and longing and shorting, this blog has the number one Google result for the phrase “longing and shorting”, thanks to an article I wrote about a number of women who worked in the investment industry who used the terms to describe their reactions to guys.

Categories
Geek

The Best Simpsons "Couch Gag" Ever

Update:

Had to take the file down temporarily as Blogware’s servers were

getting overloaded (we’re getting a bigger, faster one soon). I’ll let

you know as soon as I’ve found a new home for the video.

If you have BitTorrent on your machine, someone’s got a .torrent of the file at

http://chalco.dyndns.org/get/torrents/Simpsons_Couch.torrent.

Charles Eames

has a saying that’s one of my favourites: “Eventually, everything

connects”, a statement that harkens back to an earlier saying by the

Buddhists: “When you slice a blade of grass, you shake the universe”.

One of Charles Eames’ best-known works is the film he created with his wife Ray, Powers of 10,

the classic 1977 film that looks at the relative size of things

from  microscopic to the edges of the known universe. Your

mathematical education is not complete unless you’ve seen this film.

My friend Chris Turner, author of Planet Simpson,

has a philosophy similar to Eames’: eventually, everything connects to

The Simpsons. More proof for this hypothesis appeared recently when the

Simpsons showed its best “couch gag” (the gag at the end of the title

sequence where they gather on the couch), in which they pay homage to Powers of 10.

It’s brilliant and you must watch it [10.3 MB QuickTime movie, enclosure]. I’ll post as soon as I’ve found a new home for the video!

Categories
Uncategorized

Programmer’s Challenge: Turn a PowerBook Into an Etch-a-Sketch

Guile made a brilliant suggestion in the comments to yesterday’s article on programming the motion sensor in the latest generation of PowerBooks: write an app that reboots the machine if you turn it upside-down and shake it, the way you would when erasing an Etch-a-Sketch! (Alternately, you could make that motion simply empty the Trash.)

Photo: PowerBook rotation axes for it built-in accelerometer.

Mac hackers — get to work!

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

"I Can See My House From Here!"

Well, I can’t really see my house, but I can identify my block in this composite photo taken from the CN Tower:

Photo: Spherical view of Toronto from the CN Tower.

Click the photo to see a larger version.