Month: March 2006

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

DemoCamp 4: Tuesday, March 28th at MaRS Centre


DemoCamp 4 will

take place on Tuesday, March 28th at 6:00 p.m. at the MaRS

Centre, (101

College Street, southwest corner of College and University,

right by Queen’s Park subway

station).

Remind me again — what’s

DemoCamp about?

The purpose of DemoCamp is to bring together

the many bright lights in Toronto’s high-tech community to show each

other what we’re working on. If you’re working on a software or

hardware tool, application or gadget and you want to demonstrate it in

front of a group of your peers, you can demo it at

DemoCamp!

What sort of stuff gets

demoed?

We’ve seen projects of all types demonstrated at

DemoCamp: commercial and non-commercial, proprietary and open source,

mission-critical business applications and applications developed in

the developers’ spare time, hardware and

software.

Who can attend?

As

long as you have an interest in technology and the local tech scene,

you can attend!

You can either present a demo at

DemoCamp or be part of the participatory audience. Demonstrators

present their work — no PowerPoint; just your stuff in action — and

everyone else participates by asking questions and making comments and

suggestions.

What are DemoCamps

like?

Think of them as a techie’s “town hall” meeting, with a

steady exchange of ideas and the city’s brightest minds all gathered in

one place. We go out for drinks and dinner after the meeting, and the

idea exchange keeps going.

I’ve written up earlier

DemoCamps; here’s my

writeup for DemoCamp 3 last month and DemoCamp

2 in January.

When is it

again?

It’s on Tuesday, March 28th at 6:00 p.m. at the MaRS

Centre.

If you plan on attending, please add your

name to the DemoCamp 4 wiki

page.

Categories
It Happened to Me

My Package from "The Regulars"

'The Sales Conference' from 'The Regulars'.The

Regulars is a weird site. From first

appearances, it seems to be a

photoblog featuring photos of a guy in a gas

mask posing as different

sorts of people, such as “The Hipster”, “The Tourist”, “The International

Traveller” and “The Bass

Player”.

The “About”

page doesn’t

offer much of a clue as to what the site’s about; it merely describes

the gas mask (“A replica Russian gas mask purchased from an army

surplus store. Also sold as an East German or an American gas

mask…Very difficult to breathe in, ironically”) and how the photos

were taken (“Typical setup with remote shutter, tripod, gas mask and

necktie”).

For a while, the site had a form you could fill out to receive one of

a

limited set of gifts. I signed up for one, and it arrived at the

office

this morning. You’ll have to forgive the poor quality of the images;

the only camera I’ve got at the moment is the cheap webcam hooked up

to

my office machine.

The whole package came in an orange envelope…

Envelope sent to me by 'The Regulars'.

…containing a photo of an old 35mm film camera with “WE

MISS THE SIMPLICITY” written on it in magic marker…

Photo sent to me by 'The Regulars': 'WE MISS THE SIMPLICTY'.

…two stickers with the Regulars’ “R” monogram:

Stickers sent to me by 'The Regulars'.

…and this puzzle:

Puzzle sent to me by 'The Regulars'.

The webcam didn’t capture the puzzle very clearly, so I’m repeating it

below:

THE REGULARS

_ _ _ _ 8

_ _ _ _ _

www.regularworld.com/bonus

Other people who signed up for the packages have posted photos of their

free loot:

The question remains: What is The Regulars? An art project? A Griffin and

Sabine-esque puzzle? An eccentric part of the

internet gift

economy? A prankster with a gas mask?

Categories
It Happened to Me

On the Reading List: "The Art of the Interview"

Joey holding up 'The Art of the Interview'.In anticipation of the number of podcasts I’m supposed to produce this year (such as the one I did last week), Ross had the company purchase The Art of the Interview

for me. The Amazon reviews seem to indicate that it’s more of a memoir

than a how-to book, but there’s a fair bit of information that I’ve

been able to glean from it nonetheless. Watch out, Larry King!

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me Music

From the Archives: CBC Radio Studios, June 1999

Barely a month after that fateful day when Karl and I decided to take our accordions out onto the street and play them in public for the first time, he phoned me with an interesting offer.

“Hey, Joey! How’d you like to play accordion on the radio?”

“What? How?”

“John Southworth’s going to be doing a live session on CBC radio to promote his new album. I did session work on a couple of numbers on the album, and one of them has an accordion. He thought it would be cool to have two accordions backing him up when he did it live.”

“Count me in!”

Karl brought me a copy of John’s then-new album, Sedona Arizona. He didn’t send me an MP3 file: you have to remember that this was a month before the original Napster was released and that I was considered to have advanced home connectivity, what with my 56K modem.

The song we were to play was called Veto Valvoline, a whimsical laundry list-type song featruing words beginning with the letter “V”. We transcribed a chord chart and practiced it ourselves; a day later, John came to practice it with us. We rehearsed in my condo’s gym as the puzzled-looking cleaning staff looked on.

On the day of the studio session, Karl gave me a call with a wacky idea.

“We should dress up for this big event. Suits, ascots, hats.”

“You realize, Karl,” I said, “that we’re dressing up for radio.”

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun.”

So we did, and John and the hosts of the show were rather amused to see these two guys with accordions walk in, dressed like Fuller Brush salesmen. Here’s a photo of us in action:

Joey deVilla and Karl Mohr play accordions during John Southworth's live session at CBC Radio, June 1999.

Categories
Uncategorized

Group Therapy vs. Web 2.0

File it under “Funny Because It’s True”: here’s a chart by Kathy

“Creating Pasisonate Users” Sierra that notes in that

ha-ha-just-serious way how similar group therapy and Web 2.0 are:

Kathy Sierra's chart comparing group therapy to Web 2.0

Categories
It Happened to Me

A Literary Classic, Once Again in My Library

Cover of 'The Klingon Dictionary'This

Saturday, Wendy

and I went to the Book City warehouse sale and made out

like bandits, netting about a dozen books for less than CDN$100. I

snagged:

George

gave me The Klingon

Dictionary

back during our days at Crazy Go

Nuts University. A few months later,

Rob

MacDougall,

who needed a copy for his linguistics class (remember,

the Klingon language is a real language designed by a linguist),

borrowed it from me and never returned it. I am pleased to have this

masterpiece again and look forward to peppering my conversation with

gems such as:

  • Ross, DuSaQ vumghzchwIj Sopta;

    targwIj

    Ross, the targ ate my weekly report.

  • veQDuj’oH

    Dujllj’e’

    Your ship is a garbage scow.

  • choSuvchugh ‘oy’lIj

    Daghur neH

    Struggling only makes it hurt more.

Here’s a little tip: Klingon sentences sound even better

when punctuated with a hearty “beeeyotch!”

When we paid for the books, the cashier, who was sporting the classic

nerd grrrl uniform, took one look at the book and said

“Sweet! I was

jumping for joy when I found out we had this book in stock. Enjoy

it!”

I shall. Qapla’!

Categories
In the News

"The Economist" on a Moore’s Law for Razor Blades

Graph from 'The Economist' projecting the number of blades in future razors.Being a well-groomed owner and operator of a goatee and sideburns, I take an interest in good shaving systems. I use a Remington Precision Titanium moustache and beard trimmer,

and have a mysteriously multiplying set of Gillette Mach 3 razors (one

of which I really bought for the free multi-bit screwdriver that got

included with it), which gives a pretty nice shave. I’m not terribly

satisfied with electric shavers, and the electified version of the Mach

3 — the M3 Power — seems like nothing more than a “plausible deniability vibrator” to me.

In 2004, after the introduction of the Schick Quattro, with which Schick heated up the razor blade arms race by creating a four-blade razor, The Onion published one of their joke editorials titled Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades, supposedly written by the CEO of Gillette. It turned out to be their most prescient piece since Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over: the Gillette Fusion has not only five blades, but an extra one for fine shaping work.

Not being one to miss such a trend or its implications, The Economist has an article titled The Cutting Edge that suggests that there’s an analogue to Moore’s Law for razors, meaning that we should have 14-blade systems by 2100. If only I could live long enough to see those glorious times.