Click the photo to see a larger version on Flickr.
Alas it’s not mine, it belongs to the Tucows Marketing Department. But as a member of that department, I’m hoping to get some time on it to test out some iPhone apps I’m writing…
Long-time readers of this blog will remember an article titled At Last, My Blog Lands Me in Hot Water!, in which local moving company Quick Boys attempted to threaten me into removing comments about their service. Those comments were in response to a one-line blog entry in which I asked the readers for recommendations about Toronto moving companies. The ensuing commentary across the blogosphere ended up giving the story a high Google ranking on searches for “Quick Boys”; even today, some of the posts about their thuggery are still on the first page of Google results.
(By the way, Quick Boys, I’m still waiting for my apology.)
What’s interesting is that the original blog entry, Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?, is still getting comments from readers relating their (mostly bad) experiences with moving companies. The last comment the article got came in yesterday, and it was about a bad experience with Yellow Moving Company. The resulting article about Quick Boys’ vaguely threatening phone call received comments as late as February of this year, the last comment being about how someone had to call the cops on Quick Boys.
It amazes me how moving companies can stay in business even though so many people have such bad experiences with them. Is it because people don’t use them very often? Is it because of the unfortunate collision of relatively unskilled labour meeting your prized possessions? Is it because it’s an attractive business for unscrupulous people? Or are they perceived as being bad simply because moving is a stressful experience for many people?
Let’s keep the conversation going, fellow Torontonians. Feel free to report any experiences and reviews of Toronto moving companies, good or bad, in the comments.
Richard Florida is moving to Accordion City!
The urban thinker who coined the term “creative class” is following in Jane Jacobs’ footsteps and setting up residence here, where he’ll be doing work at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he’ll continue his studies on his pet topic: how creativity and creative people make for successful cities.
Here’s an excerpt from the Globe and Mail story:
Richard Florida, one of the era’s most influential urban thinkers, will be leading a new initiative at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management that will allow him to expand his research on how human creativity drives a city’s economic success, a source says.
The author of the 2002 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class has left his post as a public policy professor at George Mason University in Virginia after three years.
“He expressed some interest in the last several years that Toronto would be a wonderful place. … To get him here, the deal was that there would need to be a fairly important initiative that he would be a part of,” an official said yesterday.
U of T spokesman Ken McGuffin confirmed that Prof. Florida will be joining the institution, which academic sources around the country say is a coup for the university. But he declined to divulge details of the position, saying those will be released next month.
The creative class comprises those people whose lives and jobs revolve around knowledge and creativity, which covers artisans, doctors, filmmakers, lawyers, writers, artists, and yes, computer programmers, accordion-playing and otherwise. Florida’s these is that they are a key factor in the socioeconomic success of cities. He uses this thesis to explain the success of cities and areas such as Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, the North Carolina research triangle, Dublin and Bangalore.
Florida says that in order to attract a creative class, cities must have the “Three T’s”:
Want to know more? Then check these out:
From the garish (but hey, I like it) lightshow of the Honest Ed’s discount store at Bloor and Bathurst to the shot in the arm he gave to theatre in this city to his funding of the arts to teaching staid old Toronto and its locals (myself included) about salesmanship and showmanship, he was one of those people that made this city a better place.
So long, and thanks for all the flash, Honest Ed.
The Ginger Ninja and I were doing a little dog-sitting for a friend last Saturday. While taking the dog for a walk in his Swansea neighbourhood, we saw this very elaborate hopscotch setup in a driveway:
The machinima videos that people have made for Jonathan Coulton’s geek anthem Code Monkey haven’t impressed me; unlike the Red vs. Blue series of animations, the visuals feel poorly matched with the storyline.
Better by far is this video, which does an excellent job of repurposing clips from the Japanese animated TV series Black Heaven. If you watch only one fan-made video of Code Monkey, watch this one:
The Milwaukee Brewers play at Pittsburgh and end up booked in the same hotel as Anthrocon, the big furry convention. Hilarity ensues:
“That one was just a little bit outside.”