Month: July 2008

I have got to get one of these!

Click the photo to see the “Accordion Idol” belt buckle eBay page.

It’s silly, but I must admit that I rather like those commercials for Dos Equis featuring a character known as “The Most Interesting Man in the World”. That’s why I love this photo that Austin Ziegler took of me on Saturday at RubyFringe — I look like I’m auditioning for the part of that Dos Equis pitchman:

Stay thirsty, my friends!
Click the photo to see its Flickr page.

For reference, here’s a pic of The Most Interesting Man in the World:

I’m already greying quite nicely, so I can expect Dos Equis to come a-callin’ any day now…

This is funnier if you happen to follow the Ruby programming scene or know me and Zed Shaw:

Photo by Libin Pan.
Click the photo to see its Flickr page.

I can say with confidence that RubyFringe is the best tech I have ever attended, and possibly the most important one to boot. The presentations have gone beyond what you’d find at your typical tech conference: no product pitches disguised as seminars, no flavour-of-the-month technologies being hyped, but just good ideas that have a certain timeless quality to them, presented by offbeat people to an offbeat crowd. It’s events like this that make me glad I’m a geek and that I make stuff out of pure thought and caffeine every single day. This is more than a 9-to-5 workaday thing that pays the bills; this is our passion.

Simply put, this conference pulled down my brain’s pants and blew my mind.

Here’s a wide-angle photo, which is going to be known as the “We Are RubyFringe” shot:

Photo by Kieran Huggins.
Click the photo to see a larger version.

I’ve posted my notes from Day 1 over at my tech blog, Global Nerdy:

• Day 1 Notes, Part 1
• Day 1 Notes, Part 2

There’s more over here at the Unspace article, We Are RubyFringe.

I’ll post my Day 2 notes later on. I’ll also post a summary here — there was a lot of stuff at this conference that applies to more than just geek life, namely the bits about failure and eschewing the mainstream.

It’s been a while that we’ve had a slide as controversial as David Heinemeier Hansson’s infamous one from the Canada on Rails conference, so I thought I’d make one, and this one’s a good deal friendlier too:

Photo by Libin Pan.

Here’s the crowd at FAILCamp, the gathering that Hampton Catlin and I hosted, where people shared their stores of personal and professional failure — and sometimes even the lessons learned. This was taken early in FAILCamp; later on, the room was packed quite nicely:

After FAILCamp came the kickoff party at the open space on the upper floor of the Amsterdam Brewing Company. Here’s the RubyFringe logo projected against the back wall:

The opening act was Katie Crown, who had a charmingly oddball stand-up routine, which included her taking song suggestions from the audience and turned them into slightly-different version that were in the public domain (for example, she turned Who Let the Dogs Out into Who Released the Canines) and even invited me to join in with the accordion and help her out. We ended up creating public domain versions of Welcome to the Jungle and Gigantic:

Here’s the crowd at the Amsterdam taking in Katie’s routine:

The second act were We Take Lovers, who put on a great show with their indie-rock sound. They’re shopping around for accordions, so I was pleased to “talk shop” with them.

Today is day one of the conference; tonight we’re off to West Queen West to descend on the Drake and Camera!

In case you were looking for the IRC back channel for the RubyFringe conference, there’s one on irc.freenode.net at #rubyfringe. Check it out, and see you there!

This is article number eight in Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, my guide to Accordion City for attendees of the RubyFringe conference, as well as anyone else who’s interested in our fair city.

In case you missed them, here are the other articles in this series:

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel
3. Boozin’ in Accordion City
4. The Lay of the Land, Part 1
5. FAILCamp
6. The Best Damn Cookie in Town
7. Active Surplus, a.k.a. Hardware Nerdvana

In The Lay of the Land, Part 1, I covered some areas close to the hotel. In this article, I’m going to go over some of the interesting areas to the west: Chinatown, Kensington Market and Queen Street West.

Chinatown

The interesting neighbourhood that’s closest to the Metropolitan Hotel is Chinatown. From the hotel, all you have to do is walk to Dundas Street and hang a left and starting walking westward along Dundas. Things will start out a bit sparse, but as you cross University Avenue, there’ll be more to see. Continue westward and the concentration of Chinese restaurants and shops will increase until you reach the corner of Dundas and Spadina, the heart of Chinatown. Chinatown stretches north to about College Street, south to Sullivan, and west to about Denison.

As you might expect, Chinatown is lined with a lot of Chinese restaurants, although you’ll also find a lot of Vietnamese places, with a little Thai and Japanese thrown in for good measure. You’ll also find a lot of grocery stores with sidewalk stalls carrying fruits and vegetables. There are also some cheap clothes in the mix: if you need some plain T-shirts, there are plenty of places that carry them in many colours, 4 or 5 for a mere $10.

If you find yourself with the late-night munchies, Chinatown is the solution to your problem. A good number of the restaurants cater to the late-night crowd; many close as late as 5 a.m. on the weekends, and at least a couple of the Vietnamese places run 24 hours.

Kensington Market

Getting to Kensington Market is easy: just walk west on Dundas from the hotel for about ten minutes and go one block past Spadina, then turn up Kensington. You’ll be in Kensington Market, an area that blends alternative and counter-culture stores, traditional food markets, international restaurants and offbeat bars. Here’s a map of the area:

If you’re looking for stuff that you’re not going to find at the mall, this is the place to go.

For more about Kensington Market, see its Wikipedia entry and this Globe and Mail story (with video) of Dr. Richard “Creative Class” Florida paying a visit to the Market.

You can also take a little photo tour of the Market through the slideshow below:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Queen Street West

Check out this map: it shows the way from the hotel to the corner of Queen Street West and University Avenue, followed by a long stretch west. If you’ve got the time, it’s a very interesting walk — about 4 kilometres (two and a half miles) of one of the more interesting streets in the city. Things will start off a little more gentrified and no more edgy than the Hot Topic store in your local mall, but as you progress westward, the stores, bars and restaurants get quirkier, and you’ll see the “creative class” types who make Queen West their home. If you don’t feel like walking, you can always check out the scenery via streetcar.

Once again, I direct you to Wikipedia for a description of Queen Street West and its OurFaves page for some locals’ recommendations.

And There’s More!

I haven’t yet told you about Little Italy on College West, the Annex, that stretch of Baldwin Street with all the restaurants, the Beach(es), Mink Mile, Greektown, Koreatown, Roncesvalles, High Park and a lot of other places, but I hope that I’ve given you a good start. If you’re at the conference and have any questions about the city, feel free to ask me or any of the other locals — we’ll be happy to help!

See you at the conference!