Month: August 2008

I think I’ll just post this one without comment:

Photo taken by scarlett_1975 and found via UFailPix.
Click the photo to see the original.

Update: Thanks to Kim Scarborough for pointing out who took the photo!

Update

Since Sunday August 24th, Maple Leaf Foods has updated the list of recalled food to include everything produced at the Bartor Road plant here in Toronto. Click here to see the updated list.

You can also download the list in PDF format.

[This was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

My toy: M-Audio Axiom 25 USB MIDI keyboard

For my 40th birthday, the Ginger Ninja got me something I’d had my eye on for some time: a USB MIDI keyboard, specifically an M-Audio Axiom 25, a nice little unit with a lot of features. Prior to my picking up the accordion and getting the “Accordion Guy” nickname, I was a synth player for a good long time. I’ve been meaning to get back into it.

I still have a couple of old hardware synths: a Korg Wavestation A/D (a rackmount unit version of the Korg Wavestation) from my days at Crazy Go Nuts University and a Korg Poly-800 that my friend Steph gave to me when she moved out of town.

My last experience was software synths wasn’t all that hot: it was in the late 1990s, when computers and networking were a great deal slower. Software synths felt very “laggy” in comparison to my good ol’ reliable hardware, and after noodling with them for a while, I decided that I’d give technology some time to play catch-up. That time has come, and I’d like to ask any of you who are familiar with this stuff: what are your favorite software synths, samplers and sound modules?

I’m looking for a couple of things in software form:

• A nice, decent general purpose synth/sampler. I expect I’ll be doing more sequencing than live performance, but you never know…
• A “groove builder” or “Groovebox” in the spirit of the Roland MC-303

I’m currently on a PC laptop (running Ubuntu and when absolutely necessary, Vista), but I expect to buy a Macbook Pro sometime in the near future. I’d like to hear about what’s available for any platform. Let me know in the comments!

Whoever placed that sign there is either missing the point or has a nasty streak:

Click the photo to see the original.

The Toronto International Film Festival 2008, which takes place here in Accordion City and runs from September 4th through 13th, has released their full schedule of films. Over its 10 days, they will show 312 films on 36 screens throughout the city; the films will hail from 64 countries (this is fewer films than last year, but more screens).

If you want to see the full schedule, it’s here.

The Festival’s New Home: Yonge-Dundas Square

I’ve got to hand it to Sam Javanrouh, who took this picture. He pulled off a minor miracle, making Yonge-Dundas Square look like some place you might actually want to visit.
Click the photo to see the original.

The new hub of the festival will be Yonge-Dundas Square, which should prove to be an interesting change. The old location, Yorkville, was a pretty nice strolling neighbourhood, while Yonge-Dundas square is closer in spirit to crass main drags like Times Square, after which it seems to have been modelled. This is smack dab in the seething pit of Yonge Street, is dominated by cheap-bordering-on-disposable club clothes, grey market electronics, porn shops and peeler bars, pizza, pizza, pizza.

It seems to be a bit short on Festival-grade restaurants, with plebian chain establishments like The Pickle Barrel, Baton Rouge and the Hard Rock Cafe being the most visible choices. There are some bright spots, though: the Senator and Salad King are nearby, and if you feel like paying top dollar to feed your socially acceptable eating disorders (vegetarianism and veganism), there’s Le Commensal. Maybe the fancy-pants crowd will head for Lai Wah Heen in the Metropolitan Hotel or Barberian’s for steak.

The bar pickings in the neighbourhood, if I recall correctly, are even slimmer. The last time I drank in this neighbourhood, I was underage. Are there any watering holes in the area worth a visit? Let me know in the comments.

Map from the New York Times.

It’s not to late to get a better understanding of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. If you read only one article to get that understanding, I strongly recommend the New York Times article Taunting the Bear.

If you decide to read only two articles about the Russia/Georgia conflict, perhaps the second one should be this now-infamous question posed on Yahoo! Answers, in which a concerned writer from the state of Georgia — as in Jimmy Carter’s home state, Atlanta, Coca-Cola and peaches — asked why she didn’t see any sign of the Russkies:

Whether the question was posed by someone who is genuinely clueless or by a prankster, it’s pretty funny. I wouldn’t rule out the former, though.

Inspired by my earlier post titled The Way Movies Were in the Seventies, I present to you this image showing the way computers were in the seventies: