Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

Slice of Life: Playing Accordion at HoHOTo

playing_accordion_at_hohoto_aug_2009

Heather Leson, with whom I used to work at Tucows, snapped this photo of me breaking out the squeezebox at Tuesday’s HoHOTo charity event.

HoHOTo is the second edition of the HoHoTO (pronounced “Ho Ho Tee Oh”) party, which was a charity event that took place close to Christmas (hence the “Ho Ho”) and was very quickly organized after a few people had a little discussion on Twitter. No giant planning committees, no long meetings in windowless boardrooms over bad coffee and stale donuts, no big media marketing campaigns – just a group of dedicated volunteers and community leaders, a modicum of social media savvy, some fast-moving sponsors (including my employer, Microsoft Canada) and a club willing to let use their space on short notice.

Although it’s nowhere near Christmas, the event’s name has a lot of goodwill and the website already exists, so why not simply change the capitalization and pronunciation? And thus HoHOTo (pronounced “Ho HOT Oh”) came into being.

One again, it was organized largely by that chunk of the local creative class comprising both techies and marketing types. The event was a double success in raising over CAD$10,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank and being a great evening out as well.

I saw camera flashes galore at HoHOTo, and a number of those flashes ended up as pictures on Flickr.

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

The Best Tornado Video Ever

The tornado isn’t all that spectacular (as far as tornadoes go, anyway), nor is the phonecam footage remarkable in any way. What makes this video is the high-larious drama-queen dialogue. I’m downloading this sucker before the guy wises up and yanks it off YouTube.

I hereby give this video the Drama Queen seal of approval:

[Thanks to the Ginger Ninja for the heads-up!]

Categories
Geek Life

Ben Stiller Explains Twitter to Mickey Rooney

Chances are, as a reader of this blog, people ask you to explain Twitter to them. If that’s the case you might find this video in which Ben Stiller explains Twitter to Mickey Rooney amusing:

(This article also appears in my personal technical blog, Global Nerdy.)

Categories
It Happened to Me Life

My Results on OKCupid’s Politics Test

I gave my father-in-law a good laugh recently when I told him I was a radical centrist. I thought I’d check that assertion by taking OKCupid’s political test. I remember taking it two years (and four jobs!) ago and remember being tagged as a social liberal and economic moderate.

Here are the results I got yesterday:

political_compass_1

I rated as:

  • 65% socially permissive – a social liberal
  • 55% economically permissive – an economic moderate

The summary said:

You are best described as a centrist. You exhibit a very well-developed sense of right and wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Switching the result chart to the “political ideologies” view, my result point puts me on the outer edge of the centrist circle, just tangential to both the libertarian and democrat zones:

political_compass_2

The more amusing chart is the “famous people” chart, in which I’m located smack-dab between Donald Trump and Adam Sandler. I have no idea how they derived Sandler’s social and political views:

political_compass_3

There’s one face on the “famous people” chart that I can’t place: who’s that in the lower right quadrant behind Hillary Clinton? The one with the nearly completely obscured face?

I think Barack Obama’s placement all the way down in the lower-right corner in deep socialist-land is wrong and based on too much listening to Rush Limbaugh (although I think any listening to him is a bad idea). I think he should be in the same zone as Hillary Clinton.

A Couple of People I Know

I know a couple of people behind WordPress: Matt Mullenweg, whom I’ve met through Rannie and tests positive for “Democrat”:

matt_mullenweg_political_test

and Mark Jaquith, with whom I worked at b5media. The test says that Mark is a libertarian bordering on anarchist. He did answer “strongly agree” to the statement that two consenting adults should be allowed to duel to the death. I wonder if he carries a “slappin’ glove” for those moments when someone has insulted his honour:

mark_jaquith_political_test

Where Do YOU Stand?

Gentle Readers! I’m curious to see where you end up on the chart – go take the political test and feel free to post your results in the comments!

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

Tornado in Vaughan

Just north of Accordion City is Vaughan, and they got a tornado earlier this evening:

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

Tornado at Bloor and Yonge

Tornadoes normally don’t come ‘round our way here in Accordion City, but today’s storm system was quite unusual. Out here in the High Park area, it turned the sky wasabi green and smack in the middle of town, a proper tornado formed. Local YouTube user “Tubocracy” shot this footage:

Categories
Life

Quick, Set the DVR!

On-screen TV guide: "Law and Order: Criminal Intent - A young hipster is stabbed."

Alternate response: “What, only one?”