Month: December 2010

It’s got all the earmarks of an award or commendation ceremony. But is it the dog, trainer or both being recognized? Readers of the Japanese language, I want to know!

Sample dialogue:

“Remember when people were content to be unambitious, sleep till eleven, just hang out with their friends? You had no occupation whatsoever, maybe working a couple of hours a week at a coffee shop?”

“Right…I thought that died out a long time ago.”

“Not in Portland! Portland is a city where young people go to retire.”

…

“I gave up clowning years ago.”

“In Portland, you don’t have to.”

I’ve been there, and everything in this video, a promo for a new IFC series called Portlandia, is true. Everything.

Amber Mac and me. Photo by Rannie Turingan.

Last night’s HoHoTO was both a great party and a successful fundraiser, netting just shy of CDN$62,000 for Accordion City’s Daily Bread Food Bank. Held at the Mod Club and attended largely by this city’s tech, social media and Twitter addict scene, it was part charitable event, part holiday party, part night club evening and part industry schmoozefest.

Pre-Event Dinner

Lee Dale of Say Yeah! invited me to a pre-HoHoTO dinner at Bar Italia, where I got to share a table with some friends and high-tech colleagues I haven’t seen in a while, including:

• Michele Perras
• Tom Purves
• Sunir Shah
• Jay Goldman
• Connie Crosby
• Mark Kuznicki
• Gabe Mansour
• Ryan McKegney

Mmm…the fourth night of dessert in a row (three at TechDays-related dinners in Calgary, plus this one). Good thing Michele helped me put away some of this stuff!

I will be atoning at the gym this weekend.

The Party

After dinner, we made the short walk from Bar Italia to the Mod Club, where the party was in full swing. The DJs were cranking out some great tunes, and as I always say, it’s never a Duarte da Silva set until he spins Kids by MGMT.

It was great catching up with the folks from the scene, including Andrew and Melina who were running the photo booth in the bar upstairs:

The End Result

The writing on the giant cheque in the photo above is washed out by the lights, but the end result of the evening was that we raised just shy of CDN$62,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank. My congratulations to the organizers on a job well done, and my thanks to everyone who attended for supporting a great cause.

HoHoTO is the annual holiday fundraising party in support of the Daily Bread Food Bank put together by a number of notable citizens of Accordion City, most of whom are either directly in this city’s astonishing tech sector, or close to it:

• Leila Boujnane: CEO,  Idée Inc.
• Alexa Clark: Managing Partner, Plethora Press
• Ryan Coleman: Applied Innovation Specialist, BMO Financial Group
• Duarte Da Silva: Senior Manager, Communitylend.com
• April Dunford: VP Marketing, Solarsoft Business Systems
• Peter Flaschner: Creative and Community Director, Sequentia Environics
• Rob Hyndman: Founder, Hyndman | Law
• Sheri Moore: Partner, Creative Director, MCC – Moore Carlyle Consulting
• Alistair Morton: Creative Director, Partner, Peapod Studios
• Michael O’Connor Clarke:  Vice President, Digital, Media Profile
• Michael Penney: El Presidente, Afterlight Films
• Michele Perras: Manager,  Mobile Experience Innovation Centre
• Corey Reid: Chief Cat Herder, FreshBooks
• Ryan Taylor: Goldsmith, Adventurer, The Fair Trade Jewellery Co.
• Rannie Turingan: Photographer, photojunkie.ca
• Elena Yunusov: Founder, communicable.ca

For the past couple of years, I’ve attended as an ordinary person paying the individual cover charge, but I’m stepping up my game. For this year and from now on, I’m a sponsor. This year, I’m a “Candy Cane”-level sponsor, and as my fortunes climb, so shall my sponsorship. If you have the means, you should do so too! (That’s my sponsorship logo on the right.)

HoHoTO takes place tonight at the Mod Club, and it’s completely sold out. If you don’t have a ticket, you might miss out on the party, but you can still do good: click here to donate to HoHoTO and help feed Toronto’s hungry!

The Humble Indie Bundle 2 is the second edition of a collection of indie games that run on Windows, Mac and Linux. Last year, the Humble Indie Bundle features World of Goo and other games; this year, the Humble Indie Bundle contains these DRM-free games:

• Braid
• Cortex Command
• Machinarium
• Osmos
• Revenge of the Titans (a new title, launching exclusively inside the bundle)

Purchased separately, these games would sell for a total of USD$85, but for a limited time, you get to set the price and determine where the money goes! That’s right, you determine how much you spend, and how you divide the money among the developers of the games, the EFF and the Child’s Play charity. Great games for the holidays for great causes!

For more, check out the Humble Indie Bundle 2 trailer:

Get Humble Indie Bundle 2 and play some great indie games (and perhaps even get some inspiration for your own Windows Phone 7 games)!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Last night, I attended a speaker dinner for TechDays Calgary at Chicago Chophouse. I had the “black and blue” filet mignon, which was an unusual treatment: it was covered in a savoury chocolate-based sauce and stuffed with blueberry bleu cheese. Reading the menu, it seemed so weird that I had to try it…and it was great!

When I eat at a steakhouse, my preferred dessert is the cookies-and-ice cream plate, and Chicago Chophouse does a nice rendition, as pictured above.

Click the cheesy painting to see it at full size.

The actual title of this painting is A Sinner’s Struggle, but I think my title works just as well.

(I like the demon on the right, attempting to bring about lustful thoughts in the sinner by showing him a picture of Pam from The Office.)