Tu vas au salon de bronzage trois fois par semaine et au gym six fois par semaine? T’as pas fini ton secondaire? Tu t’habilles en T-shirts “Tap Out” et “Ed Hardy”? T’as une “douchebeard”? T’habites à Laval? T’aimeras ce chanson!
You may have seen the blog entry containing a transcription of my notes from the Geek Girl Ottawa dinner, but have you seen the handwritten originals?
One of the items that came in the Bag O’ Stuff that I was given on my first day at Shopify was a Moleskine notebook and a Sacchi ballpoint pen. I have reasonably good penmanship and was once better known as a cartoonist than a programmer or accordion player, so I thought I’d put both to good use.
I know that in the age of laptops, iPads, Flip cameras and tweeting from your phone, taking notes with pen and paper seems a little passe, However, the old way still has a couple of advantages. First, you can be a little more free-form with where and how you write — you don’t have to do things is straight lines, and you can easily switch between writing and drawing and mix test and illustrations with abandon. Second, and possibly more important: paper isn’t as badly affected by crumbs or a spilled sauce or drink as electronic devices are, a consideration one must make when taking notes at a dinner.
At the end of 2009, I had a couple of coupons from Dell (thanks to TechDays) that entitled me to 25% off monitors, printers and scanners from their store. I used one coupon for their 24″ Ultrasharp monitor, which I’ve been using regularly at my home office since the start of 2010 — first with the developer machine first assigned to me, then the Dellasaurus, and now with “Vic Romano”, my Shopify-provided 15″ MacBook Pro (my machines are currently named after the hosts of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge).
I used the other coupon to get something I’d been meaning to buy for a while: a scanner. Not a cheap one integrated into one of those all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax machines chimeras, but an honest-to-goodness, dedicated flatbed scanner. I picked out the Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner. Unlike the monitor, the scanner languished unused, with its moving parts still immobilized in its packing material, until a month ago.
My plan was to return to cartooning, something I’d done for just about every student paper during my days in high school and Crazy Go Nuts University. I wasn’t going to go as far as posting webcomics, but perhaps I’d use comics as part of my blog entries. I fancied myself a less surreal, more saucy version of why the lucky stiff.
Like much of 2010, that plan didn’t quite work out. All that was prologue for 2011, which has been about throwing away old plans for new ones. Inspired by a brush with death and a couple of strange events in February that I like to call “The Battles in Seattle” (one personal, one professional, both unbloggable but tellable over drinks), I left a comfortable and lucrative job at home for a startup and relocated, if only temporarily, to a town where I know only a few people and even less about where anything is.
So in that spirit of change, when the time came to pack my stuff for the move, I took the scanner with me, along with some sketchpads that had been lying fallow even longer than the scanner. I removed the last of the packing materials and hooked it up this evening. There was no better candidate item to scan than my Geek Girl Dinner Ottawa notes in my Moleskine.
So expect more scans of my handwritten notes, along with hand-drawn illustrations and comics in my blog posts. I hope you find them interesting.
A rocket attack is pretty much the only thing that would keep Canadians away from Tim Hortons. I once walked through a blizzard because I had an insatiable craving for the sausage/egg breakfast sandwich on a biscuit and a double-double and nothing else would do.
Photo courtesy of Vidiot.
Saw this in ByWard Market the other day – it’s just too adorable not to post:
The term “hack” used to denote an unprincipled, untalented news reporter, but journalists have since reclaimed the word use it it proudly now. It’s still used in the publishing business to refer to a journeyman take-on-any-topic type of writer, as opposed to one who specializes in a given area.
The term “hacker”– at least within tech circles – describes a computer programming enthusiast who loves having a clear and complete understanding of the systems s/he works on and enjoys creating clever programs. The layperson’s use of the word “hacker” is more often than not used to denote people who break into computer systems – the preferred term for this sort of person is “cracker”.
While both fields appear to be quite different, there’s much that binds them together these days. Both now work online and both deal with the interpretation, processing and dissemination of information, each in its own way. We even have people who live in both worlds at the same time:
With such an overlap, it was high time that hacks and hackers got together to talk about their respective fields, share ideas and start collaborations. That’s how the Hacks/Hackers meetups got started and spread far and wide. Hacks/Hackers Ottawa had its first meetup at the James Street Pub last night, and I was fortunate enough to catch it, thanks to a timely invite from my fellow Shopifolk Edward Ocampo-Gooding, Ottawa’s open data champion.
I took notes during both presentations and present them below. As always, any inaccuracies should be pointed out to me, either via email or in the comments. Feel free to copy the notes and accompanying photos and use them as you see fit!
My friend Maria snapped this photo of a guy in a squid suit on Bathurst Street by the Amsterdam Brewery:
I’m reminded of this fella:
Last Saturday in Minneapolis, after spending the earlier part of the evening doing this:
…and the later part of the evening doing this:
…I returned back here at around 3:00 a.m.:
The lobby was still packed with people, many of whom were still dressed up pretty nicely. A quick look confirmed that it was a wedding party that didn’t want to stop, even though last call for alcohol in Minneapolis is 1:00 a.m. (it used to be that way in Ontario until the mid-’90s). They’d turned the lobby into their own private party, and the aloft management, as hip as they are, let them be. The tables were covered in boxes from Pizza Luce and bottles of beer.
I made my way to the elevator, but was stopped by a big grey-haired gentleman who said “Oh, no you don’t!”
“Pardon me?” I asked
“You just can’t wander through a lobby at three in the morning, with an accordion, without at least explaining what it is you’re doing!”
“I take it out a lot. Good things happen when I do,” I replied.
“That’s my son,” the guy said as he pointed to a young, shaven-headed guy in a dark grey T-shirt. “He just got married!”
“Congrats,” I said. “Would you like a song?”
“That is exactly what I want. Play whatever you like!”
And so I stayed for another hour, chatting with the bride, various wedding guests and relatives, and singing with the groom, who knew the lyrics to a lot of songs. We did The Clash, Black Eyed Peas, Britney, Cee-Lo, Stone Temple Pilots, AC/DC, Violent Femmes and Steppenwolf. People sang aloug — boisterously — and all the while, I could see the night manager at the front desk, smiling. aloft run an extremely cool hotel.
I made it to my room at 4:00 a.m.. A nice night all ’round.
