Month: May 2011

At last, after a week here in Alternate Accordion City (a.k.a. Ottawa), a sunny day! With all the grey and gloomy days, I was beginning to think that Ottawa was turning into Vancouver. Here are some pictures that I snapped this morning on my wonderfully short walk to work at the Shopify offices…

First, Centre Block, which most people just think of as “The Parliament Building”. It’s the equivalent of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., except that you can walk right up to it without being taken out by sharpshooters. You can even do handstands on the lawn if you feel like it:

The groundskeepers seemed to really be enjoying themselves this morning. Outdoor work is so much nicer on days like today. That’s a statue of Canada’s first and hardest-drinking prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald on the left, and Chateau Laurier in the background on the right.

Here’s the Rideau Canal, as seen from the Rideau Street bridge, looking north:

Here’s a zoomed-in shot looking north along the canal, giving a better view of the Ottawa River:

Here’s Chateau Laurier’s west side:

And here’s Chateau Laurier’s east side, along with the surrounding buildings, as seen from the sidewalk on Sussex Drive, the Canadian equivalent of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC (yes, the prime minister’s house is just a short bike ride away from me):

Crossing Sussex takes you into ByWard Market, where Shopify is located. Along the way is Chateau Lafayette, a.k.a. “The Laff”, a delightfully divery watering hole that I remember (or more accurately, don’t remember) from my days at Crazy Go Nuts University:

Now that the weather’s warming up, the stalls in the market are really getting into full swing:

Steps away from Shopify’s front door on York Street are a bunch of clothing stalls, including this one:

And here’s the last pic: Shopify’s front door. It won’t be for too much longer; later this summer, Shopify is moving to a larger space across the street.

From my front door to Shopify’s, it’s about a ten-minute walk at a leisurely pace. With the notable exception of the trip from my bed to the home office, it’s one of the nicest commutes I’ve ever had, and I’m looking forward to doing many more this summer.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Want to use your developer chops for the greater good? Build an open data app! Open data is data from public records that’s been put online in a form that’s easy for applications to grab, crunch and do all sorts of things with. It’s information that’s out there for the public good, but it needs to be used by applications built for that same public good.

My fellow Shopifolks, Edward Ocampo-Gooding and Daniel Beauchamp, are doing a presentation in Original Accordion City tonight at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West, just east of Dufferin) on open data titled Hello World 2.0. Here’s the abstract:

Hello World 2.0

• Wondering what your next big project should be?

• Need some ideas for new and innovative features?

Work on something that matters. You’re bright and hungry to sink your teeth into using new tech all the time. Instead of making yet another X, build something for yourself and for your neighbours & city. Do it with open data: public records now online in an easily hackable form.

Edward and Daniel will talk about how making cool and interesting art & tools backed by open data has catapulted Ottawa hackers into the limelight with coverage & support from the City of Ottawa, CBC, newspapers, local radio and TV stations, and a *lot* of citizens. We’ll show you what’s worked for us, what the scene is like and how you can make open data work for you in your city.

Edward Ocampo-Gooding’s awesome titles include Developer Advocate at Shopify (talk to me about APIs and apps) and lead Organizer at Open Data Ottawa (talk to me about APIs and apps). Daniel Beauchamp is a developer at Shopify and one of the core members of Open Data Ottawa. Along with Edward, he has given several talks on open data, and has recently helped organize a hackfest spanning 76 cities worldwide.

It’s taking place tonight from 6:45 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.. Admission is cheap (a mere $3.00), but you should register if you want to attend!

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

The standard-issue machine at Shopify, which is still mostly techies, then designers, then “suits”, is a 15″ MacBook Pro (Quad-core i7 running at 2.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and hooray, the trackpad supports right-clicking). It’s sleek, it’s sexy, and I’m just as fond of it as I was of my favourite “axe” when I was a Microsoftie: the Dellasaurus (a ridiculously souped-up orange 17″ Dell Precision M6500 with 16 gigs of RAM).

The problem is that in an office where fifty or so people have the exact same machine, you need some way of telling yours from the others’. I figure no one else in the office — and perhaps very, very few people on the planet — would ever put an IE9 sticker on a Mac. I put in on a few moments ago as of this writing, and I think that Steve Jobs is feeling a disturbance in The Force right now.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Hello from Minneapolis! Minneapolis is in the great state of Minnesota, which has a “concealed carry” law with an “opt-out” statute, hence the sign in the photo above. But seriously, how can I feel comfortable shopping for electronics if I ain’t got my gat?

I’m here for the weekend to attend MinneBar — the Minnesota BarCamp — as a representative of Shopify, who are one of the sponsors of the BarCamp Tour, as a guy who just likes a good geeky gathering and as an opportunity to catch up with some friends from the Twin Cities. MinneBar is taking place at Best Buy Headquarters, which actually looks like a very decked-out Best Buy with office space instead of product shelves. The ground floor has large hallways and meeting rooms aplenty, which makes it perfect for an unconference.

I’ll post photos from this trip in a couple of days.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.