Month: April 2012

Late last month, one of the most unintentionally funny publications I’ve seen in some time made a splash and then just as quickly disappeared without explanation. It was The Conservative Teen, a magazine with a incredibly oxymoronic title, the slogans “fostering conservative values” and “countering liberal bias” (not exactly burning issues on the teenage agenda) and wholesome-on-the-verge-of-delusional articles that most certainly were not written by teens nor anyone who’s even had contact with a teen. (They might have had fantasies about teens, but that doesn’t count.)

Among its articles are such gems as:

• An unsurprising condemnation of Glee, complete with a special mention of Katie Couric, whom the writers still haven’t forgiven for embarrassing Sarah Palin with a so-called “gotcha” question (Palin claimed to read a lot of news but couldn’t name a single newspaper, despite having majored in journalism).
• Why Abstinence Works. It clearly doesn’t, and it turned out that the article was contributed by the Family Research Council.
• Ronald Reagan: The First Black President?
• Libertarian View: Government Creates Poverty
• How to Draw Obama

Many of the articles, either in deference to teenager’s inexperience or to John Stuart Mill, many of the articles came with definitions for some of their tougher words (such as “cameo” and “Judaism”). Perhaps it didn’t occur to the writers that kids these days would Google any unfamiliar terms. Then again, they may have wanted to spare the young’uns the terror of Google returning some liberal results for their searches.

The back cover features this full-page photo which works best if you imagine it read aloud by Sam the American Eagle from The Muppet Show:

I’d link to the magazine itself, but its site lived for less than a handful of days. According to this Buzzfeed article, the reason why depends on whom you ask:

• Ask the contributors to the magazine and they’ll that it ran out of money. You probably can’t find a more ironic example of the free market in action.
• Ask the publisher and he’ll say that he’s unable to continue with the magazine due to illness.
• Ask the guy who registered the site and you’ll get nothing. He’s nowhere to be found, and his (presumably former) employer would like him to explain why he registered The Conservative Teen using company resources without authorization.

The disappearance of The Conservative Teen leaves a void for some enterprising, politically active publisher to fill. My suggestion: get some actual conservative teens — tricky to find, but perhaps you can find the loner in the high school cafeteria plotting revenge, some homeschooled kids or visit a militia training ground — to write at least a few of the articles.

Here’s HackTO’s official greeter. She’ll let you in if you pet her and give her an ear rub.

Hack-what? See this article for an explanation.

I like the way this guy thinks. I would’ve have thrown booze into the mix, but I assume it’s implied. (I draw this from the Catholic sacrament of confession, in which there are two assumptions: you have sinned, and the priest is drunk.)

I wonder if he has any connection to the vicar in Sheffield who had to explain to the emergency room why there was a potato up his cornhole.

In case you were wondering, the title for this post comes from a Simpsons quote.

As I write this, there are about a hundred people gathered in a warehouse space — Freshbooks‘ new offices — in Toronto’s west end who’ve been there since 8:30 a.m. or so, and I am among them. They’re setting up laptops, connecting to wifi and firing up their software development tools.

They’re here for HackTO, a “hackfest” in which developers from Toronto and parts surrounding are challenged to write an app in a day. The apps they write are required to integrate with at least one of the services provided by the sponsors:

• Shopify (whom I’m representing, along with my coworker David Underwood)
• Atomic Reach
• Context.IO
• FreshBooks
• Idée
• SoundCloud
• TinEye
• Trendspottr
• Twilio
• YellowAPI

David and I just finished giving the attendees an overview of Shopify and the sort of apps you can write using the Shopify platform, and all the other sponsors will do the same during the opening presentations. Once these are done, the hackers will form teams and work on building their apps until the 5:00 p.m. deadline. The esteemed panel of judges will then award prizes based on what they believe are the best apps created today, and David and I will award a $500 Apple Store girt card to the app that makes the best use of Shopify.

It may seem odd to spend a Saturday afternoon working, but for many of us programming is more than just a way to pay the mortgage — it’s a calling and a passion.

I greatly doubt that people sell insurance or do people’s taxes as a hobby on the weekends, but like cooking, carpentry and a number of creative lines of work, programming is something that people do as both work and a hobby. I’ve spent many a happy weekend afternoon learning a new programming language, cobbling together multimedia programs for desktop computers or web apps or Xbox games or (more recently) iPhone/iPad apps in the same way some other hobbyist might build model airplanes or sketch buildings or try out a new recipe. That’s what these people are doing today, and as a bonus, their hobby may pay off in all sorts of ways, from learning something new to winning a prize to making some new contacts to getting hired.

Good luck, hackers: I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!

I’m going to be in Ottawa all next week, from the late morning on Monday, April 16th through to the early evening of Friday, April 20th. I’m there to touch base with the folks at Shopify HQ, and if you’d like to catch up, drop me a line!

In response to former child star Kirk Cameron’s (he played Mike Seaver on the eighties sitcom Growing Pains) recent statement on Piers Morgan Tonight that “homosexuality is unnatural, detrimental and ultimately destructive to foundations of civilization”, other former child stars from the same era have banded together to form Child Celebrities Opposing Kirk Cameron, or CCOKC (pronounced “cock”, natch) for short. It probably won’t convince Kirk that he’s dead wrong, but at the very least, it does a high-larious job of explaining why that’s the case. In light of the creepy social conservative backlash that’s happening everywhere as part of the Republican bid to win the presidency this November, we need more messages like this. Watch, enjoy and share with your friends!

The videos a bit racy and some of the audio might not be suitable for your workplace. I’d suggest you switch jobs, or failing that, don’t watch it at work.

If you’ve got $3,100 burning a hole in your pocket and love the old Super NES game console, you might want to get your paws on this: a coffee table that’s not only done up like a wooden Super NES controller, but also functions as one.