Month: September 2013

[ insert your own joke about some great stories ending with someone tossing a salad here ]

…they had an election, but don’t look to their TV if you want to find out who won.

I love this comic that depicts Marvel Comics’ biggest bad guy, Thanos (you saw him in the post-credits scene in the Avengers movie), and DC comics’ second-biggest bad guy*, Darkseid, as guys who carpool to work.

(* In case you were wondering, DC Comics’ biggest bad guy is Orson Scott Card.)

Justin Kozuch is one of the better-known people in Toronto’s startup/indie tech scene, and he comes by his notoriety honestly. As a digital marketer par excellence, he’s worked on a number of notable projects, including:

• Hailo, the smartphone app that connects taxis with people who need them, quickly and conveniently. Justin was their social media marketer and community manager, growing the brand from a virtual unknown to one of the go-to apps for Torontonians on the go.
• Pixel to Product, a Canada-wide research project of his own creation that covered the country’s digital media industry. He won the Mesh Prize to fund the project, and its output was the comprehensive 2011 Canadian Digital Media Economy Report.
• Community management for Radar DDB and OSL Marketing.
• Social Media Week Toronto, where he was the lead events coordinator.
• The TTC’s Customer Liaison Panel, where he gives Toronto’s transit system some much-needed advice on improving their customer service from the angle of technology and social media.

In a just world, Justin wouldn’t be looking for work. But it’s not a perfect world, and looking for work is exactly what he’s doing right now. If you need someone who truly gets digital marketing, social media, and PR, and who comes with my highest recommendations, go talk to Justin! Give him the opportunity, and he’ll take your company to great heights with his social media/marketing/community management savvy.

If you don’t need his services, please help spread the word! Send people to and use the Twitter hashtag #hirejustin:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

I passed by Lee’s Palace last night, looked at the bands who were playing there soon and noticed that they’ve got an eighties revival going on. First, there’s ’80s proto-goth rock band The Mission, whom I’ll always remember for Tower of Strength:

Then there’s the ’80s ska band The Selecter, who are probably best known for Too Much Pressure:

The arty and experimental Pere Ubu, who’ve gone through all sorts of changes over the decades. Here’s 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, their first single:

and Edward Ka-Spel’s group, The Legendary Pink Dots:

…is Global Nerdy, and it’s my blog on technology and software development, with a particular focus on mobile technology. It also has those slice-of-life posts that are more related to my work, including my impromptu appearance on a panel at Jobspring Partners’ Tech in Motion meetup on Wednesday:

Among its regular features are the iOS Fortnightly tutorials, in which I produce a new tutorial on writing apps for the iPhone and iPad every two weeks…

…regular roundups of mobile tech news…

…special articles that ended up making the rounds on the internet, including:

• My observations on Microsoft’s stack ranking system, based on my experiences there
• My writeup about the time I tried the FizzBuzz test on programmers I interviewed
• My oft-cited article about how Chrome is now the most-used browser
• My article on why netbooks suck
• My poking fun at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

If you want to stay caught up on the world of technology, software development, mobile tech, and nerd humour, Global Nerdy’s the place to be!

I was first introduced to the cartoon short Lupo the Butcher one night at what was then called The Diamond Club (it became the Phoenix Concert Theatre in 1991). They played it on the giant screen hanging over the dance floor as an excuse to introduce a break in the music at 12:30 so that they could announce last call, back when you had to stop serving booze at 1 a.m., and over time, it became a sort of ritual to mark the approach of closing time. It was crude, full of cartoon gore, swear-tastic, and to me, downright funny.

Someone’s upload a high-quality version of Lupo the Butcher to YouTube, and I thought I’d share it here.

Be warned: There’s profanity and cartoon gore galore in this cartoon — it might not be safe for your workplace!

Lupo went on to star in a Converse commercial:

Lupo the Butcher’s creator, Danny Antonucci, went on to create the very odd (and not very well-received) Brothers Grunt, which started airing on MTV in 1994:

and then went on to the Cartoon Network with a hit you might recognize: Ed, Edd and Eddy…