Tech Evangelist Joey deVilla on Shopify, startups, software development, tech news and other nerdy stuff
That most hated of typefaces, Comic Sans, gets anthropomorphized and bad-assified in Mike Lacher’s piece for McSweeney’s titled, (in)appropriately enough, I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 1 comment }
“Truck Nutz” let you communicate to the world that you’re a bold and sassy guy in a way that words just can’t convey, but what if you don’t have a truck? For that Truck Nutz message without truck ownership, this iPhone case might fit the bill:
Cartoonist Chris Onstad came up with this idea back in January 2006 with this surreal and funny Achewood comic in which Ray Smuckles comes up with “ChatSacks”:
If someone will make one for a Windows Phone 7 device, I’ll buy one of those cases.
{ 0 comments }
This image actually had me rolling out of my chair laughing. Click it to see it at full size:
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 5 comments }
Once again, my friend and former co-worker (I worked at his startup, OpenCola, during “The Bubble”) Cory Doctorow is holding the Canadian launch of his latest novel, For the Win.
Here’s the publisher’s blurb about the book:
In the virtual future, you must organize to survive
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.
Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation.
The event takes place tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Merril Collection of the Lillian H. Smith building (a.k.a. “The Library”) at 239 College Street, just east of Spadina. Perhaps a post-launch visit to Caplansky’s is in order.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 1 comment }
The Hand Eye Society describes itself as a “not-for-profit coalition of people and projects in support of Toronto’s videogame communities”. Their goals are:
I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the people behind the Hand Eye Society is Jim Munroe. He’s a former Adbusters editor turned self-publishing author of a number of enjoyable science fiction books such Flyboy Action Hero Comes with Gasmask and Angry Young Spaceman, developer of indie games including the interactive fiction piece Punk Points (the online version requires Java), maker of movies and all-round Toronto DIY-espousing creative type.
Also connected with the Hand Eye Society are other indie videogame notables including:
The Hand Eye Society is throwing a social this Thursday, May 27th in Toronto at Unit Bar (1198 Queen Street West, a shade east of Dufferin/Gladstone, halfway between the Drake and Gladstone hotels). The doors will open at 7:00 and there may be a set of curated videogames for you to check out.
At 8:00 p.m. special guest dignitary Brandon Boyer, Chairman of the Independent Games Festival and contributing editor for Boing Boing and Boing Boing’s games blog Offworld, will, as the Hand Eye Society’s blog puts it, “deliver some form of immensely significant communication to the assembled videogame creators, enthusiasts, organizers & slack-jawed onlookers.”
If I weren’t going to be in Montreal that evening for the Make Web Not War conference, I’d most certainly at this event (I’ll definitely catch the next social). If you’re in Toronto and love videogames (especially ones that break from the mainstream) and especially if you love making them, catch the Hand Eye Society’s social this Thursday!
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 0 comments }
The blog Geeks are Sexy put together a wonderful alphabet rhyme using Creative Commons “share-alike”-licensed photos on Flickr, which I thought I’d share with you:
Here’s the text of the rhyme, along with a credit for each corresponding photo:
A is for Away Team, where you should never wear red (mild mannered photographer)
B is for Binary, 1s and 0s in your head (jpstanley)
C is for Cosplay, making cons an awesome place
D is for Doctor, who keeps changing face (great beyond)
E is for Emoticons, that tell you what we’re feeling (neal gillis)
F is for Flickr, whose photos we are “stealing” (tricky)
G is for Gadgets, the way to our heart (slipstreamjc)
H is for Hardware, I took it apart! (jurvetson)
I is for iEverything, love it or hate it (dan dickinson)
J is for Japan, we’re glad Nintendo invaded (oscar mota)
K is for Keyboard, we love every letter (andrew*)
L is for Leias, the more the better! (koadmunkee)
M is for MMORPGs, it’s a magical place (i eated a cookie)
N is for NASA, and the beauty of space (nasa1fan)
O is for Occipital Lobe, we love using our brains (illuminaut)
P is for Programming, ((though lisp is a pain)) (phil_jackson)
Q is for Quilting, and other geeky crafts (athenamat)
R is for Reading, no matter what the path (timonoko)
S is for Science, though the cake is a lie (don solo)
T is for Tabletop, and a 20-sided die (nengard)
U is for Uncertainty, you just never know (neil crosby)
V is for Voltage, oh the places we’ll go! (oskay)
W is for the World Wide Web, it’s more than just porn (shimown)
X is for Xerox, where so much geekiness was born (marc smith)
Y is for Youth, since kids are geeks too (benmcleod)
Z is for Zork, watch out for the grue! (the_tml)
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 3 comments }
What happens when you take computing’s proto-heroes Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, turn them into characters in a steampunk adventure television series with a title sequence lifted directly from Space: 1999? You get Albion: 1849, a series with a themes similar to The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne.
[Found via 2D Goggles, via Rob Miles’ blog.]
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 2 comments }
Make Web Not War is a cross-platform conference focusing on web development in mixed open source and commercial environments. Make Web Not War is jointly sponsored by Microsoft, our friends at PHP Quebec and open source communities across Canada. We’re proud to be a part of MonDev, Montréal’s Open Source Week, which takes place from May 24th through 28th, 2010.
Make Web Not War is a free-as-in-beer event taking place on Thursday, May 27th featuring free-as-in-speech software development. Among other things, you’ll get to:
Make Web Not War’s schedule has two tracks:
Make Web Not War will take place at Reunion, located at 6600 Hutchison:
Registration is free – just visit the registration page and sign up!
MonDev, Montréal’s Open Source Week, runs from Monday, May 24th through Friday, May 28th. It’s a celebration of Open Source technology and community throughout the Montréal area and features many events, including:
From MonDev’s “About” Page:
By encouraging local and international partnerships, Open Source developers are creating free software that can be continuously updated and shared. For many software innovators, Open Source represents the future transformation of software development.
Through Open Source, communities, cities and nations around the world are presented with the opportunity to promote and actively nurture an environment of learning, collaboration and innovation.
Montréal is an important centre of global Open Source activity and home to many software developers, projects and companies. Open Source Week will bring together industry leaders, teachers and students from around the world for a full week of activities that will include workshops, seminars and presentations.
Microsoft Canada’s Technical Evangelism team – Yours Truly included – will be taking the train to Montreal, and we want you to ride with us! We’ve booked an entire car, and we’re bringing the Xbox, Rock Band (and hopefully Red Dead Redemption) and other goodies, and since it’s VIA Rail, there’ll be wifi and power aplenty, and good company and conversation, of course! Best of all, we’re subsidizing the trip – you can travel from Toronto to Montreal on Tuesday morning, depart Montreal for Toronto on Friday, and it’ll cost you only $50!
What’s on the train?
Want to travel on the cheap in in high geeky style? Take the train with us – email cdnsol@microsoft.com to get the invitation to ride.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 0 comments }
Okay, I get the missing “13” (bad luck in Western cultures) and no numbers with “4” in them (bad luck in Chinese and Japanese cultures), and the –1 is clever, but where’s the zero? C’mon Asian people, we’re supposed to be good at math!
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 5 comments }
My tech show for kids, Developer Junior, premieres today on Butterscotch.com! In this episode, Junior (the puppet) and I (the human) take a look at the Kodu game builder system and go through a quick tutorial:
Developer Junior is a show on Butterscotch.com aimed at the younger set and is all about helping kids make the most out of the technology in their everyday lives. It’s about writing programs, creating media, playing games, and having fun with technology. (It’s also a dream come true for me – I always thought I’d be a great host for a kid’s show.)
There’s another episode coming up, in which Junior and I walk through the process of making a movie using Live Movie Maker. Watch for it!
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 1 comment }
Every job has its tedious part, but my job has an unusually high number of moments of pure awesomeness, such as those pictured below. I’ll explain more about the project later, but for now, enjoy the photos!
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 1 comment }
“FTW” has been known to stand for many things, but in the case of the FTW! Coding Competition, it means “For The Web” (as well as “For The Win”). The FTW Coding Competition is part of our Make Web Not War event taking place on Thursday, May 27th in Montreal.
The FTW! Coding Competition is your chance to show off your web development skills and compete for some great prizes. We’re looking for people to either:
as long as it falls under one of these categories:
The prizes for the FTW! Coding Competition are:
I’m tempted to take this off the prize list and keep it for myself. It’s made up of all these goodies:
A nice package for bouncing between home and the office.
A very portable and powerful system for the coder on the go. This one’s for all you “cafe coders”!
We’re awarding bonus prizes for submitted apps that we feel worthy of the following superlatives. You can win these on their own or in combination with the first, second and third place prizes!
In order to be eligible, you have to submit your web application by Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. So get working!
You can find out more about the FTW! Coding Competition, including all the terms and conditions of the competition, at the FTW! Coding Competition site.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 0 comments }
The comic below, created by John Campbell, is a snarky but amusing deconstruction of Star Trek: The Next Generation:
I always found it funny that the “empathic” character Deanna Troi had the power to sense plainly obvious emotions and painful that they had to explain bits of human behaviour that one should’ve picked up by the end of adolescence. That being said, much of the show’s audience was teenage boys, and teens often figure out the world through stories, so why not explain that stuff? And as someone much wiser than me once said, science fiction is a sandwich: once you’ve gotten past the bread of aliens and future tech and the thin slices of plot meat, it’s all about the thick moral mayo.
The last panels in this comic had me laughing out loud, especially since I imagined the line as delivered by actor (and dater-of-inapproriately-young-women, the lucky bastard) Patrick Stewart himself, using that William. Shatner. Mode. Of. Delivery.
In case it’s not apparent who the comic figures are, here’s a quick guide…
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 0 comments }
Photo courtesy of M Thru F.
I assume that someone did this using this trick.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
{ 1 comment }
