I wouldn’t mind having a setup like Videocrab’s:
Photo by Videocrab.
Click here to see its Flickr page.
Categories
Credibility Gap
I know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this promotion doesn’t exactly inspire confidence:
Once again, it’s time for another Developer Lunch here in Accordion City! This is going to be the ninth in the series of lunches organized by Kristan "Krispy" Uccello, and it will be held at the usual location, Sky Dragon restaurant (on the 5th floor of Dragon City mall at the corner of Spadina and Dundas).
These lunches give Toronto-area developers and other techie types to get together for some delicious dim sum and conversation. I’ve been to several of these, and they’ve always been fun. The bill gets split on a per-table basis, and it’s typically worked out to about $12 a person, and everyone leaves full.
If you’re a developer – and that means anyone who practices or is interested in programming – you should come on over to Sky Dragon and join us for lunch! I’ll be there, and you’ can ask me about anything, whether it’s development, Microsoft, accordions, whatever!
The Developer Lunch takes place today (Tuesday, January 27th) at noon and runs until about 1:30 p.m.. Just look for the tables with the geeks!
Categories
Gnu’s Night Out
Suppose you’re a plush Free Software Foundation animal and you’ve just arrived in Montreal and “gnu” in town. What do you do? You hang out the with speakers and university delegates from the CUSEC conference for a night on the town!
For dinner, we went to L’Academie on Crescent Street, a restaurant where the food is prepared by student chefs training to work in three- and four-star restaurants. Here’s the gnu enjoying some Masi:
Afterwards, it was off to Brutopia for an evening of fun and drinking games:
Brutopia make a wonderful oatmeal stout. I think the gnu’s glad he joined the Dark Beer Side!
I’m going to take the gnu on my trip to Seattle next week, where I’ll be attending Microsoft’s Techready internal conference (after searching him for FSF listening devices, of course). Watch this blog for photos of the gnu’s tour of the city, and maybe even the offices in Redmond!
Before I forget, let me wish you all a happy Chinese New Year! This year, it’s the Year of the Ox, so it’s only fitting that I post a picture of him:
Jon "The Ox" Entwistle, bassist for The Who.
For more on the Year of the Ox and Chinese astrology, this article at SFGate.com should help get you started.
Categories
The Gnu IS a Real Creature
After winning the auction for the Free Software Foundation plush gnu, I hung out in the hotel lobby, checking my email. I talked with some passers-by, and occasionally Richard Stallman, who sat at the couch across from me, cracked the occasional (and very painful) pun.
In these conversations, I was approached by no less than three people who asked me if the gnu – the animal mascot of the Free Software Foundation — was a real creature or a mythical one.
Doesn’t anyone watch Animal Planet, nature shows or The Great Space Coaster (starring Gary Gnu) anymore?
They’re real. Here’s the first line of their Wikipedia entry:
The wildebeest (plural wildebeest or wildebeests), also called the gnu (/gəˈnuː/ or /ˈnjuː/), is an antelope of the genus Connochaetes. It is a hooved (ungulate) mammal.
Maybe it’s time to organize a bus trip of geeks so that we can all go to the zoo.
Beer and science have always gone together!
I’m going to speaking at tonight’s Nature Network Pub Night here in Toronto on the topic of blogs, how they’ve helped me both do and find work, and how people in the sciences can make use of them.
The pub night is being held at Fionn MacCool’s at University and Adelaide (the full address is 181 University). People will start assembling there for dinner, drinks and conversation at 6:00 p.m. with the presentations starting at 7:00 p.m..
If you’re interested in getting to know your fellow science-types in town or want to catch up with me and talk about blogging, programming, science, accordion playing or anything else, please drop by tonight!