Category: Toronto

"Coupons…you want coupons, don't you?"

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Today was day 1 of the mesh conference here in Toronto. I met up with Colin, cursed the caterers for only having bagels to eat, drank as much water as I could and found a seat before the proceedings got underway.

The first (and best) part of today’s schedule was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington. He’s a pretty frank guy, and when he lambasted Ted Murphy from PayPerPost — calling him “the most evil person in the room” — things got fun. He also spoke frankly about how silicone valley is in need of another meltdown, to get all the PR and money-grabbing types out and let the real revolutionaries take over again.

Tom Williams and Austin Hill were also good, giving their perspectives as two guys who got very rich very young, and have devoted their time to effecting social change. Hill talked about an interesting new distributed computing power saving tool; think SETI@home for saving electricity. Check it out at DarkGreenPC.org.

After a sad lunch (strike 2 against the caterers: only vegetarian options were ceasar salad and pasta salad) I saw a very funny panel with Rachel Sklar, Loren Feldman and Cynthia Brumfield about whether or not old media should be scared shitless of new media. The consensus: maybe a little. New media won’t kill old media, but it’ll scare it into reacting.

I also watched panels entitled “Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?” and “The Always-On Generation – What Do Youth Do with the Web?”; the former was more like a university lecture or radio show than panel discussion, while the latter was amusing for how old it made most of the participants feel. A sample snippet:

[panelist] Erica Sum: “How many people in here have been to YTMND?”

[I raise my hand, as do maybe 4 or 5 other people in a room of about 100. Erica then starts talking about how cool it is in a screwy kind of way.]

Confused audience member #1: “Umm, could you maybe describe what that is for people who don’t know?”

Confused audience member #2: “Yeah, like how it’s different than Facebook or MySpace?”

Erica [trying to stifle laughter]: “Oh, it’s not at all.”

You can’t fault the audience members for not knowing what YTMND is, or for thinking it has something to do with social networking, since it’d been the dominant theme of the day. It was just a funny exchange.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Note to self: bring a nutrigrain bar.

.:.

Obviously, if I’m at home writing this, I wasn’t able to attend the free screening of Severance that I won passes to earlier this week. I was feeling too wonky, and have too much to do tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I plan to do an hour or two of work while I watch the hockey game. Dagnabbit…I wanted to see that movie too.

.:.

Things I’ve learned in the last 36 hours: never wear a white dress shirt to the dentist (that pink shit they polish your teeth with sprays) and screens for balcony doors are outrageously expensive (we’ve been quoted >$400 each).

.:.

An instructional video: how to break up with advertisers.

[tags]mesh07, severance, dentist, balcony screen doors, bring the love back[/tags]

Just like Mel Lastman was Canada's mayor

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s warm today. Very warm. But it’s good; I think the sticky, humid weather is good for my cold. Feels like I’m in a sauna, kind of.

Another plus to being up this high, this close to the water: even on really warm days we get a cool breeze up here.

.:.

I left work just after 1:00 today. Got home, ate, caught up on a little work and just rested. I can’t bring myself to take sick days anymore — I’d have to pretty damn sick to not be able to look at a laptop — but today was a good rest for me. We’re going away for the weekend, so I don’t want to be snotty and hacky around my friends.

.:.

Apparently there’s a new poll out that says the Toronto Maple Leafs are who most would call “Canada’s Team”.

Overall, 24 per cent of the just over 1,000 people surveyed between May 17 and 20 named Toronto as Canada’s team, while 22 per cent picked the Habs and just 15 per cent chose the Senators.

This surprises me a little bit. Not because the Leafs got the most votes, but because they won by so little. Given the population of the GTA and the surrounding area, I would have expected the Leafs to have more support, but there’s Montreal right behind them. While that should be a little embarassing for Toronto, this is worse: what the poll doesn’t capture is that the 76% nationwide who didn’t vote for Toronto probably despise the Leafs, whereas — apart from in Toronto — the Canadiens have plenty of fans nationwide. If you were to do a net promoter score, I don’t think Toronto’d do so well.

[tags]toronto weather, humidity, leafs, canadiens, canada’s team[/tags]

Touch me, I'm sick

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I feel like hell. I really hope this goes away soon; my choices right now are drug myself up on cold meds, or stay undrugged and constantly fight the urge to drill holes in my own skull.

.:.

The fireworks last night were pretty cool. From our vantage point we could see them going off all over the place, at least two dozen little spots of light popping off at any given time. There seemed to be a bunch coming from Riverdale Park or Withrow Park, but the main attraction was over Ashbridges Bay. We could see (and occasionally hear) them very clearly. Canada Day should be pretty fun to watch from up here.

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Farewell, 24. You were good once, in your first season. Now you suck. I will never watch you again, unless I hear that a) Jack dies and fights Nina in hell; b) Mandy returns.

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I find it freaky that every 17 years a gigantic swarm of insects emerges in the mideast US. Extremely freaky.

[tags]cold, flu, victoria day fireworks, ashbridges bay, 24, cicadas[/tags]

Water, water everywhere, but trust me, you do not want to drink it

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On sunny & windy days, this is a pretty typical view: beaucoup de sailboats. More pics over at flickr.

.:.

Enough already with the whining about gas prices. Seriously. It’s cheaper than milk. It’s cheaper than orange juice, Coke or cough syrup. It’s cheaper than bottled water. And yet, there are people like this:

“It’s always like this,” Harris said as she filled her SUV at the Esso station at Lake Shore Blvd. E. and Leslie St. “They spike it up on weekends. They spike it up on the long weekend. They always have an excuse. It’s refinery problems, or it’s terrorism in the Middle East, or hurricanes. Oil is down, so there’s no reason for high prices.”

First of all, you drive an SUV, there’s no reason for you to complain about high gas prices either. If you can afford a gas guzzler, you can’t be strapped for cash.

Second…the same free market economy that made you wealthy enough to buy an SUV is what makes gas prices go up and down according to demand. Of course they’re out to charge you as much as they can; why wouldn’t they? YOU KEEP PAYING IT!!

And please, no excuses about “I need my car to get to work.” Buy a smaller car. Take public transit. Bike. Walk. Car pool. Choose to live closer to work in the first place. If you can’t (or won’t) do any of those things, then by all means, produce the contract you signed when you bought your car stating that gas prices would never, ever go up. Don’t have one? Then buy some oil company stock to offset the losses that you’ve chosen to inflict on yourself.

Side note: it’s interesting to watch the Toronto Star cover stories like this. On one hand, the Star wants to stick to big business and take the side of the poor consumer, but on the other hand they want to be the environmental advocate (ironic, considering they’re a newspaper) so they come across as conflicted in these cases.

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As much as I despised Jerry Falwell, and as cold an emotionless as I can be sometimes, and as much as I think it’s hilarious, I simply cannot bring myself to buy this shirt.

[note: if you don’t get the punchline, read this.]

.:.

A week-old post on Torontoist that I didn’t look at until just now has some great concert footage of the Arcade Fire. The scene in the middle of the clip is the best one; my favourite part is how Richard Reed Parry replicates a snare drum sound.

[tags]toronto, lake ontario, sailboats, spire condominium, gas prices, toronto star, jerry falwell, torontoist, arcade fire[/tags]

Lather. Snort. Repeat.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My shampoo is tingly. Really, really tingly, almost to the point of burning or poison ivy or something. Anyway, I’m sure it’s meant to be good for my scalp or my hair or both, so I don’t mind the tingliness. However, today, I somehow took breath in just as a big blob of it was running down my face and happened to be just in front of my left nostril, so a bunch of this tingly-ass shampoo shot up my nose.

This, I don’t mind telling you, was not how I planned to spend my nice hot relaxing shower. Now I had to do something, but I also had a bunch more frothing shampoo about to run in to my eyes, so even as my sinuses were disintegrating in the face of this new terror I had to calmly rinse the rest of it from my hair, all while blowing all the air out my nose that I could manage. I wasn’t really thinking about how stupid I must have sounded; instead, all I could think was that maybe I should give baths another try.

Anyway, I didn’t care what the bottle said, I was not going to repeat.

.:.

Last night was the first chance we’ve had in ages to just sit and watch some TV. Actually, to be clear, we didn’t watch TV, but rather watched a few episodes of The Sopranos on the laptop. We’re trying to catch up for the final episode; there’s no way we’ll be able to avoid hearing about the series finale.

.:.

So, we knew it was inevitable that we’d eventually lose some of our view, but we didn’t think it would happen so soon. I suppose those buildings — at the foot of Yonge Street, just west of the Redpath sugar factory — won’t be built for a while, and it’s only a small chunk of our view, but it’s one of the best views we have of the islands. Perhaps, both for the sake of our view and the good of the waterfront, city council will find a way to stop the development and put a park there.

[tags]shampoo, sopranos, toronto condos, yonge street[/tags]

PeanutAllergy Inc.

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If the Globe and Mail weren’t such dicks about their online content, you could read this interesting article by Russell Smith about the recent spate of anti-religion books, Christopher Hitchens’ (which I talked about here) being the latest. Smith made the point that, even if it’s not dressed up as a cult/religion, slavish devotion is still hard to take. He even comments about how allergies that never used to exist suddenly afflict half the population: his example was half the population of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood claiming to be allergic to wheat gluten; I’d suggest that the current generation of children all seemingly being allergic to peanuts is another good one.

Update from the comments: Joe dropped this great quote from the recent Lou Dobbs interview with Hitchens: “Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.”

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Google Analytics has revamped their reporting engine. Holy crap. Magnifique. I’ll never use StatCounter again.

.:.

Walking home from the grocery store tonight we noticed that a bakery is going in on the ground floor. Sweet. Dangerous, but sweet.

[tags]globe and mail, russell smith, christopher hitchens, google analytics, bakery[/tags]

Down swingin'

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It was a great game last night, but the Raptors lost to the Nets, and fell out of the playoffs. The Raptors played about as well as they could, on the road in an arena they haven’t won in all year, with two busted-up point guards, but in the end came up just short. And I mean that literally; if Jose Calderon had gotten his entry pass to Bosh just six inches higher, Bosh would’ve had an uncontested dunk to win the game. Alas, ’twas not to be. At least there was no sense than Vince Carter knocked the Raptors out of the playoffs; apart from a few hard drives to the rack in the 4th quarter, Carter was pretty much an empty shirt.

.:.

I woke up early this morning (or rather, was woken up by furry beasties) so I saw the sunrise. I’m still getting used to how amazing it looks in the morning; we have an unobstructed view (for now) to the east, so it’s a pretty pleasant way to wake up.

.:.

We’re gonna go have some breakfast, run a few errands before coming home to do some more unpacking & setting up. It’s nice to be able to do that stuff, after a pretty crazy month.

Aaaaaand Sonny almost knocked the TV over just now when he attacked an in-flight golf ball that he saw on Sportscentre. I guess that could be an advertisement for Sharp.

[tags]raptors, nba playoffs, toronto sunrise[/tags]

Kinda-stranger in a slightly strange land

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Forgot to mention: just after I printed my exam (I was one of the few people who typed it, which I think led me to type twice as much as anyone else wrote) I walked back to the computer and closed MS Word…which promptly crashed the computer. Like, Blue Screen Of Death crash. Good thing I printed first. That would have been a suck.

.:.

It feels good to be home. As soon as I got home I went and grabbed some lunch, and I realized it’s the first time since we moved that I had to chance to actually look at any of the new neighbourhood. I know it well enough so it’s not like things are a mystery,  but I like the idea of discovering all the shortcuts and back alleys and hidden spots. Now I’ve just gotta find some time…

[tags]blue screen of death, st. lawrence market, toronto neighbourhoods[/tags]

56.465%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The Raptors barely held on last night, sending the series back to New Jersey. After watching the first quarter, after which Toronto had a 20-point lead, I figured it would be walk. Instead, Toronto’s two point guards got injured and the Nets clawed back into it, missing their final shot of the game to let the Raps sneak out of the building with the win.

The problem now will be playing in New Jersey with, potentially, your two best point guards in street clothes.

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Nothing brings out the histrionics of Toronto city councillors and merchants like a proposed streetcar right-of-way. “Restaurant could go bankrupt”, Adam Vaughan? It’s a two month test! Drop the inflammatory statements and find some statistics.

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Christopher Hitchens and I have not always gotten along, but I think I need to buy his new book called God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

[tags]raptors, king street streetcar, toronto city council, christopher hitchens, god is not great[/tags]

16.181%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

No sooner do we move away from Hayden Street than a woman is found murdered (presumably) in a TTC stairway there. We walked by that stairwell every time we took the subway, as the exit’s just a few steps from our old place, but never actually took the stairs as homeless people camped out in there and it was usually pretty foul-smelling.

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Time Canada has an article about Porter, the airlines flying out of the Toronto Island airport. It doesn’t seem to be the best-researched article, but it caught my eye because we’re starting to consider Porter as an option. If we want to fly to Montreal, the prospect of a quick trip from our condo to the island airport is more attractive than the $50 cab ride and 90 minute wait involved in flying out of Pearson. And if Porter starts flying to Halifax (which they plan to do) and New York (which they’re applying to do), the idea gets even more attractive.

[via Spacing]

.:.

OK, must brush teeth and head off to class. I think today we’re talking about teh internetz. I believe it is a series of tubes.

[tags]murder, hayden street, porter air, toronto island, city centre airport[/tags]