Grand Theft Auto IV: Midnight Lineup and First Impressions

Here’s a photo of the line outside my local EB Games (the Runnymede/St. Clair location in Toronto) for Grand Theft Auto IV, taken last night at midnight:

Read on for more about the line, my initial impressions and a video featuring the first ten minutes of the game.

Why I Took the Job Title “Nerd Wrangler”

Why I Took the Job Title “Nerd Wrangler”: When I accepted the position of b5media’s technical project manager, Jeremy Wright said “come up with a less-formal sounding title”. I did a little Googling and figured that I could “own” the term “Nerd Wrangler”. It’s happened — I pretty much own the first page of results […]

After a Month in Vista, This Pretty Much Sums Up My Feelings About Operating Systems

When I moved to my current position as Nerd Wrangler at b5media, I arrived to discover that the computer waiting for me was a Toshiba P200, a 17″ beast of a laptop that I’ve named “The Coffee Table”. This is the first time in about 5 years that I’ve worked with Windows as my primary operating system, and after a month in Vista, my feelings about operating systems are pretty much summarized by the picture below:

More on my experiences in a later post.

[Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.]

The b5media Office

In case you were curious, here are some pictures of where I work: the b5media office.

Regular Posting Shall Resume!

Those of you who follow my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, know that I’ve had my hands rather full with a transition to a position at b5media (where I’m the Nerd Wrangler) and attending South by Southwest Interactive, where I’ve been doing some serious work with serious people…

Anyhow, I’ll be back tonight and the regular posts to Global Nerdy shall resume tomorrow, March 13th. See you then!

The Final Countdown, Again

Didn’t I just do this?

Once again, it’s my last day at the job, which means I’m cranking that classic of 80’s hair metal: The Final Countdown by Sweden’s gift to rock, Europe.

It’s become a bit of an end-of-job tradition for me that started back at OpenCola, the dot-com that Cory Doctorow co-founded and for which I worked for during those heady last days of The Bubble. In the summer of 2001 when all but seven people (I was one of the seven) were laid off, some wag played The Final Countdown over the office intercom system. Since then, I’ve associated it with departures from a company.

Since it’s now my tradition, I now present a couple of versions of this song…

The New Job: Nerd Wrangler at b5media

I figured I’d start off the working week with a big announcement: I’ve landed a new gig. As of this Thursday, March 6th, I’m going to be working at b5media.

Read on for more…

75 Words Every Sci-Fan Should Know

75 words every sci-fi fan should know: a list of terms that science fiction has invented or popularized. Among these is Whuffie, a key word at Cory Doctorow’s start-up, OpenCola, where I worked and had my “bubble” experience, including to move to and away from San Francisco.

The Evolution of the TSOT Office

Some photos of how the office space has evolved over the past month, from this…

…to this…

…to this:

Rant Said Zed: I’m Too Sexy for My Rails

(The resemblance between Fred “Right Said Fred” Fairbrass and Zed Shaw — uncanny, isn’t it?)

Inspired by the now-infamous rant by Zed Shaw, I’m changing my presentation topic at Tuesday’s TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Night to “Rant Said Zed: I’m Too Sexy for My Rails (or: Lessons and Challenges from Zed Shaw’s Rant”). If you’re free Tuesday evening, you might want to catch this.

Etiquette Reminder

A quick reminder to my readership: If you’re going to be a jackass in the comments (like “Brian” was in this one), your comment will either not get approved, or — as in Brian’s case — “disemvowelled”. You’re in my virtual living room, and I expect you to behave accordingly.

Windows Vista Annoyances

I just got an announcement from the folks at O’Reilly about their new book, Windows Vista Annoyances. I thought to myself, “Well, that’s good for 500 pages of material”. Then I checked the page count: 664. Heh.

Many RailsConf Proposals Submitted, Included Mine

Me playing accordion (with Chad Fowler, who was playing ukelele) at the RailsConf 2007 evening keynote.
So Many Proposals, So Little Time
Chad Fowler, organizer of RailsConf, the annual conference for Ruby on Rails developers, writes:

There were more proposals for RailsConf this year than there were attendees at RubyConf 2006 [According to this site, there were about […]

Gift Idea: “RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Site with Ruby on Rails”

Today marks the start of my fourth week at TSOT, a Toronto-based startup that develops custom social networking software in Ruby on Rails. The company’s first two products are FraternityLive and SororityLive, which as you might imagine are targeted at fraternities and sororities, with future plans for creating similar apps for other fields.
I was hired […]

The New Job, Day 1: A Very Quick Update

Very cool here at the new workplace. More later.

Assrockets and Opportunities (or: Why I Changed Jobs)

Why I Changed Jobs: The Best Guess
A number of people have approached me — both online and in person — and attempted to guess what it was that made me consider leaving my Technical Evangelist job at Tucows, a job that I enjoyed and to which I was well-suited.
The person who came closest, a “long-time […]