Next week, on Tuesday 4th of July, the Toronto Democamp 7 will be held at No Regrets, 42 Mowat Avenue, Toronto.
Sign-up instructions found on the Democamp 7 page.

Democamp is the show-and-tell extention of BarCamp.

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.”

For people who don’t know what DemoCamp is, it is a good day to get introduced to this special monthly event. Those that do know what it is, sign up already! DemoCamp is one of those things that make me happy and proud to be in Toronto. We have a very active techie community and this is an excellent place to meet up and get to know people.

The demo schedule:

1. Portal Prophet Platform Demo from Domainer Inc. – Kristan Uccello
2. FeelingBullish.com Financial Social Networks Demo – Josh Blinick
3. Paruba.com Tagging the e-commerce web – Teehan+Lax
4. The Glove: 3D info visualization – Cameron Browning
5. Special Guest Appearance: Perl 6 – Damian Conway all the way from Monash University.

Yes, this week’s special guest comes all the way from Melbourne Australia. On a slightly related topic, Damian Conway will be speaking about “Perl, as well as modern archaeological techniques, bidirectional cross-dressing, Ancient Greeks hackers, and a host of other improbable topics.” at room BA1180, Bahen Centre, from 18:30-21:00, July 5th.

I have recently been reading articles written by Frank Demmler. He’s a Prof at the business school of Carnegie Mellon University. He has seen the problem from all angles, having been in each position at one time or another and he shares his learnings in the series linked above. Be warned; some familarity with the ‘problem space’ and with the terms are needed, but Frank shares his personal learnings which will be a good refresher for veterans and a warning guide for wannabe-n00bs like me. Here’s an excerpt:

“One of things that continues to surprise me is that many board meetings that I have participated in or observed, have been largely a waste of time “


I concur!

Vocalize the title fast, 3 times. This is the funny story of my first day of WORK ever, with events that lead up to it =)

Here’s some background story:

I met with Elliot Noss, from Tucows, at Mesh a few weeks ago. We went to the bar, he got us (customers, employees, and Alan and I, potential employee extraordinaires) some drinks and food and we chatted… good times. He gave me his email and told me to send him my resume, so I did.
A couple of weeks later, I was having interviews galore, running all over the map. One of my favourites was Nurun. Slightly reluctant about relocating, my preference was to get a job in Toronto, and Tucows was my first choice, followed by Nurun. Cutting the story short, I was given an offer from Nurun to start work on Friday 16th of June and Tucows gave me their hiring decision on Thursday 15th of June, at 5 PM.

Friday June 16th

02:00
I spent the night thinking about what to do; I’ve been told that I had an offer from Tucows, but I haven’t seen the contract yet, and it was to be sent to me during the day. The job at Nurun starts at 8:30am and its now 2:00 am… hmm… I need more time. I considered lying to them and telling them I had an emergency or something (bad bad) but my moral values led me to decide on telling them the truth: I have another offer, that I need to consider and come to a decision. Such a good guy I am, eh? =) I’m not a ship-jumper, but come on, Tucows appears to be what I want to do for the next coming years! The interviews, especially the one with Alain Chesnais really sold me to their cause and it wasn’t as if I had already started working there! I knew I’d lose my offer at Nurun, but whatever… I’ll just have to hope Tucow’s contract doesn’t involve a life-bound duty of mopping the floor at 96 Mowat!
08:30-09:30
I get there at 8:30AM (its the time stipulated on the contract). Nobody’s there. Fumbling around for 15 mins, I finally walk up to the info desk guy, and he gives me the passcode to get into the office. I get in, find a seat in the reception area, meet some people and go to my designated desk. Then I digg, waiting for the Director of Operations to come. Sheesh! heh, work starts at 8:30AM and the people aren’t here already? Are these people serious??! Heh, it turns out they have “flexible working hours”, with the requirement that work begins anytime in between 8:30 to 10:00, and as long as 7.5 hours are completed it was all good.
09:30- 12:00
The D-Ops comes in. I wanted to talk to her about my offer, but heh, I couldn’t get a quiet time with her! As soon as she came, she presented me to EVERYBODY in the office. I shook hands with them etc; it was like playing with a rabbit before killing and cooking it! I sat in the D-Op’s office and dropped her the bomb when it was contract signing time. She didn’t know what to do, sent me back to my desk and starting calling HQ in Montreal, and the VP of North America for advice (who was very late for work!). She called me back in after a while and (as I expected) told me my offer was revoked. I didn’t care since I really wanted to work for Tucows. Result of my 1st day of work ever: drama.

Conclusion

Between Nurun and Tucows (the two job selection finalists), I had the choice between a cushy job and a challenging one. The former offered more benefits (vast benefit programs with flex dollars etc; being a subsidiary of Quebecor, so potentially more money), flexible hours and what appeared to be an easier time. The latter company proposes charismatic leaders, interesting challenges and most importantly fosters an environment with people I want to be with, as well as “the vision”; Tucows is a very forward-thinking company, constantly innovating and creating. They are all about open source and embrace web 2.0 with arms wide open!

One last, small deciding factor was this: man, I’d rather develop on *nix than on Windows any day.

Blogs that I recommend people to read from Tucows are the company’s developer blog as well as Joey DeVilla’s personal blog.

Hey people. I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy these days with many professional matters and personal projects. One of the personal projects I am very enthusiastic about is the game I am developing with a team of amazing coders =). And how can you go wrong with a name as cool as Really Big Shoe?
We are currently in the design phase of the game engine, having completed the object oriented analysis of it. We plan to move to OOD soon then OOP. We are loosely following the ICONIX process for building the mother and we plan to support a couple of games at the very least off it.

Here’s a quick description of the game we’re building the engine for:

It will be a 3-D puzzle-platformer but set in a 2-D environment (akin to the New Super Mario Bros.) One of our inspirations was ‘The Lost Vikings’ and although we are not making an identical game, it will involve platforming together with a puzzle element.

The twist to the genre is this: we want to simulate people playing simultaneously with only 1 player.

More in-depth discussions on the concept can be found in the meeting minutes, and our thought process is also documented.

The motivation behind this process is to: have fun making a game, get involved in a cool personal project, have experience developing something other than XXX boring apps, have fun and learning project management skills. In broad words: HAVE FUN & LEARN.

For a more detailed description, please check out our wiki.

I stopped playing games, but now I’m making them! =o)
Your comments are well appreciated.

After speaking to my dad today and from his desire to update his blog’s appearance from the Wordpress default, I decided to execute his wish. I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to find an inspiration for the layout and finally made a choice. After installing the Wordpress theme, it was time to customize the hell out of it.

Dreading the fact that I hadn’t used photoshop in years, I installed the beast. Customizing the interface required some image work… I’m sorry to say, the Gimp doesn’t cut it (or maybe I don’t have enough 5ki11z!), photoshop was a no-brainer. Good job Adobe people, good interface consistency; my (rudimentary) knowledge of Photoshop version 4.0 easily transferred to version 9.0 and soon enough, I was making rounded corners! (for that web 2.0 flavor)

Please check the blog and please send me your comments.
I need to update mine’s too, its too ugly! But heh, its less effort to do it for somebody you love instead.

Enjoy, dad. May your internet presence bring you much joy.