This hot humid air in Toronto this week has made for some exciting weather! An hour ago it was hot and sunny, I was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper when out of nowhere I hear a clap of thunder. Huh? The sky to the north was black with thunderheads. I made a joke about this year’s MMVA’s being struck by tornadoes, but I was only kidding! These radar images illustrate how quickly a severe thunderstorm can develop in this hot humid weather. This weather is more typical of mid-late August, not the middle of June.
You should pick me as your Twitter weatherman. I’ve recently launched a new Twitter weather service for Toronto - TorontoWeather to deliver Toronto’s weather to you. Here’s why you should choose me over all the others. Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated, awed and amazed by weather. My mom pasted a chart of the different types of clouds in our pop up camper, and I studied it religiously every time we went camping. I guess that started me down the weather nerd path in a big way. Today I find the dangerous severe type of weather, such as tornadoes and hurricanes the most interesting. I would love to see a tornado in my lifetime and although I’ve come very close, have yet to do it. I understand to some people this would seem crass, crazy and cockeyed, and to them I do apologize. I don’t want to see any more people harmed by them, this year has already been a banner one for tornadoes, and hurricane season is right around the corner. I find these storms fascinating because they are such massive forces which can affect many people’s lives so quickly, and are, for the most part, completely unpredictable. We can send men to the moon, but we don’t know when weather is going to fuck with us. Well actually, some think we might be able to manufacture and steer hurricanes, but that’s another story.
I enjoy staring at the somewhat live radar images from Environment Canada and predicting if and when it will rain at my location. To me this is fun, which goes to show you how lame I can be. I don’t have all the education that Michael Kuss has, or all the experience of Dave Devall, or Claire Martin’s awesome hairor awards. But I am pretty good at guessing when it’s going to rain. This is because my lifelong secret desire has been to be a weather presenter, so now I’m doing it on Twitter. If you do choose me as your weatherman, I promise that I will relay weather info, on a completely arbitrary basis, and give you my predictions of the possibility of tornadoes hitting the GTA. I will also throw in some weather related facts and trivia, just to mix it up. I sure hope you find this service useful.
I am lucky enough to be able to attend mesh 08, Canada’s premier web conference, as a contributor to the MeshTV group today and tomorrow. Keynote presentations were given by Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros. Records Head of Technology, and Dr. Michael Geist, one of Canada’s most outspoken defenders of Internet privacy, and a professor at the University of Ottawa. Both were excellent and I suggest catching highlights on the MeshTV channel on mdialog. The highlight of today for me was the Video is Everywhere panel, with my boss, Andre Gaulin representing CTV (my employer), and bragging about our kick ass video players. Guin Orvis, a former coworker who is now an Interactive Producer with the CBC, revealed that over 40% of The Hour’s audience was online! The panel also talked about what are some of the obstacles facing the industry, what’s working well, and what their forecast for the next couple of years might be. MDM and Keebler did a great job liveblogging the entire panel over on ScribbleLive and you can check out the other panels they covered here.
I finally finished a slide show of some of the pictures from our visit to Picton two weeks ago! Additionally I should mention that Bruno and Jens have a website for their vineyard - The Old Third. They have some great photos of the tractor Birdie there!
R2-D2, an icon of cinema and a comfortable fixture in any home theater, actually uses a projector in the films — so of course he’d make the perfect DVD projector at home! Able to project from a distance of over 16 feet with an 260-inch image, this is one R2 unit that will soon be playing back the entire message in homes across the country. Check out these features:
Picture by DLP from Texas Instruments
Project to ceilings and walls up to a 260-inch picture
Resolution: 1024×768
Contrast Ratio: 1800:1
Lumens: 1500
Built-in CD/DVD player. Also plays MP3/MP4 video
iPod docking station, memory card and USB slots
Built-in 20 watt stereo speaker system
FM wireless audio out (channels 1 through 7)
Full-function: forward, reverse turn 360 degrees and recline
Millennium Falcon remote control with removable stand
I am lucky enough to be able to attend 
