• Jun 14, 2009

    The Sweat

    Hot damn. Do we look tough or what? Nice photo, Hilary.



  • Jun 2, 2009

    Cancer sucks…

    So I’m participating in The Canadian Cancer Society’s Relay for Life with some friends.

    Donations to the CCS are good. You know that already, though, right?

    You can pledge here.



  • May 27, 2009

    Playing a rock and roll show with a brand new rock and roll band

    My pals Isaac and Joan of Little Foot Long Foot are releasing their brand new CD Harsh Words tomorrow night at the Rivoli. As opening acts, they’re getting a bunch of bands to cover the entire record, one band per song.

    I’ll be performing as part of a brand new rock and roll band called The Sweat. We’ll do the LFLF song “King Hipster.”

    That’s tomorrow night, 27 May 2009 at the Rivoli, starting at 9:00 PM. Cover is five bones. Or if you want a CD too, ten bones.



  • Apr 21, 2009

    Video: me at the Corktown Ukulele Jam

    So basically, every Wednesday for a bunch of weeks now, I’ve been going to the Corktown Ukulele Jam. It’s just down the street from my house at the Dominion on Queen, and it’s awesome.

    A few weeks ago, the videotaped the whole night and put it on YouTube. Here’s me, doing a ukulele cover of “She’s Dead” by Jim’s Big Ego:

    There’s a contest for these YouTube videos — the most viewed after a month wins a dinner at the Dominion, if I recall correctly. So feel free to watch this multiple times.



  • Apr 10, 2009

    If you make stuff online, listen to this

    If you do creative work that lives online, you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode of Jesse Thorn’s excellent The Sound of Young America. It’s a panel discussion with Jesse, Merlin Mann (of 43Folders.com), Mike and Matt Chapman (of HomestarRunner.com), and Jeff Olsen (of Adult Swim).

    Go ahead. Listen: [audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/tsoya/tsoya090326_ima.mp3]

    It’s 55 minutes long, though. So maybe you’ll want to download it from MaximumFun.org. It’s a wide-ranging discussion, but ultimately, it’s about how to make stuff online that people will care about.

    In particular, I found Jeff Olsen’s comments about unnecessarily consistent website design:

    I think a lot of what we do is the opposite of what people try and do in terms of branding, of “We’re going to be consistent, you know, we’re going to look the same way in all these different places.” I mean, you won’t see the Adult Swim logo hardly on our site at all. […] I think branding and consistency, weirdly, can fight what it takes to provide great entertainment.

    This reminds me a lot of what Mark Ramsey had to say about NPR website design:

    I don’t know why when I go visit a program website for NPR or wherever, I end up on npr.org/program, and the page looks just like every other program at NPR. What in the world is that? You mean to tell me that your program is virtually identical… that what’s important to me as a listener to this program is that it’s almost like every other one on NPR? That’s what you want to communicate to me?

    Seriously. If you make stuff online, listen to this. It’s worth it.