Professional Critic at Work

Kingston Eats

Kingston Eats

Since I am both "from" Kingston and the editor/publisher of the CheapEats Restaurant Guides, I get asked often where to go in Kingston for good eats cheap. Since I’m heading down to Podcasters Across Borders in Kingston this weekend, I decided to share this email which I wrote for a friend headed down to Kingston for the weekend.  It includes both cheap, and not-so cheap places mostly within walking distance of the waterfront. I’d love to hear your thoughts and any other recommendations you’d like to add to the pile. Casa Domenico – 35 Brock Street – It’s a new…

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Letter to Toronto Life

Letter to Toronto Life

As many of you have voiced your support on my Creative Commons issue with Toronto Life, I thought I’d share the letter I sent them about their use of my photos without permission.  [original post about that is here]   Hi, I’m writing because 2 of my photos are being used without my permission on your Daily Dish section. Both photos have a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en_CA) which states explicitly that my photos are available for non-commercial use only. I also state, explicitly, in my Flickr profile “If you want to buy any of my photos for commercial use,…

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A Little Palm Pre-view

A Little Palm Pre-view

Last week, I was invited to a preview of the new Palm Pre by Jenn Evans of Sequentia Environics. I tweeted about it, big surprise, and got deluged by questions and requests to talk about my experience. I didn’t realize until I started talking about it that so many of the other previews and demos were hands-off. We did get to play with the Palm Pre, not enough for my tastes but of course my tastes lean towards someone handing me a phone and me going off into a corner to play with it for a week. And then getting…

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Good Thing It’s Pretty cuz It Sure Ain’t Smart

Good Thing It’s Pretty cuz It Sure Ain’t Smart

I was talking about tech toys with Gerry yesterday and we came to the realization that what we want from our tech is that it be exciting, shiny and new for the first couple of days then to quickly become invisible. So cleanly and effortlessly integrated into our life that we don’t even realize how heavily we rely on it. The conversation was a result of our recent switch back to Telus. As is expected in our Canadian telephony melee, we had to change phones in the process. Me from the Nokia I received as part of a blogger outreach…

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Lex The Roving Reporter

Lex The Roving Reporter

Straight from the Source – Do’s and Do Not Do’s of Blogger Relations By Alexa Clark (OneDegree.ca) [Photo by Mondo Lulu] More and more brands, marketing firms and PR agencies are turning to niche bloggers to get the word out about their new product or service. But are they doing a good job? What do bloggers really want? Alexa Clark, food blogger, … Continue reading on One Degree – http://www.onedegree.ca/ Are you going to the CMA’s Digital Marketing Conference this week? By Kate (MyNameIsKate.ca) We’ll also have a roving reporter from One Degree, Alexa Clark, on site as well. Would…

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No Competition

No Competition

Yesterday as I was walking home from a wonderful lunch meeting with Mondo discussing life, business and photography I deeked into the LCBO on St. Clair West.  As you should already know, I have my S2 back so I’m taking pictures left, right, and centre, like the photoholic I am.  So, when I saw the ad for the “Amateur Photo Contest” stuck to the counter at the LCBO, I did what any photographer would do,  I whipped out my camera and took a picture. Of course, since I’d been walking in the rain the white balance was off… and as I…

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Before You Hit ‘Send’

Before You Hit ‘Send’

You might want to review your subject line in conjunction with your “From” name.  Consider for a moment the imagery that is evoked by the following: Cascades Tissue Group  Heidi Hollinger passes it on  05-Sep-2007  11K While, I’m sure Heidi is a lovely person, I don’t really want to know that she shares her tissue.  ick! Technorati Tags: tissue, cascades tissue group, marketing, mexicat, email Photo by Mexicat

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Grilled

Grilled

Grilled Bored, slightly dispondent and waiting for Weeds to start, we flipped on over to Channel 300 and rented ourselves a movie. We decided against the more obvious and mainstream titles and chose something we'd never heard of before, a little film called Grilled.  Now, this is not high cinema, unless you mean the 420 kind.  But it has mobsters, freezers, hookers and meat.  I mean, meat salesmen struggling to bring home the bacon, how can this not be funny? We like Kevin James and, except for I Love Raymond, we've been amused by everything Ray Romano has done.  And…

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QotD: I’m reading (or about to read)…

Vox’s QotD today leaves me questioning – do I really have a “nightstand”?  I certainly have piles upon piles of books beside my bed, in the living room, on my desk, beside my desk, on Gerry’s desk, in a bookshelf or twelve… books-a-plenty my friend. What books are on your nightstand? So, I’ll answer the QotD as if the subject line is the real question because the answer will be more concise… and besides I’m too damned lazy to itemize the 50+ books scattered around my bed. I just finished two books that have an overlapping theme of getting and…

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Bon Cop Bad Cop – Bon!

Bon Cop Bad Cop – Bon!

This movie rocks!  And, yes, that is a professional critic’s opinion.  Of course, my area of expertise isn’t movies… but phht, who cares? I like movies.  I like Colm Feore. I like hot Québécois. I like bilingualism. And I can live with hockey if I have to especially for the hot Québécois! Bon Cop Bad Cop is a standard buddy cop movie set in Montreal and Toronto and played out in both official languages.  The cultural stereotypes play nicely into the standard buddy-cop structure – break-the-rules-get-r-done cop partnered with play-it-by-the-book cop.  They work together, have a couple of scraps and…

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What is Vox to you?

What is Vox to you?

Many of the people I know who are using Vox already have and maintain popular blogs – personal and professional.  But Vox has been attractive and/or interesting enough to draw us over to check it out. My friend Kate notes that she is “writing a comparison between Vox and other mainstream oriented blogging software.” Vox is still new and evolving (see the ever growing template options), so I’m wondering what you think of Vox so far?  How are you using it? What is Vox to you? I’d love to see this as a QotD, but I think it’s unlikely to…

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Creampuff & The Bear

Creampuff & The Bear

Woo Hoo! No drama today. Well, none off-stage anyway. I finally made it to Chris & Creampuff’s Fringe Show Lies That Bind at the Factory Theatre.   It was a fun frolic in family dysfunction. An awakening for anyone who is or has a storyteller, or twelve, in their family. My favourite bit was Ursula’s rant being abandoned in the woods. Projectors? We don’t need no sticking projectors. I was impressed by the number of people that showed up for a Friday 1:30pm performance.  Who knew that many people were out and cruising the Fringe mid-day? I was even given 2…

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