I've had more than my fair share of USB key drives over the years. Unfortunately, because of the way the downtown computer stores do things, they only seem to have drives with both the qualities of useful size (1+ GB) and decent manufacture about one third of the time. So the last time I had to replace a (stolen) key drive, I was stuck with one from Dane-Elec.

I had to go downtown today for a meeting with one of my college professors (or from some perspectives, ex-college professor, but I digress). While waiting for the GO Train back from Union Station, I saw a book, sitting all alone on one of the benches. Curious, I stepped closer, to find this sticker on the cover.

Considering that the first Thursday of the month was only two days after New Years, it's not surprising that the IGDA Toronto chapter moved the January gathering to a different date. It's more than just a regular meeting this month, however – there's a quartet of presentations this month, including Jason Della Rocca (the IGDA's executive director) and a guy from the OLPC project.

It'll be a blast. Come on out!

If you've been paying way too much attention to my website lately (and I'm sure you haven't) you might have noticed that I've been fooling around with different themes, looking for one to replace the current Garamond theme that currently defines the look and feel of coldacid.net. The thing is, while Garamond was okay when I first started using it, it's lately started to feel somewhat of an albatross. (And it doesn't help that almost every LCD monitor I've ever dealt with more or less washes out any of the theme details, either!)

Has well-known tech publisher CMP ceased participating in the Canadian magazine market? As someone who has (or had) a subscription to Game Developer Magazine and often bought Dr. Dobb's Journal off the shelf, it's pretty scary how I haven't seen a new issue of either since December.

I can't say the same for other CMP magazines, but for the two I already mentioned, I was able to get confirmation from within the company that they are no longer on newsstands, anywhere. What gives? I'm not just surprised that the magazines have been made subscription only, but that there was no notice of it, anywhere that I had seen.