Eduard Khil, better known to the internet at large as “The Trololo Guy”, is said to have suffered a stroke and irreversible brain damage and is now in a coma. The video of a performance from decades ago, performed in a vocal-less style called vocaliz took the ‘net by storm and inspired a number of homages and parodies, including this one from Family Guy:

as well as this one by Christophe Waltz, done around the time he took the Oscar for Inglourious Basterds:

He enjoyed the parodies…

…and he even invited people to come up with actual lyrics for the “Trololo” song, whose actual name translates to I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home:

Here’s a recent performance of the song that made him an internet sensation:

Remember this great moment from the 1992 Presidential campaign with Dan Quayle?

Naturally, Quayle’s memoirs say that he was relying on cards provided by the school for the spelling of the word “potato”. They purportedly misspelled the word as “potatoe”, and while he had an inkling that something was amiss, he decided to trust the school’s incorrect written materials. (If this is true, it explains a helluva lot about the invasion of Iraq to capture those WMDs.)

The Romney campaign is dealing with a similar gaffe. The With Mitt app, which is still available in its uncorrected form as of this writing, lets you use your iPhone to take pictures with overlays bearing pro-Mitt Romney slogans such as “Day One, Job One”, “I’m with Mitt”, “Obama isn’t working” and so on. Normally, it would get buzz from Republican-leaning voters and the usual pro-Republican sites and the sorts of people who think FOX News is real, but thanks to a traitorous typo, it’s getting a lot of buzz in places where you’d normally see Mitt mocked (this blog included).

The problem is that one of the overlays — meant to say “A Better America” — actually says “A Better Amercia“. Here’s a self portrait I took with said overlay:

That’s right, Mitt’s app has the word America — quite possibly the most important word after “God” in any God-fearing American’s lexicon — misspelled. Had the Obama campaign done this with an app, you’d be hearing calls on FOX News right now for execution for treason.

Let this be a reminder to app developers: have someone double-check the spelling on the text and graphics of your apps! The developers behind the With Mitt app have their work cut out for them to fix their rep.

As Vanity Fair reports, the app is actually quite fun in spite of its association with Mitt Romney. The slogans are so easily subverted and will provide me tons of photographic fun, which I’ll share from time to time here on the Accordion Guy blog:

The accordion: Day one, job one!

The “I’m with Mitt” word bubble offers endless comic opportunities that would make the Romney campaign soil their special Mormon underwear. I’m thinking Mexican donkey show.

Yup, those are my feet in the foreground, and that’s Clearwater Beach in the background. I took this photo yesterday, when most of you were at work.

I’m taking a break from work to relax, recharge, recalibrate and even retool, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t already have a couple of irons in the fire. I’m taking a few calls from interested employers and partners or their representatives, I’m still actively blogging (especially on Global Nerdy, my tech blog), and starting today, I’m teaching myself iOS programming. I realize that not everyone can pick up and run off to Florida, crash at a pretty blonde’s house, tour about, hit the beach, use her swimming pool and self-train on a valuable skill — but I can, and I’d be a fool not to pass up the opportunity.

My last job was at Shopify, a very design-oriented company. Naturally, they had a very well-designed business card template. Here’s what my Shopify business card looked like:

Only the title and email address on the card are invalid, but I still need to create new non-company ones just for me. Seeing as I’m coasting on savings, advertising revenue from the blogs and what I like to call “ill-gotten gains” (Microsoft stock), I think I’m going to opt for the inexpensive route. Still, it doesn’t hurt to look to others’ business cards for inspiration, especially the really creative ones featured on Bored Panda, some of which I’ve posted below.

The ones above are for Levin Tahmaz, personal trainer. His business is quite cleverly summarized in his business card.

The business cards for the Surrey, BC deli restaurant La Charcuterie look like their products.

Gangavan is a secondhand shop, so why shouldn’t they have secondhand business cards?

Heh heh heh. Oops — I meant to say: I completely and categorically do not get the joke in this business card.

The clever design in this designer’s business card ensures that you’ll be holding it up in front of you, where you can read his name, many, many times.

For more imaginatively-designed business cards, see Bored Panda’s articles:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Click the photo to see it at full size.

I love flea markets, which is why I spent time at one outside Tampa on Saturday. The part of me that’s still from “the old country” that likes walking through stalls run by local people running small businesses selling things that you aren’t going to find at your local Wal-Get or Tar-Mart. The opportunity to see what people are dunking in batter and deep-frying is a bonus.

Click the photo to see it at full size.

They sell everything at this flea market. Friends of Anitra sell jewellery, and there are stalls for everything from pets to computers to leather jackets to customized hospital scrubs to cheese to cars…and even legal services, like the one pictured above.

My favourite place in the flea market is the store that carries nothing but Aloha shirts. I love these things, and being a Pacific Islander myself, I think I look pretty damned good in them. I asked Anitra to take a picture of me in my latest purchase beside “Good Luck Riki”, the tiki that stands guard over the change room. This one was a steal at fifteen bucks. I’m pretty sure I’ll buy another shirt here during me next visit.

Another satisfied customer!

Greetings from the land of awesome junk food! I’m touring about with Anitra for the Memorial Day weekend, so this entry will be a quick one.

Pictured above is a taste treat I saw that isn’t available in Canada: Philadelphia brand milk chocolate cream cheese. No wonder Mayor Ford thinks Florida is the promised land!

The combination of chocolate and cheese reminds me of the Ween album with that title, so I’ll close with this classic, Voodoo Lady:

It’s a pretty impressive catalogue of every overused line from major motion pictures and tv shows with even a slight bent towards science fiction. He even manages to slip in a joke about Tampa, Florida near the end.

Here’s one way to handle a negative review on Yelp.

Found via Happyplace.com.

Click the diploma to see it at full size.

Found at Happyplace.com.

It’s all in honour of Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. For more details on towel days, this site explains all.

So far, the first week of my “funemployment” — in which I’m taking some time away from the working world to recharge, retool, recalibrate and relax, as well as get a little travel in — has been pretty good. The photo above shows me on the patio of John’s Italian Caffe in Baldwin Village, where I’m dining with…

…Anitra, who was up here for the week for a conference. She’s back home in Tampa, but I’m flying down there tomorrow to be with her for a couple of weeks. She’ll be working during the weekdays, which will free me to get in some decent time at the gym, the pool, learning iOS programming (it may sound weird to non-geeks, but I find programming an enjoyable hobby) and checking out the new synths at the nearby chain music store.

I took Anitra to a number of places in Toronto, including the Boiler House in the Distillery District…

…where we also checked out some of the galleries and shops.

We also went to the Cheese Boutique, who’ve been having guest chefs from local restaurants serve samples of their cooking…

…and we also went out for a picnic on Ward’s Island, then walked to Centre Island to catch a bit of Centreville. We also got to sample Barque in Roncesvalles Village as well as 17 Steps in Bloor West Village.

We’ll be touring around Tampa when I’m there, and I’ll share my photos as I take them.

I’ve also been running around on my bike, meeting up with people. Although I have a perfectly functional car (a Honda CR-V that I drive less than 10,000 km a year and whose gas tank I fill once every four to six weeks), I live right by High Park subway station and bicycle year-round. In many cases, especially when traffic is bad or parking is short, it’s often about as fast as using the car or transit, and I get some exercise out of it to boot. I snapped the photo above at the crest of the Dundas Street bridge going towards Lansdowne a couple of days ago.

Front Street is always gorgeous in the summer, and I was passing through to get to…

…this month’s Sprout Up, the event for local entrepreneurs and startups. As usual, the Courthouse, Sprout Up’s usual venue, was packed with over 400 people there to catch the presentations from some new startups as well as the guest speaker. I was there to do my usual networking; although I’m on vacation, I’m still making sure that I’m tied into the scene and doing a little hustling for my next gig.

One of the places I got to do some hustling is Soma Chocolatemaker on King near Spadina, where I met with a friend to talk about a potential job opportunity in the fall.

It was good to hear about the opportunity as well as to catch up with my friend, and better still, to do so over a glass of Soma’s iced mayan hot chocolate. That stuff is amazing.

The well-wishes on Facebook and other online places in response to my announcement of going on summer vacation have been amazing. I wasn’t expecting much of a response, especially the “Dude, you’re my hero” sort. I was just lucky enough to have some money socked away, a nice tax refund, a pile of frequent flyer points I’ve been saving for just such an occasion, and some Microsoft stock to sell before it’s too late. My former employer, Shopify, have been nothing but cool and generous about the whole thing. I have neither debt nor kids, my expenses are few and my network and rep are such that I can either find a job or make one when it’s time. I think of what I’m doing as equal parts pragmatic and lucky, not courageous or anything special.

The networking’s been going well. I’ve had a handful of phone conversations with recruiters who’ve contacted me as well as friends and associates who’d heard that I’d be on the job market in the late summer and fall. It’s nice to be wanted, and if you’re looking for a kick-ass tech evangelist who can also code, check out my LinkedIn profile (LinkedIn functions as my resume now) or drop me a line!

Last night, I had dinner with my friends Maria and Jen at Bairrada on College West. Now that it’s warm, their patio’s open, and it’s one of my favourite places to get a cheap, cheerful and filling meal.

So far, funemployment’s been fun!

This one’s making the rounds on the internet, and I can’t resist posting it here, what with all the other Game of Thrones posts I’ve been making of late.

Here’s a nice idea: airport lounge seats with both three-prong and USB power in the armrests. It might not be the most ergonomic thing for certain types of plugs and adaptors (they’ll probably poke you in the side), but the intent of having convenient, plentiful power is a big convenience for travellers.

The look on the Prince’s face is priceless. Lay down a dope beat, Charley!

For the most part, these guys — whom I assume are not hardcore cosplayers — came up with some decent homemade Avengers costumes. The Captain America’s not bad for something quickly put together, I like the attention to detail in Thor’s costume (right down to the inscription on Mjolnir, the hammer), and making an Iron Man costume out of Captain Morgan and Jose Cuervo boxes is inspired (in the comic books, Tony Stark is a recovering alcoholic).

However: that Hulk costume? Creepy.

Click the comic to see the original on its site.

I’ll admit it; I LOL’d.

I can’t resist a Game of Thrones gag.

Click the comic to see it on its original page.

I love this Games of Thrones-inspired cake. I’d serve it and say “Coffee is coming.”

I won’t lock myself in a little room and make videos like the one below.

Warning: Annoying techno and dude dancing in his underpants. You might not want to view this at work.

Seriously, what is it with Asian shut-ins and their desire to make disturbing music videos?

The view from my seat when I made the big decision last Wednesday.

Being Shopify’s Platform Evangelist has been a great privilege that I’ve enjoyed for the past year. There are no “B” players at Shopify, which means that I’ve had the honour to represent the best and the brightest. Wherever I’ve gone on behalf of the company, the mere mention of the name “Shopify” has commanded respect, admiration, kudos and high-fives, and all the credit has to go to the Shopifolks for making the best damned system for setting up shop online. Computer science may say that software is made up of data structures and algorithms, but I know better: it’s made of people, and these people are the best. Naturally, so is the software they create.

That being said, I need to take a summer vacation. At the risk of repeating the “it’s not you, it’s me” cliche, I need a break. I haven’t had a proper vacation in years, and it hasn’t helped that the last eighteen months have been crazy ones for Yours Truly. I’ll just gloss over the sordid details and quickly summarize:

• Major life change
• Near-death experience
• The incident of which a certain software-producing multinational corporation headquartered in the Pacific Northwest does not speak, ever
• The non-date, my first as a newly-freed man that went horribly, tragically wrong (not screaming-in-the-fetal-position wrong, but pretty badly for a first time out in years)
• Signing a job offer with Shopify, leaving my old job, and starting the new one a week later
• Relocating to Ottawa for the summer, then re-relocating back to Toronto in September
• At one point, averaging a flight every couple of weeks as a participant in the 2011 BarCamp Tour, helping out with hackathons and speaking at South by Southwest, ConFoo and other events
• Relearning the Ruby programming language and the Rails framework
• Meeting a girl from far away, and the requisite travel involved

All told, I consider these good happenings, but I need to take some time to collect myself. A lot of stuff has happened, and I’ve been leaping from one big change to the next without a break. I’m in great danger of bringing my “B” game to everything I do, and I need to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

Hence the vacation. It wasn’t easy, but I resigned from Shopify last week. They’ve been incredibly supportive and helpful in ways that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to repay. Even though I’m no longer with the company, I remain their supporter, advocate and friend. I may even open a Shopify shop very soon (and if you ever need help opening one, you can ask me).

Damn, we’re cute.

I’m going to go hang out with Anitra (that’s her in the picture above; she was my date for the Filipino Centre of Toronto’s President’s Gala) in Tampa for a couple of weeks starting next Saturday. She’ll have work during the day, during which I’ll hit the gym, work on my writing (the Global Nerdy blog’s been going like gangbusters as of late)…

My new reading material (feel free to suggest others!).

…finally get around to learning how to write software for iPads and iPhones by actually writing (or trying to write) software for my iPad and iPhone, and of course, swimming in the pool pictured below:

I’m the only person I’ve ever seen in this pool.

In late June and early July, I’m going with my family to visit the Philippines. I haven’t been back in a dozen years; when I was married, I’d made peace with the fact that I might not ever see it again. Now that I’ve got the opportunity, the time and 145,000 credit card travel points burning a hole in my pocket, I’m going.

Me and new friends, April 2000 – the last time I was in the Philippines. Please control yourselves, ladies; there’s plenty of me to go around.

After the Philippines, it’s back to Florida to be Anitra’s arm ornament for a wedding, plus a little downtime to get used to the Eastern time zone.

After that, more learning, more writing, more working out, and eventually either landing a new job or making one. If you’re looking for a rock and roll accordion-playing tech evangelist in the late summer or fall, check out my LinkedIn profile and drop me a line!

In the meantime, the Accordion Guy and Global Nerdy blogs will go on, and when I’m not off in Florida or the Philippines, I’ll be in Accordion City catching up with friends. Perhaps I’ll see you!

I’m looking forward to my summer vacation.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.