The Brawley

The Brawley, a set on Flickr.

I shot these for The Brawley Restaurant and Lounge newly opened in Etobicoke, Toronto. They'll be used for their website and promotional material.

The Brawley page on Facebook

Ponytails For Decency

A few weeks after an old lady attacked my bookstore owner friend (Eddie of Dencan Books) with the crumpled-up ball of my work comes word of a fresh complaint.

Stockings and garters and heels -- oh my!

A number of my more recent images, printed on canvas and framed, are hung in a store window down on Lakeshore Road in Toronto. When Candi and Jim, the store owners, put them up I warned them about the Bookstore Versus Little Old Lady episode and pointed out that two of the images in their windows were large renditions of my pin-ups. They laughed and said something to the effect that "Oh don't worry: this is the Lakeshore. Anything goes here."

So apparently last Friday a dual-ponytailed young woman, 19 or 20, came into the store and waited patiently to get Candi's attention. She insisted that those pin-up images were inappropriate and should be removed from the window. Candi said "rubbish" and the girl said, "but they are in their underwear -- women and children could see them!"

Candi, displaying her stubborn and mischievous streak, retorted that there's an enormous illuminated billboard down near the Gardiner Expressway (a 6-lane elevated highway that runs right through downtown Toronto) showing a man wearing only his Stanfield undershorts and that if she could get them to remove that, Candi would remove my pin-ups.

The girl left. But will she return with a mob? Stay tuned ...

Panl in the news

"The Artist"

Panl Updates Cloud Monitoring Service

We put the final flourishes on an update to the Panl service, and the details of it went out on the news wires yesterday. Read all about our great changes here ... 

Picture Credits

Model/HS: Denise Stellar

MUA/Wardrobe: Chantelle Krupka

Artistic Director/Retoucher/Photographer: Bruce Walker

You code it, we'll monitor it

I can't reveal all yet, but the staff at Panl are busy adding new features to an already great service.

More to come ...

Model/HS: Denise Steller

MUA/Wardrobe: Chantelle Krupka

AD/Photo/Retouch: Bruce Walker - ModelMayhem 1440574

And speaking of new stuff ...

My company Panl has launched its services. Here's the blurb:

The Panl monitoring service is now launched and available to everyone! 

Panl offers free website monitoring, and the ability to create custom monitors to track almost any IT metric. Our unique "overdue alert" capability lets you know about events that are supposed to happen but don't. You can track monitor status on the web or with our iPhone app, and receive alerts via email, SMS, or iPhone notifications. 

You can sign up for our commercial plans for as little as $10/month, or get additional free monitoring services by referring your friends and colleagues. 

Please visit http://panl.com to get started, or for more information. And please pass this email along to any of your IT contacts that might be interested.

Stop The Meter On Your Internet Use!

This is of particular concern to Canadians ...

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are about to impose usage-based billing on YOU.

This means we're looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay MUCH more for less Internet. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

These Big Telecom companies are forcing small competing ISPs to adopt the same pricing scheme, so that we have no choice but to pay these punitive fees.

This will crush innovative services, Canada's digital competitiveness, and your wallet.

We urgently need to send a clear message to Ottawa, saying that we won't stand by while some of the most profitable companies in the country indiscriminately add new fees to our Internet bills. Enough is enough.

Per: http://openmedia.ca/meter

Mr. Rogers: piss off

Well Mr. Rogers has gone and done it: totally screwed the pooch with the iPhone's intro to Canada. The rates for voice and data, especially data, are way out of line with US, UK, and in fact most of the rest of the world. He's caused some pretty serious rage out there in blogland ...

Fuck You Rogers

Fake Steve Jobs on Real Steve Balmer

FSJ may be fake, but his insights are real. Here's his take on the Microhoo! buyup plan. Brilliant.

[...] here's the really dark part of all this. He knows it won't work. He has to know this. He's not stupid. The cultures will never fit together. And the deal is too big. It's not manageable. And it's completely anathema to Microsoft. It's totally out of character for them. It goes against everything the company has ever stood for. Ballmer knows this, and he's doing it anyway. Because this is exactly what every old-guard CEO does when all else fails. I mean it's right there in the official playbook that you get in business school. And ultimately, smart as he is, Ballmer is an old-school kind of guy. He's not really a tech guy. He has a mindset that was formed in Detroit, where he grew up. He's a Big Three automaker kind of guy. And this is a Big Three move. It's Ford buying Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo because they can't think of anything else to do.

So if the deal happens -- and I'm not convinced it will -- Ballmer will have bought himself maybe two years before it becomes clear to the entire world that it has failed. By then maybe Ballmer will be gone and someone else will have to mop up the mess. [...]

Link ...