Tag Archives: humour

Money Grandma

Cute Story about my youngest nephew, a twenty dollar bill and The Queen. It happened on the on Christmas Morning when my nephew got a 20 dollar bill for spending money from his grandparents. It was so funny I had to write The Queen about it. We’ll pick from that point:

Dear Madam

On Christmas, I heard a story that was too priceless not to share with you.

Canadian National Vimy Memorial with The Queen on the Twenty Dollar Bill

My 7-year-old nephew, Oxford Andony was given a 20 Canadian dollar bill amongst other gifts.

He came to me, and I pointed at the Vimy Ridge Memorial that is on one side and said, “That’s Vimy Ridge, Uncle Robert saw that when he was in Europe, so did Grandma and Grand-dad when they visited last year.”

My nephew Oxford then turned over the 20 Dollar Bill and said:

“Do you know who that is?”

I replied, “Who?” trying to get him to answer.

He pointed at your portrait on our money and said:

“That’s Money Grandma.”

“Who?” I replied.

“Money Grandma… She’s a grandma, and she’s on the money. She is Money Grandma.”

The Canadian Dollar Coin Obverse side showing The Queen

He said this in the most endearing way as a sign of affection.

I gave a little chuckle and then he said:

“Money Grandma is rad.”

He then saw a Canadian Dollar coin, affectionately called a Loonie to us Canadians, and said,

“look, more Money Grandma.”

So the saying goes “Out of the mouth of babes”  We all thought it was very cute. I am sure this will be remembered in our family for years to come and thought you would enjoy this anecdote as well.

~~~~~

I’ve never sent a letter to The Queen. I wonder how you do that? … Well, it’s pretty easy. But it has to be a written letter.

I sent it off wondering if the story would get to her, being a grandparent and great grandparent she must have had similar experiences… I  wonder if she would find it funny. I wonder if it even made it… Three months went by and then while my nephews were visiting. My mother said,

“Did you ever hear from Buckingham Palace?”

Royal Cypher and Post Mark to Buckingham Palace

I said no I haven’t, not yet, maybe it was lost in the mail. But it’s a cute story I may blog about if I never hear back.

The day the nephews left I check the mail and BOOM I  find a letter in the mail post marked EIIR Buckingham Palace.

I thought it would be a form letter or something thanking me for my letter. But no it was a personalized letter from her Lady-in-Waiting Philippa de Pass. Spelling mistake and all, (the spelling mistake makes it more authentic), see below for full copy.

I am going save this letter and present it to Oxford next time I see him. I really do hope The Queen had a good laugh as we did, and this will just one of many family stories for years to come.

Letter from Philippa de Pass Lady-in-Waiting on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II (click for larger version)

Comedy Hack Day Vancouver 2016

TLDR: We made a silly game you can play it here: http://pot.robertdall.com But really… your gonna want to keep reading.

I heard about these Comedy Hack Days and I, though. You spend and entire weekend building something just to get a laugh? Isn’t there an easier way?

But then my buddy and Later co-founder Ian MacKinnon brought the funny hackathon weekend to Vancouver. So I read about it and thought well that sounds hilarious, and you had to apply to go, you had to tell the organizers why you wanted to go, What you could offer, what skills you have.  That preference along with Ian running the show how could I not apply?

In the morning we pitched our idea. Those who applied in groups said what they would be working. I tried and failed to pitch my dating app based on your podcasting preferences or Public Radio Dating as a service which people actually though it was too realistic.

But Wes Lord pitched an idea called “Portland Oregon Trail” Which recreates one of the games of my childhood The Oregon Trail.

“Where we wrangle up an intrepid band of hipster adventurers at a poetry slam in Omaha Nebraska and set sail for the cooler pastures and fair trade organic coffee of Portland Oregon, In 2008, Before it was mainstream.” ~ Wes Lord

I went into the foyer and met up with Wes Lord, Aaron Shaw, Max Ahn, Kelvin Lau who later became the team Portland Oregon Trail. We decided to build the game in the browser as appose to an App as we were all pretty much familiar with the web, but only some had app building experiences.

Screenshot of the Portland Oregon Trail Game
Screenshot of the Portland Oregon Trail Game

It was amazing how fast we just got down to work and started submitting code to our GitHub repo. I had a previously poor hackathon experience at a different event, but this was the complete opposite. We couldn’t believe what we accomplished on the first day and how well everyone worked together.

Also props to Lighthouse Labs / Launch Academy for providing an awesome working space and the organizing committee with plenty of food, drinks and coffee and awesome bandwidth to keep us going. Also to some anonymous sponsor who purchased Carmel Corn for everyone because he felt it was important to have a snack.

Yes we even had notifications and events that increased or reduced your cool points.
Yes we even had notifications and events that increased or reduced your cool points.

I was the design and graphics person, as the rest of the guys had the all of the javascript knowledge needed to run the game. Wes Lord and I were also the only two that played the original game. Luckily Internet Archive had a copy all the others could play.

We got a decent night sleep as hackathons go as we’d completed a lot that first day and we hit the code again the next morning. Sunday was harder than Saturday as we were doing a lot of QA and fine tuning for the semi-finals that were behind held downstairs that afternoon at The Hive.

Sometimes the irony of the situation that we presented ourselves was funny enough. Yes the colour graphics from emulator of the Oregon trail was not web safe. (I know nothing needs to be web safe anymore but when I got the RGB covered it hex I found it some what ironic.)

We also had to find a Commodore 64 True Type font which we then converted into a web font and displayed it as a 8-bit font via @font-face which has only been available for mass usage since 2011.

~~~

We presented, and were lucky enough to be voted by our peers to show our game at the finals! The Competition would be tough, the finalist were:

PMPL – a social networking app that brings people with pimples to people who want to pop them.
Rock out with my Rock out – A pet rock “Dwayne Johnson” App for your phone!
PokeMAN Go – Pokemon Go using real people using a facial recognition api to catch real people. (Yes it actually worked similar to Pokemon Go)
Burning Bridges – Russian Roulette generator that if you lose it send an insult to someone in your address book.
Portland Oregon Trail – Hipster’s trying to make it to the promise land.

We presented to rousing applause and laughter having a comedian like Wes presenting made for a presentation.

We ended up getting third losing out the funny yet equally disgusting PMPL getting second and the PokeMAN Go winning the event.

Conclusion

Although a little physically tired I actually felt rejuvenated in other way. We actually accomplished something in less then 48 hours I actually want to show to people. Yes, there are bugs, yes the code isn’t prefect, but yet what we were able to accomplish in two days was pretty awesome for people who didn’t know 15 minutes before decided to built the thing. If your a designer, comedian, coder and your looking a for fun you should really apply next year. I am sure it will be a lot of fun.

Oh and you play the game yourself. There is a number of easter eggs and inside jokes amongst the code. Drop me a note in the comments if you find one of them.

You can play the game here

 

How to make a Web Page by HomeStar Runner

With a hat tip to Paul Clark @pdclark on twitter, Here is StrongBad on how to create a website.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html

It’s awesome. You should check it out.

It’s also in flash so no go on a smartphone

Apple’s new OS Yosemite

Dear Apple and the National Parks Service. I recently had a conversation about the new OSX called Yosemite with a fellow web developer Paul Clark.

PC: Because @10up is distributed, Yosemite is my office today. We’re hiring.   #php #css #js #WordPress pic.twitter.com/hrW0FoFVOr 

RD:  You weren’t looking for the OS were you?

PC:  Rode through without a windshield. Still working out the bugs.

RD:  I am just glad you didn’t crash exploring the new OS…

PC:  I was surprised it was on a drive. Thought they switched to cloud distribution.

RD:  But I bet it was a swift ride!

PC:  Now that you mention it, the Dashboard did say I was going pretty fast.

RD:  Was it a test drive? http://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/ 

PC: All good things have to come to and end. I heard from my Notification Center.

You can read our conversation here… It was totally geeky on the fly and a little silly fun on a Wednesday Night

ps. No… neither of us work for Apple or the National Parks Service.