Not grounds for unsubscribing from his feed of remaindered links (the quality of which has been high lately), but I can tell you that I didn't expect to see this advertisement for the partners in The Deck.

There's still no word on whether the products advertised are any good, only that the participants use the products. And do all participants use all the products? Finally, for an ad network that sucks, consider joining The Dreck.

Flo on the sorry state of articles in the media about gaming (inline link added): “Articles on gamers and gaming often seem to flipflop between distaste and mockery of the gamers themselves and the perception of a real and serious threat to healthy, normative behavior. I think this highlights the real issue behind almost every mainstream discussion of games addiction: the privileging of certain kinds of behavior. The implication of this article is that gaming addicts are recluses with no social skills or friends. Frequent mention is made of socialization within the gaming sphere itself, but this is always contrasted negatively with normal, healthy, 'face-to-face' interaction. It isn't that these hardcore gamers don't have social relationships, they simply have the wrong kind of relationships.”

This is my first full day in Toronto, here for about a week. I've already seen a Blue Jays' game (my first ever in Toronto!) but they lost 10-5. Evidently there will be—or possibly already is—video of me singing terribly out of tune the "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" song during seventh inning strech, but you won't get me pointing to it! No foul balls came my, the closest one hitting a lady in the head. (The paramedics came down and everything.) I have a healthy sunburn on my arms and possibly my face, but that didn't spoil my good time, as the Jays belted out 4 home runs, two of them back-to-back jacks.

Duncan points to CBC's The End, a three-part series on the future of TV, radio, and print, with video of each available online along with show notes. Jian Ghomeshi hosted the series, and interviews people in each industry, some of whom (all podcasters or bloggers) I've met or had online conversations with. Ghomeshi splits time between Toronto, Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles, ending each segment aware that some people will have watched it on TV, their computer or their personal digital video player of choice. As I joked on Duncan's pointer, there doesn't seem to be an episode about the end of the Internet, to which Duncan noted there was no episode about the end of the universe.