Category Archives: News

Awesome Vegetarian Restaurants in Downtown Toronto

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Staying at the Hotel Victoria in downtown Toronto for the last week with my girlfriend Amy has opened us to a ton of new, fantastic vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Google has helped us find them all, but I wanted to take a second to put together a small list in case you’re downtown Toronto for a while and are looking for great places to eat.

I’ll separate them by category.

Pizza

Pizzaiolo
http://www.pizzaiolo.ca/
There are probably 15 to 20 of these around Toronto, but the one we went to was just a few doors down from our hotel on Yonge St. It was amazing. In fact, it was so amazing, we ordered pizzas there two days in a row. They have a ton of vegetarian and vegan choices and each are made fresh right in front of you. It’s amazing.

Take-Away and Fast Food

Urban Herbivore
http://www.torontoeatoncentre.com/EN/Directory/Stores/Pages/UrbanHerbivore_F018.aspx
Like most food places in Toronto, there are a few locations. The one we went to was in the Eaton Centre, and it was fantastic. I ate the BBQ Tofu sandwich and loved it even though I’m not normally a huge fan of tofu. It was quick and cheap. Like all great vegetarian food, if you didn’t know it was vegetarian you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Sit Down

Fresh Toronto Vegetarian FoodFresh
http://www.freshrestaurants.ca/our_history.asp
Fresh was, without a doubt, our favourite. It’s got great style, it’s busy, it’s fast, and the food tastes fantastic. Amy loved it so much she bought one of the recipe books they offer on sale.

King’s Cafe (Kensington Market)
http://www.kingscafe.com/
This is the sister restaurant to our favourite vegetarian restaurant in Guelph, Zen Garden. Great food and amazing Lychee Black tea.

YouTube’s New UI

Posted on by John Rockefeller

If there was one website that needed a new UI it was Youtube.com. The site’s design hadn’t changed significantly since it’s introduction in 2005 and it was slow, heavy, and out-of-date.

Since the purchase of Youtube by Google, a few new features have shown up from time to time including the ability to sign in with your Google Account. Unfortunately, the site still felt like a third-party product and not part of the Google package.

In line with the across-the-board design upgrade to all of Google’s offerings, Youtube has just upgraded its design to match its Google siblings, Gmail and Docs. It’s a huge boost in terms of design and functionality, but it’s not all peachy. First, the bits that work well.

  • The Account Switching feature that’s found on Google Docs and Gmail is a very welcome addition, especially for people that make Youtube videos but also have a personal account with separate preferences and subscriptions.
  • The site is much faster. It’s hard to describe how good it feels to actually watch videos on the site now. Before, the site would stop loading randomly, usually just as we sat down to eat after clicking Play or when showing someone a video you’ve raved about.
  • Buttons are in the right spots and don’t move while the site is loading. I’ve griped about this sort of UI mistake before on other websites, especially twitter.com. The problem is something will move as soon as I go to click on it because another part of the website has loaded. I end up clicking on something else (usually an ad) that I didn’t want at all. It’s terribly frustrating and (thankfully) has been much improved in the UI upgrade.

And now for the not so good. Don’t worry, there isn’t much.

Is this Yahoo or Google?

There is way too much stuff on the front page. When Google first launched their search engine, designers lauded the simplicity of their design. It was common to compare yahoo.com up against google.com. Unfortunately, the front page of Youtube seems to be going in the wrong direction: more and more things just keep getting piled on the front page until it becomes a cluttered mess and I’m unsure exactly what I’m supposed to be looking at.

What’s your take?

Dropbox For Teams?

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge fan of Dropbox and have been using it for years. I learned about a new service that they’re offering called Dropbox Teams. One would assume that this version of the software would offer tighter integration with teams or some other features to justify the $795 cost which includes 5 seats.

Looking over the FAQ offered a lot of technical questions and answers but not what I was looking for: Why would anyone choose this option over the free or $10/month 50GB option?

Is there anyone out there using Dropbox Teams that can shed some light on why they went that route versus the regular service?

Edit: I see now. It’s basically a huge jump in the amount of storage capacity with some support thrown in that one will likely never use.

Movin’ On Up!

Posted on by John Rockefeller
DZone MVB

Aw yeah, DZone MVB baby!

Great news! I just received the confirmation E-Mail letting me know I am now an official DZone MVB, or Most Valued Blogger. Blog posts from my Develop in the Google Cloud blog will be featured on the DZone site along with many of the other DZone articles from other MVBs. This will provide some extra exposure to yours truly and makes me really happy to boot!

I’ve been working on a Java/Google App Engine project called Quoats that displays a random quote from around the web. It’s a simple app that I thought would be a great way to get my feet wet with the platform and something I could share on my blog. So far, I am really enjoying a number of things about Google App Engine and Java including JDO and Google App Engine’s persistent storage mechanism. Tres cool.

If you’d like to learn more about Quoats, you can check out the project page (and the source code) on Assembla.

It’s baaaaack!

Posted on by John Rockefeller
Kool-Aid Man

Image via Wikipedia

After a now completed year-long project took my full attention, I’ve re-launched my blog. It feels great to be back. Taking it down was a mistake as I really enjoyed the outlet; sharing PHP tips & tricks, and releasing news about projects that I’m a part of is a lot of fun and good for the soul. So, I’ll be getting back into the swing of things, posting often once again.

It’s amazing to look back and see how much stuff has happened in a year. I’m flipping through my older posts and remembering them like they were a decade ago instead of  just one year!

A few geeky points about the blog:

  • It’s HTML5 WordPress. Oh, yeah! (cue Kool-Aid Man)
  • It uses Microformats (I love these things)
  • The theme is my own design built off of the WordPress Toolbox theme
  • http://www.stiligececilie.net/ provided the amazing free FB, Google, etc. icons under my Twitter widget. If you’re into graphics design, you have to check out her stuff. It’s awesome.
  • It’s got some kick-ass jQuery that lets you scroll infinitely through my posts instead of pagination
  • This will be my 101st post. Sort of makes sense to cross that line when I relaunch :)

 

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