Vinyl Record Stores in Toronto

It recently occurred to me that I could get an unusual gift for my mother for xmas...

A vinyl record.

Thus I went looking for vinyl record stores...

The vinyl record stores in Toronto are a true phenomenon since very few prophets would have predicted so many stores would still selling LPs, EPs and 45rpm records over a decade after the millennium, especially since in the 1990s collectors were shedding their records, and vinyl was selling by the pound.

Nobody could have predicted vinyl's survival years and decades later.

After its effective extinction by the compact disc, never mind the Napster and mp3 revolution... the revival of vinyl among young collectors who've embraced the iPod and brought back the turntable and effectively put the stake through the CD's heart. You will still find CDs in all the music stores like HMV, but they're not selling like they were during the 1990s.

But it is vinyl that will survive the test of time. CDs have lost to mp3s, but to the true music collectors vinyl is still king.

After all, what's a CD these days except one extra step between you and your mp3?

The vinyl revival is a sign of what is happening right now. It is a re-injection of new, quality, heavy weight LP pressings into the marketplace, and not just new titles, but classics and obscurities as well. Record store owners expected a surge in demand for classic rock, with a new generation discovering Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin on twelve inch black plastic... and instead they're seeing sales in a wide variety. Everyone it seems is going back to vinyl.

Here is a list of Toronto's best vinyl record stores:

Rotate This
Hits & Misses
She Said Boom
Play De Record
Cosmos on Queen/Cosmos West Records
Vortex Records
Planet of Sound
Kops Records
Slinky Music
Paradise Bound
Second Vinyl
Pandemonium

So there is quite a few and they're mostly in downtown Toronto, which means for fun you could just do a walking tour of all the vinyl shops and make an afternoon of it. No plans today? Go for it!

Ever noticed how University and College apparel is overpriced?

Seriously.

Ever noticed how University and College apparel is overpriced?

Let me give an example... I went to York University in Toronto, Canada... for 5 years.

And I don't have a single piece of university apparel. Or a school ring either. I admit, I loved the university too. Loved the teachers. Loved the classes. Loved the campus. Heck, I even grew to love the concrete architecture and bizarre sculptures.

York University even had its own shopping mall on the campus known as York Lanes... and within York Lanes was the official university apparel store... where the prices of t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, hats, scarves, etc were jacked up so high as to make it ridiculous. I am talking like $60 for a simple t-shirt.

Part of this problem I think was because York had somehow privatized its line of apparel and the private company running it, in order to make a profit, had jacked up the prices. Furthermore the private company had to pay to rent the space in the York Lanes mall, and since it wasn't exactly booming in terms of sales they had jacked up the prices more so.

What they should have done is have a tiny basement office in a corner of a rarely used building (like in the basement of the Behavioral Sciences building)... someplace where the rent was cheap and it would really just a storage room (similar to the Lost and Found office) monitored by 1 person.

Now I must admit York University isn't alone in this. A LOT of universities and colleges have jacked up prices for their apparel (and vigilantly guard against "copyright thieves" making knock-off versions).

SIDE NOTE: Since then I think the ownership has changed and York apparel is now sold via the York U bookstore (also in York Lanes)... so presumably prices have probably dropped. Finally. 9 years after I graduated.

But not all places of higher learning do this. Let say for example you attended the University of Alabama... and you wanted some University of Alabama shirts... Well then you just visit their website, browse the prices, and order whatever it is that you actually want.

Easy. And the prices are fair. Not cheap, but fair. Comparable to what you might pay in Old Navy, American Apparel or H&M.

That is the way it SHOULD be done.

Some of them will even have a broad selection of products, like the "Alabama Houndstooth Fedora Hat"... which is *cough* actually not a Fedora. Its a Hamburg hat. Fedoras are broad brimmed. Hamburgs are short brimmed. Sheesh, seriously people, stop calling Hamburgs by the wrong name.

Same goes with Swiss hats. If it looks like a Hamburg but has a feather in the side, it is called a Swiss.

I swear... It is just like idiots in Hollywood (and video game designers) who keep using Egyptian khopesh swords BACKWARDS and having people committing suicide by slicing their wrists sideways (the proper way is to cut lengthwise along the vein).

And this is what you get for attending university for three to five years... You become educated to the point that:

1. You can recognize historical inaccuracies in TV shows and movies.

2. You *should* be able to spot the difference between different pieces of clothing and their proper names. (Like the difference between "leggings" and "stretch pants".)

3. You can do math and you know when something is overpriced and ripping you off.

4. You can recognize when a company is giving you a fair deal (and when their stuff is made by sweatshops in South East Asia) because you know how to read the label.

5. You can use your brain enough to go to a custom T-shirt place with a logo and have a new shirt made for $30 instead of paying $60 for the official university shirt which is grossly overpriced. (Better yet, you can pick colours and designs nobody else has, thus ensuring you have a shirt that other alumni will be jealous of.)

Oh, and assuming you are also potty trained, you should also be able to dress yourself.

Now go join the workforce of brainless zombies who sit at computers and press buttons, doing what you are told by the uncaring bosses with their big salaries... and ignore the fact that you were told for years that people value creativity and individual thinking.

Pfffff!

Private Cooking Lessons in Toronto

Meet Luca. (Note to self, find a photo of him.)

He is a professional Italian chef. He caters private functions and dinner parties.

But what I really want to talk about is his Italian cooking lessons in Toronto. Basically, if you want to learn how make really great tasting Italian food, you give him a call and book some lessons.

Which is funny because he charges less for his private cooking lessons than he does for his catering service. Just check out his prices.

Private cooking service catering is: Starting by $35/person + cost of food & wine.

Private Cooking Lesson: Starting at $25/person + cost of food & wine.

Full prices depends on menu, but basically he charges $10 less if he is teaching you instead of just serving and catering you.

So it is actually a pretty good deal if you want cooking lessons in Toronto and he teaches a variety of different recipes, not just Italian recipes.

Check out the recipes he has on his website.

Orata + Sea Bream

Lasagne + Eggplant and Tomatoes

And my favourite: Potato Pie

The Demon's Pawn

"The Demon's Pawn" is the newest story available from the good folks at Korovia.com...

To understand this book a bit you first need to understand what Korovia is.

It is a "free license fantasy world" where anyone, provided they follow the rules, can join in and publish their story within the setting of Korovia... Korovia itself is a pseudo-Slavic fantasy kingdom similar to Transylvania, but with dragons, elves, dwarves, minotaurs, gnomes, fairies, werewolves, good / evil wizards and demons... basically Tolkien-esque fantasy, but unlike the world of Middle-Earth (which is copy-written and trademarked) the world of Korovia is open to anyone.

That said... lets get back to "The Demon's Pawn".

Demons play a big role in the Korovia Timeline. In less than 8,000 years Korovia has had three demon wars (basically invasions from another dimension) and the demons won't give up because they have marked the kingdom of Korovia for conquest. The demons are always looking for some way to get into Korovia, conquer a city or two, and then start laying waste to the landscape.

Unfortunately the paladins / holy knights from the Holy City of Kost keep stopping the demons. They're not the only ones, but they play a major role.

Enter Katya Yerovik. An orphan girl raised by elves. A demon prince has taken a great interest in her development and somehow she is a chess piece in the demon's plan of conquering the Holy City of Kost...

Yada yada yada, I won't ruin the story for you.

But I will say WOW. This story has a huge web of overlapping bits and pieces and they all come together by the end of the book. It is an exceptionally well written story.

Unfortunately the story is currently only available on Amazon Kindle. But if you have a SmartPhone, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc then just download the free Kindle app and start reading. The story itself costs only $2.99. Less than the price of a coffee and it is superbly written.

10 Reasons why Goodlife Fitness SUCKS

The following review is based on Goodlife Fitness clubs in Toronto, Canada.

#1. They're basically no different than other fitness gyms like Extreme Fitness, etc.

#2. They don't list pricing on their website.

#3. When you call you end up getting a sales agent who is on commission.

#4. The sales agent will want to sell you a yearly contract and he only gets his commission if he gets your bank or credit card info.

#5. Once they have your banking or credit card info Goodlife Fitness with then auto-charge your bank account or credit card once, twice or even three times monthly.

#6. When you cancel your membership they will KEEP charging your bank account or credit card, even though you cancelled your membership in writing months ago.

#7. If you try to get your money back from Goodlife Fitness they will REFUSE to give it to you, claiming that you used the gym during those months they charged you for and claiming that your membership was still active.

#8. The only way to stop them from taking money from your bank or credit card is by closing your bank account or cancelling your credit card.

#9. Goodlife Fitness will then try phoning you, demanding more money or alternatively being really rude to you when you are trying to get your money back from them which they have essentially defrauded from you.

#10. Goodlife Fitness isn't alone in this fraudulent behaviour. Extreme Fitness and many other "big name" fitness gyms all use this tactic of ripping you off financially. (Many cellphone companies do the same thing.)

How to make your own T-Shirt Company

Isn't technology awesome?

I mean seriously. It used to be if you wanted to make your own t-shirt company you basically just learned how to make screen prints, purchased lots of cheap blank shirts and then did all the work of screen printing onto the t-shirts yourself.

These days you can just get CafePress or a similar website to do it for you (and pay an arm and a leg for shipping), but that really cuts into your profit margin.

But what if you could just buy a machine that did all that for you? Now I admit Industrial Embroidery Equipment is pretty expensive. Out of the range of most people, but it can be done if you're willing to make the investment.

And a lot of the process can now be easily automated, so the onus on you is really to just set it up the way you like it, let the machine do the work and your job is really to get the sales.

Check out the amusing video below:


Now I admit that is an awesome video and the cartoon mouse sure makes it look easy.

But consider the prices. I browsed swfusa.com and the cheapest machine I could find was $7,500. (American dollars of course.)

The prices of the various machines weighed in between $7,500 to $55,000 USD. So yeah, if you have the money you could get a machine to do all the work for you.

So really you would just need to design the clothing, program the machine and then find buyers for your products, followed by shipping and accounting costs. (And buy the materials, of course. Thread, fabric, etc.)

I think the hardest part of all that would actually be "programming the machine" to do embroidery work on a t-shirt. That sounds super technical and I wonder just how easy the software allows you to do that.

Okay, so I admit that does sound like significant work, but it may all be worth it, especially if you're selling in bulk. But it beats having everything sewn in third world countries by sweatshop labour (*cough cough* slave labour *cough cough*).

Next lets pretend you are up to the challenge and have 10s of thousands of dollars to be spent on machinery. What will you actually design?

In theory you could do quite a few different designs. There are certainly lots of options out there. Worse comes to worst you could just browse Facebook for ideas for slogans, artwork, etc... just so long as nothing is copyrighted.

Speaking for myself I would have t-shirts made of all my artwork, use quotes from famous people (quotes are copyright free) and whenever the inspiration struck me make random limited runs of various things. And then sell it all on fashion blogs like Fashion Salon, etc.

However I am a very creative person. I create new things every day of my life. I would have to be in a coma to not be creating something physical (and even then I'd still be dreaming in a creative way).

Note to Self: If I ever end up in a coma I must remember to wake up and ask for a pint of stout. (Magnum PI fans will like that idea.)

So anywho, having your own t-shirt company (and the heavy machinery to do the actual work) isn't for everyone. You would have to be very creative in the first place. Preferably with some training in the fashion industry.

The Lilith Bloodstone Series

The Lilith Bloodstone Series is a series of fantasy short stories set in the fictional kingdom of Korovia and written by Canadian author Charles Moffat. The stories feature a young heroine known as Lilith Bloodstone who is as unusual as the land she lives in.

Korovia is a cold and brutal place, trapped in an ancient curse that has placed the kingdom in a perpetual ice age and it has been that way since the Last Demon War. As such the people of Korovia make their livings by hunting, fishing and trapping, mining and trading their goods with other kingdoms. Korovia still has a summer, but its comparatively short.

The curse that plagues Korovia has also made it possible for monsters and undead to flourish. Most people live in small towns or cities and very few farmers exist except in the southern reaches of Korovia, both because its not ideal farming conditions and also because of the monsters that attack people.

Amidst all of this is the Holy City of Kost, the site of a famous battle during the Second Demon War. The city was founded by an order of paladins (holy knights) and amongst their descendants was a knight known as Phoebus Bloodstone. Phoebus' wife died and he was called away on duty to protect a village of elves, and so he entrusted his only daughter Lilith to the knights for safekeeping. Unfortunately for both Phoebus and his daughter he died defending the elven village from an onslaught of horned trolls.

But you don't really find out all those extra details until later. The stories start with Lilith Bloodstone. How and why she got there and what happened to her parents are revealed as the stories continue.

At an early age Lilith Bloodstone began to exhibit signs of magical talent. At first the knights were uncertain what to do so they hired a tutor to train her in the arte of magic and she quickly mastered the simple spells provided to her. The tutor eventually came to the knights and said there was no more she could teach the young girl who was devouring spellbooks and was proving more adept than the tutor. The child prodigy was therefore sent to the Academy of Arcane (sometimes called the Academy of Magic by non-magic users). Amongst the dabblers, sorcerers and wizards Lilith Bloodstone found her calling, but each wizard typically makes a choice to specialize in one branch of magic...

She certainly had her options. She could learn divination and become a seer, or perhaps summoning and become a conjuror... Or maybe she had the explosive talent of an evoker or the mesmerizing talents of an enchantress. But none of these held interest to young Lilith. Instead she decided to follow a more complex and forlorn path...

NECROMANCY.

Considered to be a "dark arte" by many Lilith Bloodstone had chosen a path few wizards dared to tread and most wizards who went that way fell prey to the dark side of the arte, a dark side known as The Black Rose. And it is the story of the Black Rose wherein Lilith has her first adventure. But Lilith doesn't stop there.

Far from it, Lilith has many more adventures as she becomes a hunter of undead creatures, a vanquisher of evil, and she furthers her goals of expanding the boundaries of White Necromancy (using necromancy to destroy undead and save lives).

The series is written by Canadian fantasy author Charles Moffat and to learn more you're going to have to read the books which are available on Amazon Kindle.

The Black Rose

On Death's Door

The Astral Plane

Brutus and Avianna is another story set in the Korovia world, and also written by Charles Moffat.

Unlike the Lilith Bloodstone Series, Brutus and Avianna is a very different story. For starters its erotic. But its still set in the same fantasy world, Korovia, which is listed on korovia.com as a "free license fantasy world" where any author can self-publish their books using the setting.

Which is an interesting concept in comparison to other shared fantasy worlds like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, wherein authors can only publish their books via the company which owns the copyright, self-publishing isn't allowed, and they vigorously defend their copyright.

It does make you realize that if e-readers like Kindle and Kobo are the way of the future (which unlike tablets don't have glare), then self-publishing will become the chosen medium of authors, and free license shared worlds like Korovia are a sign that the publishing industry needs to adapt.

Review: One Simple Trick to get Women to Sleep With You

Okay, you've probably seen the ads for them online. The titles of the ads may vary, but they're all basically selling the same thing: Sex with Women via somekind of mental trick.

When you click the ad it takes you to a long-winded video which is basically just a huge waste of time and the primary goal is to get you to buy his book on how to trick women subconsciously into sleeping with you.

I am now going to save you some time.

Here are the tricks outlined in his video:

#1. Look at her mouth. Don't look at her breasts.

#2. Stand sideways. It makes you look more attractive and indifferent.

#3. Mention that you feel at ease talking to her.

#4. DON'T TALK ABOUT MONEY.

#5. DON'T TALK ABOUT SPORTS OR EXERCISE UNLESS SHE BRINGS IT UP.

#6. Give the impression you're already desirable. eg. Talk about your female friends, women trying to get into your pants. (Pre-Selection based on other women finding you desirable.)

The number six step is the one he stresses the most in the video.

Beyond that he will also try to convince you of all the other great stuff in his book, essentially things you can do that supposedly will make women want you sexually.

Indeed this video-promoting some guy's book isn't alone. There is a lot of books out there all claiming to sell the same thing. Here is some of the one's I found on Amazon.com




All the books are basically preaching the same thing: Be desirable, be confident, play hard to get, make them chase you, etc.

So in theory, yes, the advice in these books can help you get laid. In theory. But I would still argue that exercising and joining Toastmasters International (so you can learn to speak confidently) wouldn't hurt you either.

Zombie Archery Target

It cost me $27.67 to have this Zombie Archery Target made at Staples Business Depot. Took about 40 minutes for them to print it off, but it was worth every penny and every minute of the wait.

For archery lessons visit cardiotrek.blogspot.ca.

Christmas Wish List: A Throwing Axe!

Note to Self:

Here is something I would like for Xmas.

"Condor Tool & Knife CTK4011BT - Double Bit Throwing Axe, Black Blade Double bit throwing axe with overall length of 13 3/8in. And 7in. Blade composed of 1075 high carbon steel with epoxy black powder coating. FEATURES Handle Material: 1075 Carbon Steel, Black Overall Length (inches): 14.50 Special Features: Double Bit Condor Tool & Knife CTK4011BT - Double Bit Throwing Axe, Black Blade."

Price? $27 on Google Shopping.

Why? Because axe throwing is one of those sports I would like to try and what the heck, why not buy an axe!