I’m not much of a facebook normally, I log on only when I get a notification of a message by e-mail, so obviously I was pretty neutral about the announcement that Facebook was making it’s way to the X-Box 360. Still, I had to give it a try, and I’m sure glad I did!

I was expecting a heavy, clunky, feature-to-feature adaptation of Facebook on the 360. Instead, whoever developped this app was smart enough to strip it off a lot of non-essential bells and whistles and in-so-doing sculpt a mostly enjoyable experience out of a normally mundane one.

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So, I saw Doug Pray’s “Art & Copy” the other night. Because it’s essentially an ad for advertising, it offered a novel perspective (wait for it): a movie about advertising that features conversations with people that actually work in advertising. No Klein-ist sweater and keffayeh wearing leftist intellectuals/activists, mostly just ad-(wo)men.

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Last Wednesday my daughter, Maryam, was born! Weighing in at 9 pounds 5 ounces, she outweighed my son Ali who was 7 pounds 14 ounces at birth. She is a big, healthy bundle of joy that has her father’s appetite, insuring she’ll only get bigger

Due to the current Swine Flu scare, the hospital made it difficult for people to visit us, but despite that we had visitors willing to endure the hospital’s strict rules and requirements. A big thank you goes out from my wife Nina and myself to everyone who visited, called, or wrote to us during this joyous occasion!

Now our family feels even more like a family!

Here’s the deal, my extremely talented good friend Nicolas Girard was returning to his native France for good. So what does he do with his remaining time here in Canada? Why he decides to build his friend (yours truly) the most awesome joystick ever! And so the NEStickle (not to be mistaken for the NES emulator NESticle) was born!

This thing is a new level of awesome, seriously. It has the best Sanwa buttons and joystick money can buy, is compatible with the X-Box 360, the Playstation 3, the Playstation 2, and any PC running Windows, Linux, or even a MAC OS! If I wanted, I could also get an adapter that would make it compatible with the original X-Box! Seriously, if that’s all it was it would still be amazing, but it’s built into and out of an actual, honest to God, Nintendo Entertainment System! Go ahead, lie and say you’re not jealous, I dare you!

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