This weekend, Random Hacks of Kindness took over the CSI Annex, and developers from all over Toronto came together to work on a number of projects. On Saturday, representatives from different NPOs made proposals to the hall full of hackers. Claire Buré, a researcher at CSI, proposed a mobile app for reporting bike crash data. I ended up hacking on an urban tree mapping web app but during the hackathon everyone floated around a bit to get help and share ideas with fellow hackers, which is how I learned about this new app.

As a bit of a nerdy kid, I always had mixed emotions when I heard that recess would be canceled due to bad weather. Staying inside usually sucked, but it meant I could play pen and paper games with my nerdy friends. This weekend, at Gamercamp, playing and talking about video games and board games was pretty much all anyone did. So recess.to's big Sunday event, full of running around and playing outside was much anticipated. Until it rained. In elementary school, we would have said that recess was canceled. But thank to quick thinking from recess.to's David Fono, we ran around the halls of George Brown College instead.

Leafing through William Dendy's insightful and poignant Lost Toronto, I came across a 10-page section dedicated to the buildings of Toronto Street, the short strand connecting King and Adelaide, west of St James Cathedral. The book reads like a conservation hall of shame, but Dendy pays the most attention to this particular disfigured thoroughfare.

Once home to several great examples of gothic and Second Empire architecture, Toronto Street is now a mishmash of high-rise glass structures, squat stone boxes, and modern marble with the odd national historic site thrown in for good measure. Although it's far from the ugliest of the city's streets, you can't help but wonder what it might have been had things been different.

Money and the value of art have never been more closely tied one another. After finding out that a Jackson Pollock is valueed at $140 million, it i's impossible not to look at the work with this in mind. How can one focus solely on aesthetics when there are so many zeros on the price tag?

Mammalian Diving Reflex held its "Dare Night - to Hell with the Truth" on Friday November 18 at Gallerywest on Queen Street. The concept, a take on "Truth or Dare," the popular teenage game, nixed all truth aspects and went for dares only. Mammalian has been working with teenagers in Parkdale since 1993, and has in fact formed a collective/think tank, the "Torontonians," a group of teenagers who specialize in creating their own participatory one-off performances.

The Toronto Islands have always been my favorite spot to slip away from the city for a few hours. It's just a quick ferry ride, and you're transported to a place that's quite unlike the Toronto most of us experience everyday. In autumn there's no hustle, no bustle here — just one cafe is open and the people are few are far between. It's the perfect spot to work on contemplative photography.