Last Thursday we hosted our first ever Relive the Wizard – A Mario Kart Tournament.

Taking home the coveted trophy, some serious prizing from PKG/Skull Candy and the title of Mario Kart Champion was Offshoot’s own Chris (we-swear-we-didn’t-rig-it) Woodford.

Held at The Baitshop, Offshoot proudly hosted and watched some local businesses, gaming connoisseurs and of course our friends battle it out for the first place.

Players were put into a group of 4 and battled through 3 random races. The top 2 winners proceeded to the next round and the bottom 2 were sadly elminated. After the first round of competition, gamers went in to sudden death rounds in a one race winner-advances and loser- eliminated, until the final two drivers were left.

It was a crazy night, full of upset, defeat, surprises and cheers!!

We can’t take all the credit for producing such a stellar tournament. We had some help from some amazing companies.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Andy Priestman from PKG and Skull Candy. They hooked us up large by providing some amazing prizing for our first, second and third place gamers.

Props to the guys at The Baitshop for letting us use their perfect venue!

Kudos to Michelle Gatien for being our eyes of the event and caputring the moments for us.

Thanks to Vitamin Water for donating some delicious beverages.

Many, many, many thanks to our wonderful MC/Referee of the night Modi Taylor Cline, who encouraged the gaming trash talk and kept our players in line and on the ball.

Finally, a MASSIVE thank you to our Food & Beverage sponsor, the Video Game Developing Program at TriOS College. These guys set up our spectators and our gamers with some delicious and game fuelling treats and drinks.

Here’s a sampling of some photos from the tournament.

Check back soon as we will be posting some more photos and of course stay tuned for your opportunity to sign up for the next Relive A Wizard – A Mario Kart Tournament.

This summer, Neil tossed around the idea of holding a no holds barred ladder match Mario Kart tournament. For what reason? Well, none other than to crown the Mario Kart King or Queen of Toronto! This Thursday December 3rd, we’re excited to announce that, along with our friends at The Bait Shop, we’ll be holding “Relive The Wizard: A Mario Kart Tournament.”

Things get underway at 7pm sharp. If you’d like to attend or enter the contest please RSVP here.

Food and beverages will be provided by the likes of Red Bull and Vitamin Water and Steam Whistle. Our friends at PKG and Skull Candy will be giving away some prizes to the night’s winners. On top of all that, we’ll have some DJ’s spinning throughout the night to entertain guests plus a few other surprises as well.

We hope to see you there!

Been listening to some Silent Majority today. It takes me to a special place when I listen to this band, especially the album Life Of A Spectator.

Here are the lyrics for Popular Opinion:

You got a problem with me personally
So you go and you write about
It in your fanzine
Then someone reads it and she likes it and she puts it in hers
And it grows and it grows and it grows
Do you f*****g know me
Or are you judging by popular opinion
I think you are
Are you judging
This popularity contest
Is nothing less
Than a set up and I’m fed up
With this s**t that your putting through
And I didn’t ask for this
You placed it on my shoulders
And I’ll give it back to you
This status
I didn’t ask for it

If Popular Opinion was written today, this is how it would go:

You got a problem with me personally
So you go and you write about
It in your blog
Then someone reads it and she likes it and she puts it in hers
And it grows and it grows and it grows
Do you f*****g know me
Or are you judging by popular opinion
I think you are
Are you judging
This popularity contest
Is nothing less
Than a set up and I’m fed up
With this s**t that your putting through
And I didn’t ask for this
You placed it on my shoulders
And I’ll give it back to you
This status
I didn’t ask for it

I miss my ‘zines!

Hi Tek has to be one of the greatest producer’s birthed by Hip Hop. Not sure why I’m writing this but I’ve just bumped his last two albums in a row and they are so nasty… I don’t think there is anyone in the game that loves crafting beats more than he does (other than the good Dr., of course).

“Let me see where it started at…”

Cop these!!!

Hi-Teknology
Hi-Teknology 2
Hi-Teknology 3

“Music for life… RIP Dilla”

Packt publishing has just released a new book on the 1.8 release of the Zend Framework. ZF 1.8 was definitely a milestone release and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this book. Much easier than sifting through the ZF documentation. It’ll also be interesting to see Keith Pope’s view of ZF and the examples he uses. It looks like there’s a pretty in depth case study on building a shopping cart with ZF, which will likely be an asset to any web programmer. You can check out the book at Packt Publishing. If you have it or you’ve read it, leave some comments and let me know your thoughts.

Get to work!!!

Toronto’s Zenn Motor Company is stopping production on their innovative electric cars. Instead, the company is switching gears and focusing on what they call the ZENNergy drive train.

This new drive train, that can be installed in the cars of other automakers, would be an EESU-powered drive train. The only missing link to this new product is a U.S. based battery maker, ESStor Inc. that’s developing a new battery to power a car for 400 kms at speeds up to 125 km/h and that will charge within minutes.

According to the Toronto Star, Zenn still has plans to build concept cars but none will be made for commercial availability.

Good bye Zenn…thanks for your hippie chicness, your quiet ride and your push to make environmental friendly cars.

Hello ZENNergy…all the best for infiltrating the oil hungry automakers.

Yesterday was Car Free Day around the world and although it was not highly publicized Toronto did take in on the action! I’m wondering if this explained why there was NO parking spaces at any of the Go Train stations. Check out what some Ryerson University students did to commemorate the day!