I had a friend who smoked when I was in my twenties. One day she left a cigarette pack at my apartment, and because I was young and was testing boundaries, I grabbed the pack, went out on my balcony and smoked a cigarette. Of course, not being a real smoker, I coughed. I didn’t particularly like the smoking part... so I sucked back on it as fast as I could. As I started to feel the effects, I felt…
This turns out to be almost exactly the one year anniversary of me writing a letter of gratitude to a blogger whose work I really appreciate. The reply I got was roughly “Thank you! A note like this makes my day”. It’s something I absolutely can and should do more of. Recently I sent a note to a small musician when I realized their song had been popping into my head for nearly 15 years. I…
In 2019 I wrote the kinder gentler version of this blog post . You want the happy version? Read that. I still believe in the vast majority of it. But in 2026 — Fuck Energy. I’m so fucking tired of the fucking oil and gas business driving the terminology bus. This rhetorical spin of “Energy” and “Energy Superpower” is a fucking con-job, and I am so done. Energy from oil and gas means burning shit.…
If you still haven’t encountered Angine de Poitrine , do yourself a favour and take a few minutes to watch the first 3 minutes of this. If you’re intrigued, just let me tell you it just keeps getting better.
This video was a fascinating watch. The thing I loved most about it is the way it felt like an artifact from a parallel universe, one where instead of the LED we got micro-fluidics.
This is mostly a blog post for my own reference. I wanted to revisit the prompts I used to test out DALL-E in January 2023 against the new OpenAI image model . The Tree “ A painting of single poplar tree in fall with leaves falling, lit just before golden hour, that evokes feelings of nostalgia and warmth .” 2023 2026 The Farmer “A fine art painting of a farmer holding a microprocessor" 2023 2026…
For the last 8 months or so I’ve taken up bouldering; the indoor climbing-sans-rope sport. It’s been a really interesting journey. So far it has been one of my favourite forms of exercise. There’s a whole bunch of things which factor into my interest in bouldering: There’s a ton of variety and novelty. One of the challenges I had with doing strength training at a gym was... well, a deadlift is a…
Reasons to go see Project Hail Mary A faithful adaption of a well loved book. Don’t want to see a movie? read the book More excellent comedy work from Ryan Gosling Good Sci Fi results might beget more good sci fi movies? We can hope.
About a month ago I got my ZSA Navigator , and have been using it every work day since, so I thought I would leave some semi-structured thoughts at this point. First and foremost I should say: It took me at least two and a half weeks of puttering around before I was remotely happy. There’s a few things that I did right, and a few things that aren’t yet supported which would have sped that up, but…
Hyperlinks are important. It drives me nuts that many journalism outlets disagree. I see it all the time in The Globe and Mail , the New York Times and others. Here’s a perfect worked example of why they are important. The Economist writes about how college students can’t read . They talk about a study where students have trouble reading Dickens. Well. Except it turns out that’s not the whole…
I’ve recently finished reading the cozy fantasy novel Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea . While the weather was too hot to feel warmed by it, I nevertheless enjoyed it. I love me a story with Characters who talk through problems. In fact, my least favourite narrative tropes are where the problems are created by two people, ostensibly who care for eachother, but cannot have even the simplest…
I just finished Nana Visitor’s book. What a fascinating read. Looking at Star Trek from a woman’s perspective, both Visitor’s, and the many women she interviewed. It’s a book I actually wish was about five times thicker: you can feel the hours of interview that -didn’t- make the pages. I would have loved to hear more from many of the women she talked to. It’s a hopeful book, though I did learn…
I’m in a bit of a summer lull with guitar. Bad : I’ve totally fallen off my discipline, and haven’t accomplished even one thing on my summer goals list Good : I’ve been having fun . Playing riffs with totally incoherent tones, and having a blast — Lemme tell you, there’s a punk cover of Cissy Strut waiting to happen I’m sure. I’m sure I’ll find my discipline again. But maybe I’ll go dig my loop…
I really hate the term prosperity — no one means the same thing when they say it, and a heck of a lot of people think it means “I’m gonna be a {million,billion,trillion}aire”. Maybe it’s time for a new definition of prosperity: The ability find friends, make friends, see friends. Time to enjoy the changing of the seasons. The time and money required to have a hobby, or three. Time with your kids;…
Just sent this letter to the ministers of the environment for Canada and Alberta, as well to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. Honourable Ministers, The momentous rise of AI has many people wanting to build data centres. While I personally am skeptical of the long term impact in terms of jobs, even if you take claims at face value it is incredibly important that we…
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It’s become exhausting how many different ways I have to remember to make a link in editors: Select text, ⌘-K, paste link Select text, paste link over top Type [markdown](link syntax) ... Of course, these are all mutually independent, so half the time I try one, hit ⌘-Z, then try again. Anyhow. Gripe.
After about 11 months or so of poking at Duolingo, a few weeks ago, I finally finished their Finnish course. So now I blog, as is my tradition. I originally started in anticipation of a trip to Helsinki last year , and then I continued on my return because frankly, I was having fun stretching my brain in a new direction. Something that I have learned about myself is that I enjoy challenging…
Lost to the ether of the internet, and bad decision making at Mozilla, is a toot I made in August of last year. My local archive has a copy though: Nobody: Nobody: Nobody: Nobody: Me: … maybe I should read Arrian So yeah. I read Arrian. Or more specifically, the Anabasis of Alexander . Arrian seemed like a good choice. After having read Herodotus , Thucydides and Xenophon’s Hellenika the next…
I was shocked to discover last week that Noah Gibbs had passed away . Memories are being collected for his family here . I thought I would share mine here as well. “ My recollection of Noah is of a kind generous man who contributed tirelessly to the things he believed in. I first encountered Noah after I gave a conference talk calling for better benchmarks in the Ruby community. At the time I was…