I love Austin Kleon’s Typewriter Interviews (something I wish I’d invented). I especially like his interview with poet Mary Ruefle, which includes: I don’t know where I lie on the aphantasia to hyperphantasia spectrum, but I know for a fact that I’m far to the “a” of my “hyper” p … | Continue reading
From The Rage My Father Gave Me, by Molly Rosen, in New York: First, he started screaming at no one in particular: “What the fuck?!” Then at the receptionist, a scrawny college girl with fried blonde hair: “My daughter has been waiting for two hours, two fucking hours!” His boomi … | Continue reading
Adam Mastroianni’s post So you wanna de-bog yourself is a tour de force of life-unstucking reflection. Like: Waiting for jackpot Sometimes when I’m stuck, someone will be like, “Why don’t you do [reasonable option]?” and I’ll go, “Hold on there, buddy! Don’t you see this option h … | Continue reading
Patrick Rhone posted a lovely recollection on the occasion of his 20th anniversary. In part: But, truth be told, I ended up spending most of the time outside of the play talking to Bethany. She’s just the sort of interesting person with fascinating stories that you never really t … | Continue reading
In the spring of 2020, when I emerged solely responsible for maintenance of the estate, I asked Gary Schneider, from The Macphail Woods Ecological Forestry Project, to come and help me get the lay of the land (among many other interesting activities, Macphail Woods offers landsca … | Continue reading
The provincial government has launched a campaign, You Matter, to raise the profile of thinking about mental health in the public service workplace. The video released to launch the campaign features a variety of public servants, followed by Premier Dennis King, and I especially … | Continue reading
Next week is Transgender Awareness Week: Transgender Awareness Week is a week when transgender people and their allies take action to bring attention to the trans community by educating the public about who transgender people are, sharing stories and experiences, and advancing ad … | Continue reading
Frank reminds us that yesterday was Aaron Swartz Day. Aaron left a comment on one of my posts here, 20 years ago, which made it feel like we were part of the same little corner of the Internet. While we never met, I felt him a kindred spirit, a much more prolific and accomplished … | Continue reading
My Golding Jobber № 8 letterpress came to me modified by it’s previous owners, Bill and Gertie Campbell, so that a small motor drives its flywheel. In the original, the press would have been driven by a belt, or by a foot treadle; the update to an electric motor is a boon to prod … | Continue reading
I voted absentee in the U.S. federal and state elections back in September, casting my vote for Kamala Harris. Given the quirks of U.S. election regulations, I vote at the address where I lived with my parents, as a newborn, in 1966: 863 Post Avenue, Rochester, NY, I house we lef … | Continue reading
I’ve been a digital hobbyist for almost 50 years, from my days fooling around with a TRS-80 Model One (on which I coded a video game, in BASIC, called “Galactic Warrior,” and then parlayed my skills into my first coding job) through to my experiments with everything from energy d … | Continue reading
When I migrated my blog to Drupal 10 back in September, one of the things that got left out was migrating the collection of just over 300 sounds that I’d posted over the years. I sat out to do this today, and they’re back in place here, everything from me at 6 months old to a rem … | Continue reading
I was sad to learn of the death of Ralph Hostetter, in 2019, something that escaped my attention at the time. Ralph was a Maryland newspaper publisher who had a summer place in French River, here on PEI, a piece of bold architecture for the village, an A-frame high on the hill ov … | Continue reading
I had a hankering for a Factory Coffee this afternoon, and seeing that Island Chocolates was open today, I drove out to Victoria. Only to find that Island Chocolates wasn’t open today. I rerouted to Foxy Fox, in nearby Crapaud, and enjoyed a flat white and a peanut butter cup, ov … | Continue reading
From this week’s 10+1 Things, a link to a beautiful infographic of 77 cocktails. For example, here’s a Russian Spring Punch: | Continue reading
Zoë Schlanger, reporting for The Atlantic, on how your black plastic spatula might be made of e-waste: For the past several years, I’ve been telling my friends what I’m going to tell you: Throw out your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the mat … | Continue reading
Annie Mueller writes about the dumbness of getting AI to do dumb stuff, concluding: But what if we spent less time figuring out how to do dumb stuff faster and more time pointing out how dumb the stuff is or finding ways to avoid it altogether. Not always possible, sure. But some … | Continue reading
It’s PSC Awareness Day, Frank reminds us. From his blog marking today (in translation): What is PSC? PSC is a rare disease. There are just over 1,000 cases known in the Netherlands and around 100,000 worldwide. It is a progressive and chronic disease. This means that over time th … | Continue reading
I am a voracious highlighter of RSS feeds and email newsletters in Readwise Reader, an accumulator of songs in my Spotify “Liked Songs,” and a saver of “Watch Later” videos in YouTube, often with the thought that I should, one day, blog about whatever I’m noting. These piles of i … | Continue reading
Pressing Matters magazine first came to my attention last year, through Frab’s Magazines, the wonderful Italian magazine shop. I’d first come across Frab’s last spring, and fell into a deep (and expensive) rabbit hole of magazine ordering; I’m still reading my way through the bac … | Continue reading
The latest of the tests in our strength cycle at Kinetic took place during today’s workout; this time it was the back squat. Where a dead lift — which we tested earlier in the month — is picking up a barbell off the floor, a back squat is holding the barbell on your shoulders, sq … | Continue reading
Until this weekend anchovies were a mythical beast, never encountered, but often referred to in popular culture, frequently preceded by “hold the…”, and certainly something I’d avoid if offered. But then, Thanksgiving. There was a decision to have a Rukavina family lasagna meal o … | Continue reading
One of the casualties of Hurricane Fiona, in 2022, was a plum tree that Catherine and her father planted many years ago. The tree had been a prolific producer of plums for years—I made a tasty apple-plum sauce from its fruit and that of its neighbouring apples back in 2020—but Fi … | Continue reading
“If I could wave a magic wand, and change one thing about your life, what would it be?” These are the types of questions uncles ask, I suppose. At least curious uncles like me. The younger nephew’s response was to be allowed more time for video games, and to not have to go to sch … | Continue reading
William Denton wrote yesterday, in a postscript to a blogpost: No library in Canada had this book, and I got it through interlibrary loan from Rice University in Texas. Resource sharing departments are wonderful. Being the son of a librarian taught me a lot about libraries (and a … | Continue reading
We’re in a six week cycle of strength conditioning at Kinetic, and today’s workout was a build to a single “RPE 10” deadlift (“lift as much as you can while maintaining technique”). I lifted 245 pounds. While not impressive by Olympic standards, nor even by Kinetic standards, by … | Continue reading
I got my haircut yesterday. When Hillary asked “How short do you want it?”, I replied, uncharacteristically, “pretty short,” and then let chips fall where they may. This is as short a haircut as I’ve ever had. I kinda like it. | Continue reading
My daughter, who just turned 24, has been “Olivia” since she came out in May of 2021. Truth be told, she’s been Olivia, in her heart, for a lot longer than that. When Olivia first came out—to my assembled family, on Zoom, without any preamble—I am not proud to say that my first r … | Continue reading
Until earlier this week, I wasn’t really conscious of how often I use the ability of my iPhone to respond automatically to me saying “Hey Siri.” But then, for some unknown reason, it lost this ability, and I found that I really missed it. I did all the usual things: check the Sir … | Continue reading
Manuel Moreale writes about his frustrations with using Ko-Fi as a "micropayments" system to support his work: It honestly sucks that in 2024 there’s not a good way to support creators with small donations. The “one a month” model is great from a human perspective but financially … | Continue reading
Here’s a sketch I made of the house, at 233 5th Avenue in Cochrane, Ontario, where my mother grew up: I loved that house. It started off life as a bottling plant, and was later converted into apartments by my great-grandfather Ed Caswell. I loved the smell of my Grandma Ada’s fur … | Continue reading
Back in 2011, when I purchased the Golding Jobber № 8 from Bill and Gertie Campbell, I spent a morning with Bill, in their shop in Tryon, learning the ins and outs of it. It was, in essence, a very compressed course in running a job shop with a workhorse letterpress at the centre … | Continue reading
Years ago, when I was equipping my first print shop, Alan Preston, then personable owner of Hearts & Flowers, gifted me a used paper cutter, of the type you might remember from public school. I’ve been using it ever since, and it’s served me well: I’ve made tens of thousands of c … | Continue reading
Twelve years ago in this space I wrote about Vance Bridges, in a post about being a member of the Central Farmer's Co-op: I had an up and down relationship with the coop after that: I went to every Annual General meeting and was dismayed by fellow members referring to the coop in … | Continue reading
A year ago last week I started working out at Kinetic Fitness with coach Cayla Jardine-Hunter. As I wrote back in December, after I’d been at it for just three months: Do I love it? Not completely. I keep going, week after week. I haven’t faltered. Some mornings I wake up and thi … | Continue reading
December 2019 was a strange time for us to buy a car. Catherine had been in and out of hospital, and was not doing well (she would die just over a month later), but she was enthusiastic about the idea nonetheless. Perhaps she took some comfort from offering me agency to scratch m … | Continue reading
I have been using Drupal to manage this blog for almost 20 years (my first mention of this was in 2005). Over the years I've managed to drag the site forward from Drupal version to Drupal version, often with considerable hair-pulling involved. The last major upgrade was in May 20 … | Continue reading
I solved a mystery recently, an Icelandic folk mystery. Every time I plug my iPhone into any car other than my own car, Icelandic folk music stars playing. Specifically, the song Á Ferð Til Breiðafjarðar, by Steindór Andersen and Sigur Rós, from the album Soundtrip Iceland starts … | Continue reading
The July edition of our This Box is for Good box was as complete a departure from our June box, in theme, execution, and result, as you can imagine. June was abstract and typographical; July was a rendering of Kinlock Beach. We’re both very happy with the result: it was a complic … | Continue reading
We’re behind on the process of documenting our monthly This Box is for Good boxes, but we’re slowly catching up. A few weeks ago I posted the play-by-play for our June 2024 box. It is one of my favourites, in part because it flowed from a collective river of imagination, in the s … | Continue reading
This morning we woke up at the shore with four teenagers expecting pancakes for breakfast, and no eggs in the pantry. At Lisa’s suggestion I texted our neighbour to see if he might have a few, and he quickly texted back that he’d leave them on his porch for us. A few minutes late … | Continue reading
Almost exactly four years ago this week came the Refrigocalypse. COVID was freshly at our heels, the world’s supply chains had shut down, and my refrigerator, my specifically-sized, hard to find a replacement for at the best of times refrigerator, had stopped working. After tryin … | Continue reading
This morning’s workout of the day at Kinetic was a 25 minute AMRAP (as-many-rounds-as-possible). It was hard: 9 back squats, 12 push-ups, 15 box jumps, 21 sit-ups. Repeat. It took everything I had to do 6 rounds. In the middle of the workout, in the middle of a round of box jumps … | Continue reading
The awards for the 2024 edition of Island Fringe were presented last night, and among them was The Oscar Wilde Award, which I sponsor every year, presented to the show that “most effectively celebrates non-conformity.” This year the jury selected the show So an Autistic Priest an … | Continue reading
We got up early this morning to go for a bicycle ride, before it got too hot. I remembered that the City of Charlottetown had extended the Riverside Drive/Bypass active transportation pathway from Brackley Point Road to Mount Edward Road, and thus the Confederation Trail. This me … | Continue reading
In August of 1990 I drove from my home in Peterborough, Ontario, 3,400 km southwest to El Paso, Texas, to take up a post as a nanny for a few months. We were driving in a convoy: Leslie, mother of my 2 year old charge, an aspiring midwife (El Paso being a hotbed of midwifery educ … | Continue reading
When I was a teenager I purchased, at some expense, a book of plans for Star Trek ships. I likely bought it at Coles in the Burlington Mall. I wasn’t a huge Star Trek fan as a kid. And, if I’m being completely honest, there’s as much chance that I purchased a book of plans for Ba … | Continue reading
It is Sunday morning, and I’m sitting on the sidewalk at the front door of the public library in Morell, using the wifi account I signed up for yesterday. For all intents and purposes it feels like 2005 when I had a favourite wifi-enabled tree in the south of France as my tenuous … | Continue reading