What’s better than 150 Extra Engineers? This blog post! (What I find interesting in tech, June, 2026 edition)

Ok, technically the IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch was better than 150 extra engineers. I can’t provide you with one of those, but I can provide you with this list of links on what I find interesting in tech lately (besides AI, which I have posted on separately since it is a big topic in itself).

Hardware

Software:

Raspberry Pi :

Miscellany:

(Credit for the top image: File:IBM 150 Extra Engineers 1951.jpg – Wikimedia Commons)

AI: what people are doing and what people are saying (June, 2026)


When it comes to AI, there are 1) lots of people doing practical things with AI and 2) lots of people writing about AI. They rarely overlap. 🙂 

But overlap they do in this post! For those of you not doing practical things with AI, skip to the second section.

1) Here’s a bunch of links for people who are doing practical things with AI:

2) Here’s a bunch of links for people who like to read about AI:

How to be an artist, how to do art, and what art can do for you

 

As a frustrated artist, I not only gather links about artists, but I also gather links about art. Here are just some of the ones I’ve picked up recently:

If you want to be an artist, it might be good to ask established artists what their thoughts are. Artsy.net did a series on this, and I put together a list of just some of them:

Also helpful, swissmiss has a good piece to help you determine the type of artist you are / want to be:Artist vs Creator

If you decide you want to be a painter, here’s some things to get you started. Sometimes all you need to do is to start. (These are taken from the book Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 More Small Paintings: Pick Up the Skills, Put on the Paint, Hang Up Your Art. I recommend it and Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings: Pick up the skills * Put on the paint * Hang up your art):

Maybe collage is your thing. If so, check out:

I am a big fan of trois crayons drawings, so I liked this: Chalk it up to three colors: bring together color, form and design by using the trois-crayons technique–traditionally only red, black and white chalk

I’m also a fan of zines, so I thought this was good: Gen Zine: DIY publications find new life as a form of resistance against Trump | US news | The Guardian

Conceptual art isn’t for everyone, though it is for me. Perhaps you might want to consider that route: Conceptual Art 101: A Beginner’s Guide | DailyArt Magazine – www.dailyartmagazine.com

Finally, kintsugi is more than just a way of repairing things. To see what I mean, check this out: Trevor Noah Explains How Kintsugi, the Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery, Helped Him Overcome Life’s Tragedies | Open Culture – www.openculture.com

From the todo lists of Haring to the cutouts of Matisse as well as some stairwell drawings by Byrne (the arts on Wednesday, June 2026 edition)

Here’s the latest edition of #theartsonwednesday, a mini-newsletter within my blog highlighting recent stories on visual artists new and old that I’ve found interesting:

 

On the ubiquity of Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney is everywhere, it seems. He played 2 big shows in LA in March. He was at the recent closing of The Late Show with Steven Colbert. Not only was he a big part of the 50th anniversary celebration of SNL, but he closed out the 51st season. Now he has a new album coming out, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane”, so he’s on every platform promoting that, including The New York Times and The Guardian.

When he’s not performing current work, he’s plugging away at the past. We recently saw the release of “Man on the Run”, a documentary of his days in his band, Wings. (Trailer here, reviews here by the Guardian and the New York Times). And then there is his photo exhibit, “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm” at the AGO.

He’s in his 80s. He’s not the singer he was in the 60s — see points 13 and 14 here to see what I mean — but he still puts on a good show. He still looks healthy and fit. Hopefully he will be with us for some time to come. Lord knows he is not lacking for opportunities to perform.

P.S. For more on McCartney in Wings, check out this (Wings by Paul McCartney review – a brilliant story of post-Beatles revival | Paul McCartney | The Guardian)  and  this (Paul McCartney: where to start in his solo back catalogue | Music | The Guardian).
Here are some odd and ends in terms of links I found which I am including in this post, to stick in my back pocket so to speak: ‘The Beatles Anthology’ Gets a New Ending: Director Oliver Murray on How Episode 9 Finally Put a Sweeter Cap on the Group’s Historic Docuseries, plus was Denny Laine ever properly paid (I think so) and also I thought this piece on his 3 hour show in Hamilton last year was good.
Lastly, I’ve written quite a bit on Paul McCartney. You can find it, here.

Back to Dirac (What I find interesting in math and science, May 2026)

 

I am not doing as much study in the area of math and science lately and haven’t written on the topic since last May, but I still found time to note these pieces and wanted to share them. A typical smattering of astronomy, physics, math, biology, what have you….

 

 

On developing a habit of writing politicians

Over the years I’ve developed a habit of writing politicians. I shared this habit with my friend Norbert and I after that chat I decided to share it here in case you want to develop a similar habit.

If you want to write politicians like me, you need to know how to contact those pols that mean the most to you. For me those three are the mayor, the premier of the province and the prime minister. The mayor is reachable by email so I have that address handy. The other two are reachable via a web form, so I have that info in hand also.

I have a template that I use for letters I write to each of them. When I want to write them about an issue, I pull up the template and fill it in. I usually say what the issue is, then what I would like them to do about the issue. Then I send it.

That’s it! It’s a two step process. Very quick. Occasionally I will follow up, but the purpose is really to register my voice. I don’t expect anything other than a canned response. Only one politician’s team, Mayor John Tory, ever made an effort to respond in a more personal manner.

While I do write about issues, I will also write politicians of all sorts and compliment them if they do something I approve of. Typically these will be constructive actions and often ones where politicians are working together.

I write politicians in a style I use for anyone who works for me, because they do. I don’t insult them or get angry with them: I find that never works when it comes to influencing someone I want to change.

Ideally I would write at least one politician a week but it’s more the case I write one a month.

I hope you can take up this habit. It makes me feel like I am doing something small but important in our democracy. Just like voting is small but also important. Good luck with it.

What are the best novels of all time? What about the best Shakespeare plays?

What are the best novels of all time? What about the best Shakespeare plays? And what do these two lists have in common?

What they have in common is that The Guardian has taken a crack at both of them:

This is smart in a few ways. One, there is nothing that gets people going than someone saying: these are the best. No doubt there will be many people checking them out (and driving traffic to the Guardian web site) just to see if they agree or disagree. Two, it’s really good thoughtful that the contributors have made to come up with such lists.

I grew up with The Book of Lists, so I am always interested in a good list. If you’re similar, or simply a fan of the Bard of a great novel, then check them out.

Restaurants loved and lost: Libertine in New York City, Rodney Scott’s in Charleston

The minute I read this review by Pete Wells, I knew I had to go Libertine. I love a French bistro generally, and this one sounded especially good. On the night we went, everything about it was ideal. We snagged a lovely table near a window and had a waiter that bent over backwards to make sure we had a memorable evening. The food, from the appetizer (oeuf mayonnaise) to the mains (that sausage and potato dish) to the a dessert (a massive chocolate mousse), was delicious. As soon as we were home for the evening, I was already dreaming about when I could go again.

Sadly those dreams are done, for Libertine is closing this month. The same people own the space and plan to turn it into something else which will no doubt be great. But I would have liked another chance to eat at that fine New York City bistro.

Another place I had hoped to return to some day was Rodney Scott’s in Charleston. It too was a place that I heard of through someone famous (Anthony Bourdain) and I had a chance to dine there once at it’s location on King Street. I filled a plate with lots of food that Scott was known for, from the BBQ meats to the tasty sides. Alas there are almost too many great places to dine in Charleston and I never did go again, and now I never will.

I look forward to finding out what goes next in the space where Libertine was. And I hope Rodney Scott can make a comeback.

P.S. For more on Libertine closing, see this. For more on Rodney Scott’s closing, see this.

 

How to set up a blog that’s just a simple html page

I wanted to go back to the very beginning of blogging, where someone’s blog could consist of just a simple html page with maybe some images to go along with it. But I also wanted to have an easy way to update it. I’ve succeeded in doing just that, with the result visible here: https://berniemichalik.com/simpleblog.html

If you think this is something you want to do, head over to here and check out what I say in that repository. It’s a pretty basic setup. There’s even advice how to host it in a bucket on Amazon, which is what I do.

Let me know if you have any feedback, especially if you think things aren’t clear. Thanks!

On AI generated code and the DevOps Lifecycle

 

It’s an exciting time to be a software developer.  Exciting and weird.

It’s exciting because of what developers are capable of doing with agentic AI tools from companies like Anthropic. It’s weird because as Clive Thompson writes: “In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming”. Yet while programmers may be barely programming, they are still producing code.

Indeed, not only are they producing code, they are producing A LOT of it. Take this example in this other piece by Mike Isaac and Erin Griffith:

When a financial services company recently began using Cursor, an artificial intelligence technology that writes computer code, the difference that it made was immediate.

The company went from producing 25,000 lines of code a month to 250,000 lines. That created a backlog of one million lines of code that needed to be reviewed, said Joni Klippert, a co-founder and the chief executive of StackHawk, a security start-up that was working with the financial services firm.

And it’s not limited to senior programmers. As Isaac and Griffith write:

“The blessing and the curse is that now everyone inside your company becomes a coder,” said Michele Catasta, the president and head of A.I. at Replit, an A.I. coding start-up in Foster City, Calif.”

It all sounds great: who wouldn’t want such a productivity gain? Alas, there’s a problem. Isaac and Griffith add:

““The sheer amount of code being delivered, and the increase in vulnerabilities, is something they can’t keep up with,” she said. And as software development moved faster, that forced sales, marketing, customer support and other departments to pick up the pace, Ms. Klippert added, creating “a lot of stress.”

A lot of code means a lot of stress. Not just for sales, marketing and customer support teams, either. I suspect it’s also causing plenty of stress for testing, operations and application support teams in organization that rely on a DevOps lifecycle for software development.

To deal with such stress, any organization that adopts AI technology to write code and also uses DevOps needs to consider their entire software development lifecycle in light of such code.  AI generated code, no matter how fast it is coded, will have limited value if it’s not reviewed and tested properly. It will have limited value if it is not written in a way that it can be supported by applications and operations. Not to mention it will be hard for others to fix and enhance it later if it is not built and deployed using agreed upon processes by the organization.

To avoid creating unsupportable code with problems that will accelerate technical debt, developers of all levels need to know more about their code than “it works on their machine”. If such developers expect others within their organization to use their code, they must write code that doesn’t impact their organization’s DevOps lifecycle. They must take the time to write AI generated code that is supportable. That additional effort by people generating the new AI code is essential if organizations are going to survive the code tsunami that is coming.

The good news, I think, is that everyone that participates in the DevOps lifecycle will be able to devise ways to support AI developers such that their code will fit in nicely.  After all, as this piece by IBM on the DevOps lifecycle explains: “The DevOps process describes how software moves from ideation, through production and feedback, and back to ideation, with development and operations teams working as a single, collaborative unit.” Organizations need the new AI supported developers working with others as a single collaborative unit to succeed. If they do, the new productivity will go from something that causes stress to something that causes success.

(The opinions expressed above are mine only and not necessarily those of my employer.)

Microchanges: or how to get unstuck when you are stuck with the 10 minutes a day principle

I was feeling stuck lately. I thought I needed some goal or purpose to get me going again. But what?

Lately when I’ve been stuck with personal challenges I’ve been turning to my own personal AI (i.e., Ollama running the LLM gpt-oss-120b), for advice. I asked the software: What are 3-5 goals I could set for the month that other people have found worthwhile and that could help me gain momentum to set and achieve other goals?

I got back the following:

Below are five monthly goal ideas that many people swear by because they’re concrete, doable in a single month, and give you a quick win that fuels the next big project. Pick one (or a mix) that feels most relevant to you and turn each into a SMART target (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time‑bound).

# Goal Why It Works How to Structure It
1 Daily “micro‑habit” – e.g., 10‑minute meditation, 5‑minute journaling, or 30‑sec body‑weight routine Small, consistent action builds a rhythm. Once the habit feels automatic, it’s easier to layer more complex goals on top. Specific: “Meditate at 7:00 a.m. every weekday.”
Measurable: Track days on a habit‑tracker app.
Reward: After 21 consecutive days, treat yourself to something you enjoy.
2 30‑Day “Read a Page a Day” challenge Reading a page a day adds up to ~30 pages a month – enough to finish a short book or digest a chapter of a non‑fiction title. It keeps your mind curious and gives you a tangible end‑product. Specific: “Read 20 pages of Book X each day.”
Accountable: Post your page count on a public calendar or share a weekly summary on social media.
3 Declutter One Area per Week Cleaning a single spot (desk, closet, email inbox) gives an instant sense of order and control, motivating you to tackle the next spot. Specific: “Sort the top shelf of my bookshelf every Sunday.”
Measurable: Log each area with before/after photos.
Result: After 4 weeks you’ll have a noticeably tidier environment.
4 Save/Track a Small Amount of Money A financial win, even a modest one, builds a habit of budgeting and shows that you’re moving toward a bigger financial goal. Specific: “Set aside $25 each week into a savings account.”
Track: Use a budgeting app to see the cumulative total at month‑end.
Celebrate: Use the savings for a fun treat or a future investment.
5 One New Skill Minute a Day Dedicating just 15 minutes daily to a new skill (language, guitar, coding) creates incremental progress that feels fast and keeps you engaged. Specific: “Learn 5 new Spanish words every morning.”
Measure: Keep a vocabulary list; test yourself weekly.
Progress: At month‑end you’ll have a solid foundation to expand.

Quick Tips to Keep Momentum

  1. Track it visually – a wall calendar, habit‑tracking app, or a simple check‑box list. Seeing your streak grow is a powerful motivator.
  2. Start with the first week – often the hardest part is just getting started. Commit to “just 1 minute” or “just one page” to overcome the inertia.
  3. Set micro‑rewards – a favorite coffee after week 2, a new playlist after week 4, etc. Rewards reinforce the positive loop.
  4. Reflect weekly – spend 5 minutes reviewing what worked and what didn’t. Adjust the goal slightly if it’s too easy or too hard.
  5. Share your goal – tell a friend, post on social media, or join a community. External accountability can keep you honest.

Pick a goal that feels both meaningful and achievable for this month. Once you finish it, you’ll have a proven “win” to celebrate, and that confidence will make launching your next big goal a lot easier. Happy goal‑setting!

Wow. That was an actual helpful list. I’ve adopted all five just to see how I can do.

  1. Microhabit: 5 minutes of kettlebell exercises and squats
  2. 10 minutes of reading a day
  3. 10 minutes of declutter a day (vs a week)
  4. 5-10 minutes of financial tracking
  5. 10 minutes of drawing / art practice

What I’m noticing at first:

  • The short time periods allocated for each one makes it hard for me to skip it, so I haven’t been, even on days I am tired or busy.
  • Even short periods of activity add up. I can do much more exercise than I could at first. My reading is making progress.
  • The friction that prevented me from doing things have decreased.
  • I use a physical log book to keep track. This helps reinforce the sense of making progress.
  • It’s better to do things poorly to keep the momentum then to get hung up on poor results for a given day.
  • I was getting bored going into the third week.
  • Cumulative results were good.
  • Switch things up to keep the momentum going.

What I observed towards the end:

  • I was getting stronger but levelling off.
  • Reading is easy to be consistent and if anything I tend to have periods where I read longer (e.g. if the book I am reading is engaging)
  • Some things make me want to go deeper: example on finances.
  • The drawing is more scattered. It is more creative, less rote, unlike the weights or even reading.
  • I wanted to expand this to 6 or 7 microhabits a day but I was running out of time.
  • It was easy to stick to the microhabits when my schedule was light: it got harder when I got busy. No doubt that would be less so if I took on 2 or 3 instead of 5.
  • Doing multiple things made me stick to things more than doing one thing would have.
  • Eventually I want to making things a project. For example, on my decluttering of my room, that took a long time. A complex mix of things there. In places like the kitchen and other spaces, less sentimental items, so easier to declutter.

I stopped doing this once I took a break and went on vacation. It was rewarding, though. And it helped jump start me into doing things I was not. I highly recommend it.

P.S. For more on the importance of doing things 10 minutes a day, read this.

(Image from Valeriia Miller)

If you had to buy only one ebook…

If you had to buy only one ebook, I would recommend this one: 50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die. Coming in at just over forty thousand pages, it has the following:

  1. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
  2. Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
  3. Austen, Jane: Emma
  4. Balzac, Honoré de: Father Goriot
  5. Barbusse, Henri: The Inferno
  6. Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  7. Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
  8. Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
  9. Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
  10. Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
  11. Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  12. Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
  13. Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
  14. Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
  15. Cleland, John: Fanny Hill
  16. Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
  17. Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
  18. Conrad, Joseph: Nostromo
  19. Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
  20. Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage
  21. Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room
  22. Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
  23. Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
  24. Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
  25. Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
  26. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
  27. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
  28. Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Hound of the Baskervilles
  29. Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
  30. Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
  31. Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
  32. Eliot, George: Middlemarch
  33. Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
  34. Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
  35. Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education
  36. Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier
  37. Forster, E. M.: A Room With a View
  38. Forster, E. M.: Howards End
  39. Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
  40. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: The Sorrows of Young Werther
  41. Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls
  42. Gorky, Maxim: The Mother
  43. Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mines
  44. Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  45. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
  46. Homer: The Odyssey
  47. Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  48. Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
  49. Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow
  50. James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady

And it’s not just for Apple ebook readers: there’s a Kindle version too.

Best of all, it costs less than three bucks!

A few thoughts on Palantir as dangerous uncool jokers

Barbara Kruger once slammed some as “a ridiculous clusterfuck of uncool jokers”. I think of that phrase often, and I thought to apply it again when I read about Palantir’s manifesto on a recent thread on X. It’s easy to dismiss it as “the ramblings of a supervillian”, but I think there is something more to it. Reading it, I thought I saw  references to ideas like those espoused by Nazi thinker Carl Schmitt, among others. I mean, Palantir wouldn’t be the first on the American right to do that.

As an experiment, I asked ChatGPT what German writings from the first half of the 20th century this resembles. It came back with this:

 

That was a good summary of the manifesto. Reading more on Spengler, Jünger and of course Schmitt confirmed that. The Palantir manifesto might not be a Nazi document, but it is aligned with writings of pre-1933 radical conservative thought, much of that which went on to influence Nazi Germany. To me the manifesto shows how dangerous Palantir is at its core.

Now I get it: for some of you, it’s hard to take these jokers at Palantir seriously. I mean:

 

Not to mention things like the fact that they are taking the time to design their own…chore coat, or that Palantir associate Peter Thiel is saying such crazy things that the Catholic church is mulling burning him at the stake.

So yeah, while they may be a bunch of uncool jokers, as far as jokers go, they are far from harmless. Being a joker and being dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive.

 

On thinking about the U.S. national debt exceeding 100% of the GDP (gross domestic product). Again.

Every so often the debt of a country becomes a political issue and writers start cranking out pieces like this in the Wall Street Journal about how:

“The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II.”

There’s some interesting choices of words in there, like “once-unthinkable” and “breaking the record”, phrases that seem to indicate danger.

If you feel nervous about the debt, here’s some things to consider. First, remember that personal debt and national debt don’t work the same way. Second, it’s important to take a longer term view when considering national debt.

A good example of a long term view is this chart of the U.K. government debt as a percentage of GDP. You can see the debt to GDP ration rose substantially above 100% at two major events in British history: the battles with France in the 19th century and the battles with Germany in the 20th century. Indeed, the ratio rose as high as 250% in the 20th century, only to subside to below 50% in the postwar era.

This is not to say that the ratio does not matter. It is to say that there is nothing magical about breaking the 100% ratio. The ratio could go higher. Chances are it will eventually go lower if for reasons of inflation if nothing else.

Writers — usually right wing writers — start bringing up the debt when left wing governments are in power. It’s a way for them to frighten people and pressure the government into spending less. (Such writers rarely bring up debt, especially for things like military expenditures, when the government is right wing.) Don’t be frightened. Governments have an obligation to tax and spend responsibility. They should not be basing their spending on this ratio.

(Image is from here.)

On running GPT-OSS-20B on my Macbook Pro

I’m been running gpt-oss-20b on my Macbook Pro for some time now. I typically run different LLMs on my Macbook using ollama as the basis for this. While I’ve tried various models, this model from OpenAI is the one I found that gave me the best answers to the questions I’ve been giving it. I even prefer the answers I get with gpt-oss-20b on my Mac over those I get from larger SaaS models provided by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

I’ve found it very good when it comes to asking it questions concerning lifestyle changes. For instance, I asked it for:

  • ideas on how to celebrate a big birthday
  • a 12 month plan to do Swedish death cleaning on my house
  • a 12 month plan to get my estate in order
  • a 12 month plan to get back in shape after a long layoff

I’ve found it not very good at all with questions around food and music:

  • coming up with music playlists based on certain criteria (over a third of the songs were hallucinations!)
  • coming up with spice mixes for cooking meats (the proportions were way off compared to tested recipes)

Like all LLMs, I found it works well as a means to generate ideas. It works ok or poorly when you start expecting exactitude in the answers. YMMV.

Other things I like about gpt-oss-20b running on ollama on my Macbook:

  • I can see it go through it’s reasoning when it comes up with the answer, which is a nice feature.
  • For some reason the default output format is one to my liking, and I can easily move it into Microsoft Word or Apple Pages for further formatting
  • I especially like it because I can ask personal questions and not have those being captured by a service in the cloud. It provides an extra layer of privacy.

I am running gpt-oss-20b and not gpt-oss-120b due to the capacity of my Macbook Pro. Indeed, even gpt-oss-20b takes up a fair amount of resources on my Macbook, despite it having a GPU to do the heavy lifting. I am not in a rush for these answers though, so it is fine. I’d run 120b if I could, but I have been happy with the response with 20b.

If you have a machine with a GPU and enough RAM and disk space, consider downloading ollama and this model and give it a go. Let me know what you discover!

 

On turning a certain age and how to approach it

I turned a certain age today. While I have been happy or at least ok with turning most ages, this one has been challenging. Perhaps because it has greater significance than most birthdays, in terms of how your life changes. Perhaps because it nails home the fact that I am old, regardless of how I might try and turn a blind eye to that or couch it with modifiers.

Like all my birthdays, I am taking the day off. Indeed, thanks to L, I took an especially long weekend and went to Montreal for a great visit. Tomorrow I will start the new year. But how to start into such a year?

I think I am going to enter this new age by constantly asking the question: does this enlarge me or diminish me? So, do that exercise, practice that skill, maintain what is important to you while giving up on activities that take away your time, your resources, your joy. Whatever helps my life expand — in a good way — will be the path I will head towards, as best as I can.

P.S. I first came across this advice from this post by Austin Kleon, who took it from a larger list of wise ideas from Oliver Burkeman.

On the book, “How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis

As someone who struggles with keeping a clean house, I was drawn to the book, “How to Keep House While Drowning – A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing” by KC Davis.

Some points in it that struck me:

  • laziness is likely not the reason you are not cleaning your house…indeed laziness may not even exist. Laziness may mask fatigue, anxiety, depression, and a sense of being overwhelmed, conflicting priorities, and much more
  • you don’t exist to serve your space: your space exists to serve you
  • care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at caring for your space has zero bearing on whether or not you are a good or bad person
  • The five things tidying method: there are five things in any room 1) trash 2) dishes 3) laundry 4) things that have a place and are not in their place 5) things that do not have a place
  • You don’t have chores, you have care tasks. Care tasks are functional.
  • Don’t thinking of cleaning, which is endless, but think of resetting the space, which is not.
  • Care tasks have three layers: health and safety, comfort, happiness.
  • You can’t save the rainforest if you are depressed.

The last point is an important one. This book examines our mental states that make it difficult to deal with the care of our space and provides guidance for dealing with such states. I know for some people, caring for your home is easy, a joy even. (I’m looking at the CleanTok people when I say this.) But for others like me, their current mental states make cleaning it difficult. This books helps us with those mental states and helps us deal with them such that you can have a cleaner home.

I got a tremendous amount of value from this book. So much so I am going to order it and put it on my shelf of self help books that made a big impact on me. I’ve reread it a few times now and I expect to do more of it over the following months. If you have a chance to read it, I highly recommend it.

P.S. I do not recommend CleanTok or “cleanfluencers”: they are the opposite of the ideas expressed in this book. They take care tasks well beyond the three layers into a four layer of mania.

Will middle management survive AI? Jack Dorsey says no. Let’s consider some history

Jack Dorsey, a rich man who many mistake for a smart man, wants to use A.I. to help eliminate middle management. According to this article:

Jack Dorsey wants all 6,000 Block employees to report directly to him — with zero management layers — using AI to replace the coordination and oversight work that middle managers have historically done.

Block already cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce — in February 2026, shrinking the company from roughly 10,000 to 6,000 employees. Dorsey says most other companies will follow the same path within a year.

Wow. Sounds impressive. You can read the article to see how he plans to do it, but it sounds like a bunch of hand waving to me, amounting to not much of anything.

People have been talking about how computers would eliminate middle management since the 1950s. Indeed, as you can see in this PC Mag piece from 1984, the belief that middle management could be eliminated resurfaced with the surge of personal computers coming to organizations. And yet organizations, including IT organizations, continue to have multiple layers of management despite the omnipresence of personal computers.

So no, I don’t believe AI will allow Jack Dorsey or any CEO to eliminate middle management completely, any more than AI will eliminate bullshit jobs. It didn’t happen in the 1980s and it won’t happen in the 2020s.

P.S. I think Dorsey used AI — AI washing — to cover for the bad management decisions that led up to the 4000 job cuts. The Guardian mentions: ‘overstuffed teams outside of the “bitcoin hardware team” and the company’s “bloated headcount era”, which began in 2020, fueled by nearly nonexistent interest rates in the US’. Dorsey denied this, but I’m inclined to believe Jason Karsh who used to work there. Dorsey has a talent for being in the right place at the right time and spouting ideas that make him look like a leader, but both his decisions at Block and his poor leadership at Twitter makes me say one should never look to him for ideas on how to run an organization.

How to become an expert in your own way by adopting the Wirecutter way and Amy Stewart’s way

You may not know it, but you are an expert. So am I. So are most people you meet.

I was thinking about this when I was reading this piece by Amy Stewart on The Self Appointed Expert. I especially liked her templated approach:

And this is exactly the template for becoming an expert in anything:

  • Do the thing
  • Read about the thing
  • Take classes about the thing
  • Talk to people / hang out with people who know about the thing
  • Be a member of the organizations that promote the thing
  • Go to the events / conventions / festivals etc about the thing
  • Write or draw or photograph or record the thing
  • Repeat

I think this is an excellent template. I would add that this likely won’t make you THE expert on a topic, but it will make you AN expert on a topic. Likewise, you don’t have to be an expert on something on a large scale: you can have a narrow range of expertise but you are still an expert.

If you are communicating with others about a topic in your area of expertise, I would go recommend you use an approach some of the writers at The Wirecutter use. At the end of some of their assessments they will have:

  • Why you should trust us. In this section, they will outline how they did their research and anything else they did to become and expert or demonstrate expertise.
  • How we picked. Here they show the qualities they looked for in picking the best item.
  • How we tested. Basically how they made sure the items being reviewed had these qualities.

Even if you don’t agree with their picks, it may be because you value certain qualities different than they do. And if you can’t do that, perhaps you have opinions on a topic but you aren’t necessarily an expert.

It’s good to be an expert in things, even if it is for something arcane. Even if someone stops you and asks for directions, they are assuming you have enough expertise of the area to tell them where to go.

Go check out Amy’s piece for more advice. For an example of how the Wirecutter reviews things, go here.

Free or a small fee: Libby and Bookbub help make reading easier for me again

My reading has really dropped off since the pandemic. Perhaps that has happened to you as well. I’ve tried various ways to read more, but two things I’ve recently adopted that have helped me read more are the Libby app and the Bookbub site.

The Libby app in conjunction with a library card from the Toronto Public Library gives me access to thousands of ebooks for free. Not to mention audiobooks, magazines and more. That wide access combined with the easy of use features of the app means I am more likely to find something I want to read and then read it once I find it. I now enjoy going to the library again, even if the library comes through my iPad. (You can use Libby on your phone and even through your web browser, but I find the experience through my iPad is the best of them all.)

While Libby provides a massive amount of things to read, there are still times when I want something they don’t have. That’s where Bookbub comes in. I’ve subscribed to Bookbub’s service and several times a week it emails me a list of low cost ebooks to sample and then purchase. When you sign up, you tell it the subject areas you are interested in and then it proceeds to send you emails with a list of books you might like. I’ve already bought several which I then read using the Apple Books app. It also provides access to books for Google Books, the Kindle, and the Kobo, if you are not an Apple user.

For more on the Libby app, go here or here. For more on Bookbub, go here.

Happy reading!

My Top 20 tools: iPhone apps edition (2026)

Previously I wrote about my top 10 desktop tools. Here’s what I would say are the top 20 tools (apps) I use on my iPhone. I use far more apps than I do desktop tools these days. I suspect others are like that too.

  1. NYTimes: Every day I wake up and check the news. And while I might use apps for CBC News, the BBC, or The Star (Toronto news), the NYTimes is the one I depend on. Besides its great content, I believe it is the one of the best apps out there.
  2. Instagram and Bluesky: besides the news, these are the two social media sites I check when I wake up now. I gave up Facebook ages ago. Twitter died to me when Musk took over. And Threads I lost interest in. But Instagram allows me to keep up with what my friends and favorites are up to, and Bluesky lets me track the news in a different way. Also I use Bluesky as a logging journal in a way. Often when I don’t know what to blog about, I’ll use my posts on Bluesky as inspiration.
  3. Slack: another app I check first thing. It’s indispensable for work communication, especially when I am on the go. Email still lives, but Slack has taken over much of its functionality I find.
  4. Simplenote and Joplin: I mainly create and update notes using these two tools on my desktop and limit my use of the apps for reading only, but occasionally I will take notes on my phone.
  5. Workflowy: what is true for Simplenote and Joplin is also true for Workflowy. I refer to it often on my phone. In addition, when I am doing my todo list in the Workflowy app, I will cross off todos there.
  6. Google Drive: this app gets me the information I need that isn’t in the note taking apps like Simplenote. I hit it up frequently throughout the week.
  7. Jetpack: each day I like to check on how this blog is doing and Jetpack is the app that lets me do that. I can also use it to do an occasional post on this or other WordPress blogs I have, or approve people’s comments on a post.
  8. Airline Apps: if I am flying somewhere, airline apps are a must. They just make travel easier, from providing my itinerary, to guiding me through the airport, to alerting me when it is time to board. Travelling without airline apps would be that much harder without the apps.
  9. Fitbit and Wyze: if you have scales from these two companies as I have, then the apps that go with the scale are a must. Same is true for other devices that they make, like the Fitbit fitness trackers.
  10. Habit List: a great app to track your habits. It’s simple to use but it provides many good features. Recommended.
  11. TOwaste: it’s easy to lose track of what goes on the curb when. This app helps me with that. (Yes I do have many tracking apps! Maybe too many!)
  12. Spotify: Spotify is my radio. What can I say? I like music and Spotify is my source of music these days, even though I have a ton of CDs around the house.
  13. Libby: one of my favorite apps. I still read physical books, but I do much of my reading of library books using Libby. I especially love reading magazines with Libby on my iPad. It is fantastic for that.
  14. Instacart: I joke that Instacart is my favorite app. I really use it many times a week. I use it when I can’t sleep. I get it to help me find the best deals on groceries. I use it to find rare products. I should write a separate post on just all the ways I use it. It’s the best.
  15. Hue: my own personal light switch. I have around a dozen Hue devices from Philips in my house and the Hue app controls them all. It’s excellent.
  16. Scotiabank: my banking app. I can’t say if there are better banking apps. I will say I use it daily.
  17. Feedly: there are other ways of keeping track of other people’s blogs and RSS feeds, but I find Feedly the best. And there are still plenty of good RSS feeds to read, so I try and use this one at least once a week.
  18. Authenticator apps: I make an effort to use two factor authentication whenever I can. Authenticator apps make that happen.
  19. Pushover: I have remote devices I want to send me notifications occasionally. I use Pushover as a service to manage those notifications. For instance my Ubuntu server sends out an “alive and well” message every day by calling the Pushover api. The message in that api call gets transmitted to the Pushover app on my phone. If I set up a VM in the cloud, I will sometimes use pushover to get updates on that VM. It’s a fine service and a fine app.
  20. Apple apps: Almost too many to mention. They aren’t necessarily fun, but they are all highly functional and important. I’d be lost without default Apple apps like Maps, Calendar, Clock, Message, Mail, Photos, Health, Fitness, and Books.

 

 

My Top 10 tools: desktop edition (2026)

I think people benefit from seeing the tools other commonly use. Here’s mine: hopefully you’ll find it useful. A one on my iPhone apps will follow this post.

  1. Microsoft Excel: No surprise, but I use this every day. Specifically I have a master checklist in Excel that I use with supporting worksheets. One worksheet is a daily checklist, another contains my weekly goals, a third tracks meals, etc. It helps me stay focused and it helps me track what I need to stay on top of throughout the day, month, year. While I use Excel for many other reasons, that is my chief reason.
  2. Easylog, my private logging program: related to my master todo list, I have a simple logging program I wrote in python that allows me to track everything from how much I slept that night, to things I’ve accomplished, to what the weather is like. Each entry is a one liner, and each entry simultaneously goes into a local xlsx file and a remote Google sheet as a backup. It’s my one stop shop for logging what I need to log. Some things I’ve logged for years, while other items are ad hoc (e.g., headaches post brain bleed).
  3. Workflowy: another program I use many times a day is Workflowy. I use it mainly as a giant todo list. But I also use it to keep a list of things to blog about, recipes I want to cook, my bucket list, and more. As a bonus, I get it to help me whenever I am working on an outline: I can quickly draft an outline in Workflowy, sort things around, then export it into another tool. Do I use it for any form of planning? I certainly do, since it is great for that too.
  4. Simplenote and Joplin: these two tools are complimentary. Simplenote I use as my personal note-taking app, and Joplin I use for work note-taking (though I have started to use Microsoft OneNote). I used to use only Evernote, but as it got more difficult to use, I switched to Joplin. However I like Simplenote for personal items, especially recipes. My Simplenote is filled with recipes. And much much more. (Shout out to Quick Draft. Like Workflowy and Simplenote and Joplin, it has an iPhone version and a desktop version, so when I do updates on my phone, they automatically replicate to my desktop, and vice versa. I use Quickdraft to take random notes, like a scratchpad.)
  5. BOX / Google Drive / OneDrive: I use these three (and occasionally Dropbox, though less and less) for all my cloud storage needs. BOX and OneDrive are where work files go and Google Drive is where personal files get backed up. I have a custom python script to keep files on my different laptops in sync using those three storage services.
  6. bbedit: this tool is my text editor of choice. Very powerful, very dependable. A workhorse tool.
  7. IFTTT: I use IFTTT for some home automation my life. I don’t use it as much as I used to…maybe I need to reconsider that.
  8. Ccleaner and JDisk Report: maybe some day I will get a massive hard disk for my Mac, but for now mine is relatively small, so I use ccleaner to clean out files I don’t need and give me free disk space. When I need to find out what is on my Mac that is still taking up all that space, I use JDisk Report.
  9. ollama: ollama is a nice tool that allows me to run LLMs (large language models) on my Mac. I use this for work when I want to test various LLMs to see how they respond. But I have also found that with ollama and the LLM GPT-OSS-20B, I get the capability of SaaS tools like Claude or ChatGPT and the comfort in knowing my question is not being used as input for future training. Plus I just like the format of the response. If you have a Mac or a Windows machine with GPUs, I think ollama plus that LLM is a nice thing to use as your own personal AI.
  10. Visual Studio (VS) code + Roo Code / IBM Bob: most of my work these days is done using AI tools like Roo Code within VS Code or IBM Bob. Both of them are powerful interfaces to Claude Sonnet, the LLM that provides them the smarts they need. Both of them have many similarities. These AI tools have revolutionized how I do my work.

Shout out to Google Chrome which is so indispensable I don’t even think of it as a separate tool. Same goes for Terminal, which I have on the go constantly. Same for Outlook and Mail and Word and Slack. Do I use Teams? I do. Do I like Teams? I prefer Slack for messaging, but Teams is useful for meetings.

Sixpence none the richer, a half penny will do, and other thoughts on the old English currency

I was in London recently when someone said something was 50p. It got me thinking: do they still have half pence or shillings any more in England? With a bit of research I quickly discovered that a) they do not b) they got rid of all of that currency and went with a decimal system, much like Canadians did when we got rid of imperial measures and moved to the metric system in the second half of the 20th century.

The old money, like the imperial units, had a certain charm that their newer counterparts lack. Charm aside, the new replacements are easier to work with. (Although leave it to Canadians to invent the Loonie and the Twonie as coins!) I’m glad for the decimal units of money when I go to England, and I am believe most Brits must feel the same way.

For more on the old system of English money and how it was upgraded, check out this, Decimalisation, and also this, Pounds, Shillings and Pence.

Six cool things

Here’s 6 cool things that might not warrant a post by themselves, but are worth taking a look at.

  1. First up is this Thanksgiving Menu at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (1899). Menus are fascinating to me not only because they show the food being enjoyed from a certain era, but how menus are written up tell us something about how we think about dining. (Also amazing to see most of those items are under a dollar.)
  2. Staying in the past, here’s a fun piece on Saying No Gracefully, Victorian Style – by Amy Stewart. We no longer take the time to say no gracefully: perhaps we should. The next time you are using AI to write a rejection letter, consider asking for it in the Victorian way. 🙂
  3. Something else that is moving into the past: Longwave. The BBC did a story on it, here. I used to love longwave radio as a kid. Before there was an internet, longwave radio let you reach out and find out what was happening in the world.
  4. Moving to the present, this truly is… A Delightfully Tactile Stop-Motion Music Video Pieces Together 300 Ceramic Tiles. Definitely worth a look.
  5. Also in the present is this David Byrne: Tiny Desk Concert featuring David Byrne over at NPR.
  6. Last but not least, here’s a piece on the future: 23 Ways You’re Already Living in the Chinese Century over at  WIRED.

On lacking importance, but still comforting and worthy

Claes Oldenburg Ice Cream Sundae on Tray 1962

When I was younger, I wanted to engage with what I considered Important, especially when it came to important works of art. I thought such engagement would help me become a better person, among other things.

I still think it is good to engage in the Important, be that the visual arts or literature or even fine dining. But I think it is good to engage in the flip side of that. For some the flip side could be disposable fiction or trashy TV or fast food. Not everything you engage with has to be life changing.

I thought of that again when I was going over this piece, In Praise of Comfort Films – kottke.org and looking at the art work on display here: Monument to the Unimportant | Pace Gallery – www.pacegallery.com. It’s interesting that for comfort films, they cite The Big Lebowski, Perfect Days, Mon Oncle, Kiki’s Delivery Service and more. They may bring comfort, but they are also fine if not great films. Likewise for the artwork at the Pace Gallery: the subject matter may be ordinary but the works themselves are not. And that’s the thing: work that is comforting or everyday may be just as great as work that is difficult or extraordinary.

Perhaps that’s the thought to take away from this: the common and comforting are also important, if not Important, and they can be great in their own way. Just like all of us are great in our own way, no matter how important or unimportant we may seem to some.

On losing your livelihood due to technology

Reading the title, you might be thinking this post would be about the current jobs panic brought on due to the rise of AI. It’s something I’ve been thinking about, not in the context of the 21st century but in the context of the 19th century.
I wrote here about how farm automation lead to great benefits. But of course there was great losses as workers lost their traditional way of living That can be felt first hand in this 1965 interview with a 107-year-old Irish farmer reflecting on the changes he’s seen during his life. Of those changes, the biggest one he saw was the Industrial Revolution and the coming of machinery to farming. And he wasn’t the only one. There was a massive displacement of workers in the 19th century, as labourers went from being farmers to working in non-farm jobs (e.g., factory work).

Having grown up in the 20th and now 21st century, I’ve seen and continue to see the impact of technology on people’s work. Will AI have as much impact on 21st century workers as machinery had on 19th century farmers? Time will tell, but I doubt it.

 

It’s Monday. Here’s three good essays on work


It’s Monday. Maybe you are feeling uninspired about your work. Maybe you need a new perspective on working. Whatever your thoughts or feelings, I recommend these three essays:

  1. How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life – The New York Times – www.nytimes.com
  2. My Truck Desk by Bud Smith – www.theparisreview.org
  3. (2) The simplest, hardest way to “live like a local” – andrewsamtoy.substack.com

Or maybe you are fine with your work, but you need some work space inspiration. If that’s the case, then I recommend looking at this for ideas you can take and use: Our Favorite Home Offices – nytimes.com

On the new Apple Neo

Computers come and go. Rarely do any of them get people excited and raving. I believe the Apple Neo computer is one of those rare devices. Just search for “apple neo reviews” and you’ll see what I mean.

Designers love it. Technologists love it. Some critics like Om Malik have written several piece on it, including this here and here. Heck, this review was art.

Like I said: people are excited. I am excited too because the Neo demonstrates something Apple does well but doesn’t get enough credit for, and that their ability to is make lower end technology that is highly appealing. The Neo is visually appealing with its strong use of colours and the Neo is technically appealing because of the great technical features you get for that low price.

I also think Apple wins greatly when they make this type of value oriented product. Such products draw in new users who may not have gone with Apple but who might have gone with a Chromebook or a low end Windows machine. And once you get those new users  — and I was once one of them — to start using Apple technology, they will want to use more Apple technology, if for no other reason that all that technology works well

For more on it, see the press release here. Obviously your next step is to go to an Apple store on apple.com and check them out.

P.S. May 2026 – Looks like the competition (Acer) is getting into the act. Good.

On Tracey Emin and David Hockney, in London

I was fortunate to be in London last week when two great artists were having shows there.

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The larger of the two shows was Tracey Emin’s at the Tate Modern. While I was happy to be finally able to see “My Bed”, there was so much more to the show I thought was great, from her fabric work, to her sculpture, to the many bold paintings on display. I was impressed by her film, ‘Why I Never Became a Dancer’. So many films by artists are uninteresting, but hers was anything but. I highly recommend you head over to the Tate, not just for the Emin work but also for an extensive exhibit of Nigerian artists on display.

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Hockney’s at the Serpentine gallery was a smaller show. Here is a review of the Hockney show and while I disagree with it, it’s a good summary of what’s on display.  I think Hockney continues to be ahead of his time, and I admire his efforts to adopt new ways to make pictures, regardless of what others say. So after the Tate make your way to the Serpentine.

P.S. For more on Emin’s show at the Tate, go here. Also check out this review: unlike the dismissive Hockney show, it’s better.

If you want to read more about Tracey Emin, you can go here. And if you want to read more on Hockney’s show, read this and this.

 

Restaurants loved and living: St. JOHN and Brutto

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It was a delight to be able to go back to London last week and eat at two of my favorite restaurants: St. JOHN and Brutto.

St. JOHN has been around since 1994, and since first reading about it, I knew that some year I would dine there. Brutto has only been around since 2021, but it also sounded perfect to me. In 2022, I was blessed to dine at both in one week.

They make an odd pair. Unlike St. John’s signature nose‑to‑tail menu of English cookery, Brutto features Florentine style cuisine. The decor differs significantly as well, with one being a minimalist dream of white and black and the other being a maximalist trattoria. Those differences aside, they’re similar in both having Michelin awards, both being in Smithfield,  and both having great food, great ambience, and great service.

St. JOHN can make people nervous with some of the offal dishes they serve, but on their menu lurk dishes that are somewhat more traditional, even for fish and chip fans. Likewise there is a wonderful green salad (with something of a horseradish kick) and the warm madeleines at the end are worth the wait, especially with a glass of dessert wine.

Brutto’s menu is more familiar for most people and the difficulty there is settling on a choice. I recommend the fried dough balls to start and the tagliatelle with meat sauce to follow: both are so good. I can’t recommend just one dessert: you’ll have to try several. Should you start off with a small negroni for 5 pounds? I’d say yes.

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There’s some restaurants that you can dine at once and be done with them. There are a few restaurants that as soon as you dine there, you dream about when you can dine there again. For me, Brutto and St. JOHN are a part of that set of few restaurants to dream on.

 

Move slow and fix things

You may have heard the phrase: move fast and break things. It is a philosophy that many businesses adopt to succeed through disruption.

An alternative philosophy would be: move slow and fix things. If such a philosophy sounds appealing, then so should this article in The Guardian on its favorite Japanese repair kits for ceramics, clothes and more. In learning about these kits you’ll also learn about kintsugi (gold‑joined pottery), sashiko (invisible stitching), boro (waste‑fabric repair), and kumiko (wood inlay).

In adopting new skills by using such kits, you may end up adopting a new way of living as well.

P.S. On the topic of repair, I’d like to also recommend a new book by Stewart Brand, “Maintenance of Everything: Part One“

The Depanneur in Toronto…a food lover’s delight

As a longtime fan of Sanagan’s Meat Locker, I was excited to discover Peter Sanagan (the owner) was offering a class on how to make sausages from scratch. I signed up right away.

Not only did I have a good time making sausage, but I discovered something new: The Depanneur (thedepanneur.ca). Beyond hosting cooking classes like Peter’s, they host supper clubs, private events, and  more.  If you love food and are in Toronto—or planning to visit—sign up for a cooking class; act quickly, as spots sell out fast. The Depanneur also offers a helpful newsletter—subscribe at the website for updates and avoid missing out on events.

Toronto: sometimes good, sometimes bad

A lotof good events have happened in Toronto since my last newsletter in September. Some bad, too.

First up, the biggest of good events: It. has. finally. happened. Finally. After more than a decade of delays, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT launched in February! I honestly wondered if it would ever open. People didn’t know what to believe about possible opening dates. But it happened. After 15 years of disruption on Eglinton, it happened.

Should there be an investigation into this construction fiasco, given it only took 6 years to build the Chunnel and 40 months to build the CN Tower? I think so, though it’s doubtful. I don’t even think residents will get an apology. People like Doug Ford and others will just shrug and move on or say we should be grateful, I guess. As someone who had to live with this mess for all of that time, I am feeling disgruntled and I expect to stay that way for awhile.

In other transit events, this was good: the Gardiner Expressway reopens over a year ahead of schedule. Yay! Not sure if it is good or bad but the Dundas subway station just changed its name. However I noticed that Dundas West still is…Dundas West. Perhaps that will change some time in the next 15 years.

In non-transit events, the other big bad thing that happened since my last newsletter was the Toronto Blue Jays’ heartbreaking loss of the World Series to the LA Dodgers. Hey, I am glad for Los Angeles: that city has suffered much recently and could use the win. But I would have been delighted if we had won it. I got to go to the Skydome and see the Jays win the last two World Series: I would have loved to see them win again, even if — like everyone else in Toronto — I was watching it on TV.

For more on that plus other good things that happened in 2025, go here.

Another bad thing that happened in the last while was eight current and former Toronto police officers bein charged in the Project South probe as part of an organized crime bust. You know things are bad when it gets worldwide attention in newspapers like The Guardian.

Homelessness is not a new thing in Toronto. There’s never enough resources, it seems. To see what I mean, you can check here and see: Daily Shelter & Overnight Service Occupancy & Capacity – City of Toronto Open Data Portal over at open.toronto.ca. However, one good thing that happened was the Slaight family donated $25M to fight Toronto homelessness.

The Ford government recently privatized the blue box recycling program in Toronto. It was bad at first, with many complaining about the botched roll out of it. Even on my street things were not picked up for a time. It seems to have sorted itself out though.

Speaking of the Ford government, it seem they will not be  proceeding with changes to rent control laws. That’s likely a good event for tenants. In terms of other events, Mayor Chow and the city unanimously  passed their recent budget. John Tory toyed with the idea, but it looks like he will not be running for mayor in the next election. But maybe another member of the Ford family will? Who can say.

I can say that these are all good: Toronto’s best diners: 5 local icons picked by Toronto Star readers. Also good? This piece on five of Toronto’s oldest restaurants. New restaurants are talked about all the time. It’s good to see the older establishments get more recognition.

Finally, I must say, it’s been a winter. I am looking forward to spring. But before I go, here are some good Toronto links I want to share:

See you ’round six months from now. In the meantime, go see the Cumberland Terrace while you still can.

Be aware and avoid URLs that start with https://storage.googleapis.com/

No matter what I search on these days, be it software or salad, I will see websites that start with the following: https://storage.googleapis.com/

In my case, it happens when I ask to see just the images of my search results. The images look appropriate, but when I click on the link, it will take me to some site which has nothing to do with the search or the image. Who knows what else is happening when you go there.

Based on this, it looks like it is not a new problem. You might think Google would want to clear it up, but apparently not.

So keep an eye out for that URL in your search results, and make sure you do not click on it no matter what.

On the iron triangle of project management


Everyone who works should be aware of the iron triangle of project management. In essence, it says:

  1. The quality of work is constrained by the project’s budget, deadlines and scope (features).
  2. The project manager can trade between constraints.
  3. Changes in one constraint necessitate changes in others to compensate or quality will suffer.

Another way of looking at it is with this formula:

  • Quality = (Time X Resources) / Scope

If the scope increases without increasing either the time it takes to get done or the resources to get it done, then quality will decrease.

I think about the iron triangle a lot as a consultant. Clients often want to fix the values for time and resources while increasing the scope and not decreasing the quality. Sometimes consultants will want to increase the time and resources on a project without increasing scope in order to provide higher quality. It’s a balancing act, keeping all four measures aligned such that everyone is happy.

Anyone who provides a product or service to a client or customer should be aware of the iron triangle. Work makes more sense once you are aware of it.

 

There are greater inventions than the Internet or AI

What is the greatest invention since the 19th century? If you’re someone like Om Malik, you might say the Internet. Others might say the personal computer, or computers. AI might be the choice of others.

While these are all great inventions, I’d nominate two others: medical technology and farm machinery.

 

Medical tech like vaccines and blood transfusions alone have saved billions of lives since they were created. And that’s two out of the many medical inventions that have increased our life expectancy according to this. It’s why we now can expect to live to be 80 as opposed to 40.

If that technology allows us to live longer, farm machinery enables us to do more than work the land in order to survive. Tech like tractors and the McCormick Reaper make it possible to harvest more food than ever before with much less effort. Other inventions like fertilizer enable us to get much more out of our harvests.

The Internet and other IT are grand inventions that help us in many ways. But I don’t think any IT can hold a candle to the benefits brought to us by medical and farm technology.

P.S. For more on farm technology, go here.

On Canadian conceptual art

When you think of Canadian Art, it’s likely you might think of artists like the Group of Seven or Alex Colville or other representational artists. But Canada also has some very good conceptual artists. I came to that conclusion after do some research on the late great Kelly Mark and all the artists in her sphere. Here’s some links highlighting the work of Mark and more:


I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one of my favorite Canadian artists, Micah Lexier, whose work can be seen on tumblr and who also has a good Instagram account. And if you live in Toronto, you no doubt have seen his work without even knowing it is his. Check out his tumblr and you’ll see what I mean by that.

The arts on Wednesday: more VanGogh plus graphic design masters, Futurists and more

I’m always reading about artists in such places as the New Times, the Guardian, Wallpaper and more. These 2 dozen pieces below capture just some of the good things I’ve found in those publications since my last post on the arts in October.

First up, some good pieces from the Times. I highly recommend the first two, on Van Gogh and David.

Each Friday the Guardian posts a newsletter on the arts, and I have to say, it is consistently rich and full of good things to check out. We are lucky to have such art coverage in such a major publication. Here’s just a small sample of things I found there:

Wallpaper also has good arts coverage. It tends to be contemporary artists, like these pieces:

 

While I love good painters and sculptures, I have a fondness for artists who work in collage and other forms that involve graphic design. Kalman, Heartfield and Kruger are just three examples found below, with some other artists mixed in:

The following don’t have any particular idea tying them together: I just thought they were interesting and worth a look:

(Top image from the piece on Van Gogh, middle image from the work Kalman did for the restaurant Florent in the 1980s).