Monthly Archives: October 2022

It’s Hallowe’en! Here’s everything you need to know about the Home Depot 12 foot skeleton!

Posted on October 31, 2022 | Comments Off on It’s Hallowe’en! Here’s everything you need to know about the Home Depot 12 foot skeleton!

For Hallowe’en, people have become more involved in decorating their homes. Nowadays a mere jack o’lantern is not enough. Instead, homes have yards filed with things, from fake tombstones to inflatable animals. A new member of those  spooky menageries and a favorite of many is the 12 foot skeleton from Home Depot.

People love the 12 foot skeleton. They are making Tik Toks and Reels with them driving around town. Other people leave them in their yards all year round. They have a weird likability to them, those bony giants.

If  you have one or want to get one, then read this: How to Maintain Your 12-Foot Skeleton and Other Giant Halloween Decorations – The Home Depot. Home Depot has all the info you need to take care of the new addition to your home/haunted house.

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Some thoughts on the genre of food writing, after reading about Chantal Braganza’s cake

Posted on October 30, 2022 | Comments Off on Some thoughts on the genre of food writing, after reading about Chantal Braganza’s cake

Good genre writing tends to make us forget it belongs to a genre. Atwood and Kafka and Borges all can write in the genres of SF and fantasy, but we don’t think of them as genre writers. They are good writers who happen to (sometimes) write genre fiction.

I thought of that when I read this piece by Chantal Braganza in Maisonneuve: An Ugly Sweet Thing. Food writing is also a genre, and while Braganza is a food writer here, she is first a good writer who in this case is writing about food. It’s a really fine piece and I encourage you to read it. It’s about food, of course, but it’s about so much more. That’s what good food writing does.

Food writing gets knocked about these days, and that’s too bad. So many food writers that include a recipe in their writing have a button at the top that allows people to skip just to the recipe. People who click on that button are missing out. The writing is important too, not just the recipe. If you just want a recipe, go to AllRecipes.com. If you want to learn more about food and what the author thinks about this particular dish and why it is important to them and perhaps you, too, read the writing. You’ll be glad you did.

More and more I buy food books not for the recipes, but to get inspired to cook and to create in the kitchen. Preparing food is work, and some times that work gets us down. (Ok, it gets me down.)  We need things to lift us up. One of those things is good food writing. Here’s to more of it.

Now go get some cake.

 

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The history of technology and telecommunications is also a history of Cape Breton

Posted on October 29, 2022 | Comments Off on The history of technology and telecommunications is also a history of Cape Breton


Cape Breton is known for many things, including a great deal of history. One part of that history that I wish were played up more is the part it played in telecommunications at the beginning of the 20th century. I thought of that when I read about how a Cape Breton town (North Sydney) knew about the end of WW I before the rest of North America. It knew about it because of the Western Union offices there. It was a leader at the time. Sadly that Western Union building in North Sydney was torn down.

While that place is lost, there are still other sites on the Island that recognize that history of technology. There is the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck that is worth visiting. And while it is small, The Marconi Museum in Glace Bay is also good. There are some fine museums in Cape Breton: if you are going there to there to see that sort of thing, make sure you include those two.

Cape Breton had a significant role to play in the history of world telecommunications. That role should get recognized and more museums should be made to promote that era, in my opinion.

For more on North Sydney, see:   wikipedia North Sydney Nova Scotia.

(The image above is the Marconi National Historic Site of Canada in Glace Bay, linked to at goCapeBreton.com)

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Friday Night Cocktail: the freezer martini

Posted on October 28, 2022 | Comments Off on Friday Night Cocktail: the freezer martini

On my Instagram feed I am seeing lots of reels on how to make fridge cocktails. Essentially you have a bottle of liquor in your fridge but instead of it being simply vodka or gin, it is a full on cocktail, premixed and ready to drink. Why not?

In the same vein, I propose you consider making the freezer martini. Like the fridge cocktail, the freezer martini sits in your…well, you know. So when you need a martini this weekend, just pull this out and pour a splash in your martini glass. All you need to add is some olives or a lemon twist and you are set.

For more on this and how to best make them, see Imbibe Magazine or Eater. It’s slightly different than you typical martini.

Speaking of olives, you can freeze them too! I mean who wants a warm martini? No one of good taste.

For an alternative way to keep your martinis cold, see this nice hack: How to Make a Pitcher of Martinis That Stays Cold at the Thrillist.

Cheers!

(Image link: to Imbibe magazine)

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The great Steve Keene is having a moment

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Comments Off on The great Steve Keene is having a moment

As Fineartsglobe.com says, Steve Keene is having a moment. Perhaps it’s because there is a new book on him: The Steve Keene art book. Whatever the reason, I am glad that he is getting more attention and recognition. Not that he is unknown. There’s been profiles done on him in Garden and Gun , Gothamist.com, BKMAG.com, Artsy.net…even the the New York Times.

if you don’t know him and wonder why you should care, read any of those pieces. In a nutshell, he’s an incredible artist who is the direct opposite of people like Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons. Keene makes a lot of art and sells it for next to nothing. Despite that, he is a good painter with a strong technique and a fine use of colour. I admire him. I hope he and the book continue to have success.

For more on the book, see Pitchfork. Image above is a link to a page from the book.

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Crowns: kings and queens and royalty, then and now.

Posted on October 26, 2022 | Comments Off on Crowns: kings and queens and royalty, then and now.

A lot has changed with European Royalty since this (colorized) photo of Nine Kings was taken in 1910 at the funeral of Edward VII. For one thing, many of these monarchies these Kings represented have disappeared. And of the ones remaining, they are slimming down quite a bit, such as the one in Denmark, with Denmark’s Queen Margrethe stripping 4 grandchildren of their royal title. Harsh but fair if the monarchies are to survive. And it’s not just happening in Denmark: Charles is likely to do it in England, too. Monarchy ain’t what it used to be.

Perhaps that’s why we look back in history with series like the Crown. The success of which has lead to this German Royal Drama about the heads of Austria-Hungary coming out next. The farther we go back, the grander it all seems.

Speaking of grand and wanting to go back in time, here’s a good piece on King Charles’s Poundbury Town. Going forward in time, this AI portrays how famous people like Princess Diana would look like today.

That’s the thing about Royalty. In many ways it is about a life other than the one most of us lead. There’s an unrealness about it that somehow attracts us.

In closing, I want to include a clip of one of the most real people in The Crown, Tommy Lascelles. No one is more grounded than him, which makes him highly effective and often dangerous:

P.S. I am fascinated by that photo of the nine kings. Here’s a good post with lots more detail: Nine Kings in one photo 1910.

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Would you pay $200,000 for a Mac SE??

Posted on October 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Would you pay $200,000 for a Mac SE??

You might not but I bet someone might. Because it’s not just any old SE….it’s Steve Jobs’ Macintosh. Uncreate has the details:

(Jobs) didn’t stop using Apple products, though, instead working on this Macintosh SE until 1994. Amazingly, it still has files from its days on Jobs’ desk on its drive, and as an incredibly desirable artifact from his “Wilderness Years”, is expected to bring over $200,000 at auction.

For rich fans of Apple, this would be some crazy good thing to have in your collection.

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What makes you happy about your job. Think Maslow, not Brooks

Posted on October 24, 2022 | Comments Off on What makes you happy about your job. Think Maslow, not Brooks

Too often when I see pieces on work and what makes a good job, they downplay certain aspects, like pay or job title. That comes up in this piece by Arthur Brooks, How to Pick a Job That Will Actually Make You Happy, where he writes:

… this belief is based on a misunderstanding of what brings job satisfaction. To be happy at work, you don’t have to hold a fascinating job that represents the pinnacle of your educational achievement or the most prestigious use of your “potential,” and you don’t have to make a lot of money. What matters is not so much the “what” of a job, but more the “who” and the “why”: Job satisfaction comes from people, values, and a sense of accomplishment.

I don’t think he is wrong with this, I just think he is missing out on the bigger picture. The way to see the bigger picture is to focus on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (shown above).

According to Maslow, we have several needs: basic needs, psychological needs and finally self-fulfillment needs. The lower needs are simple and obvious: the higher ones are complicated.

Our jobs provide for some or all of these needs. For example, our work environment should provide us with our basic needs, while our pay satisfies both basic and psychological needs. Things like job titles, promotions, awards, perqs, and other acknowledgements also help with psychological needs. As for the work itself, and the things Brooks is discussing, they satisfy our self-fulfillment needs. If you are fortunate, you have a job that provides for all those needs to a high degree.

That said, we all measure our needs differently. For people who work dangerous outdoor jobs, their basic needs may not be met nearly as well as someone who works in a warm office. For those outdoor workers, the satisfaction from the work itself (e.g. rescue work, emergency repair work) may more than make up for the discomfort and difficulty they face. Likewise, for a person working in an office, doing interesting work that fulfills their potential may be much more important than promotions and pay raises and other things their co-worker with different psychological needs has.

In Brooks’s piece, he emphasizes self-fulfillment needs and minimizes basic and psychological needs. That’s a common mistake, and the reason people might become dissatisfied with their job, even though on the surface what they have appears to be a great job. We all know about people quitting because of bad management: in that case you can see people’s needs at all levels not being met. But people can also struggle because they have a conflict that some of their needs are being met while others are not. For example, people can have a good job with lots of benefits, but it is very unfulfilling, or they can have a good job that is very fulfilling but it doesn’t meet their basic needs.

The best job can fulfill all of your needs to a satisfactory level. That’s the job that will make you happy, not just a job that satisfies your top needs. When you look to work at a new place, make sure you can get all your needs met to the level you need. You’ll be much happier.

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On the joy of train travel compared to air travel

Posted on October 23, 2022 | 1 comment

 

Train travel is good.  Train travel from Toronto to Montreal and back exceptionally so. Let me count the ways by comparing it to airline travel.

It starts off before you even get on the train. In Toronto you can catch a subway or an Uber to Union Station downtown. Once there, it’s a short walk to get to where you board the train. There’s no getting stuck in traffic on the 401 trying to get to the airport. No paying for expensive cabs or limo. Fast and cheap.

Then you get to the station. There’s no multiple checkpoints to get on the train. You find out where the train is boarding and you line up to get on. Quick and easy.

Once on the train, you have lots of room to move around. No having to sit in your seat all the time. No seatbelts. Wide chairs. Comfortable.

If you take the business class train, you get a constant supply of food and drinks. Wine, caesars, port and cognac is all available and included. Plus hot towels, snacks and full meals. Satisfying.

Then there’s the scenery. There’s lots of it and it’s easy to see out the big windows. Tired of the scenery? You have a good amount of time to watch a movie, read and even nap. Relaxing.

Finally, you start in one downtown and end up in another downtown. You don’t have to get in still another cab to get to your final destination. Sweet.

Sure you can take Porter at Billy Bishop, but you still need to cab into Montreal from Dorval. And while the flight itself is short, the time you take getting to the airport, getting through security, building in extra time so you don’t miss your flight….it all adds up. 

Air travel is essential for long distances. But for shorter distances, you owe it to yourself to take the train.

 

 

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Cameras aren’t dead yet. Here are four fun ones.

Posted on October 22, 2022 | Comments Off on Cameras aren’t dead yet. Here are four fun ones.

First up, this may be the only Leica camera most can afford, and then it is still around $1700: Leica D-Lux 7 Vans x Ray Barbee Camera.

To see what I mean, check out the Leica M-A Titan Camera… it costs around $20,000. And while that is extreme, it is closer to the median than the d-Lux 7.

Maybe you need this Pixy Selfie Drone  to follow you around and take selfies all day. Your own paparazzi!

Or perhaps you just want a new webcam. This one, Opal C1 Webcam | Uncrate, will set you back around $300.

Thanks to Uncrate.com for all these. Still one of my favourite sites for all things cool and wonderful.

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What’s the best way to deal with inflation? Are we in a recession? Here’s some pieces that address these good questions.

Posted on October 21, 2022 | Comments Off on What’s the best way to deal with inflation? Are we in a recession? Here’s some pieces that address these good questions.


First up, inflation. As inflation heats up….

Central bankers around the world are lifting interest rates at an aggressive clip as rapid inflation persists and seeps into a broad array of goods and services, setting the global economy up for a lurch toward more expensive credit, lower stock and bond values and — potentially — a sharp pullback in economic activity.

…according to the New York Times. Not all economist and thinkers agree with this. Here’s Hadas Their providing a socialist’s view on why price controls are a better idea. More on her argument in Jacobin. For a counter to that, here’s someone from the Fed arguing that price controls should stay in the history book. I tend to side with the Fed’s view over Their’s, but she raises valid criticisms of the central bank’s approach.

Perhaps I am too used to economics only coming from a male perspective. Perhaps you are too. If so, we might all benefit from reading this: We all play by economic rules set by men. What could a feminist economics look like?

But back to the Fed. If they want to bring down inflation, how does they go about doing that? You can learn about their methods to control the economy here: The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Operations.

Besides dealing with inflation, many economists are looking to see if and when we will be in a recession. One surprising way to do that is look at the price of copper. If you are asking yourself, what does the price of copper tell us about the economy, then read this. For more on this, see:  historical Copper price data. Here’s more on the Global price of Copper (PCOPPUSDM) from FRED.

One last thing. On the topics of inflation and the economy, the economist Larry Summers has been popping up more and more because he seems to me he’s been predicting bad inflation early on. Given that, here’s something to keep in mind: Summers Watch from The American Prospect. Let’s just say that I think there are better people to get your advice from.

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What Mark Cuban can teach you about motivation is simple and powerful

Posted on October 20, 2022 | Comments Off on What Mark Cuban can teach you about motivation is simple and powerful


Do you find it hard to motivate yourself? If you do, you should look to Mark Cuban for a valuable lesson. Mark Cuban recently started Cost Plus Drugs to allow him to bring low cost medicine to people who need it. It’s a great initiative. But it took someone awful like Martin Shkreli to get the ball rolling. As Cuban says, when he saw Shkreli’s company jacking the price up on some drugs to obscene amounts, he concluding that the opposite could happen as well. Then he went and did something about it.

So kudos to Martin S for inspiring Mark C to start this new company: your greed has not been for naught.

Here’s the lesson in a nutshell: find someone doing something wrong that you strongly disagree with and then decide to behave in the opposite way to counteract that.  You will be plenty motivated, I am sure. And you will be doing the world some good too.

For more on this, read how Mark Cuban says Martin Shkreli inspired him to start Cost Plus Drugs in Vox.

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Save the Jack o’ Lanterns from the rats with nice tails

Posted on October 19, 2022 | Comments Off on Save the Jack o’ Lanterns from the rats with nice tails


Walking around my neighborhood this weekend I noticed two things:

  1. People have done a great job decorating for Halloween
  2. Squirrels do not give a fig for Halloween and seem to like wrecking people’s good work. Especially their pumpkins/jack o’lanterns.

If this is happening to you, I recommend you at least read this: How to Keep Squirrels From Destroying Your Pumpkins.

You’re welcome. Thank you for decorating: the kids from 6-96 love it.

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Gawker existentialism (some thoughts on the piece titled, Failure to Cope “Under Capitalism”)

Posted on October 18, 2022 | Comments Off on Gawker existentialism (some thoughts on the piece titled, Failure to Cope “Under Capitalism”)

This article, Failure to Cope “Under Capitalism” in Gawker touches on several areas of difficulty many young people face today. It ends with the following recommendation:

This is your life. You do not have time to wait for the revolution to begin living it. You will always be able to find someone to give you permission not to live it. But no one is coming along to live it for you.

This struck me as a form of existentialism. Gawker existentialism, if you will. It does not deny the problems that are foisted upon you: downward social mobility, addictive and manipulative social media, or an upbringing that has left you disappointed. It does not deny that, but it does insist that it is up to you to do something about it. You have to make choices, chief of which is to live your life. Your circumstances may shape you, but you are responsible for how you move forward. Perhaps the existentialism of Gawker is not as noble as the existentialism of Sartre or Camus, but it is a form of it nonetheless. (You could make a case it is somewhat close to the existentialism of Kierkegaard or Kafka.)

I leave you with this, the angst of Charlie Black, who is struggling with the perceived downward mobility of himself and the whole preppy class, in “Metropolitan”:

Like existentialism, struggles with capitalism are not new. 🙂

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The suit is dead! Long live the suit!

Posted on October 17, 2022 | Comments Off on The suit is dead! Long live the suit!

The suit is dead! Well, if not dead, likely on death’s door. To see what I mean, read this: The end of the suit: has Covid finished off the menswear staple?  The suit has been already dying off somewhat in the last few years, with the decline in necktie use and the introduction of more casual shoes to go with it, among other adaptations. Perhaps it will be gone altogether in the next few years.

I was thinking about the death of the suit when I was eyeing this work above in London last spring. That form of business attire has been dead for centuries! No doubt in centuries from now people will be standing in galleries looking at painting of men with neckties and double breasted  blazers and thinking how odd it looks, just like how we think the Dutch men above look odd. Suits — of all eras — eventually die off.

What will not die off, though, is the need for some form of fashion to indicate the person wearing it has a specific business function. What form that will take, I don’t know, but there will be something, some form of “suit”, that indicates you are talking to a doctor or a lawyer or a banker or a businessman (or woman) of some stature. Of that you can be sure.

The suit (as we know it) is dying: the suit (will come to know) is being born. Long live the suit.

 

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Not to be overlooked: five great women of the 20th century you should know about

Posted on October 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Not to be overlooked: five great women of the 20th century you should know about


Here are two good essays on five great women. First up is this piece on the Oxford Quartet: The Women Who Took On the Philosophical Establishment. And then there is this piece on Regina Jonas, who was officially ordained as the world’s first woman rabbi.

Both are well written essays featuring outstanding women who accomplished so much, despite the hardships they had to deal with. (In Jonas’s case, that is an understatement.) I recommend both as good things to read on a Sunday.

The story of Rabbi Jonas is part of the Overlooked series by the New York Times. I admire that series, and I’m glad the Times has it. If you want to read good bios of exceptional people, go deeper there.

(Image is of Regina Jonas, link to image in NYT)

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The PO-80 Record Factory Kit from Teenage Engineering is very cool

Posted on October 15, 2022 | Comments Off on The PO-80 Record Factory Kit from Teenage Engineering is very cool

The smart folks at Teenage Engineering have produced another cool product. As Yanko Design explains….

The PO-80 Record Factory Kit is a record cutter that engraves audio onto 5″ vinyl discs, giving kids the ability to record their own LPs the old-fashioned way, quite like how millennials made mixtapes and burned their own CDs. The Record Factory, created in collaboration with Yuri Suzuki, lets you engrave and playback 5″ discs with an ultra-analog lo-fi sound. This isn’t studio-grade equipment, after all, but it does add a creamy muffled, effect to your audio that totally sounds like the 40s and 50s in a nutshell.

Love it! For more on the PO-80, see these write ups in Yanko Design and the Awesomer.com.

(Image link to Yanko Design)

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Friday Night Cocktails: some very good ones and a few not so much

Posted on October 14, 2022 | Comments Off on Friday Night Cocktails: some very good ones and a few not so much

Rather than recommend just one, I have a few cocktails for you to consider:

Those all sound good. As for the not so good, here’s two articles to consider:

Cheers!

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PlantUML: not just for UML. Also good for Gantt Charts, Mindmaps, etc

Posted on October 13, 2022 | Comments Off on PlantUML: not just for UML. Also good for Gantt Charts, Mindmaps, etc


If you are an IT architect or specialist, you may have used PlantUML. I have and I really like it: It makes doing technical diagrams dead easy.

What I would like you to know about are non-UML capabilities of the tool. PlantUML has the capability to draw Gantt charts and Mindmaps. You can quickly write out your plans and ideas and PlantUML will convert them into the diagram you want. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend it. If you use Visual Studio Code from Microsoft, plug PlantUML into it and you can get your diagrams made that way. But the PlantUML website can also do the job.

For more on this, go to the sections on Gantt charts or mindmaps.

 

 

 

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On Mark Zuckerberg’s Legs and other stupid things we have to try and ignore

Posted on October 12, 2022 | Comments Off on On Mark Zuckerberg’s Legs and other stupid things we have to try and ignore

So in Mark Zuckerberg’s hot new remake of Second Life, avatars will soon have legs. Woo. It’s something I’d rather not think about.  Just like I don’t care about Elon Musk and whether or not he spoke with Putin. Or anything to do with Kanye’s opinion on pretty much anything. But that’s the problem with social media these days. Even if you don’t want to know about these things, other people want you to. People whose opinion you’d normally are interested in. I mean, even I am guilty of this right now. So why do this?

What I would hope for is to nudge folks a little so that they find other things to share on social media. Things like stories about themselves. Or good things that they’ve discovered, be it big or little. Maybe facts or ideas about people other than those manic attention seekers that are everywhere on the Internet. That would be great if that could happen.

Will it? Likely not. That’s why I expect to see new forms of social media taking off. Perhaps it will be Discord. Perhaps someplace else. But some place you can go and avoid those that are so hard to avoid currently.

Meanwhile, congrats to Mark Z on growing a pair…of legs. Happy for you.

P.S. Turns. out Mark Z’s legs were a lie. Amazing.

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Wordle is fun again. Here’s why that is for me….

Posted on October 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Wordle is fun again. Here’s why that is for me….

Like many of you, I started playing Wordle during the pandemic. It was fun for a long time, then it wasn’t.

I’m not sure what got me playing again, but I think the Wordlebot had something to do with it. Every time I play now, I consult the little bot to see how it did and what it recommends in terms of words. As a result, I have become better at the game. Some of the go to words I use frequently now because of what I’ve learned from Wordlebot are:

  • Crane
  • Slate
  • Sloth
  • Unhip
  • Guilt
  • Croup
  • Alter
  • Chirp
  • Crony
  • Corny

the other day I played CRANE and first and then went with SLOTH and got it in two. If only I had made SLOTH my starting word! Oh well. It’s fun for me again, and that’s what counts.

Also I play it quickly these days. Before I could spent easily 30 minutes on it: now I try and be done in 5.

For more on it, see this good piece: Wordle and the starting word. Adieu!

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What do Brad Pitt, David Salle, Steve Keene and Diane Arbus have in common?

Posted on October 11, 2022 | Comments Off on What do Brad Pitt, David Salle, Steve Keene and Diane Arbus have in common?

What do Brad Pitt, David Salle, Steve Keene and Diane Arbus have in common? They all are artists I’ve been reading about over the last few weeks and months. Now you can too.

In addition to reading about those four, there are additional pieces below on other artists of note. Most of them are painters but there are some sculptors too. Quite a mixed bag! Enjoy!

(Images linked to those in the Washington Post and Colossal).

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Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! Here’s a really good guide to roasting a turkey, planning the meal, and keeping it simple

Posted on October 10, 2022 | Comments Off on Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! Here’s a really good guide to roasting a turkey, planning the meal, and keeping it simple

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! Last year I shared with you what I was making for the celebration here. Our meal was delicious, and all made from scratch, thanks to the fact I had help! (Thanks, Lisa!) So if you have help, I recommend what I did last year.

However if you don’t have help and you are doing it all by yourself, let me suggest you get some stuff off the shelf. I always make the turkey, some form of veg, and mashed potatoes from scratch. Always. But if it’s just me cooking, I will get Stove Top stuffing, packaged gravy, baked rolls, and canned cranberries. Hey, even doing all that is a lot of work with 4 burners going, not to mention the oven and the microwave. My foodie friends may disown me, but I learned this lesson from Anthony Bourdain years ago: simplify simplify simplify your prep even if the food isn’t the level you want. Trust me. My main goal is to get a pretty good dinner on the table reasonably, not show off I can make everything from scratch by myself. However, YMMV.

Speaking of trusting me, I would also recommend going with the simplest form of turkey roasting possible. Here’s my approach. I tend to get a 12-16 pound turkey and I roast it unstuffed at 325F at 15 minutes / pound. I write out the time I put it in, how long it should roast based on that formula, and when I believe I should take it out. I put it in the oven uncovered, and when it gets to the golden brown you see below, I cover it simply with aluminum foil but keep on cooking it until it is done. I check on it more towards the end, basting it every time I do. 

How do you know it is done? If you use a meat thermometer, many current guides will say the turkey is done when the meat is 165F. Back in the 1980s the meat was said to be done at 185F. 165F will leave you with a moister turkey, and 185F will mean everything is well done. If you are nervous, go with 185F. In the worst case, at 185F some of the breast meat may be a bit dry: that’s fixed with some gravy. 🙂

Oh, and while meat thermometers are great, a simple plastic pop up pin put in the breast works good too. If you don’t have a meat thermometer or a pop up pin, cook to the time calculation you did above….you’ll be fine. 

If you want more guidance on turkey roasting, go here. I generally get unfrozen turkeys: it makes life simpler. If you have a frozen one, you want to read this.

Enjoy your dinner, whatever form it comes in. Cheers!

 

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It’s Sunday. You could use a nap. You need a nap machine!

Posted on October 9, 2022 | Comments Off on It’s Sunday. You could use a nap. You need a nap machine!

Ok, you may need a nap, but you don’t really need a nap machine. On the other hand, it is a very cool thing to consider having:

Intrigued? Go here and read all about it.

 

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Selling your house and want to make it look more appealing without spending a ton of money? Do this

Posted on October 8, 2022 | Comments Off on Selling your house and want to make it look more appealing without spending a ton of money? Do this


If you are selling your home and want to make it more appealing to buyers, then read this.

If you want to make changes but are short on cash,  here are six ways to do that.

Less is more.

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On Fred Franzia, the creator of Two Buck Chuck wines

Posted on October 7, 2022 | Comments Off on On Fred Franzia, the creator of Two Buck Chuck wines

Fred Franzia, the creator of two-buck Chuck, has died. He was quite the maverick in the wine industry. Heck, his company was called Bronco Wines. While he did much to strengthen the idea that wine should be more affordable and accessible, I tend to agree with Eric Asimov in his assessment of his product. I think there is a better middle ground, and his Charles Shaw wine did not occupy it. But like all things, taste is subjective.

For more on the man and his wine, here’s a good piece by Priya Krishna on him. And here’s Eric on Fred Franzia and the Legacy of Two-Buck Chuck.

P.S Speaking of Eric, here’s a good piece of his on riesling. Like him and others, I wish more people would discover this grape and grow a liking to it.

Also, this piece on a maker of orange wine was a great read.

 

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The pandemic hit NYC in so many ways, including an unusual one

Posted on October 6, 2022 | Comments Off on The pandemic hit NYC in so many ways, including an unusual one

The pandemic hit NYC harder than many cities, I believe. While terrible things like COVID deaths and ad hoc evacuation have thankfully declined, it is still feeling the impact. Dining is one of these things that was affected. According to the Times, the city that never sleeps is now turning off the “Open 24 hours” sign, at least in some places:  In NYC Some Doors Now Close at 10 p.m. One of the reasons for this could be that for (some) New Yorkers, 6 p.m. Is the New 8 p.m. How long will will this last? I’m guessing like many things in New York, it is transitory and the city that used to never sleep will be sleepless soon enough and flocking to places like Katz’s Deli in the Lower East Side.

I love New York. It never gets old. It’s just acting like an oldster lately. 🙂

P.S. Somewhat relatedly, this was a fun story: Immigrant brothers crafted New York’s hand-drawn posters for decades 

(Image: from the Times piece – Katz Deli)

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An election, a new hotel, and more. What’s new in Toronto, October 2022 edition

Posted on October 5, 2022 | Comments Off on An election, a new hotel, and more. What’s new in Toronto, October 2022 edition

What’s new in Toronto? For one thing, there’s an election coming up soon. If you live in Toronto and want to see who is running in your  ward, then click on this…. it’s a great way to find out who all is running and give you the chance to make an informed decision. Get out there and vote!

Ideally, the next batch of politicians elected will effectively deal with the problems Toronto is having, like a lack of affordable housing. Will that happen? This piece makes the case that even if the next mayor has more power, they likely will not get more housing built. I hope that isn’t true.

Besides housing, another way to improve Toronto is better transportation Painfully, the completion of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT has been delayed AGAIN. Argh! (People are outraged, and rightly so!) At least the signal upgrades on line 1 are done. Finally! I might be able to go down town again on the weekend.

Do you drive? Maybe the thing to do is avoid some of the the worst roads in Toronto and get a good used bike from bikeSauce, the bicycle resource centre and  use that instead.

Problems aside, there’s lots of good things about the city to celebrate. Like TIFF! One thing new with the film festival: it now offering movies digitally, which sounds interesting. If you want to get outdoors, there’s lots of recreational facilities available, and the city is hiring for them. Some gorgeous new places have opened, like the Ace Hotel. Nice to see. Need more nice Toronto things to see?  See this,TORONTOVERSE – Your interactive city  and this list of the most beautiful places in Toronto. 

The food scene is always in flux in Toronto. David Chang’s Momofuku is closing. So is Bonjour Brioche after 25 years. But Toronto still has a countless number of places available, old and new, and some very inexpensive. 100 such places are listed here in this list of the Best Cheap Eats in Toronto. Cheap AND good. Those are my kinda of places.

Speaking of things closing, NOW magazine is closing down. RIP. You were an essential part of my youth. And not just me: everyone who has lived in Toronto in the last few decades.

Need more Toronto? This is a nice piece on the great restaurants of the past. Here is a fun tour of hidden Toronto: Lower Bay subway station. Check out this piece on the Toronto Fringe Festival in 1999. Finally, I liked this image of the Toronto Hydro Electric System head office building on Carlton Street.

(Image: Ace Hotel from the article linked to.)

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Should we give up streaming and go back to CDs and DVDs?

Posted on October 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Should we give up streaming and go back to CDs and DVDs?

Did you know you can still get DVDs from Netflix? Well according to this, you still can! And maybe you should.

I’ve been thinking about it recently for a number of reasons. One is the number of streaming services I pay for that I barely use. Sure I like the idea of being able to watch any movie at the drop of a hat. But do I….really? No, I do not. It’s a waste of money for the idea of instant gratification.

Second, streaming services may be making us less likely to hear and experience new things. I thought of that reading this piece in the Guardian. I find that happens to me with Spotify: it is trying so hard to match me with music that aligns with my taste that I get stuck in a rut. In some ways streaming is a gilded cage.

That’s why we should heed what Clive Thompson says and rewild our imagination. It’s more work, but more rewarding.

So get out your DVD player and order some movies or DVDs and watch something you’ve always wanted to but never seem to because it is not available online. You can even order a DVD player for cheap, here.

 

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Want to make employees more productive. Do this, not the other thing…

Posted on October 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Want to make employees more productive. Do this, not the other thing…

If you are a manager and have or planning to have trackers on your employee’s computers to see how productive they are, I have an alternative and better suggestion.

The suggestion? Use your Office software to see how many meetings your employees are in. There is an inverse correlation between the number of meetings they are in and how productive they are. (Worse, when employees are trying to be productive by multitasking in meetings, people running the meetings will sometimes criticize them for not paying attention.) If you can reduce the number of meetings your employees are in, your employee productivity will increase, I assure you. (Can you make it increase even further? Yes. Give them S.M.A.R.T. targets and do whatever you can to help them achieve them. That will be another post.)

Meetings are a necessary evil for work: you need them, but not too many. Anyone managing people should review the meetings their employees are in and find ways to cut them out like bad clutter. And if they can’t eliminate the meetings, have fewer of them and make them shorter. One way to do that is use tools that default to shorter times. Software like Microsoft Teams makes the default meeting size 30 minutes. Years ago software I had would make the default meeting size 60 minutes. Guess what? We had lots of 60 minute meetings. Ideally software would take the default meeting size down to 20 minutes: that would give back at least 20 minutes / hour to employees, and more would get done.

For more on the problems of spying on your employees, see this piece in the WSJ: More Bosses Are Spying on Quiet Quitters. It Could Backfire.

P.S. Microsoft Viva can provide some of this information. For more on that tool, go here.

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On the Maritimes, Hurricane Fiona, Kate Beaton and Ann Terry, etc

Posted on October 2, 2022 | Comments Off on On the Maritimes, Hurricane Fiona, Kate Beaton and Ann Terry, etc


The big news out east recently has been focused on Hurricane Fiona. As the local media showed, Fiona destroyed property all throughout the region. One place heavily hit was Glace Bay. A ton of damage occurred there in my hometown. Homes, buildings, you name it…even the airport between Glace Bay and Sydney was hit. To get a sense of the damage done, click on any of the links (also where the above photo comes from).

Sadly, a lot of the havoc that Fiona caused will not be covered by insurance. Here’s hoping the government steps in. And it wasn’t just damage: a woman in Port aux Basques, Nfld. was pulled out into the sea and drowned, as was this man in Lower Prospect, N.S.

Despite all this hardship, people from that part of Canada are resilient. Before the storm, the local media even had advice on how to cook when your power goes out for days: Storm day dining. Mari timers are in for some tough times, but they’ll pull through: they always do.

I’ve been thinking much about Cape Breton and Nova Scotia lately even before the storm. The great artist Kate Beaton has a new work out call Ducks which documents her life and time working in Alberta.  Anyone who is a fan of graphic novels should get it. Even if you are not, I recommend it.

Speaking of great Cape Breton women, I was thinking of Ann Terry lately. Growing up, you could hear her everywhere. She seemed like she was everywhere. Here’s a good introduction to her, and here she is broadcasting. She had a tremendous voice. A great presence, too.

In other east coast news, it looks like Westjet is suspending flights to NS . I always hate to see transportation reduced to the Maritimes. Here’s hoping that doesn’t last long. Speaking of reductions, here’s a story on how some churches are closing down in Atlantic Canada. I suspect that phenomenon is not limited to that part of the country, though.

 

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On sleeping spiders, Marie Curie’s scandalous affairs, and other things I find interesting in math and science, Oct. 2022

Posted on October 1, 2022 | Comments Off on On sleeping spiders, Marie Curie’s scandalous affairs, and other things I find interesting in math and science, Oct. 2022


I haven’t been doing as much reading in math and science these days, but what I have found and listed here I thought interesting or worthwhile:

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