Yep, you can get your own image and include text. Cafepress has everything you need here: Customize your Sigg Water Bottle with your personal style – CafePress Sigg Designer. You have to put up with a fair amount of flash, but the end result could be one cool gift, even if the gift is for you.

(Found at the always cool, SwissMiss).

In sports, when a great player retires, they often retire the athelte’s number. Looking at this poster over at swissmiss

I imagined a similar idea for artists. For example, after Hockney, anyone else who paints paintings of California is going to be compared to him. Likewise Pollack and drippings, etc.  Of course artists can still create works about California or Germany or use steel or trash, but they are going to suffer the same comparisons that a lesser athlete faces when wearing the same number as a great athlete.

That said, there are lots more topics and ideas and themes to paint or sculpt, just like there are lots of numbers. So artists and athletes, take note, but take heart. 🙂

I love it when people take something commonplace and make it much better. This article in Car and Driver on how to adjust your mirrors to avoid blind spots is just such an example.

C&D says if you use this method, you can avoid having to glance over your shoulder before turning. Anyone who does alot of highway driving would really benefit from this.

(via Lifehacker)

…can be found here: Stop Google Buzz From Showing the World Your Contacts  (via Lifehacker). What I like about this article, besides the detailed instructions, is that it tells you how to turn off Buzz.

All this negative buzz about Buzz makes me glad I stuck with my Yahoo! email account.

Really! you need to see it to believe how great it is. I would link to some here, but the images appear locked in Flash. So go to
Cole and Son (Wallpapers) Ltd – Manufacturers of fine printed wallpapers since 1875 – Offical Website

I encourage you to buy the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It’s a great cookbook. However, if you are hesitant, follow the steps in this video to make the master recipe. Or if you do buy the book, watch this video: it will help you with the master recipe (although the book does a great job of describing it).

Honestly, it is that easy. I was skeptical, like alot of people, but it really is a simple and easy way to turn out a nice looking load of bread.

N.B. If you were to try this just using the video, the authors recommend unbleached all purpose flour in order for the recipe to turn out well.

Enjoy!

YouTube – Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

The folks at TED invited Sarah Silverman to speak at TED (mistake #1) and then said terrible things about her afterwards (mistake #2).

You can get a sense of what she said here:  What the Hell Did Sarah Silverman Say at Her TED Talk? at Gawker. What surprises me is that the people at TED were surprised. Silverman is what she is, and anyone with Google should know this.

Actually, I shouldn’t say she is what she is, because what people think she is, simply a comedian, isn’t true. I think Silverman is half comedian, half performance artist. The comedian is what gets her onto the stage, gets people listening. Then the performance artist comes out along the way, and the performance artist wants to shock and make people uncomfortable. All the time she is performing, people are seeing only one person, but two performances, and that disturbs people. Not to mention what she says. Most comedians tell jokes, funny stories, and try to get you to laugh. That’s it. Great comedians try for more, try to actually change the audience and how they think and what they find funny. I think Silverman tries to do that.

In some ways, that combination of traits should have made her a great comedian to do TED.  The mismatch comes about, though, because TED is more about awe (positive) and less about shock (negative).

So fine. They made a mistake. It happens: not everything is a good fit at a conference. Unfortunately, some of the TEDsters made the mistake of criticizing Silverman over twitter (Sarah Silverman Shows Why You Should Never Twitter Fight a Comedian at Gawker). Now to me this is a really big mistake, because, again, if you use Google, you will see you do not want to mess with Sarah Silverman. And Steve Case, no less. This is like watching the small nerdy kid at school pick a fight with the nastiest kid at school. All I can say is that I hope for Case’s sake that Silverman has better things to do than beat him up. Because it will not be a nice thing to see.

As a performance artist, I think Silverman is great. As a comedian, I am not sure if she hasn’t moved too far over into the Andy Kaufman territory. If you are going to be a cruel comedian, people need to see what drives it, what motivates it, allows them to sympathize with or at least understand it.

If you love her, great. If you can’t stand her, check out this is supportive article of Sarah Silverman in the Washington Post here: TED Organizer Trashes Speaker, Fails Social IQ Test – washingtonpost.com. It’s smart.

P.S. I am willing to bet the only comedian appearing at next year’s TED will be Jay Leno. 😉

According to the Official Gmail Blog: A new Buzz start-up experience based on your feedback has been prepared. It sounds like they’ve made some smart moves. The smartest would be to have some outside privacy experts review it and state how it meets or exceeds the concerns people had around privacy. Indeed, I would recommend anyone who starts up a new social networking service with new technology have privacy experts come in and review your service before launch.

Let’s see if these changes can rescue Buzz.

The Toronto Star has a great article on the Olympic luge track where the Georgian luger fatally crashed. It has lots of background and commentary from other athletes. Highly recommended: Athletes had feared luge track’s killer potential – Vancouver 2010 Olympics – thestar.com

One thing it didn’t mention is some of the other details written about here: Canada’s Medal Quest – Gold, and Lots of It – NYTimes.com. Canada’s ambitions may have some overlap here with the death of the luger (e.g. limiting foreign teams access to the track). That’s not “blame Canada”: luge is an inheritently dangerous sport, and anyone who competes at the Olympic level knows the dangers and tries to balance them with the need to go the fastest. I believe, though, that more focus needs to be given to the safety of the venues, not just how fast can they be made.

As athletes strain against the limits of what can be done with the human body in the 21st century, they are coming across the limits of going stronger, faster, higher. And their lives will suffer as a result, unless more can be done to make sports safer. That doesn’t mean sports have to become boring: if anything, athletes can use better equipment and terrain to push themselves even further. But no one should die or suffer for the rest of their lives in the quest to be the best.

Google has a hornet’s nest on their hands with their new Buzz offering. What should have been a big push for them into area of social computing and social networking has turned out to be, at the very least, a public relations problem for them, according to this:
Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service – NYTimes.com.

If privacy was dead, then this would be a non-issue. But if you read the article with an open mind, you can see lots more examples (other than the ones I provide here: How to think about privacy) of why privacy is important and is and should be alive and well.

I think Google is a great company. This could be a great opportunity for them to show the world how privacy should be implemented in services such as Buzz.

Barbie once said, “Math class is tough.” (Geez.) Flash forward almost 20 years, and now she has taken on a new role of computer engineer, according to the NYTimes.com. W00t! The choices Mattel asked people to vote on were computer engineer, architect, environmentalist, news anchor and surgeon. Those are all great choices, but given the social Web, I am not surprised that computer engineer was voted first. (I received alot of prompts from peers to vote on this!)

There are great and famous women in IT, though not nearly enough. If this helps get more girls interested in IT and they go on to have great careers and make great contributions to IT, then I am all for it.

The NYTimes.com article is good. I recommend you read it for more details.

I think this surprising chart says it all:

What drives Microsoft is Windows and Office. Still.

I am surprised by a few things on this chart. First, I thought Office was the real cash cow at Microsoft, but it looks like Office is returning less these days. I also was surprised by the spike in Profit from Windows, but this is likely to do with Windows 7 sales likely shooting up. Finally, I am surprised at just how little Entertainment and Devices add to the bottom line. I guess XBOX is not that profitable. (Never mind Zunes!)

You can also imagine how the profit from Office and Windows allows Microsoft to continue to explore such services as Bing. While Bing may not be profitable, it may be increasingly bringing in revenue. That might be enough for now.

While this increase in profit, I guess Ballmer is safe for now.

From CHART OF THE DAY: In Case You Had Any Doubts About Where Microsoft’s Profit Comes From

I like Jennifer Hudson alot. And I love “People Get Ready”. Combine that with Smokey Robinson, whose artistry I practically worship, and you have one great duet. Here they are, for “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music From the Civil Rights Movement”, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson performing “People Get Ready”.

That just made my week.

Sade has a new album out, Soldier of Love, and all of the songs are priced at $1.29 on iTunes. That  appears to be the premium price. I am a big fan of hers, going back to the 1980s, and since she doesn’t have a lot of other albums out, I decided to look at her other albums available on iTunes. Of the ten albums and dozens of songs available, a number of the biggest hits are $1.29, but most of them are $0.99. This is not surprising. What is surprising is two songs:

Tar Baby from her second album, Promise and Immigrant from Lovers Rock, are the only two songs priced below are $0.99, at 69 cents.

This got me thinking: why those two songs and those only? Could it be they sell signifigantly less? If so, why? Could it be their titles? If they don’t sell less, then why only these two songs? Why not other songs from other albums?And why 69 cents?

It’s a mystery to me. I’d love to here a good answer for it.

Speaking of songs less than 99 cents, I want to say that I am disappointed in iTunes pricing overall. When Steve Jobs talked about pricing songs above the 99 cent price point, he said there could also be songs for less. I thought that made perfect sense and was looking forward to it. Since then, though,  I have not seen too many songs priced less than the 99 cent price, and I would be willing to guess than far less than 1% of the songs in the entire iTunes catalog are less than 99 cents.  For example, I checked out two favourite of my mom’s: Harry Hibbs and Charlie Pride.Great artists in their own right, but I am willing to bet not the biggest sellers in the catalog. However, not one song off Harry Hibbs songs that I can see is less than 99 cents. To be fair, where I do see iTunes dropping the price is on entire albums. Both the best of Harry Hibbs and the best of Charlie Pride are very cheaply priced at 7.99 and 5.99. Indeed, if I randomly poke around, it appears that Apple wants you to buy albums, and you are more likely to get deals that way. (For example Eurythmics Boxed is $44.99, but it has 125 songs on it, which works out to around 36 cents / song).To me it looks like Apple abandoned the notion of cheaper individual songs.)

Still, I am curious about the 69 cent songs for Sade…

Lovers Rock by Sade – Download Lovers Rock on iTunes

From the tumblelog Brooklane

I agree with Matthew Yglesias (and Henry Farrell): (Many) Books Are Too Long. Over the years I have slowly stopped reading books, though I read copiously on the Web.

 There are two reasons for this slowdown, depending on the book:

1. for non-fiction, I side with Farrell: “They (the authors) make an interesting point, and then they make it again, and again, padding it out with some quasi-relevant examples, and tacking on a conclusion about What It All Means which the author clearly doesn’t believe herself. The length of the average book reflects the economics of the print trade and educated guesses as to what book-buyers will actually pay for, much more than it does the actual intellectual content of the book itself.” I don’t know how many books that I have picked up, read about 50-100 pages and then thought: well, it is clear that the author needed to pad this out to get it in the 200-400 page range and therefore chapters 4, 5, 6, etc. and revisions of chapters 1, 2 and 3. At that point, I put the book away. 
2. With fiction, too often I pick it up and read the jacket to get a sense of it, and the sense I get is reading a synopsis of something that is ultimately aimed at becoming a film one day. (I can almost hear the movie trailer narrator as I read it: “In a time of trouble, John Doe rises up to deal with some difficulty or other”. Of course if it is really serious fiction, then John Doe will fail and suffer.) And it too will go on for 200-400 pages when it could easily be done really well in 100. So I put it back.

Of course that is not all books. I have read and loved great works of non-fiction, like Stalingrad and The Peacekeepers, that are 500-1000 pages long and loved them. Likewise, two of my favourite fictional works are The Satanic Verses and The Brothers Karamozov, neither of which is short (and in many cases, of varying quality). But alot of fiction and nonfiction that I read, or start to read, could easily be 99 pages and priced at $3.99.

Right now I am reading Seneca’s “The Shortness of Life”, part of Penguin’s Great Books series. Frankly, at $9.99 it feels overpriced. But I love the size and format, and appreciate the opportunity to read works like this. I would likely buy more if they were cheaper.

When eBooks started to take off, I was hopeful that writers and publishers would consider alternative forms and lengths of works. I think that would be very enticing. Instead, we can see from this, Amazon Caves To Macmillan’s eBook Pricing Demands, that nothing is going to change in the book publishing world. At least from inside the book publishing world. Instead, it will happen outside the book publishing world. If MacMillan and others think that they can price this way for an eBook, based on protecting their own margins, they are likely in for a bad surprise.

One more thing: I am surprised how much teen hardcover fiction is. I buy it for my 14 year old and most of it is $19.99. Why? Because teens won’t / can’t pay more than that. So why do the hardcover fiction aimed at adults cost almost twice the price. The quality of the book itself is the same.

Generally I find books today are poor value. I am afraid ebooks will be the same. And what the book publishing industry will find eventually is that they go the way of the music industry.

I found this chart in The Economist to be astounding when I see the changes in GDP shares of the G7 versus the Brics. It’s striking evidence of the shift in purchasing power from the G7 countries (essentially “the West” or the First World) to Russia (the old Second World) and the largest countries of the developing or Third World).

Looks like Electronic Arts is not only playing fast and loose with Dante’s Inferno (according to the NYTimes.com) but with Sony and David Jaffe’s games series, God of War. I can’t speak for that series of games, but I do know Dante’s Inferno, so when I read this:

“…images of Virgil spout lines from the poem at you once in a while, and Dante’s ranged weapon appears as crosses of light, but there is no heavy religious imagery and never any real sense of horror or torment. There are, however, a lot of bare female breasts. There is even a giant Cleopatra demon who spurts knife-wielding unbaptized children out of her nipples.”

I wonder: is it likely that this game will get younger people — ok, men — to read Dante? It would be a good thing if it did, but I am doubtful. (And if they do, they will be likely disappointed in the lack of bare nekkid ladies in it.). I am also doubtful if you should get this game. It sounds like God of War is better.

From The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens. I am aware of this quote from my copy of The Practical Cogitator (page 115). It’s a great quote from a great anthology:

“In the present, every day is a miracle. The world gets up in the morning and is fed and goes to work, and in the evening it comes home and is fed again and perhaps has a little amusement and goes to sleep. To make that possible, so much has to be done by so many people that, on the face of it, it is impossible. Well, every day we do it; and every day, come hell, come high water, we’re going to have to go on doing it as well as we can.”

“So it seems,” said Abner.

“Yes, so it seems,” said Judge Coates, “and so it is, and so it will be! And that’s where you come in. That’s all we want of you.”

Abner said, “What do you want of me?”

“We just want you to do the impossible,” Judge Coates said.

On the Shortness of Life, by the Roman philosopher Seneca, is not just a great “book” on how to not waste our lives. it is also something I would recommend to anyone starting a career. Seneca addresses this book to Paulinus, who has a job managing the corn stores of Rome, but he could just as easily be addressing a doctor, lawyer, or an IT professional. In this book (more an extended letter), Seneca is advising Paulinus not only how to live one’s life better, but on how to keep his job in perspective. It may be centrues old, but it is still good advice.
I think anyone with a career or considering a career should read this book. Good advice never goes out of date.

For more on the book, goto the Penguin site and check out On the Shortness of Life – Seneca – Penguin Books

The U.S. Government looked to tax soft drinks to decrease consumption, saying it was a signifigant contributor to obesity. Soda manufacturers did not want that and countered by saying that the tax would hurt the poor. Sad. Reading the article, it appears that the major soda manufacturers are adopting the same approaches big tobacco adopted. This is telling, and terrible. I like drinking diet soda, but I think it is time to ditch it when I see behavoir like this. You read and let me know what you think: Beverage industry douses tax on soft drinks – latimes.com (via Matt Yglesias).

I have no idea if this works or not, but Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools recommended it, and that’s good enough for me. If you have to deal with alot of snow, don’t like snow blowers, and find shovelling exhausting (or life threatening!), consider this:

To buy, check it out at Amazon.com: The Sno Wovel Wheeled Snow Shovel

P.S. It’s unusual enough you might be able to get some kids to do your shovelling, I mean snowovelling, just because it is unusual and fun to try! 🙂

I love the covers done at the BBC Live Lounge. Here’s another one:

This song hasn’t been out long, but already I’ve heard a few covers of it. No wonder.

YouTube – Paramore – Use Somebody (Kings Of Leon Cover) – Live Lounge

For years I have had a recipe for carrot soup that I enjoy making. It has a fair amount of butter, but it is delicious and still fairly light. For my carrot soup recipe, I have the following ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1/2 onion (or more if you like onion)
• 1 clove of garlic (again, if you like more, make it 2…or 3.. :))

• 2.5 cups of carrots, chopped
• 5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (it calls for water, but I prefer stock)

• 1/4 cup of long grain rice, uncooked (for thickening, I think)
• Seasoning: herbs or spices (more on this in a bit), salt and pepper

The recipe is easy.

1. Get out all your ingredients and prepare them (e.g. chop the onions, mince the garlic, roughly chop the carrots).
2. Put a pot on a burner on medium heat. It should be big enough to contain all these ingredients (at least 3 L / 3 Qt)
3. Melt the butter in the pot. Once it stops sizzling, add the onion and garlic and stir around until the onion and garlic are soft. Don’t brown them. (2-5 minutes, depending on the pan you use and your burner).
4. Add the rest of the ingredients, save the seasoning
5. Turn up the heat to high and bring it to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 20 minutes until the carrots have softened. Put a lid on it while it simmers.
6. Once the carrots are soft, puree them.  As for me, I use a hand blender from Braun. In the worst case, mash ’em up then use a whisk to make the soup silky smooth.
7. Add seasoning until it tastes the way you like.

So that’s the basic carrot soup recipe.

Now if you like that, try replacing the carrots with other root vegetables. I used parsnips the other day and that was delicious. I am going to try sweet potatoes next. Also try combos: if you have one parsnip and a bag of carrots, make carrot-parsnip soup. I start by getting a deal on root vegetables and go from there. You know those soon to be tossed out veggies at the supermarket or local green grocer? Those are cheap and are great in this recipe.

For carrot soup, I prefer adding herbs like thyme or chives as a seasoning. A good parsley works, as will tarragon. For the parsnip soup, I found spices go well and I used Asian garlic-hot sauce and that was great. Curry powder would be good, and blends like herbes de Provence are also good. Heck, you could even try a dash of lemon or lime juice  or even Tabasco or HP sauce if you like.  (If you are experimenting, try it in an individual bowl first, rather than on the entire pot of soup. That way, if you overdo it, you have only ruined part of the soup.)

If you like a thicker soup, change the ratio of liquids to carrots. Right now it is 2:1 in terms of quantity. For a thinner soup, try 3:1. For a thicker soup, try 3:2 or 1:1. (If you make it too thick, just slowly add warm broth until it is the way you like it).
For other ideas, check out this recipe: Golden Carrot Soup with Mozzarella. Note the carrot to liquid ratio is the same, but they replace the stock with milk to make it a creamier soup. Nice! Also, they add cheese. (Hey, it’s by the Daily Farmers! :)) These are all great ideas, but I like my simple and humble soup.

Please stick with the 1/4 cup of butter. I think a bowl of this soup has around 100-150 calories, but the butter makes it delicious, and you need some fat.

Experiment with herbs and spices. Whenever you see a nice spice combination, for example in a Jamaican or African inspired dish, mix up a batch of the herb or spice combination and put it in a spare pepper shaker and then shake it into your soup. (And once you have this shaker, you can use it on baked fish, roasts, grilled veggies, rice, etc.)

Try adding some canned beans to the soup (e.g. 1/8-1/4 cup of chickpeas per soup bowl) for some additional protein. Make sure they get a chance to warm in the soup before you serve it. You can add left over meats (e.g., sausage, rotisserie chicken) to it. Sometime those additional bits of meat that don’t look good on your dinner plate will look great in your soup.

Cooked pasta (without sauce) that was left over the night before will also go well with the soup. Indeed, soup is a great way to use up things. If you have some leftover corn, or peas, or green or yellow beans, they would also go well.

Of course dried bread, crackers or croutons also go well with purreed soup. Again another way to use up bread starting to dry out. (Plus if you add in after seasoning, they will thicken up the soup more.

Try replacing the onion with related vegetables like leeks (perfect with potatoes) or vidalia or red onions. If you use a nice looking onion, put a bit aside, chop up finely, then garnish the soup with it before you serve it.  Likewise, if you have some roasted red peppers in your fridge — I keep a bottle around — they also look good chopped up and garnished on your soup.

The key is to start with a basic recipe and then try different ideas.

Anyway, I am not a professional chef, but this works for me, and it should work for you too. Let me know what you do!

I love smart new bands that can refresh and recreate older music and make it their own. Nouvelle Vague is such a band. blogTo wrote about them being in Toronto recently, and this lede into the review of their show sums them up quite nicely:

Nouvelle Vague brought back British ’80s new wave and punk in their own style Wednesday night at The Opera House. It’s not everyday you get to see a pretty, young French singer break into The Clash, Sex Pistols, New Order and Joy Division.

Recreating some memorable hits in either a country, bluegrass, bossa nova or folk genre, they put on quite the entertaining cabaret-style show. Supporting their third studio album, 3, the French group, led by arrangers/producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, enchanted the audience with 20 remarkably reworked songs, sung by two young chanteuses, Helene Nogueira and Karina Zeviani.

They have lots of great videos over at YouTube, including this one:

That’s not your Dad’s Billy Idol. And I should know! 🙂 But it’s great pop, done terrifically well.

Over at John Hamilton’s Life and Times blog is a great post on the stages or emotions you go through when moving from one place to another. As John says:

So you might know about the seven stages of grief, especially if you’ve had a relative go through a bad illness or someone close to you died. Denial, bargaining, acceptance… It’s important to know this stuff and you should: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/kubler_ross/kubler_ross.htm

Well, apparently there are seven stages of emotions you go through when you move as well. Especially with an international move.

You might think: well, there is a big difference between dying and moving. True. But moving is highly disruptive and stressful. Anyone considering a big move like John’s would be advised to check this out.

The New Yorker has great examples of artists using the Brushes application for the iPhone/Touch, such as this one.

The works are brilliant in themselves, and an impressive display of how to use a technology. What I also like about the animation is how they show the work being built up, and illustrates how the artist goes about creating it. For non-artists like myself, that is very educational.

This one is pretty obvious. The email says:

Dear customer

We regret to inform you that your Bank of America Online Account
has been temporarily suspended.
Your account has been suspended after too many failed login
attempts have been made. This is most likely an attempt to gain
unauthorized access to your account and/or personal information.

To resolve this problem we have attached a form to this email.
Please download the form, open it and follow the instructions on
your screen.

Bank of America, Member FDIC
©2010 Bank of America Corporation

First off, I am not a BofA customer. Second, they want me to download a form (!!) and basically fill in information that runs some PHP program on some non-BofA site.

Needless to say, NEVER fill in such forms. If you ever get an email like this, talk to your bank or other institution directly.

Food.about.com has not only a great video on how to make packzkis, but they also have a good video on how to make another polish food:
Pierogis.

If you like traditional Italian dishes like gnocchi and ravioli, then you want to consider pierogi: they are closely related. Likewise, paczkis are a form of fried rich bread, much like Berliners and other jam filled pastries.

Give them a try!

Thanks to Bakers Journal for a great article  (and photo) of a great Polish desert: paczkis! (“pronounced “poonch-key,” “pooch-key” or “punch-key”). According to this article,

“on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (known as Fat Tuesday or Paczki Day; in 2010 it falls on Feb. 16), (Polish) bakers would enrich their yeast-raised dough with sugar, shortening and eggs to create a deep-fried pastry delight similar to a raised Bismarck or jelly doughnut. Their original purpose was practical: to use up lard and eggs, which are prohibited during Lent. But now, like king cakes in New Orleans, they are marketed as a last-minute indulgence before the Lenten season of sacrifice.”

They are truly delicious. We used to make the dough, stuff it with jam, then deep fry them until they were golden brown, then shake them around in a bag of sugar before eating them hot! Having them that fresh really makes a difference. But even cold, they are tasty.

So if you are looking to give up something like eggs for Lent, try having some of these first. You’ll be very glad you did.

Now that it is getting very cold here in Hogtown, if you are out and about in such weather, it can be helpful to know where you should go to get The Best Hot Chocolate in Toronto. BlogTO has a rundown of some great places to go for this wonderful hot beverage.

As an aside, I love going to Aroma for their hot chocolate. They drop a big chunk of chocolate into hot steamy milk and you stir: delicious. However, while you won’t find it in the article, you will see people argue for it in the comments.

Regardless, if you go to Aroma or any of these other places, you will (almost) appreciate the cold weather better once you have one of these drinks from one of these places.

Kudos the the government of Canada. As well as the signifigant relief funds Canadians are providing, the Canadian government has cancelled Haiti’s debt to Canada and is urging other  creditors to cancel Haitian debt. Indeed, Canada’s….

“…Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urged Haiti’s international creditors Wednesday to cancel the country’s debts following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed 200,000 people, including 21 Canadians.

Canada cancelled all its Haitian debt last fall, Flaherty noted, and all Canadian contributions to the country’s earthquake relief – more than $100 million – is in grants, not loans.”

If you are not a Canadian, contact your local political leader and ask them to follow the Canadian government’s lead.

Are you an aspiring Canadian filmmaker? If so, then check out the NFB’s web page, Hothouse » Hothouse 6: Call for Submissions. They are looking for talented filmmakers like you for a 12 week paid apprenticeship. You’ve got until February 19, 2010 to apply. You can do it! Go to the site for entry details. And when you win, come back here and tell me! Thanks!

Well, it likely has nothing  — NOTHING! — on the 19 most complex and dangerous roads in the world.

Here’s The Road of Death, Bolivia:

The other 18 are just as bad. You have to see it to believe it.

This is a great article (Overhyped, Overpriced & Disappointing: iPad? No, iPod in 2001) that shows that alot of the comments for the iPod were very similar to the iPad. If anything, the iPod likely had a more difficult going over. I highly recommend the article and especially the comments that it links to.

As a side note, it is remarkable that back in 2001, the iPod was going for $399. Now the iPad is going for $499. That’s quite striking in it’s own right.

When I first saw this article, A Licence to Print Money For Canadian News Sites – Torontoist, I thought, this won’t work. Well, according to Toronoist

“..news organizations everywhere have been experimenting with different sources of income, such as licensing. For more than a year now, CBC.ca, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, have been using iCopyright…

Here’s how iCopyright works: if you want to print an article from your printer, just click the little print icon beside any story, and an iCopyright window pops up asking you how many copies you’d like to make. Printing is free, as long as you’re making fewer than six copies. If you want to print six or more, iCopyright asks you to pay per article. The system works the same way if you’re trying to email an article, and it can also be used to quickly purchase republication rights.”

Now, technically this is trivial to get around. But it could still make money if larger organizations such a school boards mandate that teachers must pay for such things. This may not make sense to individuals, but large organizations sometimes will make such a call. And not just public organizations, but private ones as well.

I don’t believe it will make alot of money, and it won’t stop the march towards a new journalism that recognizes that people will no longer pay directly for news. But it could be more successful than one might think.

Reading this article, Squeeze an Extra Hour Out of Your Busy Day – Time management – Lifehacker, I thought: that’s all fine and good, but what I want is less busy time, not more. I want more weekend. Likely you do too.

One simple way of doing this is to actively plan your Thursdays, Sundays and Mondays. For Thursdays, try and arrange for a relaxing or enjoyable activity to do Thursday evening. It could be going for coffee or drinks, or seeing a show, going book or window shopping, or going out for a nice dinner. Anything that makes Thursday night more special than Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday night. If I do that, even though I have to work on Friday, I  feel like the weekend has already started.

As for Sunday and Monday, it is a similar idea. Even if you find your weekend busy, try to schedule the busyness and chores before Sunday evening and try and  make Sunday night enjoyable, even if it is taking extra time to relax. So many people I see — via email — that they have already started their work week on Sunday night! They not finished working on Saturday morning and they start working on Sunday evening! If they are lavishly rewarded for this, then fine. Otherwise, they need to better manage their time Monday to Friday so that that doesn’t happen. And they certainly need to manage their time so that they enjoy Sunday evening.

Finally, try to extend your weekend into Monday as much as you can. If you can have a relaxing breakfast, or a special lunch, or just meeting a friend for coffee on Monday, you will have eased into the week nicely and the next thing you know, you are already launched into the work week.

For the rest of the week, work hard. But when it comes time to relax and play, play hard too.

It’s your life: make the most of it. Extending your weekend is one way to do that.