Easy: check out BlogTO’s great list of The Best Used Bookstores in Toronto. Two of my favorites bookstores are BMV books and Ten Editions, both close to each other. I highly recommend them. Even if you know of some of them, chances are you haven’t been to them all.
Toronto has alot of great stores for new books, but if you are looking for vintage or obscure books, this list is what you need.
(Photo via a link to BlogTO)
Here’s the curve (X is age, Y is a measure of one’s happiness)
As you can see, it is lowest for people in their 40s, then starts to improve past that point. To understand more about that and why you need to hang in there if you are in your 40s, read this: The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis in The Atlantic.
Two additional comments:
1) If you are in your 30s, you can expect this to happen, so take stock and think about ways to prepare for it.
2) Obviously this is a large generalization. Still, there is much merit in it, I believe.
You may want to become a vegetarian or vegan but you may also be reluctant to give up eating things like bacon or fish. If you are experiencing this dilemma, then this question might appeal to you:
“The most effective question we can ask is not how can we increase the amount of vegetarians and vegans,” he says, “but rather, how can we reduce the amount of meat consumed?”
If this appeals to you, then I recommend this article: Love Bacon AND Animals? ‘Reducetarianism’ May Be For You. Still interested? Then I also recommend this book by Mark Bittman: VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good.
You are stressed. You decide: I need to manage it. That decision alone can help bring down your stress levels.
Your next step it to take action. If you have no idea how to do that, start here: Make stress management as routine as brushing your teeth viaThe Globe and Mail.
Teeth brushing won’t cure cavities and simple stress management techniques like these won’t cure significant problems in your life that are causing you to be stressed. But just like teeth brushing can prevent cavities, simple stress management can help alleviate some stress.
Unless you have a carefree life, these stress management techniques are worth reviewing.
If you think your Internet connection is too slow, or you just want to upgrade it, you owe it to yourself to measure how fast it is. There are a number of ways to measure it, but I like using this: Speedtest.net by Ookla – The Global Broadband Speed Test.
Record both your upload and download speed. Ideally, do it at different times of the day, and do it for both weekdays and weekends. Once you have that information, you can decide on what services would be an upgrade to this.
Also, while speed is important, the other thing to consider when you are upgrading your service is what your monthly bandwidth usage is. Your current ISP should be able to tell you that.
Can be found here: 100 Tips to Improve Your Life – 99U.
I challenge you to go through this list and not find anything here that you could apply to your own life. You will likely find at least five. If you find none, maybe your life is already perfect. 🙂
The 99U is a great source of guidance on any number of topics. I have even written some articles there.
Do you beat yourself up for starting projects but not finishing them? Do you not even try to start for fear you won’t finish? If so, I recommend this article: Why Quitting is Perfectly Okay. — So, this is life. — Medium. It’s one thing I hope you finish. Everything else is optional.
Of course, finishing them is also good. Either way, you have something to gain by starting those projects.
And hey, it’s Sunday evening at the start of May: a great time to plan your projects for the week or the month. Give it a go.
Head over here: Spoonflower: Shop, design custom fabric, wallpaper & gift wrap and you can see how you can take your own images and designs, have Spoonflower print it, and send it off to you. Very cool.
I admire the work that Elon Musk does, be it Tesla, Space X, or other endeavours he takes on. I also had an opinion that the success he achieves is as close to a Given as success can be. I held that option until I read this article: Elon Musk Had a Deal to Sell Tesla to Google in 2013 – Bloomberg Business. This article shows just how touch and go it was for Musk and Tesla in 2013. Among other thoughts, it reinforced in me the notion that success in challenging areas is difficult for everyone, whether it be Elon Musk or anyone.
If you are trying to accomplish something difficult, and if you think that others have it easier than you, I recommend you read this article. I also recommend it to anyone who needs to be reminded that success is never a given, but with the right effort and focus and dedication, even the most challenging type of work can be accomplished.
I think these rules are about the best thing I have seen on how to eat: Simple Rules for Healthy Eating – NYTimes.com.
To make it even simpler, I would boil them down to:
1) Eat less processed food, and more food you make yourself from raw ingredients
2) Eat a variety of ingredients in moderation
3) If you have to drink something, drink water
I recommend you read the NYTimes piece, though. Really good.
If you are going to learn to code and you are planning to stick with it, then you owe it to yourself to read this: Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard.
It’s well written, and it has some great graphs, including this one:
I think any area of learning where you get good initial training would look similar to this. I recommend you find some mentors to help get your through the desert of despair.
P.S. Yes, I realized they borrowed heavily from Gartner’s Hype Curve. 🙂
Grass died today. To read most of the pieces on him, you’d have a hard time imagining he was a great writer. So read this instead: The Greatness of Günter Grass in The New Yorker. It’s by another great writer, Salman Rushdie. It makes you appreciate the greatness of Grass.
Is Eleven Madison Park the best restaurant in NYC? If you read this, Restaurant Review: Eleven Madison Park in Midtown South – NYTimes.com, you’d be inclined to think so. Regardless, it is excellent and worthy of considering a visit.
But what if you want to experience the place without having to go through the tasting menu? Worse, what if you don’t have a reservation. Well then, you need this: How to Eat at Eleven Madison Park With No Reservation and No Tasting Menu — Grub Street.
I can’t promise that will work, but it is worth considering if you want to casually experience some of the best Manhattan has to offer.
If you know someone is physically injured, you apply First Aid to either repair the injury or limit it until you can get further help.
Likewise, I think of this list as a form of mental health first aid: Eponis | Sinope – Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up. It’s not meant to replace professional help, if you need that, but it may be the thing you need to get you through a rough patch (speaking from personal experience).
And by here, I mean this site: Startup Stash – Curated resources and tools for startups. It is an amazing collection of tools you likely will need, for one thing. Plus, it has a superb user interface that not only groups the tools well, but gives you a sense of all the things you need to think about if you are going to go forward and create your own startup.
If you aren’t seriously thinking about startups, but would like to know about new tools to make you more productive at work, then I recommend you check out this site too.
Kudos to the creator of the site. Well worth a visit.
Over at HisAndHerWine.com they have two great infographics on how to pair wines with pizza. I picked the one above because it focuses on specific Italian wines, but the other infographic and alot more info can be found here: 16 Best Wines to Drink with Pizza.
The best wine to drink with pizza may be the one open nearest to you, but if you want to be precise and have a better pairing, check out that site.
The 10 questions are from this article: The only employee engagement questionnaire you’ll ever need and it is the kind of thing a manager would ask employees. But really, they are the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself.
I like the first three:
- Why are you still here?
- What would make you leave?
- Where would you be if you weren’t here? (What company would you really like to work for?)
The other seven are good too.
Anyone working anywhere should ask themselves these questions regularly.
Then I recommend you read this: Dental Services – free dental care – Mobile Dental Clinic – City of Toronto Dental Clinics) and see if that person qualifies for free or lower cost dental services that the city of Toronto provides. They have a mobile service which could be a great thing for someone who has limited mobility.
The NYtimes has a good piece on new dietary guidelines and why they are changing from what you were used to: Behind New Dietary Guidelines, Better Science – NYTimes.com. You will likely be surprised by some or all of it.
Some people have very serious and specific dietary needs, and if that is the case, consulting your doctor is the best thing to do. For others, the best advice may be the most common sensical, which is to eat a wide variety of food in moderation.
The NYTimes.com dips into the latest slang with this: Language Quiz: Are You on Fleek? It’s fun to give it a try: I got 9 out of 12 and I have no doubt most people can do better. If you do worse, well by the end of it, you’ve learned a few new common slang terms.
If you want a better source for translating slang, you might want to head over to a site like this. Or wait long enough until The Oxford English Dictionary folks add it to the latest and greatest version of their book.
My kids spent many years going to summer camps in Toronto. If you have to or want to send your kids to summer camps, you might find these notes useful.
The first two things you need to do: 1) get out a calendar and 2) determine your budget. Do this in February. Really! When you get out a calendar, you will likely see that the kids have 9 weeks off in the summer (for some reason I used to think there were only 8 weeks off for the kids). Next, get a budget, because you will need to account for camp costs as well as transportation costs and extra costs like if you have to pick your kids up late. When you have a calendar and a budget, your camp options will come into clearer focus. Also, you can start thinking about other things happening in the summer, like vacations, visits from family, work assignments, and other things that will affect you.
As far as organizations offering camps, the cheapest camps by far – by far! – are the ones run out of community centers from the City of Toronto. They also fill up really fast. By March, if I recall. Book those first.
North Toronto Soccer had relatively lower costs than most camps. Great if your kid loves soccer. Note: ask how much time the kids spend outside. That can be a very tough camp in the middle of summer. (Not just NT but any outdoor camp.)
My kids liked the film camp at NFB, and it was indoors and so good during some weather, but one year was enough. Also, doing it with kids under 10 was better.
If your kid loves to do art, the AGO camps are great. If you are thinking of becoming a member and signing up, do both: members used to get a break on camp costs.
Harbourfront had some of the most interesting camps. DD loved them, but DS did not. Also, Harbourfront has buses that take your kids to and from camp from various locations around the city. Saves time, costs money. Can be a lifesaver.
Hockey camps are the most expensive, some going for $600 a week. UCC had relatively cheaper ones, but they fill up really fast too. UCC has lots of good camps, and they are in line with camps at places like AGO and NFB, but the hockey ones always filled up right away. Sign up for those first! Also there were hockey camps at Larry Grossman arena that were good and not as expensive.
Another benefit of hockey camps: the kids spend alot of time in not hot facility. Great experience during the hot days of summer.
To save some money, put your kids in camps with long weekends. That one day can save 20-50 bucks
To save more money, take time off and spend time with your kids. Note: this may not be cheap, either. If you plan to take a week off and plan to take your kid to a different venue every day, you will see it will add up. If you want to do this to save money, your goal should be to find activities you both like that aren’t too expensive, be it going to the Islands, having picnics, bike rides, kite building and flying, etc.
Don’t be too dazzled by camp promises. You might think: wow, my kid will learn SO much at this camp. They will learn things. And they will likely have fun. But think of camp as really good babysitting/daycare. Camps are mostly run by teens, and alot of camp time is getting kids to and from locations, feeding them, tracking them, etc. My son hated that. Also some councillors are really great, others are just there to do the minimum. One week my son went to a hockey camp and loved it because the councillors were great. He went to the same camp a few weeks later and didn’t because the councilllors had changed.
See if you and your kid’s friends can go to the same camp. Talk to other parents and try to make this happen, especially if your kid is not extroverted. Camp can be stressful for introverted kids: having old friends can help. Some kids thrive on camps and love them. Others can’t wait to be old enough not to go.
Try to pick up your kids on time. Once camps are done, usually around 4, the councillors will likely round the kids up in one place and more or less have them sit around until you get there. It is super boring, and it will likely make it harder for you to send your kid to such camps in the future.
My kids were done with camp by about 11. I know there were camps that go well into the late teens, but that wasn’t for mine. Likewise, overnight camp was not really an option for mine. Yours may be different.
Keep receipts for all camps. Keep them in one spot. You should be able to get a significant tax break from them, assuming you are paying taxes.
I just cleaned up an environment I had set up in Amazon years ago for a client. (The client wanted to use Amazon, so we did.) In doing so, I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind which would cause me to continue getting billed even though I was no longer actively using EC2. I believe that the following checklist was useful in insuring this.
My EC2 cleanup checkist:
After following this checklist, my EC2 environment was cleaned up. Depending on how you are using EC2, you may have more things to delete. Checking your account balance will help there: if you left things behind, they may incur charges. An increase in your account balance will help flush them out.
One thing to consider: you may delete something, but it doesn’t show in admin console. If that is the case, logout and then in. I did that when I was having trouble deregistering my AMIs. I logged out and then in and when I checked them, they were now deregistered.
That’s what this piece in the Globe and Mail says (Five key traits of successful consultants – The Globe and Mail), and as a long time consultant I find it hard to disagree. The traits?
You could argue successful consultants have more common traits, but these are a good basis for anyone who want to provide such services to clients. If you want to become a consultant, ask yourself if these apply to you. If you want more details on this, click on the link to the Globe.
I’ve eaten much of the food on this Buzzfeed list, more than I should admit. All the ones I have eaten were delicious. That’s my way of saying that if you get a chance to eat any of the 23 Most Delicious Cheap Eats In Canada, then you should. 🙂
(Image via their article)
Oy. First we had the minimalist running shoe. Now comes this: Forget Barefoot; New Trendsetter in Running Shoes Is Cushioning in the NYTimes.com. Yep, we are swinging from minimalist shoes to maximalist shoes. Should you get them? I agree with Lauren here:
Lauren Fleshman, a national champion in the 5,000 meters, likened the maximalist upswing to past footwear phenomena, now rejected as passé.
“To me, maximalist shoes fall right in the line of every other shoe trend,” she said. “There’s some good reasoning, but we don’t know enough about how it affects the body longer term, and we won’t know until everyone has been using it a while and all the other research comes out about how it destroys your body or whatever, and then there’s a lawsuit, and then there’s a campaign about how to use the technology properly, and then in the midst of all this confusion the next trend takes off. There is no shoe savior coming for us.”
It is hard to know what to expect when someone you love is dying of cancer. I know that was my experience when my mom died of cancer a few years ago. There is no What to Expect when you are Expecting books to give you an education or a perspective. Yet just like we need information for when loved ones are at the start of their lives, we need information for when loved ones are at the end of their lives, too.
Here are three essays that I believe can help you with this.
When someone you love is dying of cancer, your life becomes much more difficult. Knowledge can help with that difficulty.
If you see someone in Toronto who appears to need help in dealing with this cold weather, and you aren’t sure what you can do, this page is worth reviewing: the City of Toronto’s Extreme Cold Weather Alerts page. It has numbers you can call and other information, including links to TTC Token Distribution Locations and information on 24-hour drop-ins available during extreme cold weather alerts.
Beyond resources related to cold weather, the city of Toronto has additional material on how to get involved to with the problem with homelessness in Toronto.
Obviously there are many more ways to help the homeless in Toronto throughout the year. These links are just a starting point if you are looking for information.
Here’s a place you can start: Hadoop For Dummies.
. IBM (my employer) is providing it. Once you get through this, there are lots of places online and in bookstores to get more information. But this is a good place to start.
…according to Chatelaine. You can enjoy them right from the produce section, or you can make some amazing dishes with them. If you lack recipes, here’s Martha with over a dozen great recipes. Enjoy!
In the winter, I think one of the nicest forms of white noise is a fire. It’s not the same as having an actual fire, but if you have a computer or big screen you can Chromecast this to, I recommend this video:
I’ve watched quite a number of these videos, and this one is my favorite so far: really good sound, and it looks realistic. (Oddly, this matters to me, even though I know it merely a video).
If you want the feeling of being warm and cozy inside while it storms outside, I recommend this video for white noise:
The folks at Vox have put together this: 26 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better.
One of my favourite statistics/charts is this one:
Even hardcore pessimists have a difficult time with that one. 🙂
The other 25 charts are worth checking out. They highlight significant areas where life is getting better. If you need a reason to be optimistic or to be more optimistic (or to be less pessimistic), you owe it to yourself to see the Vox post and then think about it.
There are quite a few really good introductions to git. I’ve written about them here. Once you get past “git 101”, where do you go to learn more and be more productive with git? I’d like to recommend this article:
developerWorks: Learn the workings of Git, not just the commands. It should help you get to the next level. I particularly like the diagrams: there are alot of them, and they help you better understand the flow that can occur when you really start capitalizing on git.
It has always struck me as wrong, when I read something along these lines:
It is a tragedy that Mr or Ms X died, but..
If it has you feeling the same way, I recommend you read this: BUT | Snakes and Ladders.
If I have sympathy for someone who has died, I express that. If I don’t, I hold my tongue until a more suitable time.
I used to feel the urge to write posts whenever the New York Times did an article on something that was centered around IT, because they would get so much wrong. It isn’tt just something that happens occasionally either: it seems to happen often. That’s why you should be wary of tech pieces in the Times.
Case in point, the story about Sony being hacked. For this story, someone has done the work for me: Anatomy of a NYT Piece on the Sony Hack and Attribution | Curmudgeonly Ways. I recommend this piece.
I would warn you to be careful in coming to any conclusions about a matter related to IT based on what you read there.
It is easy to think of Kickstarter as mainly a platform for massive projects. One example of that is the insane success of the recent Kickstarter project, Exploding Kittens (it raised the money it needed in 20 minutes and now is raking in millions of dollars), but it is only one example of many over the last few years. I started to associate Kickstarter solely with such projects.
But Kickstarter is for lots and lots of people, many of them raising modest sums to do something worthwhile but on a much much smaller scale than “Kittens”. A good example of that is this project, Naked by Betty — Kickstarter.
The project is “A series of (self portrait) photographs capturing the beauty of the human body beneath the skin.” (The image above is from the project description.) The artist was looking to raise $680 to pay for material needed to complete the work. It’s a reasonable amount, and the ability for projects like this to be successful is what made Kickstarter great to me.
I highly recommend this project. (I also backed it.) And there are lots and lots of projects like that out there. I recommend you look past the high profile projects on Kickstarter and other such sites and look to the smaller projects instead. You (as a project sponsor) and the project owners will both benefit.
The folks at Buffer have put together a very big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online. I have gone over it and there are lots and lots of good tools and tips and other advice to help you be more productive and get the most out of being online. Stop wasting time on social media** and start being more productive by clicking on that link now.
** Reading this blog does not count as wasting time on social media. 🙂
The folks at this site have a number of tools to help with stress, including this: Equanimity Project: Online Meditation Timer.
If you can sit quietly at your desk for awhile, it may just be the thing to help you calm your mind and get back to a more peaceful state before you proceed with your day.
It’s Wednesday. You are feeling stressed. Maybe you should go out on your lunch break and get some crayons and do some art work. According to this,
Coloring ….Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress.
And if you think, “who does that?”, you should know that in France, the UK and Spain, coloring books for adults are very popular.
There are worse ways to deal with stress than adding some color to a blank book. Might be worth a try.
We come into a lot of criticism in the course of our lives. Just on social media alone there is a lot. Some of it is directed at you, while other criticism comes at you indirectly. Some of it comes from people you like, while other critiques will come from people you barely know. You can be criticized for the things you say, the things you do, even for who you are: a man, a woman, a person of a certain race or financial class or nationality. Pick a trait you have and nowadays you can find someone saying something critical about it.
Given that you do have to deal with a lot of criticism, you can do take a number of actions. It’s not advisable, but you can run away from it. (For example, giving up on certain forms of social media, like twitter.) You can get into arguments with people. This seems like a good idea, but I often find it frustrating, endless, alienating, and the opposite of how you may want to be. You can learn to ignore it, though learning to ignore it is not always easy. Sometimes the criticism is invalid or worse, then it’s easy to ignore. But some of the criticism is valid and when that happens, it can get under your skin. It’s great if you are thick skinned, but if you are not, you need to do something else. You need to learn to manage criticism.
One approach to managing criticism is to use understand the idea of a license to criticize. This borrows from the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. The idea of a license to criticize is that you should only accept criticism from a small group of people, regardless of how many valid and invalid criticisms you come across. A license is different from a right. As an adult, no one has a right to criticize you: you give them that ability. Even when you do give them the ability to criticize you, it is a privilege or license. It is a license you are free to provide or revoke. They do not own it, and you get to say when they can or can’t use it. You should treat that license as valuable, and you should only give it to people whose criticism is going to result in you and your life being better as a result of their criticism.
In your life you will want to accept criticism. Accepting criticism from people you respect and who have an interest in seeing you succeed makes sense. You become a better person and enjoy a better life from such criticism. Accepting criticism from people you don’t respect and who have no interest in seeing you succeed makes no sense. That type of criticism just makes you miserable and ruins your life.
The next time you are offered criticism, ask yourself:
If you answer Yes to those questions, then you will likely want to accept and act on that criticism. Otherwise it is in your best interest to ignore it and look for someone who can make you answer Yes to those questions.
Finally, the number of people you should give license to criticize you should be a very small number of people. It should not be something given out to just anyone you know, never mind just anyone on the Internet.
If you are going to be running in cold weather, having a warm up to get you started will help. Here’s a good one to try: Winter Prep Workout from Runner’s World.
It typically takes 5-10 minutes to warm up when you go running. (Some people can take much longer). During those few minutes, I found I am cold and sometimes miserable. This warm up can help reduce the misery of winter running and also help you from getting injured.
Anything that makes winter running easier is worthwhile.
Smart People I Know 