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.

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.

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.

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. 🙂

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.

 

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)

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)

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!

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.

 

 

 

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.

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!

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).

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!

 

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.

 

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)

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.)

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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:

What was new in the world, September 2022 edition

Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. Among other things, I like posting these because I will be curious to see how they read in the next 5-10 years. I hope you find it worth reading now, though. 🙂

China: China has been making noise about invading Taiwan. A recent visit by Nancy Pelosi especially helped stir that pot. Foreign Policy had some good pieces on it here and here. China has been threatening Taiwan with drones, although it will take much more than drones to accomplish it.

Other things to note that are happening in China are a Banking Scandal and a poetry contest that causes problems. For more on China, this talks about how China is dealing with Covid. This addresses how China’s Surveillance State is encountering public resistance. Businesswise, Huawei is running into problems. More stories on China’s entrepreneurs.  Last, this piece and this one address how good or bad Xi Jinping is as a leader.

Asia: in Japan, Chie Hayakawa imagines a Japan where the elderly volunteer to die. Bleak. Here’s a piece on how the Unification Church causes problems in Japan. Meanwhile, India scrambles to contain fallout over insulting comments about Islam.

Europe:  Mikhail Gorbachev recently passed away. Vox looked at his legacy. As everyone knows, the Queen also died. Here’s why VOX thinks monarchies are better than republics. As for the new king, some think that he could be an improvement, at least when compared with Charles I and II 🙂

The right is strong elsewhere in places like Poland and Hungary, though the paths of those countries have diverged. Indeed, as the war goes on in Ukraine, Polish pilots Training to fly the Bayraktars war drones. Meanwhile, The right is ascendent in places like Italy and Sweden.

The U.S.: While Biden and Trump are likely to be fighting to be president in 2024, others are looking to content. Politico looks at how Nikki Haley raises money. And Josh Barro dismisses Gavin Newsom . AOC ponders if she will ever be president. Some day. Maybe. Finally, here’s a piece on the DeSantis Martha’s Vineyard stunt. Odious. Speaking of odious, Ken Starr died. Politico properly assesses his poor legacy.

Canada: Here in Canada the Conservative party has a new leader. Let’s see how that goes. I’d like to pause for a moment to highlight the interim leader, Candice Bergen. She forced the previous leader out of Stornoway so she could move in. Then she retires. Nice. Have to remember that the next time the Tories complain others not being fiscally conservative. More on that  here and here.

What did I do today? And how do I know?

Every day, but especially on Monday, I pull up a spreadsheet that helps me stay focused and motivated to Get Things Done.

I make a plan to make sure I am staying engaged/ in touch / helping my kids, my brother and sister, and my friends. Most weeks I am pretty good about it, unless I get super busy with work or I have other challenges. I make sure I spend time on maintaining my home and my finances, though not as successfully as when it comes to the people listed. And I try (but usually fail) to write or do one political act a week.

I track and try and get in some fitness, reading, drawing and writing. I try and work on hobbies and things I enjoy, like writing, cooking and personal IT projects. I try and go to a restaurant once a week (even a basic one) and generally get out of the house and see and do something new.

I have another spreadsheet that tracks how much I put into each week. I give more weight to certain activities and try and make a game out of it. It helps to get difficult things done in a week and a month.

Besides that I have a daily checklist to make sure I do the basics, like stretch and take care of the plants and my health.

That’s personal lists. I also have work lists that are very much dependent on the work I am doing.

I started doing this ages ago when I was depressed because I wrongly believed I was never getting anything done in a day. If you log it, you see you get a lot done. I also do it because it helps with my ADHDish brain to make sure I don’t neglect things for a long time.

So on any given day, that’s how I know how I did. Some days it’s lots of small things, other days it may be mostly one big thing, and on bad days or great days I do very little at all. I try and make every day count, though some days count for much more than others.

From Michelin to Peter Oliver: thinking about how Toronto has changed in the last 40 years


Two noteworthy events in Toronto dining happened this month: one was the start of an era and one was an end. The start was Michelin came to town and tossed out stars and Bibs and otherwise paid attention to Hogtown dining. The end was the death of restaurateur Peter Oliver.

Decades ago if Michelin had come in and gave out stars, it would have been incredible. Not now. What I loved about the Michelin event this month was how many people could not give a hoot. Toronto’s food scene is excellent, and we don’t really need Michelin to come in and tell us. That can be seen in critiques like this the Star . Sure the places highlighted are great, but there is more to good food in Toronto than the places starred. Many great restaurants were passed over, as this piece showed, because we are a city wealthy in good places to go.

To be fair to Michelin, they did highlight quite a number of restaurants in Toronto, even ones that did not get an award. One of those was Canoe. Canoe is just one of the many restaurants that are part of the Oliver and Bonacini (O&B)  Hospitality group. The Oliver in the name belongs to Peter Oliver.

I have been eating in Peter Oliver’s restaurants since the 80s. Back then he had a cozy place on Yonge north of Eglinton that was a great place to meet up for brunch with friends. From that place he went on to open and close many places, some of which were truly great.

While he has a career of four decades, this piece from 2000 in the Globe really shows his career as he was becoming ascendent. He had a knack at making restaurants, even though some of them (Bofinger/Paramount on Yonge near St. Clair) were too ambitious. While the buildings themselves seem to spare no expense, the food was sometimes lacking, and leading critics at the time like Joanne Kates dismissed some of it as “tourist all the way.”

What really made a difference for Oliver was when he hooked up with Michael Bonacini in 1993 to open Jump, Then Canoe. And many more. The combined talents of the two of them lead to an entire string of successful restaurants in Toronto and elsewhere.

Over the next few years I expect Michelin will be handing out more stars in Toronto. I expect the some of them will go to O&B restaurants.

The food scene has evolved significantly since the 1980s. Peter Oliver and O&B has been a big part of that evolution. Over at their web site they have a warm  Tribute to Peter Oliver. It’s worthy of consideration, just like the man himself. RIP, and thanks.

P.S. Here’s all the Michelin star restaurants of Toronto. The Globe has more on the Michelin awards. So does BlogTO. Not surprising, here’s how hard it is to get a  table at these places. Here’s a story on the one place /chef that got  two stars: rich readers, take note. 🙂

Andy Warhol, or thinking about when an artist is influential and young vs when they are older


Watching the Warhol Diaries documentary on Netflix, I started thinking about when an artist is influential and young vs when they are older. Like many, I am aware of the early Andy Warhol. If you think of Andy at all, you likely have some of these  Warhol works in mind. When I read references to Warhol and his influnce, these are many of the works cited.

One of the things I liked about the documentary is that it spent time on his later works. Two later commissions in particular I did not know much about. One of these was his Last Supper paintings. And the other was a group of portraits he did called Ladies and Gentlemen.

In both commissions, the Netflix documentary dives into the complexity of Warhol’s life at the time and how it affected the creation of these works. The religious nature of Warhol and his thoughts on death in the era of the AIDS crisis really comes through in the Last Supper works. While with Ladies and Gentlemen, the paintings take on more layers of meaning when you think of all the things going on in Andy’s life at the time, from the commercial celebrity portraits he was producing to the increasing openness of being gay in NYC in the 70s to his desire to be a model.

In some ways, I prefer these later works to the paintings and sculpture he made in the 1960s. There’s a depth to what came after later, a richness. They aren’t as influential as the Brillo Boxes or the Marilyn Monroes, but they are better.

Perhaps that is the case with many great artists. Even someone like Rembrandt. There is more of the artist in the later works,  but the works that made them famous are the earlier works, and those are the works that are mostly remembered. It makes sense in some ways, and is a shame in other ways.

It makes me wonder what would have happened to Basquiat or Haring if they had survived into the 1990s and beyond. What works they would have made. How they would have matured. Perhaps we can look to Warhol for this. Warhol too should have died when he was gunned down and almost killed, only to be resurrected on the operating table. We know how he turned out. I’d like to think of Haring and Basquiat doing the same.

If you have the time, watch the Warhol Diaries on Netflix. It’s a good series.

For more on this, the Tate has a good piece on the people who modelled for Ladies and Gentlemen. The Guardian has more on Ladies and Gentlemen, here. Finally Christie’s has something here on the Last Supper paintings.

 

On the 50th Anniversary of M*A*S*H and rewatching some of it


The famed TV show recently had a milestone: it first broadcast 50 years ago, September 1972. If you had watched M*A*S*H, and even if you haven’t, I recommend this piece by James Poniewozik, in which he presents a chronology of the show and how it evolved over the years. It brought back good memories.

Among other things, he recalls one of my favorite episodes, Point of View, particularly for this one scene. He writes:

“Point of View” is shot from the vantage of a wounded soldier whose throat injury renders him mute. In a repeated format, a reporter visits the 4077th for the new medium of television. The unit’s chaplain, Father Francis Mulcahy (William Christopher), described seeing surgeons cut into patients in the winter cold. “Steam rises from the body,” he says. “And the doctor will warm himself over the open wound. Could anyone look on that and not feel changed?”

The episode was filmed in black and white, and there is a scene showing steam rising from the patient. It was stunning.

Recently I watched another one of my favorite episodes of M*A*S*H on one of the streaming services. The writing was still good, but the format of the show displayed its age.  This could just be me though: I think you really have to dive into old TV shows to adjust to the format to enjoy it. Certainly the quality is there.

One thing I would add: it is a show made in 1970s. There may be things about that era that makes you uncomfortable, like the sexism, or whole idea of Klinger dressing up as a woman to get out of the Army. These are products of that time. In its defense, the show became less sexist over time, and Klinger shelves the whole “I am a crossdresser therefore I am unfit” bit. But it was still a show reflecting that era.

The other thing to dwell on is that it existed in a golden age of TV. Just like movies and print, it was able to achieve numbers that no TV show can achieve now in the era of the Internet and streaming. We didn’t know that then: it was simply one of the best shows of its time and we all naturally watched it. (It’s funny to think of how back then we made the time to watch a show because if you didn’t, that was it, you missed it. You might, if you were lucky, see it in the summer when network TV would show the “repeats”.)

While M*A*S*H had so much going for it, what made the series one of the greats was its actors. It achieved a rare thing in that it lost three of the leads over time but never suffered as a result of this. The people that left were great, and the people that replaced them were also great. One person that was there from start to finish was Alan Alda. Here’s a 50th anniversary interview of him in the Times.

P.S. 1972 was a good year for film too. The 70s was filled with excess and schmaltz, but it was at its best on period pieces, like The Godfather, Cabaret, and M*A*S*H.

You need a new coffee machine. Here’s some options: old and very very new

Sure, you can always go to places like the wirecutter to see their idea of what’s the best coffee maker machines for 2022. But let’s think outside the box by aiming for very old and very new.

Moka pots (like this one) are very old but still very good. If you agree, then head over to Bon Appetit for their idea of the the best moka pots. They have a really good range of options for you espresso lovers.

If you love espresso, but like something more futuristic, why not this?

You are looking at the xBloom coffee machine, now on Kickstarter! Pretty pretty fancy!

Lots of options for your new coffee maker. All you need now to do is a) decide on which one b) get some fresh beans.

P.S. If you want some really far out looking coffee devices to check out, click here.

How to say “no” at work, why boundaries are important, and a very special mute button

To be effective at work, give your best, and not burn out, you need to learn to say “no”. Now if it were as easy as saying “no”, you wouldn’t be reading this. 🙂 Given that, here’s some good advice on how to say no at work without saying no.

I’d add that you want to get to say “yes” as much as possible. However, you want to say “yes” in such a way that doesn’t cause you to be ineffective, burnout or quit. That’s no good for you or your employer. To do that, say “yes” in a reasonable context. Instead of starting by saying “no, I can’t do that this week”, trying saying “yes, I can do that next week / month / etc”. Saying “yes + better alternative” is one way to get to yes for both parties.

That said, sometimes you will have to just say no. Remember, when you say yes to One Thing you are often implicitly saying no to Other Things. Make those Nos more effective.

As an aside, you could always say Yes and then never do it, like Mel Brooks did! But I don’t advise that. 🙂

Speaking of say “no”, here’s a piece on bosses who promise jobs with a coveted perk: Boundaries. Two things on that. One, boundaries are a good way of saying No in advance. Two, boundaries are more common than the WSJ lets on. Your salary is a boundary. Your office situation is a boundary. Scope statements, terms and conditions in contracts, and agreements: all are boundaries. Boundaries are important for EVERY aspect of your work. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Boundaries make work better for everyone. Make sure the people you work with respect them. Go work elsewhere with other people if they don’t (thereby establishing a new boundary).

In other business links, here’s more on quiet quitting, which is a passive way of saying no. And here’s a very sophisticated mute button, which seems related. 🙂

(Image: link to page on Austin Kleon’s blog)

 

 

 

Do you not have fun any more? Well, here’s how to have more fun as an adult

As kids, having fun seems natural. As adults, it can be hard to come by. Worse, some forms of fun actual harm of us. So how can we have good clean fun as an adult?

Alan McKee has written a book on the subject. In an article in the Times, the writer says that He…

…defines fun thus: “Fun is pleasure without purpose.” In other words, the same qualities that seem to make it so hard for me (the writer) to have pure fun — I need purpose! — make it hard to optimize for; put it under a brain scanner, and it has a tendency to disappear.

Fun is pleasure without purpose. Adults, especially responsible adults, often look to assign purpose to events. That may make them educational or beneficial, but it often robs them of their fun. If that is you, perhaps you need to set aside time for an activity that is purposeless. Play a kazoo.  Make playing card towers. Doodle. Solve a puzzle and then throw it away. Go for a slow walk. Dance badly. Sing out of tune. Whatever you enjoy, do it without any aim in mind, other than to enjoy it. Guess what? You may be having fun.

For more on this, read: Here’s How to Have Fun. Also, What Is Fun? in The New York Times. (That’s where the blockquote comes from.)

How to decorate your space: use large leafy plants

If you are decorating a space and you don’t know what to get, consider plants with really large leaves, like this here licuala grandis. It’s practically sculpture, but easier on the eyes and the wallet.

For more on this, check out these 12 houseplants with obscenely large leaves. One of those could be just what you need to liven up your place.

Want to be healthier? You need to be more social


You have to socialize if you want to be healthier. That’s been tough during the pandemic. And it is tough for men in general. As VOX shows, men have fewer friends than ever.

Of course having friends is good, and if you can form new friendships, that’s great. But socializing with strangers is also healthy. This piece, talking to strangers, shows why.

Get out their and make small talk. Smile at people. Thank them for their help. You will be doing them a favour and yourself as well.

Like Basquiat, Keith Haring painted on walls. Now those walls are highly valued.

Years ago Keith Haring cut out a painting Basquiat created on a wall. And it’s a good thing he did! You can read about that drywall painting here.

Now Haring is getting the same treatment. The painting above was on a wall of his old home. It was cut out by the home’s new owners and sold at auction. The people who bought the house and did this have easily paid for the house many times over as a result. Quite the find!

Here’s two pieces in the Guardian on it. This piece tells the story behind the find. And this piece reflects on what it means.

Paper Macs! Doom on Doom! Build a Voight-Kampff machine! And more (What I find interesting in tech, Sept. 2022)

Here’s 70+ links of things I have found interesting in tech in the last while. It’s a real mix this time, but still contains a good chunk on cloud, hardware and software. Some good stuff on UML, Pi and Doom as well. (Love Doom.) Dig in!

Cloud: here’s a dozen good pieces I recommend on cloud computing…

  1. I think hybrid cloud is the future of cloud computing for big orgs, and IBM does too:  IBM doubles down on hybrid cloud
  2. Not to be confused with multicloud: Multicloud Explained: A cheat sheet | TechRepublic
  3. Speaking of that, here’s 3 multicloud lessons for cloud architects | InfoWorld
  4. Relatedly, Vendors keep misusing the “cloud native” label. Customers may not care. You should care, though.
  5. Cloud Foundry used to be the future, but now it’s time for this:  Migrating off of cloud foundry.
  6. I always find these RCAs good:  Details of the Cloudflare outage on July 2 2019
  7. Speaking of outages: Heat waves take out cloud data centers
  8. Google Gsuite: now with a fee. Good luck with that, Google.
  9. Is your app resilient? Consider this four step approach to verifying the resiliency of cloud native applications
  10. If you are an AWS/Oracle user:  using aws backup and oracle rman for backup restore of oracle databases on amazon ec2.
  11. Good tips:  How to add a custom domain to GitHub Pages with Namecheap – Focalise
  12. Good argument:  Rural carriers: We need more subsidies to build 5G

Software: here’s a mix of software pieces, from how to write good bash to how to run good scrums….

  1. Is Internet Explorer dead? Nope!  IE lives! In Korea.
  2. For bootstrap noobs:  Bootstrap tutorials
  3. Fun to consider:  How is computer programming different today than 20 years ago?
  4. Helpful:  Using Loops In Bash – Earthly Blog
  5. More bash goodness:  Bash – Earthly Blog
  6. Related:  Good SED advice
  7. Some python help:  Automate Internet Life With Python | Hackaday
  8. More python:  Analyze Your Amazon Data with Python.
  9. I found this useful indeed:  Google API’s and python
  10. Load testing vs. stress testing: What are the main differences? Don’t confuse them.
  11. Good IFTTT guide:  Send me new jobs available every Monday – IFTTT
  12. Intriguing:   marcoarment/S3.php 
  13. Deploy any static site to GitHub Pages
  14. For fans of either: Visual studio and Terraform
  15. My friend Carl wrote this and it’s good:  The basics of scrum 

UML: I’ve been doing solution architecture lately, and as a result I have been using Visio and PlantUML. I love the latter and found some good links regarding it.

  1. I love PlantUML. Here’s some links on how to use it with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code:  PlantUML – Visual Studio Marketplace.
  2. and here  UML Made Easy with PlantUML & VS Code – CodeProject
  3. PlantUML and YAML:  https://plantuml.com/yaml
  4. PlantUML and Sequence Diagrams
  5. More on  Sequence Diagram syntax and features

Hardware: here’s some good (and not so good) hardware stories….

  1. This is cool:  teenage engineering google pixel pocket operator
  2. Also cool:  paper thin retro macintosh comes with an e ink display and runs on a raspberry pi (Image on Top of this post!)
  3. Robots:  Roomba Amazon Astro and the future of home robots
  4. Macbook problems:  Macbook Air m2 slow ssd read write speeds testing benchmark 
  5. More Macbook problems:  Macbook repair program: FAIL
  6. Not great:  Starlink loses its shine
  7. A really dumb idea: the switchbot door lock
  8. Finally:  The 20 Most Influential PCs of the Past 40 Years


Pi: I still love the Raspberry Pi, and I want to do more with them soon.

  1. Nice to see this:Raspberry Pi Pico W: your $6 IoT platform – Raspberry Pi
  2. Related:  How to Connect Your Raspberry Pi Pico W to Twitter via IFTTT | Tom’s Hardware
  3. How cool is this?  LISP on Raspberry Pi
  4. Awesome: make your own VK Machine:  Cool Pi Project (image above)

Sensors: one thing I was going to do with a Pi is build a CO2 meter to check on air flow. However the sensor most used for this, the MQ-135, is not all that great. It’s a problem with cheap sensors in general: you just don’t get good results. To see what I mean, read these links:

  1. BUILD YOUR HOME CO2 METER
  2. MQ-135 Gas Sensor with Arduino Code and Circuit Diagram
  3. Measure CO2 with MQ-135 and Arduino Uno – Rob’s blog
  4. Measuring CO2 with MQ135
  5. Air Pollution Monitoring and Alert System Using Arduino and MQ135

Doom! I love stories of how people port the game DOOM onto weird devices. Stories like these….

  1. So many different ports!  Weird devices that run DOOM
  2. Cool!  Even DOOM Can Now Run DOOM! | Hackaday
  3. More on that:  Run Doom inside Doom!

Kubernetes: Still keeping up my reading on K8S. For example:

  1. You’ve written a kubernetes native application here is how openshift helps you to run develop build and deliver it securely.
  2. Benefits of Kubernetes 

Twitter: I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten tired of the drama around Elon Musk wanting to buy twitter. However I had a recent spasm where I was reading somewhat on it. Here’s what I read:

  1. Twitter, Musk and Mudge
  2. More on Zatko
  3. Also  Zatko
  4. More on Twitter
  5. Whistleblower: Twitter misled investors FTC and underplayed spam issues. Ok, that’s enough.

Finally: 

  1. Beware Tiktok!  TikTok’s In-App Browser Includes Code That Can Monitor Your Keystrokes. These special browsers have to go.
  2. A bad use of AI in France:  taxing pool owners with hidden pools. It’s bad because the success rate is poor.
  3. Lots of good tech articles at Earthly Blog
  4. Lots of good tutorials at Earthly Blog too.
  5. How do I link my domain to GitHub Pages – Domains – Namecheap.com
  6. Mark Zuckerberg braces Meta employees for “intense period”. That’s a shame, said no on.
  7. Updated: Hardware vendor differences led to Rogers outage says Rogers CTO. More on that Rogers outage.
  8. How to:  Fine-Tune and Prune Your Phone’x Contacts List from The New York Times. Useful
  9. Also useful:  4 iPhone and Android Tricks You May Not Know About – The New York Times
  10. Good to know:  How Updates in iOS 16 and Android 13 Will Change Your Phone – The New York Times
  11. Charge your phone differently:  Phone charging.
  12. Canadian orgs struggle with  Ransomware still.
  13. Apple expands commitment to protect users from mercenary spyware. Good.
  14. Related:  84 scam apps still active on App Store’s steal over $100 million annually

On the Emmys and the end of TV as we knew it

Shows such as the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Emmys give us the chance to consider the media they are based on. One thing to think about is how that old media is under attack by newer media. Music was the first to struggle with this problem. Now with everything from Netflix to Disney+, network television is also struggling but with new forms of TV. As the New York Times writes about this year’s Emmys:

The show remained fixated on a milder existential threat, however: streaming services. The theme remained dominant even though the ceremony ran on Peacock as well as NBC, with the host, Kenan Thompson, working multiple Netflix digs into his monologue. “For one more year,” The Times’s Mike Hale wrote in his review of the telecast, “we got the weird spectacle of broadcast TV nervously proclaiming its relevance as if it wouldn’t have the chance to do so much longer.”

I suspect network TV — ABC, NBC and CBS mainly — will come up with ways to survive. Perhaps they will do this by adopting a strategy of “if you can’t beat them, join them” and go with a stronger streaming presence. One thing for certain: the status quo has permanently shifted and they need to change to stay relevant.

As for the 2022 Emmys, you can read more about them, here.

Up and at ’em! Here’s some good stuff on remote work, office work, quiet firing and more


Hey, welcome back to work. Here’s some things to think about as you start (postpone?) your work day and work week:

Quiet Firing: first there was a trend about quiet quitting. Now there is a new thing: quiet firing. You can read about it here at huffpost and life hacker. I don’t know if this is a real trend or just something the next gen of workers are noticing. My take: if you are being sidelined or ignored, look for ways to discuss it with your boss or your HR people. You are responsible ultimately for your career, but you should also be getting the support you need to succeed. If you aren’t getting that support, you need to take action.

Remote work: One form of action you can take is to go and work some place else. If you want to remain a remote worker, consider these 10 companies that will let you work from anywhere and are hiring now . Or review this list of most in demand work from anywhere jobs. You are going to get pressured to go back to the office because …spurious reasons. Consider your options.

Office work: if you are looking forward to going back into the office, don’t forget: open office plans are awful and this piece reminds you why. Even if you work in a good location, you also need to consider how to deal (once again) with work distractions . You can’t ignore the coworker who sits in your workspace the way you can ignore you coworkers on Slack, I’m sorry to say.

Side-hustles: Maybe you plan to start up a side hustle? If so, read this, how to successfully bootstrap your startup , and this, is your side hustle is causing burnout? What to do before you quit.

In general: consider this,  is work intrinsically good?. Remember what Toni Morrison said about work. And finally, update your LinkedIn work profile.

Go get ’em.

What’s new in space? Lots!

While space is very old, some things happening in space are very new. For example, the James Webb Telescope. After much planning, it was recently made operational and started to send back amazing photos (like the one above). You can see more of them at Colossal and the official site of the James Webb telescope. To give you a sense of how great the new telescope is, here’s a piece showing side by side images of the Hubble telescope with those from the James Webb . A dramatic improvement (and the Hubble images were still great).

In other good news, NASA is going back to the moon. I am very excited about this. In not so good news, Russia says it will quit the International Space Station after 2024. Let’s hope the Space Station can survive this form of fracture.

P.S. Not news at all, but here’s a “fun” study of asteroids hitting earth. Hey, it’s space related! 🙂

(Image: link to image in Collossal)

 

 

What is good food? What is fine dining? These are things I considered while thinking about Michelin stars and eating pasta in Montreal

I’ve been thinking a lot about food since Michelin recently announced the awards given to restaurants in Toronto. When they announced the winners, I thought: how is it that I eat so much good food in Toronto and yet I have not gone to these places? Maybe I don’t know good food at all?

I thought about it more as I travelled to Montreal and ate on my trip. Two things I ate on my travels were pasta. This dish of pasta was part of a tasting menu at Cabaret L’Enfer on St. Denis.

And this was a dish of pasta I had while on the train from Toronto to Montreal:

The first pasta was good, as was the second. The first pasta was carefully handmade, precisely cooked, smartly accompanied with intensely flavoured sauces and extras and wine and finally presented artfully and with a detailed explanation. The second pasta was factory made, warmed up, accompanied with not bad wine and presented politely without much explanation. Given these differences, how can I say both were good? 

While the first pasta was excellent and superior to the second in many ways, the second pasta was still good. The second pasta’s temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, it had mild but pleasant flavours, and it fit in with a nice variety of other food. Eating it, I was reminded of all the meals I’ve enjoyed while travelling on planes and trains, and that made me think of all the joy I’ve had while travelling. I was hungry when it arrived, and afterwards I was pleasantly full. While it was not exquisite like the first pasta, it was far better than any of the other food I could have picked up at a train station. In this context, it was good — very good — and I was glad I had it.

While the first pasta was excellent, it was in no way filling. When combined with the overall meal I was no longer hungry, but it was not sufficient on its own to satisfy my hunger, nor was it meant to be. It did not remind me of other joys, though I enjoyed it. And while the overall meal was excellent, it was also very expensive. 

Perhaps food is very important to you, and any food that doesn’t approach Michelin level is not considered good by you. But to me, good food is dependent on context. A rich cheese is no good to someone who is lactose intolerant. A fine steak is undesirable to a vegan. Likewise, if you are famished, fast food you can have right now may be better than a rich stew that takes you hours to prepare. On a bitter cold day, a simple hot chocolate may taste better than the finest champagne. Or you may desire a chocolate chip cookie that reminds you of your mom’s cooking over a slice of gourmet cake. We eat with all of ourselves, and the more we bring of ourselves to the food we eat, the more good food becomes a matter of the individual who is eating it.

Good food is also dependent on qualities. The next time you are eating, think of all the textures and the tastes you are experiencing. Think of the temperature and the toughness, the sourness and the saltiness and the softness. How does it look in front of you? What are the colours? How hard is it to make? How easy is it to eat? What do you think when you are eating it? How do you feel right after you swallow it? Or an hour later? All those thoughts and feelings that you have will help you to better appreciate your food and its qualities. It will help you realize what is good food — to you — and what is not. It will make you appreciate fine dining, whether it is in a beautiful restaurant or eating at a cafe counter or on a picnic blanket. 

Michelin stars do not solely define good food or fine dining. Only you, the individual, can do that. Bon appetit. 

When Alex Colville appeared on Canadian coin, or what should replace the Queen?

There has been discussion about what should go on Canadian money now that the Queen is dead. For some, the choice is obvious: Charles III. For others like me, the choice is less obvious.

One thought I had was to commission Canadian artists to produce works to go on the front of the coin. We had done something similar for the back of the coin, in 1967. Then Alex Colville produces a series of animal images that graced six of our coins as part of the Centennial celebration. I think now would be a good time to commission one or more artists to produce images for the front of the coins, too.

We would still have our toonies and loonies with consistent images on the back. But now we could have new images on the front. I like the idea a lot.

For more on Colville’s coins, this piece was interesting.

P.S. Relatedly, here’s why the monarch on our coins face the way they do. Fun!

(Image: link to image on mint.ca)

Got to get this into your life! The new special edition of Revolver

Yep, just like some of the later Beatles records, Revolver is getting remixed and maximized, with 64 tracks of goodness for you to purchase or stream. You can read about this new special edition of that great recording here: ANNOUNCING REVOLVER SPECIAL EDITIONS (news), The Beatles.

I’m a huge fan of Revolver: it may be second only to Abbey Road for me if I were to list my favourite Beatle records. It’s all killer, no filler. Get it into your life! 🙂