Writer, Dabbler In Things
Some months back, I noticed more and more people I follow on Mastodon were commenting, or forwarding posts of others, on how they’ve noticed warnings on YouTube about users employing adblockers on their browsers. Adblockers, for those not well-versed in internet parlance, are tiny third-party programs you can add onto your browser that literally prevent … Read more
Anyone who knows me and has had occasion to be with me in a location with no fixed address, where we split up and get together again later, has heard me sing the praises of what3words. It’s an organization that created a free-to-use system in which the entire planet was covered in a grid of … Read more
My family and I are just recently back from a 2.5-week road trip to the east coast (specifically, Nova Scotia via Quebec and New Brunswick) to visit family and friends. It’s a gorgeous drive and the visits were fantastic. Couldn’t have asked for anything to go better. We’ve been trying to get our feet back … Read more
I was scrolling on Mastodon yesterday — the ad-free, federated social media I went to after finally leaving Twitter and Facebook for good a few years ago — and came across these two images that I modified. The Apple Store, where Apple devices get their apps, has long had a section deep on their app … Read more
The LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) is the provincially-owned company that, until relatively recently, was the only place in the province you could legally get wine and booze. And it remains the only place to get the latter. The company has always supplied paper bags of various sizes for your various sizes of purchases. … Read more
I like money. I like having it and what it can get for me and I certainly wish I had more of it.It’s true that money can’t buy happiness. But I suspect it’s also true that, as the nearly as old saying goes, it can buy you the boat that will take you there. I … Read more
Occasionally, a question strikes me that I can’t quite shake. Not just the big ones that will often occur to us — Why are we here? How are we here? If energy can’t be created or destroyed, what went bang in the Big Bang? — but way, way smaller. Hence part of the irritation: How … Read more
I joined the social media site Mastodon three years ago this month, having heard about it as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter, which I’d been growing leery of by that point. You can just look here for a breakdown of what Mastodon is, but in brief: A couple of years back I took a … Read more
Movember was an idea that became an annual fundraising movement. People grow a moustache over the month of November to help raise money for men’s health and well-being. I participated once over a dozen years ago, inspired by the idea and by how close to home it hit after my grandfather was diagnosed with prostate … Read more
I’ve talked before about digital privacy — among other places, here and here and don’t forget here — but after making some choices then to help myself (and the ongoing effort to help my family) get some of that, I find myself coming around to revisit it again. A bit of a freshening up, as … Read more