Wednesday, September 9, 2026 →
Nice to see Apple starting to put more effort into generating health insights, like readiness. I have much of this already via other products, but they’re scattered about and don’t integrate well together.
Microposts
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — The Night Starts Here by Stars from In Our Bedroom After the War. The two singers work well together
Dropped kid #2 off at Queen’s University to start engineering. Very excited for him! Now my wife and I need to sort out a new rhythm in a house without our kids
Unplug America is a great site from @todmaffin.com that lists Canadian alternatives to US tech products 🇨🇦
My daughter passed along some impressive footage from yesterday’s storm
🏃♂️ New running shoes day!
Aftermath of last night’s big storm
Wednesday, September 2, 2026 →
🎧 I’m glad to have supported Designed in California’s Kickstarter. The podcast has been great so far, though I have to be careful not to binge all of the episodes at once. I have particular nostalgia for the OS X transition in the current series.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026 →
Although the whole “Lake America” thing is nonsense and frustrating, I agree with Michael Geist that we want the large internet companies to follow government direction:
While critics may respond that Google was under no legal obligation to make any change since the executive order changed the official U.S. designation rather than imposing duties on private companies, the real digital sovereignty risk comes from Internet giants that disregard national laws and official designations and decide for themselves which to follow. Google could have ignored the U.S. designation, just as it could ignore a Canadian designation or law. But the better approach is to ensure that national laws and policies are respected and the services are tailored to national legal frameworks. In other words, when offering a service to Canadians, abide by Canadian law. But just as U.S. designations should stop at its border, so too should Canadian designations at ours.
Augure had added an AI memory feature to help with migration and interoperability
🔗 Get along great - Paul Wells
The President says he doesn’t want Canadian anything. Fine. Let’s keep our honour, and not let him have any.
Sounds good to me 🇨🇦
Finished reading: I like the idea of Origin Uncertain by Anatoly Liberman. The book really demonstrates well the fluidity and creativity of the English language. The chapters do get daunting though. Lots of details that are hard to keep track of and a bit of a slog 📚
🔗 Resistance is never futile by Jen Gerson
Resistance in the face of bad faith and coercion is a moral end in and of itself.
🇨🇦 Of the many reasons to resist America’s bullying, this one is particularly important
🏃♂️ Approaching the time of day when, having run into work this morning, I debate if I should just take the train back. The return run seemed like a much better idea this morning
Finished reading: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a fun read. Tchaikovsky is great at creating interesting aliens and having humans struggle to understand them 📚
🏃♂️ I’m both inspired and dumbfounded by someone running an ultramarathon everyday for 250 days
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Lovers In A Dangerous Time by Bruce Cockburn from Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition). “Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight” is a great line
We really enjoyed having so many friends and family join us for our fifth, and final, year renting the Torch Lake cottage. Such a special place!
As our vacation gets near the end, I’ll miss this view
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Feather, Fur & Fin by Danny Michel from Feather, Fur & Fin. A conservation biologist’s theme song with a fun horn section
🏃♂️ At 335m, my watch tells me this is the largest elevation gain of the year
Finished reading: Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley is a delight. Great writing and quirky characters, along with nostalgia for my own childhood. Recommended via Paul Wells 📚
Thanks to my sister for bringing these whiskeys from the Elora Distilling Company. I’m starting with the Royal Amber
Vacation continues to go well
🔗 Don’t Become a Productivity Tourist - by JA Westenberg
Because the only metric by which you can actually judge a productivity system is this: did it allow you to produce something or not?
A good reminder for those of us that spend too much time adjusting our systems
🏊♂️ The lake was like glass for this afternoon’s swim
My daughter captured me in full cottage vacation mode: a beer in one hand and book in the other
🎶 After hearing my son and nephew rehearsing Is What It Is by Chance Peña, I’ve been a bit obsessed with it. They were practicing for an upcoming campfire concert at their summer camp, where there was recently a tragedy. Watching the campers comfort each other through the tragedy seemed resonant with the song’s lyrics
Finished reading: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan is a compelling story about justice and the law. A great start to the series 📚
Finished reading: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is a fun and zany time-travel mystery. Although I enjoyed the story, it does get a bit frenetic 📚