Various Contrivances

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:46:13 -0400

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.

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:18:06 -0400

🎵 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

Notes on the week of August 31 2026

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:26:00 -0400

Some highlights from last week, as recorded on the following Tuesday.

Queen‘s Engineering

Casa Domenico

2026 Blue Mountain Spartan race

Transcript

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 20:44:46 -0400

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

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:21:53 -0400

Unplug America is a great site from @todmaffin.com that lists Canadian alternatives to US tech products 🇨🇦

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:23:52 -0400

My daughter passed along some impressive footage from yesterday’s storm

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:50:47 -0400

🏃‍♂️ New running shoes day!

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:47:22 -0400

Aftermath of last night’s big storm

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:37:14 -0400

🎧 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.

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:21:08 -0400

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.

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:59:33 -0400

Augure had added an AI memory feature to help with migration and interoperability

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:22:17 -0400

🔗 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 🇨🇦

🇨🇦 Early thoughts on digital sovereignty

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:46:58 -0400

I’ve been thinking (perhaps too much) about digital sovereignty recently. As a Canadian, the idea that we need to have independent, domestic control over our digital infrastructure, data, and policy has been a widely debated topic with fresh urgency.

As an individual, I think there are three reasons for considering the location of our technology choices:

Canadians' quite reasonable dislike for Trump and MAGA trolling of our country. This is all intertwined with our trade war and various boycotts.
Concerns about being vulnerable to having our access revoked to important digital services. This came up in a different context a few months ago, when I worried about my vulnerability to losing my Apple ID.
Interest in supporting new Canadian providers that could, ultimately, help enhance Canada’s competitive advantages and economy.

The first reason is both totally understandable and the least important in the long run.

Adopting Indie Web principles and good technology practices (like reliable backups) mostly take care of the second reason. I own my own domain name and use it for my blog, social networking, and email. The domain registrar is Hover, a Canadian company based in Toronto. I can readily swap out backend providers for my blog or email without too much trouble. The Micro.Blog service that I’m using does have an option to use EU servers, instead of US ones, but that’s only swapping one foreign government for another (though one of them is much more reliable these days). So, a nice feature to have available that I won’t enable for now.

Given I like tinkering with technology, the third reason has some appeal. I’m trying two specific services for this reason.

I’ve switched to Augure as my AI service. Not only is it Canadian-made, it also has been specifically tuned for Canadian context, which also often makes its answers more useful. Although the iOS app isn’t quite as polished as Claude’s, I’ve found the actual responses to be absolutely suitable to my needs. That said, I don’t use AI for any complex coding, so can’t comment on how well Augure works for this.

I’m dabbling with Gander.Social as a social network. In addition to being Canadian owned and operated, they also have many good ideas about how to do social networking properly that are worth supporting.

These seemed like two good places to start and I’m keen to keep exploring. I’ve found Michael Geist to be a useful resource on the policy side of this topic.

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 14:49:24 -0400

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 📚

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:16:30 -0400

🔗 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

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 16:32:05 -0400

🏃‍♂️ 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

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:33:03 -0400

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 📚

🏡 Our Haliburton cottage

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 20:35:34 -0400

After fifteen years of renting various cottages in the area, my wife and I are very excited to have purchased a property in Haliburton.

This had been our long-term retirement plan: sell the Toronto home and move up there year round. So, we’ve been keeping an eye on the market and happened to find the right place at the right price. After renting seven different places on seven different lakes, we had a very clear sense of what we wanted and this one had all the right attributes. We’re just about ten-years earlier than planned.

Our rental experience always felt very contained. We’d go up for two or three (glorious) weeks. Then pack all of our stuff back up and plan for the next year. Now we’re in this new circumstance of being able to go up north on any particular weekend. This flexibility really extends the experience which infuses our weekly planning with the potential of getting out of the city and up to the lake.

I’ll confess that it is very surreal to reach what seemed like an unattainable goal and I don’t want to take this for granted. We are very fortunate to be able to do this. That said, I do now have a whole new list of projects, decisions, and expenses to manage. This is both exciting and daunting.

All that aside, we’re looking forward to welcoming friends and family to our cottage and to building a new community.

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:33:20 -0400

🏃‍♂️ I’m both inspired and dumbfounded by someone running an ultramarathon everyday for 250 days

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 20:38:15 -0400

🎵 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

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 17:49:35 -0400

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!

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:45:49 -0400

As our vacation gets near the end, I’ll miss this view

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:16:01 -0400

🎵 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:44:37 -0400

🏃‍♂️ At 335m, my watch tells me this is the largest elevation gain of the year

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:23:24 -0400

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 📚