Many years ago when I had just started working in tech properly, I was had a huge amount of imposter syndrome. It felt like I was struggling every day to get my job done and understand the basic things. One day we were in a company meeting and the CEO said:
If that person comes to me and says "I can't do my job", its my job to find a replacement for him.
I was mortified. I just heard:
You cannot come to with any problem because I will think you can't do your job and replace you.
Later on, when I'd stopped caring about working in that company, I brought this up to the CEO. He said it was taken out of context and I could come to him with problems. The truth was, I really couldn't. That one line had put me in a state of indecision for many months. There were so many better ways to say what he said such as: "it my job to work with that employee to find a way to help them" etc. But the CEO at the time wasn't that kind of a person.
I've taken this to heart because people apply their own context to things you say. The context at work includes things like: your position in the org chart relevant to that person, your experiences in similar situations. For example: if your boss says "you are doing a great job", is that different from your mother saying "you are doing a great job"?
Of course it does, the context for the person hearing it is applied. This became clear to me quickly as a manager when off the cuff minor technical decision became an issue. A junior person said (paraphrasing) "we should do it this way because Andy said so". Another person replied (paraphrasing again) "don't do it because Andy said so, do it because its right". Both reported to me, but the first person had assumed that because I had said it, it must be the way to go. The other (and more experienced person) correctly pointed out the need to critically think about what I'd said.
As you get higher up the chain of responsibility within an organisation this gets harder and harder. That's why you often see senior people think before they say anything. What they say will be interpreted by different people differently and lead to mis-interpretation. The more people you have in that organisation and the more diverse it is, the more different contexts will applied.
For that reason I'm trying to stop and think more before responding with something that might be prone to mis-interpretation.
I get targeted personally by a tiny but energetic group of people in town on a regular basis, as part of the ongoing very emotional and fraught debate in Vancouver about real estate and foreign investment.
As a result, some have raised questions this week about why I’m appearing on a panel Nov. 29 with the Urban Development Institute with the improbable title “Real Estate in the Media: Crafting the Narrative.”
So here’s an explainer of how journalists on this continent generally operate when it comes to public speaking, for those unfamiliar with the customs.
Like many journalists who cover a beat, I get asked to be on panels, as a speaker or moderator, or to speak to classes or groups on a regular basis.
This fall alone, I’ve been at almost dozen events, including
a session with students at the Ubyssey newspaper on basic reporting strategies
a panel organized by BC Housing on identifying the priorities for the federal government in its new housing policy
a panel organized by SFU on the impact of international students on real-estate markets
a panel with the Dunbar Residents Association about what to do about their emptying out neighbourhood
a panel with Gateway Theatre in Richmond on the future of Chinatowns
a panel put on by the City of Vancouver on the right to adequate housing.
One more coming up Dec. 14, for anyone interested, will be on “Inclusive Cities – The New Urban Agenda: Lessons from Habitat III.”
I try to do a certain number each year, as part of the public service that journalists do. It’s goes with the territory, along with being interviewed umpteen times by students completing papers or graduate degrees, speaking to high-school and university classes, and answering emails about how journalism works from the general public.
I don’t accept payment of any kind for these talks — or from anyone or any organization that I might potentially cover. (That’s typical of most journalists.)
And, because I’m donating my time, I prefer to give it away to smaller groups with no money than bigger ones who could go out and pay someone for advice.
But I generally accept most invitations, from resident groups wanting to know how to deal with the media to the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, where I’ve talked on the same topic, to business groups to classes of planning students, as long as I don’t have to give a big, long speech by myself, which I don’t enjoy.
As for next week’s panel, well, when I was issued the invitation, this is what I was told was the general topic:
Broadly speaking, most people in our industry are not familiar with on how the media operates. People would like to learn more about:
o How and who decides what information is news worthy?
o How does the media gauge what people care about?
o How does the media source the information?
o How does the media select experts and choose who to interview?
I was also told that the panel would likely be:
Other speakers we are approaching include Bill Good, Jon McComb, Farhan Mohamed and Ian Young.
Obviously, the topic and the overall composition of the panel changed from what I expected, to my surprise. But I’ll be talking about what I was originally asked to speak on. No one has been in touch to tell me anything different.
Writing a chapter for the next edition of The Tinderbox Way, I needed a bunch of fictitious names to fill a sample list of imaginary campaign supporters. My original plan was to sit down and invent names. I’ve done this before, but it can be tough work.
John Smith and Samantha Adams will only get you so far.
It’s hard, and potentially embarrassing, to distinguish an imaginary name that just popped into your head from the name of an actually famous person you’ve scarcely heard of.
When I make lists of names, I can’t help playing games. I was thinking of a town populated by minor characters from Trollope. Who wouldn’t want to canvass Mr. And Mrs. Grex? But this, too, takes time, and doesn’t greatly contribute to understanding Tinderbox.
So, I fired up the Scrivener Names Generator, and was pleased to find that it now generates batches of names with one click. Click! 116 names, instantly, in a nice list. Copy, paste into Tinderbox. Explode. In no time at all, we’ve got 116 people, plausible names, and a nice balance of gender and ethnicity. Here’s the first ten:
Arturo Ellison
Shannon Everton
Hiro Gooch
Hideo Lee
Maria Cohen
Lee Hasek
Katsumi Wileman
Gina March
Lynette Fraser
Courtney Wiltshire
This is not bad. “Maria Cohen” struck me as unlikely, but no one named “Mark Bernstein” is going to tell you it’s impossible. In fact, there are plenty of Maria Cohens in LinkedIn. I didn’t know that my candidate’s voter pool had quite this many Japanese-Americans, but local campaigns are like that. (Other people in my voter pool include Poppy Wimsey, Angelica van Doren, Susumu Shepard, and Josie Neruda; this town reads a lot of classics.)
Impressive example of the easy interoperability we so easily overlook.
This time of year, every slightly warm weekend feels like it could be the last one of the year. We took the occasion to fit in a family bike ride down to the lake.
Heading down Runnymede. I’m the only one looking psyched at this point.
K at the turnaround point. This is her new bike; she has outgrown the Rambler by a fairly wide margin.
mkalus
shared this story
from Rolandt shared items on The Old Reader (RSS):
As if I needed any more reasons not to use this stuff.
Instagram’s latest upgrade includes not just the ability to send self-destructing messages, but notifies users if someone screenshots their direct message. If a user sends a disappearing message to a friend, and that friend takes a screenshot, the original sender will receive a notification to inform them of this. It’s impossible not to recognize the similarities to the Snapchat feature which also notifies its users when a screenshot is taken.
This isn’t the first time Instagram has seemingly mimicked the features of video giant Snapchat. Instagram’s Stories feature is the most obvious example of this, and several updates with the same feel have followed.
However, that’s not the only new feature Instagram released recently. If a user, for whatever reason, should decide to take a screenshot of their Instagram feed, a notification appears asking whether they’d like to share that screenshot with friends.
The city announced this week it was selling its land at 601 Beach Crescent to Pinnacle for $20 million, a promise of 152 units turned over to the city to be used for affordable housing, and no guarantee of any specific density in a planned rezoning. My story here.
That is sure to be watched closely by all, including Concord Pacific, which turned over some of its land for this parcel back in 1993, on the understanding that it was going to be a social-housing site. Concord is suing the city (as I reported previously) over this, saying the land was never turned over so it could be auctioned off to a private bidder.
We’ll all be waiting to see what happens next. It was hard to get a lot of information from the city or councillors on this, since this had been discussed in camera, but it sounds like Pinnacle may have the option to back out of the sale at some future point. (That was my interpretation, anyway, of somewhat guarded remarks.)
Flying over the Philippine Sea, an astronaut looked toward the horizon from the International Space Station and shot this photograph of three-dimensional clouds, the thin blue envelope of the atmosphere, and the blackness of space. The late afternoon sunlight brightens a broad swath of the sea surface on the right side of the image.
The Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 49 crew members NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016 (Kazakh time).
So… after a year-long hiatus from doing this weekly review thing, I’m thinking it’s time to start it back up. I’m not sure what the format should be…
Work
We hosted the (fourth?) TI Learning Spaces lunch session, to help bring together instructors who are teaching in the TI so they can share what they’re doing. This month’s topic was assessment – how do you assess learning in a flexible space, with active learning and a strong focus on student agency? Lots of great ideas from the instructors – and TI staff – who participated in the session. And we’re all looking forward to a gala dance in the forum next semester as part of a course on Jane Austen…
First year education students had a digital poster fair on Friday. 160+ students, 2 months into their program at university, sharing academic poster presentations. Amazing. The energy in the room was incredible, and students were commenting on how much fun it was. Wow. 2 months into my undergrad program, there’s no way I could have done what they did. Students are so incredibly capable and engaged. One student was Facetime-ing into the session from Montreal, where he had just finished practice to prepare for the Vanier Cup game the next day.
From an event-support standpoint for the poster session, we raised 2 Skyfold walls (AB and BC) to combine Learning Studios A, B and C, and moved most of the tables and chairs out of the way to leave the combined learning studios open for students to move between the collaboration carts. Student groups were assigned a station (with a station number indicated by a sticker placed on top of the metal cart number signs – protip: don’t use stickers for this). We had the room set up in less than 30 minutes, and it took about the same time to reset it to “normal” afterward. Many hands, yadda yadda. Go team!
PhD
I went to a CMD lunch presentation by Naithan Bosse, on interactive soundscapes. Lots of interesting ideas and examples for incorporating binaurally spatialized sound to locate it in 3 dimensional space, and to connect it to other locations/times/people. It can become a form of audio augmented reality, or collaborative co-composing.
Other
Stuff I’ve starred in Fever˚ and/or added as a link:
Scientists created the mobile game Sea Hero Quest to help detect the early onset of dementia — Quartz Before the game begins, it collects some basic demographic data: gender, age, and where you live. As players move around the game, their positions create heat maps that are relayed back to scientists. This data is analyzed to show navigational decision-making in different conditions. Alzheimer’s disease affects parts of the brain that process visual information and deal with spatial awareness.
Click ⚡️ (an interesting demonstration of the kinds of surveillance possible via tracking scripts. This link points to my own session…)
dnorman – Mastodon hosted instance of mastodon. not sure what this gives that’s different than twitter. a non-corporate twitter is a good thing though.
Types of performance-based assessment use of portfolios for documenting/reflecting/assessing performance development This is an excerpt from Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fourth Edition With Web Study Guide, by James R. Morrow, Jr., PhD, Allen W. Jackson, EdD, James G. Disch, PED, and Dale P. Mood, PhD
Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Drupal 8. On this day last year we celebrated the release of Drupal 8 with over 200 parties around the world. It's a project we worked on for almost five years, bringing the work of more than 3,000 contributors together to make Drupal more flexible, innovative, scalable, and easier to use.
To celebrate tomorrow's release-versary, I wanted to look back at a few of the amazing Drupal 8 projects that have launched in the past year.
The NBA is one of the largest professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. Millions of fans around the globe rely on the NBA's Drupal 8 website to livestream games, read stats and standings, and stay up to date on their favorite team. Drupal 8 will bring you courtside, no matter who you're rooting for.
Nasdaq Corporate Solutions has selected Drupal 8 as the basis for its next generation Investor Relations Website Platform. IR websites are where public companies share their most sensitive and critical news and information with their shareholders, institutional investors, the media and analysts. With Drupal 8, Nasdaq Corporate Solutions will be providing companies with the most engaging, secure, and innovative IR websites to date.
For more than 100 years, Hubert Burda Media has been Germany's premier media company. Burda is using Drupal 8 to expand their traditional business of print publishing to reach more than 52 million readers online. Burda didn't stop there, the media company also open sourced Thunder, a distribution for professional publishers built on Drupal 8.
Drupal 8 propels a wide variety of sites, some of Jurassic proportion. Following the release of the blockbuster film, Jurassic World built its digital park on Drupal 8. Jurassic World offers fans games, video, community forums, and even interactive profiles all of the epic dinosaurs found on Isla Nublar.
The World Wide Fund for Nature has been a leading conservation organization since its founding in 1961. WWF's mission is to protect our planet and Drupal 8 is on their team. WWF UK uses Drupal 8 to engage the community, enabling users to adopt, donate and join online. From pole to pole, Drupal 8 and WWF are making an impact.
The YMCA is one the leading non-profit organizations for youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. The YMCA serves more than 45 million people in 119 countries. The team at YMCA Greater Twin Cities turned to Drupal 8 to build OpenY, a platform that allows YMCA members to check in, set fitness goals, and book classes. They even hooked up Drupal to workout machines and wearables like Fitbit, which enables visitors to track their workouts from a Drupal 8 powered mobile app. The team at Greater Twin Cities also took advantage of Drupal 8's built-in multilingual capabilities so that other YMCAs around the world can participate. The YMCA has set a new personal record, and is a great example of what is possible with Drupal 8.
The one year anniversary of Drupal 8 is cause for celebration, so why not raise a glass? You might try Jack Daniels and their Drupal 8 website. Jack Daniels has been making whiskey for 150 years and you can get your fill with Drupal 8.
Al Jazeera is the largest news organization focused on the Middle East, and broadcasts news and current affairs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Al Jazeera required a platform that could unify several different content streams and support a complicated editorial workflow, allowing network wide collaboration and search. Drupal 8 allowed Al Jazeera to do that and then some. Content creators can now easily deliver critical news to their readers in real time.
From Boston to LA and even Australia, Drupal is supporting the digital needs of governments around the globe. Alabama is leading the way with Drupal 8. Alabama.gov puts its citizens first, and demonstrates how open source can change the way the public sector engages online.
Box has been a leader in the technology industry since its founding in 2005. Box takes advantage of Drupal 8 and the improved features made available right out-of-the-box. Bad puns aside, companies like Box are using Drupal 8's new features and improved user interface to build the best digital experiences yet.
The historic nonprofit Habitat for Humanity doesn't just build houses for those in need; they build habitat.org on Drupal 8. Habitat for Humanity provides affordable housing for communities in over 70 countries around the world. You can discover their impact through the "Where we Build” interactive map, donate, and volunteer all on their Drupal 8 site.
Obermeyer and Drupal 8 will take you into new territory. The ski wear company offers seamless end to end commerce integration, providing both new and loyal customers a great shopping experience. Let Obermeyer's Drupal 8 integration with Drupal Commerce keep you warm because winter is coming ...
Happy 1st birthday Drupal 8!
I can't think of a better way to celebrate Drupal 8's one year anniversary than by sharing some incredible experiences that are being created with Drupal 8. Whether the project is big or small, features dinosaurs, or spreads awareness for an important cause, I'm proud to say that Drupal 8 is supporting an amazing array of projects. In my recent keynote at DrupalCon Dublin, I explained why the why of Drupal is so important. After one year of Drupal 8, it's clear how powerful our collective purpose, projects, and passions can be.
Thank you to everyone who has continued to contribute to Drupal 8! I can't wait for another year of exciting projects. Special thanks to Paul Johnson for crowdsourcing great examples that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.
Last week I presented at the University of Antwerp, my alma mater. I was selected to be the 2016/2017 ambassador of the alumni and was asked to talk about my career and work. Presentations like this are a bit surreal because I still feel like I have a lot to learn and accomplish. Deep down I'll always be searching for something more. I want my life and career to be meaningful and creative, and full of laughter and friends. This presentation was very special as it was attended by my parents, friends from high school and college, professors whose classes I attended 20 years ago and the university's rector or chancellor, Herman Van Goethem. It was great to laugh and catch-up with old friends and family, and it felt meaningful to share some of my lessons learned to a group of young students.
The university's rector or chancellor, Herman Van Goethem, introducing me.
My parents sitting on the front row.
Me with some of my friends from high school that I hadn't seen in 20 years!
A few weekends ago I was fed up with my office audio setup (still am, to a point) and decided I needed a better way of listening to music while I worked. And since I have entirely too many original Rasbperry Pi devices hanging around, I decided to put one to good use.
After all, with Applekilling off the AirPort range, a tiny, cheap audio extender might come in handy for many other purposes, and with a bit of tinkering you can also use the Pi itself as a low-power (and low throughput) access point.
The first step I took (right after reflashing a minimal Raspbian 8 image and updating it) was to get AirPlay support up and running. As it turns out, the most straightforward way to do that these days seems to be with shairport-sync, which besides being able to sync audio across multiple devices (something I don’t need – yet) also seems to have the most reliable AirPlay implementation right now.
Installing it is simple enough:
# NOTE:run these as root (or prefixed with sudo)
# install required packages
apt-get install alsa-utils autoconf libtool libdaemon-dev libasound2-dev libpopt-dev libconfig-dev avahi-daemon libavahi-client-dev libssl-dev
# grab the source
git clone https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync.git
# build it
cd shairport-sync
autoreconf -i -f
./configure --with-alsa --with-avahi --with-ssl=openssl --with-metadata --with-systemd
make
# create a user account for it and add it to the audio group
groupadd -r shairport-sync
useradd -r -M -g shairport-sync -s /usr/bin/nologin -G audio shairport-sync
# install and enable service
make install
systemctl enable shairport-sync
And bingo, you should see a new speaker named after your Pi (to change the name, just edit /etc/default/shairport, the file’s self-explanatory).
If, like me, you don’t particularly like the flat audio you get off the built-in 3.5” jack (or if you have a Raspberry Pi Zero), you can get a USB audio adapter.
I got one of these (UK, DE) because the cable tail makes it a better option for me, but your mileage may vary.
To get it working, get the device number for your adapter using aplay -l (it’s quite likely to be 1 on a standard Pi) and set that as the default by editing asound.conf:
# cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}
Supporting Android Devices
Since I do happen to use an Android phone now and then, I’ve been looking into adding Bluetooth support to the mix.
However, Raspbian has changed enough for me to have failed to get pairing to work consistently on the Raspberry Pi 3, so I’ll re-visit that when I have more time – but if you’ve got it working on Raspbian 8, drop me a line and I’ll update this post.
When I saw the advertisement a little over a month ago for the Editor-in-Chief position, I was amazed at my luck. I had been working for a localization company in Beijing for a little over a year after doing radio for almost six. After working a typical 9-5, I slowly realized how unique and special media work is. It is, perhaps, the only profession where curiosity, critical thinking, concern about the world, and idealism come together in such an active and exciting combination.
As I say, I feel very lucky. I’m joining TechNode at an exciting time for the blog, as well as for the startup and technology ecosystem in China.
Started in 2009, TechNode has evolved from a pet passion project into a trusted and respected information outlet, events organizer, and integral part of tech community both inside and outside of China. My predecessor, Cate Cadell, has left the blog better than when she came: her ethics and professionalism can still be felt and we aim to preserve the high standards she set for writing and reporting.
When I first came to China in 2008, the debate was whether China was innovative, with many saying that, as a country and a culture, it was not. Now, with that debate laid to rest, the question turns not to ability or creativity, but to access. Access to information, communication, funding, and markets. We at TechNode want to shed light on the many exciting companies, ideas, and people that China and Asia have to offer, acting as (yes, I know this is cliche) a bridge between those who want to understand more and those who need to be understood.
That being said, we now find ourselves in a much different the digital landscape in China and abroad. TechNode must change and adapt to meet these challenges. Over the coming months and year, we will be introducing changes in both content and structure. Some of these changes may be obvious, others not so obvious. But, they will all serve one purpose: to ensure that TechNode becomes the number one authority on the tech space in China and greater Asia.
So, bookmark our homepage, read us often, and join us on a our next adventure as we explore this new landscape together.
“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.”
Perhaps the single philosophical consensus of our time is that the key to contentment lies in living fully mentally in the present. The idea that we should be constantly policing our thoughts away from the past, the future, the imagination or the abstract and back to whatever is happening right now has gained traction with spiritual leaders and investment bankers, armchair philosophers and government bureaucrats and human resources departments. Corporate America offers its employees mindfulness training to “streamline their productivity,” and the United States military offers it to the Marine Corps. Americans now spend an estimated $4 billion each year on “mindfulness products.” “Living in the Moment” has monetized its folksy charm into a multibillion-dollar spiritual industrial complex.
[…]
What differentiates humans from animals is exactly this ability to step mentally outside of whatever is happening to us right now, and to assign it context and significance. Our happiness does not come so much from our experiences themselves, but from the stories we tell ourselves that make them matter.
But still, the advice to be more mindful often contains a hefty scoop of moralizing smugness, a kind of “moment-shaming” for the distractible, like a stern teacher scolding us for failing to concentrate in class. The implication is that by neglecting to live in the moment we are ungrateful and unspontaneous, we are wasting our lives, and therefore if we are unhappy, we really have only ourselves to blame.
This judgmental tone is part of a long history of self-help-based cultural thought policing. At its worst, the positive-thinking movement deftly rebranded actual problems as “problematic thoughts.” Now mindfulness has taken its place as the focus of our appetite for inner self-improvement. Where once problems ranging from bad marriages and work stress to poverty and race discrimination were routinely dismissed as a failure to “think positive,” now our preferred solution to life’s complex and entrenched problems is to instruct the distressed to be more mindful.
This is a kind of neo-liberalism of the emotions, in which happiness is seen not as a response to our circumstances but as a result of our own individual mental effort, a reward for the deserving. The problem is not your sky-high rent or meager paycheck, your cheating spouse or unfair boss or teetering pile of dirty dishes. The problem is you.
I love the OTG Jacket from SCOTTeVEST. We all live in a world where we carry our phone — and probably a wallet and keys — everywhere we go, right? But, for reasons I do not understand, women’s clothing continues to lack adequate pockets for this stuff. Am I supposed to carry a purse when I go on a hike? Just because I wear women’s clothing?
Scott (who I know from my early days in tech when he launched SCOTTeVEST with some seriously dorky pocket vests for men) gets this. And SCOTTeVEST has evolved over the years to make some awesome garments that also happen to have enough pockets to stash everything you carry — water bottle, keys, phone, Kindle, whatever. There are so many pockets that each garment comes with a pocket map and the pockets are filled with cards explaining their intended use. Of course, you can use them for whatever you like.
I keep my phone in the interior phone pocket, my slim wallet in the breast pocket, my keys clipped to the built-in key-chain, and doggy bags in the big interior pocket. This jacket has become my go-to winter dog walking apparel. It is amazing and I am told looks very cute on me.
It’s on sale today. Scott’s birthday is on Monday so SCOTTeVEST is extending the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale to run through 11/28. Use the code Cyber16 at SCOTTeVEST.
Years ago I sent a giant box of old photos to ScanMyPhotos.com. I got my photos back and digital copies of all of them within a couple of weeks. I still use those photos in social media, to make greeting cards, and just to display on a digital photo frame. It was a great idea.
Whoooooooooo. You looked stressed. I know, right? First, it was a joke. Then it was unimaginable. Then unthinkable. Improbable. Unlikely. Then it happened and now we’re are all wondering, “When will it get worse?”
Still not sleeping well? Me either. Are you reading the news? Me either. I’m 165 pages into the history of the building of the Panama Canal. Developing a credible strategy for dealing with malaria and yellow fever. Boy, those were the days.
The holidays seem tainted, right? Like it’s not ok to let your guard down and relax? Yup. Same. I’m on high mental alert, and we’re not going to get much done in this state.
What we need, however brief, is an escape. I have just the thing.
Here are five of my favorite pages:
I’ve been shilling the Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-men for years, and I will continue to to shill because if you don’t care about comic books or if you’ve never heard of the X-men, you will still love this work. Whedon is the Aaron Sorkin of comic book dialog. Strike that. Whedon is the Joss Whedon of comic book dialog. It’s clever, well-timed, and distinctly human. Characters I’ve been reading for years becoming more developed and more familiar in this book.
My re-entry into comics came roughly three years ago when I dropped in somewhere in the middle of the Secret Invasion plot line. In an exercise which is surprisingly hard, I reverse engineered the genesis of this entire plot line which was Avengers Disassembled. It’s not the best book on this list, but it kicks off a whole series of fascinating plot lines including the New Avengers, Planet Hulk, Civil War, House of M, and a bevy of other plot lines that a worth your time. Read them before they come to big screen.
Leaving the comfort of Marvel, Dark Horse’s Fear Agent is an offbeat delight. Following the adventures of Heath Huston, a Fear Agent who is a member of a task force dedicated to eradicating aliens threats to member planets. It’s kitschy science fiction. It’s those horrible low-budget sci-fi shows I watched as a kid. Huston quotes Mark Twain, drinks incessantly, but somehow saves the universe.
I’m not going to say a lot about Locke & Key other than to remind of that time you picked up a book and it was so good that you forgot to sleep? That. The complete collection is six books, and only one of the middle books is slightly meh, and you’ll forget all about that by the end. When you’re done, read about the author.
Hawkeye deconstructs the superhero. In this book, he’s certainly superheroing, but he rarely wears the gear. The problems he solves are relatively mundane because, as the book states, this is what he does when he’s not being an Avenger. The page above is the chapter told entirely from the perspective of his dog. It works bro.
Five pages, five paragraphs. If you were to purchase and read all five books, I guarantee you a brief respite from the world. The stories are rich; the art is compelling. You’ll discover tales you’ve heard over and over again told in ways you did not expect. You’ll laugh. You’ll be disgusted. Time will pass, and you’ll be mentally refreshed.
Like me, I’m sure others are wondering what will spring up at the Jericho and Heather Lands in Vancouver.
Here’s a hint — the ~5-acre Marine Drive Lands (4195 Marine Drive) in West Vancouver. This parcel is owned by the same consortium that owns most of Jericho and all of the Heather Lands in Vancouver.
You can download a 16-page PDF of the recent open house’s presentation boards HERE.
For me, the plan shows welcome hints of how the CLC/MST Partnership group may approach Jericho and Heather. Namely, in this case, choice and diversity.
In addition, forward-thinking consideration of the demographic changes now upon us — namely downsizing geezers like me and young families. Right in line, this is, with the West Vancouver Official Community Plan (OCP)’s vision for the site: “Future Housing Choice, in particular, for multi-family housing.”. The plan does not seem focused on maximizing short-term profit, although I am certain that nobody will get stiffed along the way.
Canada Lands Company and the MST Partners are exploring how the site can meet the need for increased choice and housing diversity. Recent projections indicate the percentage of the population 65 years and older will increase 27% from 2011 to 2031. This population may want to reside in the same neighbourhood they have lived in for years, but may need to relocate to access greater housing choice to address mobility, maintenance and economic issues. In addition to meeting this housing demand for seniors we are also interested in exploring housing options that appeal to younger families and housing with a variety of price points.
A helpful clarification on the referendum requirement from Bill Holmes:
In (a Kickstart) post, you stated that “according to the law” there would have to be a referendum to approve mobility pricing unless the province decides otherwise.
You might be interested to learn that there is no law in force requiring a referendum. It is purely a political decision whether to hold a referendum/plebiscite.
You are probably thinking of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Funding Referenda Act, which was enacted by the BC Legislature in 2014. The referenda provisions in that Act have not been brought into force. They require a regulation to cause them to have effect. To date, there has not been a regulation bringing the provisions into force.
Even if the referenda provisions were in force, they would not require that referenda be held. (I say referenda because, if that Act applied, it would require each municipality to conduct a referendum within its boundaries, and Metro Vancouver to conduct a referendum in Electoral Area A.) The provisions would just permit cabinet, by regulation, to “order that referenda respecting funding for the regional transportation system be conducted”.
Section 34.1 of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act, which is in force, is relevant when a new regional funding source is proposed. Here’s what it says:
Proposed additional funding sources
34.1 (1) In this section, “additional funding sources”means
(a) a source of revenue for, or funding of, the authority, other than a source of revenue or funding that is available to the authority under this Act,
(b) an increase of the limits on or rates of a source of revenue for, or funding of, the authority under this Act,
(c) the modification of assessment mechanisms that apply under this Act to a source of revenue for, or funding of, the authority, or
(d) amendment to an enactment to enforce a source of revenue for the authority.
(2) The mayors’ council on regional transportation may present a proposal to the minister that demonstrates the need of the authority for additional funding sources.
(3) The mayors’ council on regional transportation must demonstrate to the minister’s satisfaction that a majority of the electors in the transportation service region supports the proposal referred to in subsection (2).
(4) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may repeal this section by regulation.
This section is a bit of a mystery. It requires the Mayors’ Council to demonstrate to the minister that a majority of electors support a proposal for an additional funding source. As far as I know, the term “electors” has not been defined for the purpose of this section, but if it were to be given the same meaning as in other legislation, it would mean everyone who is eligible to vote. I don’t know how the Mayors’ Council could demonstrate that more than 50% of those eligible to vote support an additional funding source.
That’s probably more than you ever cared to know about the legal requirements!
The owners of the Jericho Lands have a new web site with a few new things, like this partial list of documents that will inform their plan for developing the Jericho site:
Healthy City Strategy Action Plan (2016)
Rainwater Management Plan and Green Infrastructure Strategy (2016)
Renewable City Strategy (2015)
Rezoning Policy for Sustainable Large Developments (2013)
Vancouver Neighbourhood Energy Strategy and Energy Centre Guidelines (2012)
Transportation 2040 Plan (2012)
Priority Action Plan from the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability (2012)
Greenest City Action Plan (2011)
Vancouver’s Housing and Homeless Strategy 2012-21 (2011)
Green Buildings Policy for Rezonings (2010)
West Point Grey Community Vision (2010)
It is anticipated that the east and west Jericho Lands, totaling 90 acres, will be planned in one collaborative and comprehensive process.
We understand that the community is eager to hear and engage with us about the future of the sites, and we are committed to providing opportunities for the community to get involved.
Anticipated to begin in 2017, an extensive multi-phase, multi-year engagement process will provide local communities and the general public a forum to discuss ideas and views about the future of these lands.
Instagram’s latest upgrade includes not just the ability to send self-destructing messages, but notifies users if someone screenshots their direct message. If a user sends a disappearing message to a friend, and that friend takes a screenshot, the original sender will receive a notification to inform them of this. It’s impossible not to recognize the similarities to the Snapchat feature which also notifies its users when a screenshot is taken.
This isn’t the first time Instagram has seemingly mimicked the features of video giant Snapchat. Instagram’s Stories feature is the most obvious example of this, and several updates with the same feel have followed.
However, that’s not the only new feature Instagram released recently. If a user, for whatever reason, should decide to take a screenshot of their Instagram feed, a notification appears asking whether they’d like to share that screenshot with friends.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1.3 sec, f/11, ISO 2500 —
map & image data — nearby photos Main Gate of the Heian Shrine
after a snow, Jan 3 2015
平安神宮鳥居、去年の一月三日
This picture is from the same snowy outing almost two years ago that produced
the three-part “Kyoto At Night During a Heavy Snow” posts
(part 1 ·
part 2 ·
part 3). This shot mimics the one that leads Part 2,
but this one was taken five hours later (at 4:42am) after the snow had long stopped falling.
Anyway, it's just a random photo to accompany a recommendation for users of Adobe Lightroom to read
Victoria Bampton's “Lightroom Catalogs – Top 10
Misunderstandings” article. New users may find some misconceptions
cleared up, while veterans will find a good resource to point to when helping others.
Victoria (“The Lightroom Queen”) has a
thorough, non-technical writing style that's easily digested by the non-geek photographer. Her “Lightroom Missing
FAQ” is well worth it if you're struggling with Lightroom, especially workflow-related issues.
As a professional courtesy she gave me a copy of it back in the Lightroom 5 era (the current version of course covers Lightroom 6/CC), and that
version is
a ridiculous 624 pages long. I tend to prefer printed books to ebooks, but
this really benefits from being a searchable PDF. Highly recommended.
MrJamesMay on Twitter.
MrJamesMay
Rolandt shared items on The Old Reader (RSS):
NASA Image of the Day.
