Some things are meant to be written incrementally. Like this.
July 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The new year has begun, and it is a busy one as expected. We've had snowstorms, windstorms, rainstorms, power outages, and most recently, the water dried up. Yikes. What a year. And it is only two weeks old.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Last posting of the year. A time to reflect and reconsider. A chance to consider good things from this year and challenges ahead. One of the big challenges for anyone in the online world is how to manage all that email (and blogs, and youtube videos, and websites). The concept of "continuous partial attention" has been revived recently in a mailing list that I follow, called "IDC". The author, Trebor Schulz, suggests some strict rules for gaining control over the monster that threatens to take over our lives, or at least our ability to focus and concentrate. Linda Stone, the woman who coined the term back in 1998, has created a wiki site devoted to the topic. She seems to think that, on balance, it is not helping:
Like so many things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless.
Monday, December 26, 2006
The year is almost over, Christmas is complete, and as we look ahead to the new year we have good reason to be both optimistic and concerned. I think Canadians are finally taking environmental issues seriously, which is a good sign. It remains to be seen whether they do anything about it however.
Monday, December 19, 2006
Storms? What was I thinking of? Those weren't storms! No sooner did we get through that power outage than a new storm piled into us on the night of December 13/14. It hit like a truck and took out our power for 40 hours. Our place wasn't hit too hard - we have a wood stove we could use for heat and we enjoyed the restfulness of the quiet and the dark and the lack of internet. We lost one big tree but thankfully it fell away from our house and missed the neighbours. It was a close call, though...
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Nothing like a day of storms and power outages to make you appreciate the serenity of living on an island... not! The ferry was bucking like a bronco yesterday, and the traffic was horrendous. When we got home there was no power. Supper was cooked on the barbeque and then it was early to bed.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Richard has his own web site, for school related things here: http://arago.cprost.sfu.ca/smith. Check it out for more about Richard's SFU activities.
Sunday, December 4, 2006
I am experimenting with Google Apps for your Domain. It provides a remarkable level of power and sophistication to just about anyone.