Urbanity · Ci­ties are our rule now, any­thing else the ex­cep­tion. I’m bik­ing most work­days, on con­crete over the ocean in­to the stone heart of a small big city, get­ting ten dozen chan­nels of non­stop ur­ban in­put and ev­ery day I won­der where we’re all go­ing. The fu­ture is dis­tribut­ed un­even­ly and cities con­cen­trate the un­even­ness ...
 
Lightroom, Mobile, Nexus · In which I re­port on us­ing the Nexus 5X in RAW mod­e, with the help of Adobe Light­room, and on work­flows for mo­bile pho­togs. With il­lus­tra­tions from Vancouver’s Light­house Park ...
[2 comments]  
Dell U3415W · 34", 21:9, 3440x1440. Which is to say, pret­ty big and pret­ty sharp. Full name: Dell Ul­traSharp 34 Curved Mon­i­tor. It’s curved. I like it a lot ...
[9 comments]  
Modern Corporate English · “The client’s ask is simple,” he said, “but I’m not con­vict­ed that’s a good cri­te­ri­a; any­how, there are im­por­tant learn­ings for us.” How much of that do you hate? What­ev­er; liv­ing lan­guages don’t care what you think ...
[15 comments]  
CL XXXVI: Island Ingress · On a wet grey Fe­bru­ary Satur­day we com­bined two of our amuse­ments on a boat trip to Keats Is­land: Cot­tage Life and Ingress. Some of this will be com­pre­hen­si­ble on­ly to Ingress play­er­s, but there are a cou­ple of fair­ly groovy pix.
Up­dat­ed with an apol­o­gy ...
 
Low-light Phone cam · Reg­u­lar read­ers will know that I have a thing about low-light pho­tog­ra­phy. My new photo-toy is the Nexus 5X and I’ve the urge to push it fur­ther in­to the dark than it re­al­ly wants to go ...
[1 comment]  
Marlowe, RIP · Our big male cat, an­nounced in this space in 2005, died sud­den­ly. Bloggers’ cats get obit­u­ar­ies ...
[6 comments]  
#Bike2WorkPix · I’ve been cy­cling to work since late last year. It’s good, for me and the world. But there are more con­ve­nient al­ter­na­tives, and they temp­t. So here’s a lit­tle in­cen­tive: #Bike2WorkPix. Con­sid­er join­ing in! ...
[4 comments]  
Tender Sky Shoehorn · In which I re­veal a lit­tle life-hack that can get you out your front door no­tice­ably quick­er. First, a pic­ture ...
[4 comments]  
On the Nexus 5X · Wel­l, the OnePlus One was a lot of phone for the mon­ey but, on­ly a year old, is dy­ing; the GPS has checked out and the pic­tures it takes look bad. I didn’t feel like phone-shopping but when I did, the 5X was an easy choice. It’s just fine, but on­ly three fea­tures mat­ter. With win­ter beach pix ...
[5 comments]  
Cloud Eventing · So, I helped build Ama­zon CloudWatch Events (blog, AWS con­sole), which just launched. Been a while since my last ex­tend­ed spell of be­ing an ac­tu­al soft­ware en­gi­neer. Ship­ping feels good ...
[1 comment]  
Mobile Counter-theses · This is in re­sponse to 16 mo­bile the­ses by Bene­dict Evans of An­dreesen Horow­itz, a firm that’s cen­tral to Bay Area VC cul­ture. The the­ses are about half wrong, which isn’t too bad ...
[6 comments]  
Motorized Desk Tour · For of­fice work­er­s: If you’re among those (rel­a­tive­ly few now, I think) who haven’t had a chance to try a sit/­s­tand desk, I to­tal­ly rec­om­mend them ...
[2 comments]  
Christmas Decorations · I hope that lots of you are hav­ing an ex­cel­lent Christ­mas; I am. Here’s an il­lus­trat­ed card fea­tur­ing Van­cou­ver Christ­mas vi­su­al­s ...
 
Music Nights · Been go­ing out a bit more than usu­al; four nights of live mu­sic in the last mon­th. The ob­ject of the game here is to con­vince a few more of you to get off the so­fa and go hear peo­ple play. The en­ter­tain­ment was Big Su­gar, Pa­tri­cia Bar­ber, Muse and a car­ol sing. Each was mag­ic ...
[2 comments]  
The Wrath of Heaven · May it af­flict in­ter­mit­tent left-channel out­ages, and an au­dio­phile neigh­bor who lives for op­eretta, on the gorm­less en­thu­si­asts who mal­ad­just the au­dio in the car-share cars so ev­ery­thing sounds like a Bad Hair Band ...
[2 comments]  
Twitter Numbers · I still think Twitter’s in­ter­est­ing; it in­forms me and pleas­es me in ways no oth­er ser­vice comes near. Al­so, it lets me talk to the world, and when you do that, you find your­self ask­ing “is any­one listening?” For­tu­nate­ly, Twit­ter will tell you. The num­bers are big enough that the stats might be of gen­er­al in­ter­est. Of course, So­cial Me­dia Pro­fes­sion­als all have known all this stuff for years, but most of us aren’t those ...
 
One Amazon Year · De­cem­ber first made it a year here at Ama­zon Vancouver’s en­gi­neer­ing cas­tle in the sky. I’m work­ing with good peo­ple in a cool of­fice on in­ter­est­ing stuff. It’s at the white-hot cen­ter of server-side com­put­ing but sur­pris­ing­ly un­sur­pris­ing ...
[10 comments]  
Game of Homes · What hap­pened was, I got on an air­plane, un­ex­pect­ed­ly fin­ished my book, and dis­cov­ered there wasn’t much else down­load­ed on that de­vice. So I start­ed re-reading what was there, name­ly Game of Thrones. It’s hard to stop do­ing that once you start, and what’s worse, I can’t help think­ing about Van­cou­ver Real Es­tate ...
[7 comments]  
Long-form Reviewing · This is a love let­ter to an au­to­mo­tive re­view, which turns out to be one of the best ap­pli­ca­tions of blog­ging I’ve ev­er seen. Specif­i­cal­ly, the “Long-Term Road Test” for­mat over at Ed­mund­s.­com ...
[8 comments]  
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