Looking forward to talking Community Print Shop and more, why I'm going to ChangeCamp, and why you should too....

I have a small Bluetooth keyboard I absolutely love typing on. One problem, of late, it's been adding characters on me, and sometimes getting the order of the letters reversed. On my proofreads of posts, I often don't catch the typo. The typo isn't the result of my Dysgraphia, but I'm left to wonder if I'm not catching them as a symptom of my Dysgraphia. The disability does include that I can't catch my errors as my mind substitutes the correct form for the error....

Feature image credit: Mike Beauregard, Replica of a 75 million year old "Archelon ischyros" from South Dakota, hanging in the Wallace Building on the University of Manitoba campus A quick stop on the McMaster campus today was a good reminder of just how small the world is, especially on a campus. I happened to meet someone who I've only briefly exchanged tweets with - which got me to thinking about just how small a campus is. This summer, I happened to bump into a friend from undergrad who is now a Ph.D candidate at uToronto, they just happened to randomly choose to sit on a bench across from where I was sitting. One of my favourites was...

A couple of months ago, I had my first request for the use of gender neutral pronouns. I used they/them/their. Tonight, at a meeting, I used the more formal Ms. [Last Name] to refer to someone with the goal of conveying the respect I have for them to others in the group. It's a habit of mine in speaking, to use the formal to speak about someone in their professional role who I am not familar with, or to convey to a group that person has earned my respect, or that person is someone of authority. The reality is that formal Ms/Mr has become more rare in the past decade, and this is for the better in...

I love riding the bus, seriously. I sit back, read, relax, sleep, write, or just plain listen to podcasts. I couldn't imagine losing time to driving. Losing time to driving? What do you mean? I'm productive on a bus, but if I were driving, I couldn't do any of the activities listed above for me, not even podcasts as I like intellectual ones that I get my thoughts lost into. Driving requires focus. I actually prefer multi-day Greyhound trips to domestic flights. My trips to Winnipeg, as an example. My first trip to Winnipeg, to start university, was a 31-hour journey. The longest I've even do was 44-hours from Toronto to Saskatoon. Living in Winnipeg, I made a few trips...

Is it a trend anyone else is noticing? I'm noting that new build retirement apartments are including a functioning public analog clock as part of their design. It's not something I see in any other kind of building; is this the barber shop pole of retirement homes? A quick visual that denotes the function of the building? Prior to the proliferation of cellular phones, we didn't carry time in our pockets. People used watches, but they could easily be unreliable. We didn't have any means of automatically synchronizing clocks - the best one could do was listen to the radio for the top of the hour one second tone from the National Research Council Time Signal. Public clocks were common,...

It's an interesting dilemma I've encountered as a subject-focused journalist over the years: in order to get information, I have to earn a reputation as someone in the know. However, being known for being too much in the know results in sources assuming your aware of information, and those sources drying up. Much as I was previously known for my knowledge of Canadian higher education; I'm now known for knowing Hamilton. In both instances, I strictly maintained only unofficial source networks; I despise the common practice of Access Journalism which grants those in power favourable coverage in exchange for those in power serving as anonymous sources. The Good of Being Known for Knowing Prior to becoming a professional journalist, I...

1991 was a special year for me, it was the first time I heard the beautiful sound of a dial-up modem. Grade 4 started at Prince of Wales, and then I ended up at Hess Street School. (I moved a lot) Being at Hess was a transformative experience, for so many reasons. The majority of students at Hess Street School spoke English as their second language. I was two percentile points short of the requirement to be in a gifted school, the year prior I'd taken the gifted test, but there were whole sections of the test containing concepts I'd not been taught. (The School Board now evaluates gifted students with balancing of socio-economic factors) My teacher, one of my...

Joe was known by everyone. Active in ATU's PAC, political action committee, regularly engaged in conversations at City Hall. Gone at 24....

Charlotte's Web was my first large read, and it made me cry. NPR discusses what adults can take from children's books....