CBC Radio3 – Very interesting radio. Just when you thought that there was no “new” music this radio broadcast starts bringing Canadian bands to light.

CBC Radio1 – From this site you can choose which part of the country you are in. Then listen. For everyone in Vancouver you can listen to programs up to 3 hours before they air here.

PigPog – An interesting site with the title line “PigPog is all about being creative – anywhere – and sharing what you create with others.” It is filled with interesting links about something we can all use.

D*I*Y Planner – Paper, productivity & passion – A site dedicated to people who see the value of paper as a medium for planning, productivity, creative expression, and exploring ideas. This is the home of the D*I*Y Planner kit. It brings a fresh perspective into the question “Does everything have to be digital?”

Moleskinerie – One of my favourite sites. Everything and anything to do with the little journal called a Moleskine. If you aren’t aware of these little books this will tell you a bit about them and what people are using them for.

To be continued…

So an end to another year. Does this mean another list of resolutions that have a feint hope of being realized? This year’s list did not seem minished. Such a personal list rarely is shared and usually forgotten.
After resolutions we have the futurists who describe in some convoluted manner something either preposterous or something we already know. These are usually funny.
And finally the “previous year at a glance”. This is sometimes photographs, always headline news stories, obituaries (which usually bring on the thought “I didn’t know he/she died!”) and the best of books/CDs/DVDs/whatever.
Years change but our process of closing a year and beginning a new one is usually the same.

Hey – have a happy new year!

The joy of Boxing Day. Or maybe the most important aspect of today — you made it through Christmas! Ah yes all that family dysfunction with unfufilled expectations, decision making at it finest and communication at its minimum. All of this along with major assumptions by all the players. It all adds up to the typical family Christmas we all wander through year after year. But wait there is some light at the end of the tunnel…only 364 days until the next episode. And you do have those New Year’s resolutions to add even more guilt.

Here’s hoping that everyone who did make it can at least point to a few good memories from this holiday season. We seem to always come away with enough memories to make Christmas that special and unique time in our lives.

MacDonald is a Scottish writer who inspired the likes of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and others. If there is one author that you should be acquainted with it is him. Gutenberg has a wonderful e-text collection.

His Diary of an Old Soul is a marvellous poem with an individual stanza for each day of the year. Here is the December 3rd entry.

Unbelievably I slept in until 10:30 am this morning. That never happens. Why? We went to see the recent Harry Potter movie last night but given the black theme of the movie I should have stayed awake all night. Maybe it was the Buffalo potato chips that induced the slumber.

Interesting site Rocketboom.

There is a Quicktime there interviewing people (in the Archives section) asking people about their preference between Internet Explorer and Firefox. And the winner is…..
There is a daily newscast which is new and fresh.

Started reading Moby Dick by Herman Mellville. The first page has this passage:

What do you see?–Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads;

The question is what does spiles mean? A Google search indicates that it is the metal spout used in collecting maple sugar for making maple syrup. But that doesn’t seem to be the same thing that Melville is writing about. Interesting that Oxford doesn’t publish a meaning that fits either. The wonder of our English language.

Moby Dick is an e-text that can be found at Project Gutenberg. By the way if you don’t know about Project Gutenberg you should. There are a huge number of e-text books there. It has more writings of George A. MacDonald than any library I’ve encountered.

Yes boys and girls, Mr. Red Suit will soon be at a mall nearest you. I think my dear mother hauled us out to this guy once. There is probably some goofy looking shot of my brother and I somewhere in her bin of pictures. The best part of these pictures is when mothers bring them to work to show to their co-workers and the “isn’t he/she/it cute” comments. I wonder if people take their pets up to get photographed, or better yet take some beloved object up and get a picture of the old guy with it. Can you image the picture -“Yes Larry this is a picture of your Dad’s favourite lunch box and Santa, it was like a child to him.” Let’s get a picture of Mr. Martin or Mr. Harper with Santa. Santa will be able to tell us if they have been good this year. What we really want to know is if they will be good next year.

Advent began on Sunday. Tomorrow is the first day of December. For me the Christmas Season begins. It would be very nice if the retailers kept all their Christmas decorations on hold until tomorrow instead of putting them up after Hallowe’en. The season would just appear! The credit union gets decorated on Friday morning with the staff putting everything up in the morning. The local nursery, Tanglebank, delivers a few dozen poinsettas and suddenly the place is Christmassy. (Is that a word?) And to top it all off this evening I managed to write two Christmas cards! Boy times are changing.

We are invited to attend the graduation ceremony of my cousin’s son who is about to enter the police force. It should prove interesting. Don’t know what to expect. The law and order types should feel very safe. The rest of us may feel guilty and a little paranoid. Shouldn’t massive numbers of policemen-women make anyone feel paranoid?

Today I was downtown at Birks picking up my old wedding ring. It had to be expanded by two sizes to get it back on my finger. They did an excellent job and it was pretty cheap. Nice place and nice people. So far they have the best Christmas tree I’ve seen this year.

So I am heading back to the car, which was parked on the street beside a non-expensive traffice meter. This young fellow shouts out “Sir do you have 25 cents or a dollar spare change? I need to catch a ferry and am $7 dollars short.” What the heck, it is getting to be like Christmas and the guys looks like he could use some change. My hand comes out of my pocket with a few loonies and quarters. So I pick one of the loonies out and give it to him. He doesn’t say thanks. He says “How about another one of those?” I am a little shocked — How about another one of those? — I told him “Not today” and got into the car. A little unerving to say the least.

So I stick the key in the car and am getting the faceplate for the CD player out of the glove box and putting the cell phone in the holder. Suddenly there’s a car horn honking away. I look in the side mirror and somebody is blasting their horn wanting to get into the parking space. Now I am really upset. I pull out muttering to myself about the impatience and lack of civility of the downtown poplulace. It sure felt better when I was on the east side of the Georgia Viaduct.

I watched most of The Accidental Tourist tonight. It didn’t meet the “very interesting” movie standard due to the number of times it made me fall asleep. It wasn’t a bad movie, it just was the kind you wished maybe you should have done something else rather than watch this one. The plot of any movie can be weak but this one was just not understood. A movie should at least hold your interest. When you start wishing for commercials to move it along maybe it is time to take a walk.

Day off tomorrow due to Remembrance Day. Having not lived (or better yet not having any recollection) of a time in my life of war as a Canadian is sometimes difficult to fathom. Your view of war is pretty much what you have seen on a screen or read in a book. Those people that you have talked to over the years never really wanted to say much about it. It was too dark and not something to share. My father in law who was in the Danish underground never spoke of it openly. The one time I did hear something was with his brother in law speaking of the night the Allies had parachuted some supplies in a field and how they had just missed being caught by the Nazis. One fellow I worked with who was a bombadier for over 26 bombing missions said he still woke up at night in a sweat. Another who was in a tank throughout the war said that he was closer to that crew than any of his family. Those medals we see tomorrow on the chest of our vets probably represent more sentiments that we can imagine. War is hell and we should never forget that.

Had the pleasure of sitting through an excellent presentation by Dick Hardt today. It was about sxip identity. The whole concept is intriguing and puts some powerful elements into play that were seemingly “forgotten” when looking at the security aspect of other methods. First, the privacy issue is solved as the individual themselves allow the digital information to pass to those requesting it and secondly, which I think is the most important, it puts the individual into the picture as the ultimate controller and decision maker in every instance. This whole realm is really put back to the individual and that is really what gives it tremendous power as a unique idea. There is no place like home!

I was downtown today and saw a lot of people who didn’t win the Loto 649. Everyone had that in common. Taking the public transit is always interesting. You can actually see so many people. When you are driving a vehicle you never get to see these people. Your eyes are always on the asphalt, which really has little in the way of changing. One young gentleman got on the bus with a skateboard and a North Face winter jacket. The jacket had fur trim. Neat looking garment but it looked expensive and given the temperature was only around 12 degrees he must have been cooking in the thing. The back of the buses are pretty well grafitied and sometimes the only place with a window open when the driver has got the heat cranked up to the level of the Sahara Desert. And sure enough after the required number of 5 stops someone comes on, sits right beside the window and proceeds to shut it. Well you had a gentle cool breeze for a few stops. Nothing like rolling down that car window though. And that maybe is the key to better public transit — individual climate zones. The “one temperature fits all” really doesn’t work.

I was in Winnipeg last week at a meeting about stewardship. It was one of the most intense and interesting 3 days I have had in a long time. We stayed at a Catholic retreat beside the Assiniboine River and with the mild weather it was beautiful. All the leaves were off the trees but there was a gentle mild warm wind that made it pleasant. One day it rained.
How do you define stewardship? A ten letter word that can mean a hundred things to various people. There is a monentary connotation but the broader meaning tends to put an emphasis on a lifestyle, what we do with the resources and gifts that God has given us. Are we proper stewards of the time and of our abilities. It pushes the question about what is important in our lives and what is our purpose. Why are we here and what should we be doing. And those questions never are fully answered. They are always questions that need constant answering if we are true to ourselves.

Nancy White has an excellent blog on “Challenging the myths of distributed collaboration”. She points to a critical issue — that these efforts need to be based on a cooperative value set. There is the key challenge. Can collaboration be cooperative without that common value set? Or what value set do individuals have with any work that they collaborate on? There seems to be small groups that propose the end result of their code, and hence product, is for the greater good but we are seeing large dollar transactions occur when their idea (product) has a high commercial value and it is subsequently sold. The excitement of something unique and workable will always create the “buzz” necessary for it to become popular. Popularity tends to have a material side to it though. Aren’t users part of the collaborative spirit? Maybe that is what they mean by free enterprise!

Riverview Arboretum

Today we drove out to Riverview (years ago it used to be called Essondale) to view a remarkable collection of non-native trees. In 1904 1,000 acres of land were set aside for two purposes:

• A sanctuary and residential treatment facility for the mentally ill

• A site for a B.C. Botanical Garden

Over the years 200 acres were sold to developers to create Riverview Heights and in the 1990’s Colony Farm (600 acres) became a GVRD Park. There is only 244 acres left for the patients. In 1925 the botanical gardens were moved to UBC but the trees were left behind. These were cared for and are now an unknown legacy for everyone.

One can write and describe experiences one has. To truly understand the beauty and the heritage that is available to everyone you need to take a walk amongst these silent giants. There are leaves and barks of trees that you will never have seen before. They stand as stately giants on the gentle slopes of this sanctuary. It truly is a peaceful setting that is medicine to the soul.

For more information on how we can keep this pristine site for its orignial two purposes visit The Riverview Horticulture Centre Society.

Coming home from UBC a few Saturdays ago there was a rugby match between the Thunderbirds and Meralomas. We stopped to watch and saw some great plays and some solid running by the Lomas. Leaving at the half we didn’t get to see who the winner was but I don’t think the Thunderbirds were in their finest form. It was great to see the game. Rugby is the game a spectator almost becomes part of the action. You can feel the pain and sense the joy of a great kick or handoff. There is an ebb and flow so important to the game that just isn’t found in to0 many sports. It never matters what the weather is like as a wet muddy field only adds to the excitement.

Now with fall and of course the rains upon us, summer is officially over. The Lions are back to normal hence the mass exodus off their bandwagon. The Canucks are now singing the praises of the Sedin twins. Isn’t life wonderful out here in the Bannana belt?

I have been trying to implement my Getting Things Done components on OmniOutliner after turfing Entourage. It wasn’t that Entourage didn’t do a good job but with the size of everything it was taking longer and longer to move to the various sub-programs. Yesterday I came upon the Kinkless GTD System. (thank goodness for subscribing to mailing lists!). Well Ethan has produced a very basic system for GTD using OminOutliner and it works very well. In fact is works as close to GTD as anything I have seen. Check out his site. Very “Mac” like.

David Allan spoke at length about making sure the system you used was one that you could “trust”. The Kinkless solution really has that going for it. For anyone using GTD try and get to one of David’s seminars. There is lots there that is covered in the book but with a lot of aural background.

I was wondering where Bartlett’s and those Bukowski books were in the house and finally found them in the basement bookshelves. Funny how so many books are like good friends and you end up missing them.

Barlett’s is a book you either like and use or see no relevance in it. Even with the advent of the internet this is a great way to look up quotations. Just browsing one simple page can create a lot of brain cell activity. Here is what José Marti said about poetry “A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.”

Which brings me to Charles Bukowski. (there are some great sites about the man). His poetry is habanero sauce for a few centuries. He brings that stark reality to everyday living. His feet were pretty well cemented in the real world and he made a lot of fun of those who had their heads in the clouds. We need that kind of realilty these days. Theory has its place but being pragmatic shouldn’t be a crime.

Was at the Mt. Lehman Fall Fair today. There certainly wasn’t the number of people there that had been in the past. Even the number of displays seemed to be less. This was the 20th year it has been on and the remarkable thing about this fair is that it is a completely community driven event. There are not many country fairs left and this is certainly an oasis away from the commercially driven fairs.

There is going to be another Northern Voice in February 2006. This is really a neat conference for anyone interested in blogging. From beginner to advanced there is a real “people” feeling about it. You get to meet some of the people you have gotten to know through reading their blogs. You could call it Sociology and Blogging 101.

Fall is definitely in the air with the colour beginning to expand in the trees. When you start seeing that you know summer is just about gone and those short sleeve shirts aren’t going to be worn without a jacket. The real bad part of this time of year is golfing. With all the leaves dropping, hitting a ball just off the fairway usually means a lost ball. As if golf isn’t hard enough.

Anything that could go sideways at work has gone sideways at work this week. It is just plain bleak. But I am very thankful for the people I work with as they have stuck together to get us through this “snowstorm”. Have you every wondered why things happen in bunches? Is there a masterplan out there that we just aren’t aware of?

The Burns bog fire is under control finally. We had some white ash on our patio (Burnaby Mountain) that had drifted from that fire. On Sunday night our house smelt like we had been huddled around a campfire for a few days. All the windows had to be shut. There is something that needs to be bottled, campfire smell for the livingroom.