It has been a very dry summer in Ancaster, Ontario, where I live. This morning I was awakened by loud claps of thunder and the sound of rain pattering on the windows and roof. I realised that it has been a long time since I heard this sound. It even felt a little strange to …
Back from research leave
This Canada Day marked my return from a year's research leave. It has been a good year- I moved into a new home, got involved in the federal election, made a bunch of great new friends, and wrote most of a new book on social media in Canada. I also became pescetarian and mindfully started …
The quantified self makes us more human
I have been thinking a lot about the concept of the quantified self. Since Ash Wednesday 2016, I started a fast that meant that I went pescetarian. While I thought that I would miss beef, chicken, pork and duck, the reality has been that I do not. It helps that my favourite foods have always …
What made Facebook successful?
I remember, in 2006, when I first started to notice Facebook. At that point, it was a basic service, allowing users to connect to one another and share updates and information. It had competitors - myspace and Orkut, amongst many others. Why did Facebook grow to be so dominant? Facebook's simple visual identity and early …
Meditating so that writing becomes fun and not work
Amazingly, I have stuck to two of my New Year's resolutions: meditating and writing. Each day, I have been spending two hours (at least) focused exclusively on editing JPC or working on my book project. I have found that the time I spend writing and editing has become an inspirational and meditative time that I …
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On the simple life: find your peaceful thing.
Every new year, I hear many of the people I know express that they want to "return to a simpler life" or eliminate clutter. I often have this noble ambition myself. This year, I asked myself what this really means. I came up with a couple of ideas. Eliminating clutter doesn't mean stripping back all …
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New Year’s Resolutions for 2016
As I have discussed on Facebook and this blog, 2014 and 2015 have been difficult years for me. These challenges have forced me to rethink my priorities and set myself on a new path, fuelled by greater focus and enthusiasm. As I write this post, I sit by a roaring fire and watch the snow float …
Losses and grief
This has been a very difficult couple of years for me. The deaths of my sainted Aunt Dawn, Great Aunt Zorka and my beloved grandmother (Baba in Macedonian) have shaken me. I think that it will take me some time to process the loss. These were three women who were independent, strong, successful, kind, disciplined …
Back to blogging, with renewed purpose and enthusiasm
These have been a difficult couple of years, for several reason, the first of which is a sequence of deaths of people very close to me. I have had to think through and rethink many of the ways that I look at life, as well as my priorities. I feel like I have come out …
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Computers I have used and video games I have played
I have been a computer enthusiast since I was a young boy. My first computer was a Texas Instruments Ti99/4A on which I first learned the joys of video games and computer programming. After that we had a Macintosh SE, with a whopping 10MB hard drive. It felt like a supercomputer! My first laptop was a …
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