My brother Tim, who is the Chief Electoral Office for our province, is going to pick some songs as the Friday SpinTime DJ on CBC Radio this week. As I was the SpinTime DJ back in 2019, we’ve reached 2/5 of the Garrity siblings in this pinnacle of cultural relevance on Prince Edward Island.
Update: Here’s the audio. Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, and Matt Maher.
As far as I noticed, there were two guitars featured during Super Bowl El Vee Eye Eye.
During the half-time show, Nuno Bettencourt was supporting Rihanna with a theme-appropriate bright red edition of his signature Washburn, presumably the N4 model.
Before the game, Chris Stapleton performed the US National Anthem with what looks like a Fender Telecaster Custom.
Update: I missed Babyface playing America the Beautiful on an American-Flag Taylor acoustic. Interesting arrangement here, as it’s strung for right handed players, but he’s playing “upside-down” left-handed. Thanks to pmac for letting me know.
Tune in again next year for episode 2 of Guitars of the Super Bowl.
That was Nuno Bettencourt playing guitar behind Rihanna during the Super Bowl. Yeah, the More Than Words guy.
Can you make nominations for Governor General of Canada? I nominate Jonathan Torrens. He taught me in the 90s on Street Cents that combination-shampoo-and-conditioner does neither well (I use it anyhow). Also, he’s buddies with the old drummer from Our Lady Peace. These seem like qualifications a’plenty.
Reading about the extreme conditions recorded at Mount Washington in New Hampshire today (wind-chill of -77 Celsius) reminded me of my experience with Mount Washington.
I was on a hiking trip with a youth-group. We hiked to the summit, which felt pretty impressive until we saw that there were people who had driven their cars up the other side.
In the observatory at the peak, they played this great video of an outdoor breakfast on Mount Washington that I still remember almost 30 years later.
While it wasn’t -77, we did hit an extraordinary low of a -43 wind chill in Charlottetown last night. We were safe and warm in our home, but the weather felt dangerous in a way that reminded me of Hurricane Fiona.
We’re hiring designers over at silverorange, the company I helped found over 23 years ago.
It’s a great place to work. We’re looking for people able to work remotely from within Canada. There are two positions:
Senior Web & App Designer – We’re looking for an experienced designer who can help us design great systems for our clients.
Junior Web & App Designer – We’re looking for someone earlier in their career who wants to join our team, design and build great stuff, and get even better at it.
Our company blog is a great way to get a sense of who we are.
Kottke.org shared an interesting numeral system: Cistercian numerals. It only takes a minute to understand how it works in a way where you could decode any numeral. I wonder how long it would take to internalize the system, see a shape, and just know it’s 1979.
Saturday Night Live has a good skit about how to talk to kids. I’ve got my own tip for talking to kids.
Take whatever the kid has written in their shirt and read it to them on the form of a question. Here are some helpful examples:
Kid: [has a shirt with a surfer that reads, “Surf’s Up!”]
You: “Surf’s up, eh?”
Kid: […] “Huh?”
Kid: [has a Batman shirt on]
You: “You like Batman?”
Kid: [doesn’t recall which shirt they’re wearing]
The attribute I value most in those in a position of leadership is the ability to bring calm to a difficult situation, rather than ramp up the tension.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t react at all, or pretend a disaster is just fine. It means you don’t make it worse, and you do what you can to help.
Last year I was dealing with a bit of a catastrophe at work. No one was going to get hurt, but clients were affected and urgency was high. A colleague who was better able to address the situation arrived on the scene. When he showed up, there was no panic. Instead, there was a calm assessment of the situation, and then a methodical approach to diagnosing and fixing the issue.
The level of calm this person brought to the situation made us all work more effectively to get things fixed. It was clear that they understood the severity of the situation and of the urgency to get things fixed — they didn’t need to dwell on it.
When you arrive on the scene of a metaphorical fire, some of us ramp up the urgency, and start yelling “FIRE! Somebody do something!”. It doesn’t help anyone. Then there are those who arrive on the scene, take a moment to figure out what matters most, and use this context to guide their actions.
Is there anyone in the burning building? If not, you probably shouldn’t run in to it (I’m not sure you should ever run into a burning building — don’t take your firefighting advice from me). If the building is lost, don’t waste your energy throwing handfuls of water on an inferno. Get to safety. Get others to safety. Maybe there are other structures nearby that can be saved.
Next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, take a moment to consider if you are making it better.
I’ve written a short post over on the silverorange blog about how ‘efficiency’ is a better concept in Web development than ‘performance’