The premier of our little province has proposed renaming our very big bridge from the Confederation Bridge to Epekwitk Crossing. Epekwitk is the original name the Miꞌkmaq People gave to this island.
I appreciate the gesture and would like to see it happen. If we’re going to rename things, though, let’s rename the province itself.
I started watching guitar videos on YouTube this year. This led me to discover more guitar-focused YouTube channels. Like for any topic, there’s a whole parallel universe on YouTube populated by guitar players, gear reviewers, and customizers.
I’ve had the same electric guitar for 20 years, and the closest I’ve ever come to modifying it was adding a strap made it out of a seat belt and changing strings way too infrequently.
As you watch more of these videos, you begin patterns emerge. You can clearly see when a major company sends out new products. All of the sudden, every channel has a ‘review’ of the new Yahama Revstar guitars with a “Includes paid promotion” notice.
After watching YouTube channels like DBG talk about how locking tuners and a graphite nut will help your guitar hold tune, I took the bait and bought both. I can’t just be that person without locking tuners, right?
I knew I was buying a little indulgence, and was ok with that. It was a fun toe-tip into the world of improving my guitar. I was buying the learning experience of doing this upgrade as much as I was buying the actual products.
What struck me was how I was drawn into this little world, and how it turned into an actual transaction.
This is how it happens. I was radicalized by the YouTube algorithm.
About a year ago, back in March of 2021, I wrote a summary of the prospects for an all-electric minivan. At the time the options were sparse.
It’s not a year later and little has changed. The Volkswagen ID.Buzz has gone from a hypothetical future vehicle to one that will be actually introduced in Europe, but for North America, it might as well not exist.
Toyota still gets credit for going hybrid-only with their Sienna, and Chrysler for offering a plug-in hybrid version of the Pacifica. For me today, in Canada, there is no feasible all-electric minivan.
Maybe next year.
About twenty years ago, I fashioned an old car seat belt into a guitar strap. It’s still holding up. This may be my greatest triumph.
I like to be clear. Who doesn’t? Clarity is a form of kindness – or if you really want to fit it onto a coffee mug, “clear is kind“.
I find my lack of clarity in communication tends to correspond with a lack of empathy. If I really understood the perspective of the person I was communicating with, I’d understand what about my communication was lacking.
A lack of clarity can stem from fear, insincerity, or worse.
So, we’re all in agreement: we should be clear.
Where I’ve found myself getting stuck is in expecting clarity to mean simplicity, ease, or comfort. It don’t. Clarity and honesty can involve explaining how messy and complicated a situation is, or how you don’t know the right answer. As Rachel Smith sums up so well, the answer is often: it depends.
Clear communication doesn’t mean easy answers. Clarity is kindness, but so is honesty about when things are muddy.
Thanks to an interview on Vish Khanna’s fine podcast, I discovered a podcast this week that falls right into my areas of interest: music and design. The podcast is Art Design Music by Jud Haynes. It is a series of “Conversations with iconic visual artists about their work for the music biz.” He speaks with album cover designers, poster designers, photographers, and other visual artists who’ve worked with music industry.
The podcast has the one key ingredient I look for: people talking about stuff they love. The stories of creating the original (and still living) AC/DC logo, or designing for the Beastie Boys, or photographing Salt N Pepa are fascinating. It turns out that NWA might not ask a police officer in Los Angeles if the group can stand by their police cruiser for a photo, but if the unassuming British woman taking the pictures asks, it’s no problem.
I got to (very briefly) meet Jud Haynes when he was the keynote speaker at the dotgain visual arts conference at Holland College in Charlottetown, PEI back in 2018. His conference talk told the compelling story of his design career, starting with his time in the band Wintersleep, and his visual design work for Canadian groups like Blue Rodeo.
Despite his self-deprecation, Haynes is great telling stories and getting great stories out of others. His clear admiration for his guests doesn’t overshadow the conversation, but is a delight to hear. I enjoy the mix of personal life/career stories, and the lean toward the more technical/craft side of design.
Haynes has also designed labels for the brewery, Upstreet, that is literally up the street from my home in Charlottetown.
If you have any interest in music or visual arts, you’ll enjoy this podcast. I’m enjoying season 1 and am looking forward to season 2.
Though I suppose it would be hard to tell otherwise, I think I’m a reasonably intelligent person. Still, there are two areas where I have a kind of learned helplessness and completely fail to grasp basic math:
Whoever decided the clock on the lock screen of Android 12 should be stacked on two lines is bad and they should feel bad.
I’m not sure I can be objective about the company, silverorange, where I have worked for the past 22 years, but it’s a great place to work. We’re doing rewarding work with some world-class doctors that produce medical education tools. In the past few years we’ve built web systems for an art project, a funding application system, an indigenous health group, and are starting on a new project focused on mental health.
We need people to come help us build all of this stuff! Right now, there are positions open for full-stack React Web developers, and a PHP-focused Web developer. A handful of us work here on Prince Edward Island, and most of the rest of the team works remotely from across Canada.
I was talking with some friends-who-are-also-colleagues at work about a subject that, if addressed, would “open up a can of worms.” As the expression indicates, addressing this subject would force us to face a slew of other issues.
In the case, though, being forced to face these other issues felt healthy, necessary, and valuable. I asked my colleagues for a better metaphor for opening a can of good worms.
Thanks to the magical latency of Zoom, they both simultaneously and independently invented the phrase “opening a can of gummy worms.”