Posts by admin

A selection of my writing

Posted by on 24 Nov, 2010 in Writers' Corner | 0 comments

 

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As a follower of this blog (if indeed there are any) you might have noticed I haven’t written here much lately. And I haven’t written much for my other written labour of love Human 2.0 either. So what have I been doing – especially while I’m off social networks? Surely that would have given me more free time? Well I had hoped to write more here – but much of my time has been taken up by a different sort of writing – assignments for the Non-Fiction writing workshop I have been doing at Thomas More Institute. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The assignments have challenged me as a writer in new ways and have undoubtedly improved my writing. So I thought I’d publish a few of the things I’ve written here, along with some brief thoughts and comments on what I learnt from them.

 

I’ll use this post as a header post and update this post to add links to the pieces as I publish them.

 

(Image CC by Tom Swift)

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On the decline of language…

Posted by on 12 Nov, 2010 in My Stream | 0 comments

 

An insightful Friday afternoon wordplay…

Credits to Ronnie Bruce for the animation and Taylor Mali for the poem.

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Just when you thought it was safe to go into the bathroom…

Posted by on 12 Nov, 2010 in My Stream | 0 comments

 

This one did the rounds a while ago, but it still makes me laugh so I thought I’d share it.

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Who says America is the most unhealthy? This is how Canadians roll..

Posted by on 6 Nov, 2010 in My Stream | 0 comments

Here is the so-called “Epic Sandwich”, including bacon, poutine, eggs, hot dogs (including their own rolls) and a whole lot of maple syrup.

Not sure I could stomach that… Too much even for my larger-than-average appetite!

Read more at the Montréal Gazette.

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The November Project: the What and the How

Posted by on 31 Oct, 2010 in Lifenotes | 0 comments

If you read my last post you’ll know I’m taking a break from social media for a month. That post explained the general reasons why.

In this post I’ll add a little more detail on what exactly I’m doing, and how.

Here’s the things I’m doing for November..
  1. Blocking my computers from accessing Facebook or Twitter.
  2. Turning off all Facebook and Twitter alerts on my email and on my phone.
  3. Deleting all Facebook or Twitter-related apps on my iPhone and iPad.
  4. Turning off and putting away my Chumby.
  5. Unlink Twitter from Flipboard, sobeeslite and other news apps.
  6. Turning off NutshellMail and Twilert, two services I use which send Twitter and Facebook updates to my inbox.
  7. Disabling Google Alerts, Slashdot newsletters, and any other regular emails that arrive in my inbox.
  8. Turning off Google Buzz within Gmail (I can’t disable it completely without deleting my Google Profile). 
  9. Disable all notifications (including email and IM) on my iPhone and iPad.
  10. Disabling anything else that pops up early in November that I might have forgotten about that seems like a regular notification or distraction.
2-10 are all fairly straightforward.

1 is a little more interesting.

The solution I am going for is to edit the hosts file on my computer (/etc/hosts on the Mac), and add an entry which remaps twitter.com and facebook.com to different addresses – probably google news and my blog respectively). As of yet I haven’t found a way to do this on the iPad or iPhone so I may just need to rely on willpower there… Unless anyone has any suggestions?

[To read the follow up to this post, reflecting on the experience, go here.]
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