Some nights, my two older kids - Gabrielle, 8, and Ethan, 4 - beg me to make up and tell them a story. I used to quite often spontaneously make up and tell a new story, but I haven’t done it for a long time. Tonight I did, and this is the tale that I […]

Music industry? Movie industry?
Are you listening?
Adapt or die.

Aidan turned two today.
He had a “Bob the Builder” birthday, which he says as “Bob a Do-Do.” Very cute.

Two years of joy, two years of laughter, two years of love … all times three for all our kids. It’s hard to believe.
Wow - what a blessing. Undeserved, but not unappreciated.

Ten years ago I was an English major in university, thinking about a career in journalism. Then I realized that at any given time, there are more people in school to become journalists than there are jobs as journalists.
So much for the journalism thing.
But I might have given it up for entirely different reasons if […]

Sick. As. A. Dog.
[Update - April 25]
No more sushi. Ever. And that’s the last I have to say on that subject.

Never underestimate the power of the internet to surprise you. Or, rather, never underestimate the amazing, odd, weird, and wonderful things people actually invest time and energy and money into.
I just noticed Blogshares, the “Fantasy Blog Share Market.” Apparently, my blog is currently trading at around $3300 US, and trending upwards. Unfortunately, I currently only […]

I recently re-read all the 7 books that comprise the chronicles of Narnia. And my daughter Gabrielle is just finishing up The Last Battle, the last of the series. It’s her second time reading the series - she read it through at the age of 6 for the first time (she’s 8 now) - and […]

I’ve been wanting for some time to respond to Tim Bray’s article on immigration hassles that his brother Rob, who sponsors refugees on behalf of Christian churches in Canada, is trying to fix.
In it, Rob/Tim are arguing that Canada’s immigration policies are basically evil. They hurt the wrong people, they don’t help the right […]

OK, I’m at a complete and utter loss.
Has the advertising industry totally and completely lost any remants of any vestige of creativity? Apparently it has - at least the portion of it that works at or for CNN.com.
What’s wrong with the picture below? (It’s a screen capture from CNN.com, taken April 12, 2005.)

In a few short days, the largest religious organization in the world will be choosing a new leader. I’m speaking about the Roman Catholic Church, of course.
The church is taking extreme pains to ensure privacy during the selection process, and probably rightly so. The dry facts are available just about anywhere.
But wouldn’t it be cool […]

I’ve wanted to post some of the papers that I’ve written as a part of courses that I’m taking while working towards my Master of Educational Technology degree at UBC … and here’s the first installment.
It’s a scenario: how will education be different in 5 years? I chose to be a little optimistic, and wrote […]

I’ve had a little hiatus here for the past 3-4 days: I had a sudden trip to Moose Jaw, which is about as far into the Canadian hinterland as it sounds, though not quite as far as you can get.
Getting into and out of the city was interesting, consisting of a hop from Abbotsford to […]

I needed to whip up a quick EPS image today just for testing an image upload feature. The image itself didn’t matter at all; I just needed an EPS image.
So I went into Photoshop and in about 3 seconds flat, kind of accidentally created this. Which I rather like!

Note:
The charcoal border is a CSS class […]

I posted about two weeks ago on my son’s head injury, and updated a couple of days after that.
Well, it’s looking a lot better. Teresa took this photo of Aidan about a week after the original injury:

And now, another week later, it’s looking even better. Time will tell if the scar will fade away entirely […]

As I recently mentioned, I’ve added a couple of links that allow visitors to post comments to stories on this site … such as this one.
Stupid me. I forgot that no good deed goes unpunished. No sooner had I done so than this comment popped up its scaly head:

nice website, until I see that you […]

I was just alerted by a certain friend that commenting on this blog is an exercise in frustration.
Apparently, Wordpress updated how comments are handled in response to the comment spam problem, and now you must be logged in to post a comment. Which means you must be a member. Which, yes, as the inexorable train […]

The Liberal Party of Canada appears to have had its fingers in the wrong jar - many wrong jars, to be precise - and right now a public inquiry is being held to determine what exactly happened.
Apparently, according to a court publication ban, I can’t tell you what is going on. I can’t even legally […]

I just finished reading “Paddle to the Amazon: the ultimate 12,000 mile canoe adventure.” Excellent book!
I happened across it by accident … my wife’s grandfather passed away, and I received some of his books, including this one.
It’s the story of Don Starkell and his son Dana, who paddled from their home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to […]

What kind of people set guards over a sick woman to ensure no-one gives her a sip of water or a morsel of food?
I have not felt strongly enough about the Terry Schiavo case to post about it, nor has my thinking been clear enough. Part of the reason for this is that I do […]