We in our modern world have many ways of dealing with personal impurity. Contemporary hygiene and chemicals mean we don’t need to worry about it nearly as much as people in the ancient world … there are still other types of pollution as well: the pollution which gets into our minds and hearts, into our imagination and memory. How can we get rid of that? One way is to spend time with a story like this.
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1
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Thoughts on Hiring
Thinking about hiring, the typical process for screening candidates using written applications is likely to become far less effective as it becomes a game of adversarial bots both creating applications for positions and evaluating them. In light of this I see one possibility being less emphasis on written applications going forward, resulting in more emphasis on the strength and scope of one’s personal connections in turn. This could be a big step backwards for equality and inclusion as it would increase the barriers to moving outside of one’s current social circle.
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Recapturing the Magic of the Early Blogging Days
Chuck Grimmett’s post on recapturing the magic of the early blogging days describes a lot of my intentions with the latest changes to my website. The one thing I would add from my philosophy is: ‘spend less time building, more time using and maintaining’
Recapturing the magic of the early blogging days – Chuck Grimmett
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December 2024
This website
After reading a number of thought provoking articles on sharing work and connecting with people, I’ve decided to become more intentional with this website and share more of what I’m doing, what I’m reading, and what I’m thinking about.
This necessitates a bit of a redesign of the website so apologies in advance, this website is probably going to get worse before it gets better.
Housing
Suzy and I are in the process of purchasing a new home and selling our existing house. This month the focus is basically on the paperwork, whether legal, finance, or insurance. The practical matters of moving will become a concern in January.
This is putting a lot of other priorities on hold temporarily (all my synth building gear is already tucked away in boxes), so this list is going to be a bit shorter for the next few months than it otherwise would be.
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Fire Insurance Maps of Calgary
Back in the early days of fire insurance, when you wanted to insure a building, the insurance company would send a underwriter to view the building and gain a first hand appreciation of the risk. As cities began to expand at the turn of the century, this became less practical and a new solution came in to widespread usage: fire insurance maps.
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Speaker Grills of the World
Speaker Grills of the World is a single topic website, which is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of different speaker grill designs. A great source for examples and inspiration when designing patterns of holes in things.
speaker grillspeaker grill hole patterns DXF download -
RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer
From: Making Music Your Own -
NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD
Godspeed You! Black Emperor released a new album this fall, and it’s already playing on continuous repeat in my office. This album is surprisingly positive in tone, covering a range between melancholy and upbeat. While still the kings of crescendo-core, this album feels a bit more fast paced with transitions flowing faster than previous albums and more time spent on triumphant riffs.
My favourite song so far is BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD, which starts with some simple guitar and reverb washes before picking up to their trademark guitar, bass, and string based chamber rock. From there it quickly settles into a reflective interlude before building up to a stronger riff then coming back down. This song feels like an encapsulation of Godspeed You! Black Emperor at their finest.
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N.T. Wright on the Lord’s Prayer
If we are truly praying this prayer to God’s honour, we can never simply pray for food for ourselves. We must pray for the needs of the whole world, where millions go hungry and many starve. And already we may sense, bubbling up out of the prayer, the realization that if we truly pray it we might also have to do something about it, to become part of God’s answer to our praying.
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1 -
Bryan Jarrell on Self Care
The whole concept of self-care puts the onus of stress management on the individual when the problem is living in a stressful world … Self-care can be a sort of social gaslighting, where we blame humans for struggling in the midst of inhumane conditions. Sometimes, the problem isn’t our inability to measure up to life’s demands: often, it’s the demands of society that should be changed.
Bryan Jarrell, Help Beyond Self Care