Folks, there’s only one thing you should be reading today, and that’s all the tweets coming out of Claire and Jared’s wedding hashtag. Go and wish them well and see the fun! And if you’re not done reading, go check out Claire’s fantastic writing about wine over at foodiePrints. Claire and Jared are wonderful, kind people who have more than a little bit adopted Natalie Joy and I. They’re nerdy and love good food and company and laughter and are so incredibly in love. They’re some of my favourite people and…
Author: trevor
Art and Science in Perfect Harmony: IBM’s Atomic Stop-Motion Film
Researchers at IBM have made me love stop-motion animation. Using a scanning tunnelling microscope, these fine folks have painted perfect pointillist pictures using individual atoms, and made a fun little short film about a boy and his one special atom. This may just be a smile-inducing aside to real research into quantum computing but MAN is it cute.
TED Tuesday: Plant Some Shit
Ron Finley has a simple message that I want to impart not only to my little ladies but also to my students. Take responsibility for yourself and those around you, and be healthy. It’s sometimes a struggle to get my ladies to eat vegetables. Carrots are frequently left uneaten. But last summer, when we grew veggies in the garden, they wouldn’t even wait to get all the mud off before crunching through a carrot or five. Ownership of your own health and nutrition, of the process of feeding yourself, is…
Regarding All That Stuff About Paddling I Wrote Before
Just a quick poem, since I’m teaching some poetry right now and this popped into my head. Distressingly Thick-Skinned I look to live a country lad wearing city’s skin a skin I fear I’ve worn so long it grows but ever in As always, and in spite of my creeping feeling of feeling stuck in the city, paddle your own canoe, folks. Trevor
TED Tuesday: Build a School in the Cloud
Sugatra Mitra presents a model for education that I absolutely love — present students with a problem to solve, a practical challenge that demands to be solved, and then provide them the resources that they need to learn for themselves the skills required to solve the problem. What a great idea–put the students in charge of their own skills development! I question, though, how effective that would be in certain situations. Can a student become a skilled communicator without feedback and refinement? Can a kid learn organically the relationship between…
Sunny Monday
I have afternoons off this week, as my program is between sessions. After the winter we’ve had, I’ve been looking forward to spending some time getting ahead on prepping classes and spring cleaning. Imagine my delight, though, when I stepped outside and was greeted with this weather. More than that, CBC mentioned that the UV index for today was 6. That’s pretty high. I don’t know much about what that measurement actually means but I do know that vitamin D comes from your skin processing UV and I wanted some…
Sunday Reading: 07/04/2013
Who’s Responsible For The Obesity Epidemic? – Massimo Pigliucci, Rationally Speaking To set the stage here, I’m going to quote directly from Massimo’s article: The current situation in the United States is hard to believe: one third of adults are clinically obese, and so is one fifth of all children; a whopping 24 million Americans are affected by type II diabetes, usually the result of a poor diet. And the numbers are getting worse in much of the rest of the developed world as well. This is going to…
The Autum Road: Demonstrations
Marco Dante Ferraris is a rad dude. You’ve seen his handiwork before on spillway, and he’s been playing his leftie guitar for years. For the first time, the Ottawa native has put together an album of original songs that I am suddenly rocking right out to. It’s hit me right in the Valley sensibilities with a rocky, folky vibe that’s an absolute outpouring of joy. When I asked Dante about why it’s taken so long for him to put out a demo album like this, he gave a typically pragmatic…
Dear Roots: An Open Letter From Someone Who Knows Something About What You’re Selling
Dear Roots Canada, In spite of popular opinion, I don’t usually spend much time gawking at myself in the mirror. Just after a workout, or if I have a genuinely horrible hair day. But I had to stop and look at myself for a while today. Specifically, at my shirt. I know that logo well. I’ve grown up with it. Omer is Mom’s uncle, and I grew up learning to paddle in a cedar and canvas canoe he restored for Mom and Dad. Using and refinishing paddles based on his.…
Balance
What’s happened here? I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve posted on spillway. And I had so much stuff lined up, too. Ready to go with daily content. New original podcasts in the pipe. Gearing up for more posts in The Tiny Enterprise Project and Branching Out series. Where did that all go? The desire to share stuff hasn’t gone away. I’ve been excitedly prepping material documenting other projects, including paddle-making and a little scratchbuild I call DroidQuest2013. But the posts about them haven’t materialized. Why? I’ve…
Think the Science Is Still Out on Climate Change? Think Again
The language above is obviously leaning towards the alarmist, but this infographic by the fine folks at learnstuff.com points out something critical: the effects of climate change are very real, indisputably so, and potentially disastrous. The numbers that they give in the writeup that accompanies their graphic are shocking. 72% of media outlets are currently reporting sceptically on climate change, whereas an overwhelming majority — 97% — of scientists agree that climate change is a real thing, and in fact caused by the effect humans have on the environment. And…
Conflicted
To those of you who follow her on Twitter or are Facebook friends or, you know, know her in real life, because apparently that’s a thing that people do, the new hair thing is old news. I’ve been sitting on this sheet for about a week because I’m spending my whole life prepping and sometimes I forget to post stuff I make. The bottom line is that Delaney did an awesome job, and if you’re in Ottawa you should throw him some business. He knows his art, and he is the…