Scarborough, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Thornhill, Ontario; Frankfurt, Germany; Helsinki, Finland
Scarborough, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Thornhill, Ontario; Frankfurt, Germany; Helsinki, Finland
New Year’s dinner: Family starting off year together, before dispersing on diverse paths ahead. Lobster, Peking duck, plus lots of variety with 9 at table. Christmas was quiet, now enjoying the time together. (Perfect Chinese Restaurant, Scarborough, Ontario) 20160101St. Lawrence Market: Shopping for good bread and liverwurst on a late Friday afternoon with outdoor temperature above freezing. Bakeries mostly depleted, packaged for end of day. Eastern European meat store on lower floor. Bike route is flatter going west-east than climbing up the hill northbound to Danforth Greektown. (St. Lawrence Market, Toronto) 20160108Cayne’s: Selected dark roasted decaf pod for free sample coffee from machine in store. Declined on extra flavourings. Afternoon of driving around Thornhill and Markham for small errands. Not the best date for a long-married couple, but still gives us time together to talk. (Cayne’s Super Housewares, Thornhill, Ontario) 20160114New Bilan: Somalian lunch with friendly chef. Short menu of 5 meat and fish choices, ordered one of each, enjoyed as a group: goat meat, chicken steak, chicken stew, king fish, beef stew. Chicken soup with spices had us guessing flavours. Five platters came with rice, we ordered chipatti bread extra, arriving hot to the the table. Casual restaurant not frequented by tourists slightly east of downtown, unconventional choice for Sunday lunch (New Bilan Restaurant, Dundas Street East, Toronto) 20160117Francesca Bakery: Italian hot table on Friday 4:30 p.m. rather depleted, with pasta gone. Decided against calamari, chose veal sandwich and arancini (where the rice balls were hard to discern under zesty tomato sauce). Had ridden with friend out of downtown early to preempt traffic, this venue is close to McCowan transit station for my return back downtown. (Francesca Bakery, McCowan Road, Scarborough, Ontario) 20160122Absolute Bakery: Wider selection of breads in front window of neighbourhood bakery, pies and pastries in the cases behind. Chose rye bread for a change, will return for multigrain on another trip. Weather 6 degrees C and cloudy, no snow on the ground meant opportunity for bicycling on a mild Toronto day. Continuing pattern of sampling non-artisanal bakers around town. (Absolute Bakery, Parliament Street, Cabbagetown, Toronto, Ontario) 20160126First Nations School: Canoe on dry land, in front of mosaic spelling Gzaagigoo Nookmis Rose on easel planter. Translation guess: We love you (Gzaagigoo) Grandmother (Nookmis) Rose. First Nations School has junior and senior primary students in building co-sited with Dundas Public School. Multiculturalism mixes aboriginals with new immigrants on the playground. (First Nations School, Dundas Street East, Toronto) 20160127Nino D’Aversa: Racks of bread less busy than larger hot table buffet and espresso bar care areas. This brand is delivered to our local grocery store downtown, but the selection isn’t always there. Took home a loaf of ciabatta unsliced to judge freshness. Was in the neighbourhood, so a modest tour of cuisine nearby. (Nino D’Aversa Bakery, Glen Cameron Drive, Thornhill, Ontario) 20160128Pearson Terminal 1: : Express speedwalk seems slower and longer today, en route to Helsinki foot 3 weeks. Seats on flight to Frankfurt not full today. Weather at destination if expected to be about the same as at home. (Toronto Pearson Airport, Terminal 1) 20160130Frankfurt Airport Terminal A: Mobile installation in atrium of popular hub for flights across Europe. Now morning daylight, arrival was dark on overnight trans-Atlantic leg. On time schedule and loose connection have enough time for shower and leisurely breakfast in Senator Lounge. Stiffness and dull headache chills be treated, but first have to sit on another plane for a free hours. (Frankfurt Airport, Terminal A, Germany) 20160131
Hellsten Parliament: Arrived at Helsinki apartment for 3-week stay. Smaller room, just the basics for me. Teaching 2 days per week, a few other meetings, but lots of opportunities to visit with friends. (Museokatu, Helsinki, Finland) 20160131
Moments in May 2015, in Toronto, Ontario; Scarborough, Ontario; Markham, Ontario.
Toronto, Ontario; Scarborough, Ontario; Markham, Ontario.
Beach Skateboard Park. Spring has really arrived in Toronto, but people not yet wearing shorts. Transition from winter wear to light top clothes seems practically overnight. (Ashbridges Bay, Toronto) 20150502Bike helmet selection. When safety equipment all looks about the same, is made with similar materials, and ranges in price from $22 to over $200, the conscientious shopper takes quite a while to decide. The last bike helmet may be a decade old, so the perhaps thriftiness isn’t the most important attribute. (Mountain Equipment Coop, King Street West, Toronto) 20150507Yonge and Grenville Streets. Two storey storefronts demolished, foundations for @YCcondos 66 floor glass tower in progress. Intensification of downtown core, a few blocks north of Ryerson University and Yonge-Dundas Square. I don’t remember this construction project starting, the warm weather means bicycling more frequently. (462 Yonge Street, Toronto) 20150509Silver City Fairview. No lineup at suburban Tuesday matinee of Avengers movie in its second week. Stadium seating in non-3D room, a better way to enjoy a Hollywood blockbuster. (Cineplex Silver City Cinema, Fairview Mall, North York, Ontario) 20150512Table of ten. Chinese dinner on a weekday night with aunt, cousin, sister, father. Only one son attending, so our branch not dominating the table. Lobster, Peking duck, lots of Cantonese dishes, all consumed. (Perfect Chinese Restaurant, Scarborough, Ontario) 20150513
Toronto, Ontario; Sarnia, Ontario; LaSalle, IL; Allerton Park, IL; Mount Carmel, IL; Toledo, OH; Markham, Ontario.
Play reading with supertitles. Workshop @FuGenTheatre of Da Jia by Sophie Gee Nervous Hunter mixing English, Cantonese + Mandarin. Story in development, feels like Canadian Chinese families (Toronto) 20140902Real cattails, bronze birds. Ontario Travel Centre at Sarnia is a convenient rest stop before crossing into Port Huron. American border guard confiscated Canadian grape tomatoes (Sarnia) 20140909Blue Water Bridge view north. Crossing St. Clair River westbound from Sarnia to Port Huron on a Tuesday noon means no delays. Landmark lighthouse, is that a boat? (Port Huron) 20140909Lock 16, LaSalle Il. Historic Illinois & Michigan Canal, with boat for education and events. Wooden locks still intact, could require rebuilding if we ever needed heavy use again. Lock 16 at LaSalle, Il 20140910PLoP plenary. Introduction to Writers’ Workshop approach by Richard Gabriel as a more teacher-like, in the library at the Allerton Park Retreat Center for Pattern Languages of Programs Conference 2014 (Allerton Park) 20140915Writers Workshop at PLoP 2014. Reviewing process led by @rpg with @taka_iba as up first. Writers group labeled as Narrow Road to the Deep North focused on social applications of Alexandrian pattern language (Allerton Park) 20140915PLoP 2014 closing ceremony. Network of yarn as social graph of relationships gained at the end of Pattern Languages of Programs conference. Warm way to say goodbye. (Allerton Park) 20140917Wabash and White Rivers. Mount Carmel IL is at the junction of the Wabash and White Rivers. Twin Rivers Resto for relaxed lunch with Tom and Dorothy, we have all gotten grey hair since grad school days (Mount Carmel, IL) 20140918Trying out glassware. At the Libbey Factory Outlet in Toledo, appreciating the large variety of shapes for drinking glasses. We prefer shapes that fit the hand, but can they also be modern? (Toledo, Ohio) 20140919Wedding band. Bride at leisure after nuptials completed on a sunny fall afternoon. Swing band adding gaiety to the fun of the wedding. Markham Museum a festive site for all. (Markham) 20140920No parking mural. Pedestrian Sunday buskers in Kensington Market cause bike dismount in front of mural with dogs playing cards. Real dogs in yard next to garage. (Toronto) 20140928Boardwalk fall sunset. Runners in shorts, dog walkers, baby strollers enjoying the warm September dusk, before the dark brings cool. Expect good weather tomorrow. (Toronto) 20140929
California Sandwiches. Even splitting a veal sandwich on a date is a lot of food for lunch. Cheap date for old married couple (Toronto) 20140930
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates.
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences: There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify. (1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done. (2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done. For […]
The final publication of the October 2016 Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium workshop "Some Future Paths for Design Professionals: DesignX and Systemic Design" was published as “Systemic Design Agendas in Education and Design Research” in FormAkademisk, following 2 years of rewrites, reviews and revisions.
Federated wiki is deployed on a node.js server, an environment which has become available on some cPanel shared hosting providers. Here are some instructions written while restoring a wiki site originally installed in 2014-2015 on a cloud provider.
Reading The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis, reminded me of a PhD course at UBC with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, before they were recognized as Nobel prize candidates.
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Talk at @gtalug on Let’s Learn Tech Online @torontolibrary with @p2pu @CiscoNetAcad @TorontoESS. Linux Unhatched online course conducted in groups of 8 to 12, meetings twice per week in person. Non-technical facilitator encourages peers to work out understanding together. Found…Read more ›
The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›
Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›
Plenary presentation by Tim Ingold, at the 2nd @AIBR_ International Conference of Anthropology. The 2nd AIBR International Conference of Anthropology brings together anthropologists from different parts of the world under the theme “Identity: Bridges, Thresholds, and Barriers.” [….] [6:58] So…Read more ›
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
Meeting effectiveness is reduced after 7 people are involved, say @BainInsights consultants #Blenko, #Mankins, #Rogers. Follow the Rule of Seven for meetings. Who should come to a meeting is always a sensitive issue, and the basic precept is often “The more the merrier.” But more is rarely better when it comes to making decisions. Our […]
