So happy to hear @thewaroncars.bsky.social has finally added a Toronto stop for their book tour! Let's be sure to give them a warm #BikeTO welcome when they arrive on February 5! #TOpoli #VisionZero

I watch Jeopardy most days, and it’s become clear to me that my knowledge of African geography is abysmal. So I made myself a tiny web app with a blank map to help me practice remembering where all the different countries are on the continent. Test your own knowledge! […]

I think if I were running a city, I’d hire Toronto City Councilor Holyday as a consultant, and then always do the exact opposite of what he recommended. I’ve been watching City Hall politics for years and I’ve never seen an elected official who is so reliably wrongheaded. #topoli #toronto

I enjoyed this podcast interview with city planner Brent Todarian. ( @brenttoderian.bsky.social) He’s got a combination of competence and bluntness that I’d like to see more of in public figures. What I wasn’t expecting (but was really valuable) was to hear a discussion about the most effective […]

I wish I was as optimistic as the person whose robocaller has called me every other day for the last five years to attempt to scam me in Mandarin.

Ok, fedi ... what do we like for an epub reader that works for iPhone? Happy to pay for it, don't want yucky ads or tracking. Would love if there was an easy way to connect it to Calibre. Lovely if it syncs across devices, and also totally okay if it doesn't. #askfedi

I really enjoyed the Corridor Crew’s latest video. It’s about how the LOTR crew were able to do forced-perspective shots with a moving camera, something that was previously believed impossible. But the video is much more than that — it gets into the tension and partnership between practical and […]

Degoogling phase one is complete! Four Gmail accounts eliminated, my domain now flowing through a privacy-respecting European provider, paid services cancelled. While I was cancelling, they offered me a much better monthly price to get me to stay. So it’s probably not a bad idea to threaten […]

Oh great. The “correct” DNS management interface is also broken. So while I can delete records no problem, adding new ones is impossible. Which I discovered after deleting my old MX record. On the bright side… having no MX record on my domain means that I won’t be getting any junk mail! (Or any […]

Degoogling progress: over the last two days I’ve deleted over twenty thousand unneeded messages in my Gmail account and downloaded the remaining ones onto my machine. I’ve opened a new mail account with a European provider that offers ad-free, no-tracking, privacy-respecting email with multiple […]

I’ve just started the process of degoogling, and it’s become clear that this is probably going to take a few months at least. Step One is cleaning up my Gmail inbox, so that I can move the useful messages off Google and move my email to a different provider. I’ve enlisted clean.email to help […]

I unfollowed someone today, and I’m not entirely happy about it. This person posts great content on a topic I care about, but they also post a ton of stuff on many other topics I don’t care about, which were filling my timeline. If this person had used hashtags to mark their posts by topic, I […]

HEY CANADA. MP Elizabeth May is sponsoring a petition to get Electoral Reform back in front of Parliament. Could all of us who were utterly betrayed in 2016 when JT reneged on this please go put our electrons onto this one? yes, yes, the petitions don't mean a thing WILL happen, but there was […]

I saw “Wicked: for Good” last night. No spoilers here. I first read the book “Wicked” long before the musical existed, and now I’ve seen the musical and the movie. And (personal opinion), but I liked the movies best of the three. I think the movies were able to keep all the great musical […]

I just finished reading “Dinner with King Tut”, a pop-science book about experimental archaeology. In each section of the book, author Sam Kean meets someone who is trying to recreate some ancient technology or practice to see what we can learn from it to supplement the archaeological record […]

My husband likes to cook kale. Every time he makes dinner and serves kale, I don’t eat it until I first chant “Kale! Kale! Fire and Snow!” (Not out of compulsion — I just think it’s funny.) 23 years of marriage and he’s never asked me why. I love him so much.

WATCH: If you STILL don’t understand how car-dependent suburbia is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by downtown & all the urban parts of your city, watch this EXCELLENT video by @notjustbikes with @UrbanThree & @StrongTowns. And then please SHARE it as much as possible. youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI

I like to solve cryptic crosswords, but I find it very hard to do anagrams in my head. So I made a tiny web page for myself that lets you type or paste in the letters you want to work with, then drag them around into different orders. If this would be useful to you, feel free to use it […]

[Description of burlesque] Just attended my first burlesque show, to support a young friend who was performing. All female performers. Lots of hooting and hollering from the crowd. I was mostly fascinated by a young straight guy sitting in front of me with his girlfriend, as he carefully […]

Looking for an elder 2SLGBTQI+ person to join my volunteer non-profit board at https://ODLAN.ca. Must be based in Canada, since we serve Canadian non-profits in our community. We're doing some really neat work and are growing our reach and impact every year. Help our 2SLGBTQI+ communities exist […]

Tiny story: My first full-time job out of University was as a junior dev at a company that made mapping software. Our clients would put thousands of geographic data points into our software, and it would spit out instructions to a large-scale pen plotter to create these giant maps. The software […]

I just found out my previous employer (Autodesk) has introduced “AI Transparency Cards” for AI features that they’ve introduced into their building and design software. I think it’s a nuanced response to the polarized discourse which tends to conflate a large number of technologies and practices […]

Table booked! Let's go #toronto #fediverse https://mobilisons.ch/events/2df6a596-7dee-4e14-a4f5-ad471c6bfbcb

On November 26 I will be speaking at a meeting of the Visual Effects Society (Toronto Chapter) along with a group of my ex-colleagues from Alias Research about the early days of computer graphics in Toronto, the secret origins of Maya*, and what a weird and wonderful company Alias was. The event […]

Just came from a lesbian wedding — two lovely women in their 60s getting married. The brides swept into the hall, both wearing black semi-veils and black dresses with enormous black trains behind them, gliding the the front of the hall like twin queens of evil. The dresses were designed by the […]

Another gem in Toronto’s bike network is the Leslie Street Spit. Made almost entirely of landfill and construction waste, the spit is a finger of land extending five kilometres out into Lake Ontario, curving past the Toronto Islands. Over the years it has filled […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

If you’re media covering bike-lanes, watch this news story. If you’re a downtown business association discussing bike-lanes, watch this news story. If you’re anyone hearing the LIE that bike-lanes are bad for business, watch this story. And please SHARE THIS STORY so others can watch it too.

I just finished reading “This is Happiness” by Niall Williams. The book is a coming of age story set in the tiny Irish village of Faha during the summer when the town was first electrified. It’s told in first person, by the narrator (now an old man) recounting his youth. The writing is […]

I asked a British friend of mine currently living in Toronto if he was going to celebrate Guy Fawkes day today at home. He told me “I really wish Canada did bonfire night. It’s like a more murderous British Diwali.” #bonfirenight

As AI image generation quality improves, I’m hearing more and more people bemoan that “we’ll never know if anything is real anymore”. It’s a statement I’ve heard before, in the early days of Photoshop, and occasionally in my career building high-end 3d modelling and rendering software. While I […]

I’m having a great time giving out candy to the little ones for Hallowe’en. Lots of K-Pop Demon Hunter characters. I love when the parents dress up to take the smaller kids around. It’s such a fun community vibe. Plus, since this is Toronto, everyone is compressing their trick-or-treating to […]

Was just driving eastbound on Eglinton. Just after I passed the DVP, I noticed that one of the Eglinton Crosstown trains was sitting stopped. I was just about to curse Metrolinx, when I suddenly saw *why* it was stopped. Some car driver had somehow managed to jump the raised curb around the […]

Toronto Bike Rant: I needed to travel to Bermondsy Blvd today, so I hopped on my bike and headed for the Don Valley trails to get there. The trail that goes directly to my destination was closed (because they removed the old bridge before the new one was completed), but no problem, I could […]

Why did I think that going rock climbing the day after getting a vaccination in each shoulder was a good idea? #ouch

Inktober Day 27: “Onion” #inktober #inktober2025

Ontario folk: updated flu and COVID vaccines are now generally available. https://www.ontario.ca/vaccine-locations/ #toronto #ontario

Inktober day 26: “Puzzle” I realized that I am too lazy to draw all the detail I should for Victorian period stuff. #inktober #inktober2025

A optometrist friend of mine retired recently. He sold his practice not to another optometrist, but rather to a company that has been buying out individual optometrists everywhere and replacing their self-owned practices with a corporate chain structure where the optometrists are just employees […]

It was sunny but cool today, so I went with my husband on a bike ride around Crother’s Wood in the Don Valley. The fall colours were spectacular. The valley system in Toronto is a real gem, allowing you to ride for many km in the heart of the city without seeing […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Inktober Day 23: “Firefly” I really need a lot more practice on this style of shading. (Getting practice is kind of the point of Inktober!) #inktober #inktober2025

Inktober day 20: “Rivals” I gave up on not using references. I can draw a person without a reference, I just can’t draw a *specific* person without a reference. #inktober #inktober2025

Inktober Day 19: “Arctic” ….or “Arc Tick” I decided to use exciting new features in Procreate this time, like “colour” and brushes other than “technical pen”. #inktober #inktober2025

I was just at a dinner party, listening to a lovely older woman talking about her trip to Peru. She kept referring to “Machu Pichu” as “Pikachu”, and it was so charming that no one corrected her.

Inktober 2025 Day 18: “Deal” I drew my niece and her son because they are a big deal to me. #inktober #inktober2025

I just finished reading “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi. It’s a fantasy novel set in an alternative version of Nigeria, where people with magical abilities are ruthlessly suppressed by the ruling class. It’s a quest novel with all the elements — swords, magic, ancient wisdom, a […]

I drew this silly comic four months ago but I’m posting it again in support of my friends and family in the USA during their No Kings protest tomorrow. You’ve already thrown out one king, so you know it can be done! #nokings #inktober

Inktober Day 15: “Ragged” This is a day late because it took me a long time to draw, even using a lot of references. I really love this style of pen drawing, but I really need some crosshatching lessons. Inspired by a scene from @tiesselune ‘s incomplete web […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

One of my former staff sent me a link to this demo of how AI features are being incorporated into Maya. I had some trepidation, but after watching I think this is a great example of a good use of the technology. 1. The training data is not stolen — it was all created for purpose and paid for […]

I’m right now at the Foil, Arms & Hogg live comedy show in Toronto, and damn they’re good. I’ve watched their videos online for years, but the energy and connection they have on stage is fantastic. Mostly sketch comedy but they are improvising bits all over. Can’t wait for act 2 to start. Also […]