Thinking The Sounds

I’ve been following the You Are Not So Smart blog for quite some time now. It’s a great look at how we fool ourselves. It’s a great kick in the head to get us out of habitual ways of thinking about ourselves and the world.

Now the blog has been turned into a new book and I’m very much looking forward to it. The video below is a good summary (and really well done);

So, today makes six months since the girls and I landed in Canada to begin our new life here (my wife having already been here for several months).

I thought I would take the opportunity to make some random reflections on life here in the Great White North.

• People are SO friendly!  No really.  I mean really friendly.  Store clerks, people on the street, waitresses.  I’ve lived in lots of places but this is the friendliest place I’ve ever been.  It probably ties with Disney World.
• I love that I can see snow on the mountain tops in August.  I love just seeing the mountains, period.  Every day.  From my living room window.
• The weather (so far) has been gorgeous.  It was a bit chilly and damp during the spring, but summer has been amazing.  Sunny most days with highs in the low to mid 70’s (I’m still not good with Centigrade).
• When I first got here I felt like everybody could tell I was a ‘foreigner’.  Pretty dumb, but I just felt like I stood out for some reason, though I look a whole lot like most people here…
• …except…the town where we live is overwhelmingly Chinese immigrants (or of Chinese descent).  And there are lots of others of Asian or Middle Eastern descent.  I like going to the mall and being a minority.  It’s kind of cool.
• Except….  Many of the stereotypes about Asian drivers seem to be true.  Most annoying to me is the habit of always backing in to parking spaces in parking lots.  You think he’s turning right but then backs up into a spot on the left…!
• On a related note, Canadian parking lots are TINY!  I almost hate going anywhere because they’re so hard to navigate.  And I have a tiny little Scion xB!
• Living here is tremendously expensive.  Most consumer goods cost maybe 1/3 more than they would in the states.  I think we went hungry the first month we lived here because I couldn’t justify the prices I was seeing in the grocery store.  Now I’m used to it.
• Also, while Canadian stores carry lots of US brands, many of them are different versions of US brands.  It can be quite confusing.  And I have no idea what the heck happened to Canadian Corn Pops, but they are NOT Corn Pops!
• They really do say ‘eh’ a lot….
• Man, there are some big ass spiders here!  I’ve killed quite a few of what appear to be Hobo Spiders.  Thankfully they’re only supposed to be around in summer and early fall….
• Crossing the border into the states (to get mail and American cheese) was total pain until we got Nexus cards.  Now we breeze through the lines.
• It’s good to be living in a country that is not so politically polarized as the US.
• It bears repeating that this is the most beautiful place I have ever been in the world.  The water, the mountains, the air.  It’s just amazing!
• Did I mention the people are friendly…?
• TV, however, stinks up a big one.  As does lack of web services (GoogleVoice, Spotify, Amazon MP3, Pandora, etc.).  And cell phone service is expensive and awful as well.  Be thankful for what you have south of the border.
• The health care is pretty awesome so far and we haven’t even really take advantage of it that much yet.  It does give you a greater sense of comfort knowing that you’re not going to be dropped or have to pay outrageous out of pocket expenses.
• Canada’s a lot less religious than the US, certainly much less aggressively religious.  Another plus in my book.
• Except for hockey.  That’s the religion around here.
• Public spaces and green spaces are abundant and well taken care of.  The flowers on the median strips where we live are regularly cared for and incredibly lush.  Canadians value living in attractive areas.
• 
• However….  They are tearing down houses in my neighborhood at an astounding pace!  They’re demolishing these great 50’s/60’s simple homes and building these huge monstrosities that have no respect for scale or placement.  And the prices are crazy.  Our house in Kenosha would be going for over a million if it were here.
• The kids are making friends (especially Lydia).  We actually live in a place where they can go a few houses down and hang out with the neighbor kids.  We’ve never had that and it’s great!

I’m sure I could think of more, but those are just some observations off the top of my head.  I know a lot of them sound negative, but I think they’re just really small changes that take some time getting used to.  There are many aspects of life that you take for granted until you go somewhere different.  Which I’m glad we have.

It’s starting to feel like home.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Can you imagine watching anything lovelier than this?

Love this!

With the power house Stallone, Statham, Li, Lundgren, Couture, Rourke, Willis, Stone Cold, Roberts and Schwarzenegger “Expendables” movie being released tomorrow, i thought i’d pay tribute to the one true expendable…

the star trek “red shirt”, may he rest in piece on whatever alien planet he was disintergrated on…

via Montygogs Art-O-Rama!: Expendable.

Your beautiful eyes :: Photography Served.

I am so glad that I live in an age when everyday technology has given us the ability to see the majesty of the world in so many phenomenal ways!

Dr. Dre goes all space-rock….

An instrumental album is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I have the ideas for it. I want to call it The Planets. I don’t even know if I should be saying this…. [Laughs.] It’s just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like. I’m gonna go off on that. Just all instrumental. I’ve been studying the planets and learning the personalities of each planet. I’ve been doing this for about two years now just in my spare time so to speak. I wanna do it in surround sound. It’ll have to be in surround sound for Saturn to work.

via Dr. Dre Talks The Detox Wait,.

From Tricycle Magazine:

Many people have some ambivalence about silence; they fear it, or don’t value it. Because we only know ourselves through thinking and speaking and acting. But once the mind gets silent, the range of what’s possible is immeasurable. So first you taste the silence. Then you realize that it’s not a vacuum or dead space. It’s not an absence of the real stuff; it’s not that the real stuff is the doing, the talking, and all that. You get comfortable in it and you learn that it’s highly charged with life. It’s a very refined and subtle kind of energy. And when you come out of it, somehow you’re kinder, more intelligent. It’s not something that you manufacture—it’s an integral part of being alive. And it’s vast. We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room. With practice, it’s as if the walls of this room were torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.

Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing

One of my favorite songs ever. The Blue Nile are masters of subtle beauty and sophisticated pop.

Cosas Mínimas

Minimal Things is the personal portfolio of Madrid based illustrator and designer, Blanca Gómez. I’m in love with her illustrations. Every aspect of her style exhibits a sense of minimalism, from the simple geometric shapes, to the solid colors.

via Cosas Mínimas AisleOne.

I love the simplicity of these designs.

Check out Etsy for some of these images as prints or greeting cards.

Maybe this is what Ella needs (see the last post) to find her way around….

It’s rare that I see a new technology that makes me actually say “Wow” out loud, but this video did it.

It looks like Microsoft has taken Google Street View and kicked it up quite a few notches.  This is a really excellent and intuitive interface in many ways.  They really thought about how to take 3-dimensional information and find an elegant way to translate it into 2D.  While it isn’t completely natural (in that it doesn’t mimic the eye view of what you’d see as you drive down one of these streets), it does present a view that makes visual and logical sense.  I don’t think you need to be really technically savvy to “get it” when you start using it.  I’m excited to try this in action.

I have to say that MS has actually come up with some really interesting visual interfaces (Photosynth and Surface come to mind).  They have to do some more work to get them implemented into real devices, but I have to say I’m impressed with how their thinking about these technologies.