Category: General

I think I’ve had enough, with work related to the Web that is (and I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while actually). You see for the past five to ten years, most of my enjoyment with the Web has been in creating community sites where I explore and share information with others. Yet in all of these ventures (including my recent Exploring Squarespace site), I didn’t make a dime from them. Thus the thing I’m the most passionate about, I can’t see a way of making any income from it.

Since this may be my last post on the Web (for quite a while anyways), if anyone has any ideas on this, definitely let me know. I mean the only two options I can see are adding ad banners, which would basically provide pocket change, or a more substantial approach would be making new content to the site subscription-based for a monthly fee. Yet I honestly don’t see many people being into that and actually I’d rather avoid that if I could, since I believe information on the Web should be freely accessible. Yet there in lies the problem. If everyone makes their content free, how can they sustain themselves?

Seems like we haven’t made much headway since the dot com bomb period when many sites experienced the same problems and closed up shop, even though many may have had thousands of people visiting them daily. If there isn’t a way to sustain what you’re doing, no matter how valuable and appreciative your content is, then don’t expect to be doing it for long. End of story.

I’m not sure why I thought of this (maybe it’s because I’m running now) but I remember reading about professional athletes whose development is like a series of inclinations and plateaus alternating one after the other. Over a period a time they make dramatic gains in their performance until one day they reach a plateau where they level off for a while making minor improvements at best. Then after a while, again something happens to spark their development and they take off again in making dramatic improvements in their performance.

In thinking about this, I was reminded how similar it seemed to life itself. We may learn something, spending many months or years increasing our knowledge and skill level until one day we feel like we have mastered that knowledge. Sitting on that mountain top of knowledge, we may think we know it all and are masters over others below us. Thus we stop exploring, feeling as though we “know it all”. That is until one day something happens. We see or experience something that let’s us look at life from a different angle or viewpoint, making us realize that our mastery is fleeting, as there are many more mysteries of life yet to be revealed.

Location: 2958 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6K 1R4
Tel: 604-737-7529
Rating: Excellent (5/5)

Sandra and I finally had the opportunity to go together to The Flying Tiger restaurant the other night (as she had already been twice with friends of hers). This restaurant, just down the street from us on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, is getting rave revues and I can see why.

First off the atmosphere and ambience are great. Whoever did the design and lighting did an exceptional job. The menu itself is also superbly done as it has a great selection of food. Even my wife, who is a vegetarian, found many delicious dishes to choose from. During our dinner we had the following dishes.

• Drunken Prawns
  BC Side Stripe peel & eat prawns flash-seared with garlic sweet chili and Shaoshing wine, 5-spice.
  Delicious! These prawns were huge in size and since Sandra doesn’t prefer seafood, I enjoyed them all to myself!
• Three Mushroom Shoyu Tofu en Papillote
  Shiitake, oyster & enoki mushrooms, roasted sesame oil butter, edamame and tofu steamed in a parchment envelope.
  This doesn’t seem like much when you get it but the flavours within it are incredible!
• Hawker Street Noodles
  Fresh egg noodles, shiitake mushrooms, crispy chicken, wild prawns, squid, snap peas, bok choy shoots, nam prik pao, oyster sauce, sweet soy.
  We had a vegetarian version with no seafood or chicken in it but next time I’m going to ask for it on the side so that I can still have it myself, since they charge the same price with or without it. The waitress said she didn’t think it would have much flavour without the seafood and chicken but we both enjoyed it a lot.
• Szechuan Green Beans
  Wok-seared green beans, garlic, shallots, sweet chili.
  This was the only dish that wasn’t up to par. Sandra said she had it before and it was amazing but this time they dumped too much sauce on the beans and they got a little “drunken”. 🙂
• Deep Fried Chocolate Stuffed Banana with Caramel Sauce
  Deserts are not listed on the menu and this was the only one they offered but it was still delicious nonetheless.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal and I’d highly recommend it to anyone in town. Tips for next meal? Since dishes come out one at a time (tapas style), we think we’ll order basmati or garlic fried rice next time, as I would have loved to have soaked up the sweet garlic chili sauce from the prawns with some rice and it would have helped out a lot with our “drunken” green beans as well. If anything I’d say go with a group of at least four people if you can, as you’ll really get an opportunity to explore a lot of different dishes in one sitting.

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand
Rating: Good (4/5)

A lot of people to whom I have spoken, including my wife (who had seen the movie on her own with a friend of hers), didn’t find this movie very enjoyable. However, I was quite surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed it when I rented the DVD the other day. I think the particular reason for this is that I enjoyed the depth of the movie and I’m not sure if a lot of people saw that depth to it.

For example, my wife found the movie depressing. And yes, while the apparent primary subject of the movie is depressing, the inner layers of it instead make us stop and think as to what is truly important in our lives (especially in today’s society where so much emphasis is placed on external materialism versus our internal humanity). If you watch the Special Features section of the movie, you’ll see what I mean, as many of the actors themselves described why they were so drawn to the movie and the emotional human stories interwoven and layered within it. And without a doubt, the director, Nicole Holofcener, sums up the movie perfectly when she asks the following question.

“Are we the people we want to be?”

I’ve finally made the leap out of my computer chair and into getting some serious physical activity with a pair of Saucony Grid Excursion TR trail running shoes. So far I’m thoroughly impressed with them. When I tried them on at Forerunners, I compared them to about four or five other brands and they easily won out. I guess the best comparison I could give would be that these shoes feel like I’m driving in a sports car that’s low to the ground and has great traction versus the other running shoes that felt like I was driving in a 4×4 that had huge balloon tires, that while providing plenty of traction and cushioning, still made me feel like I was too high off the ground and could easily lose my balance. It’s kind of hilarious when you think about it though because we’re only talking about a minor difference in height but I still easily felt the difference nonetheless. Even more interesting is that even though the Saucony trail runners felt like they had less cushioning than the other runners, they actually felt like they had more spring to them.

So why trail runners versus regular running shoes? I actually find any type of forced physical activity to be boring which is why I never have the willpower to get out and be active. And yet if I’m playing around, say like tossing a frisbee back and forth with a friend, I can run around getting tons of exercise yet I don’t think of it as “working out” (which is why I was so active as a kid). That’s why I chose the trailer runners. Instead of just running in a straight line, I’m trying to make it more enjoyable and exciting by running all over the place and over all sorts of things. Thus I could be running on a trail near the beach, leap up onto a log, run to the end of it, leap onto a rock and finally leap off that back onto the trail. In effect, I want to be fully engaged and have some interaction with my environment around me instead of just running in a straight line like I would if I was on a treadmill in a gym.

So far, so good. I’m getting active and having a blast doing it. 🙂

Hmm, I’m already stumped. I thought categorizing my entries would be easy to do to create separate “streams” but it isn’t. Why? Because I’m finding that everything is connected in my entries. For example, I could be talking about playing the World of Warcraft. So you might think that’s easy, just categorize the subject of the entry as “Gaming” or something like that. But it’s not that easy, because often times my inspiration comes from the most unlikely of places. For example, when I’m playing online, I’m continually thinking about communities and the cultures within them. Therefore, do I add those categories as well thus making it now “Gaming”, “Communities”, and “Culture”? As I said before a while back in a previous post, the more categories I add the more absurd things seem to get, so I’d rather not have “subject” categories at all.

If anything though, I find it easier instead to categories things by type. For example, categorizing entries as “Books”, “Movies”, or “Music” is really straightforward, since if you click on that category you’ll see a listing of the books I have read. Yet if I do this, then what do I call my regular entries that aren’t books, music, or movies? Do I just categorize them as just “Blog” entries? Seems weird, yet at the same time how do I separate my content in these “streams”? Or should I really be worried about this? Yet if all of my content is merged together, I find this a detriment because it makes it more difficult for people to follow a specific “aspect” or “facet” of my life. Instead they have to see everything I talk about (although they have the choice to read it or not).

Again is this a bad thing though? Hehe, for some reason the song “All of Me” by Frank Sinatra is playing in my head now.

“All of me
Why not take all of me”

This is just a little background on what I meant by “I think I’ve found a ‘structure’ I can live with” that I mentioned in my last post.

For the longest time, I’ve been frustrated with blog formats (which is why I drive people nuts with changing my site so much because I like exploring and experimenting with different things). Therefore instead of the typical blog format, I’ve instead been searching for a format that focused more on a “spaces” approach (i.e. rooms, etc) because different spaces allowed for different forms of social interaction. In effect, each room or environment that we step into in the real world, changes how we socially interact with others. In a business environment, we may be speak professionally, not letting our emotions show. Yet in the back corner of a quite cafe, we may express our deepest emotions to a good friend. And even more so, in a night club environment we may speak and behave wildly different with others, as we let go of a lot of the things that may hold us back from expressing ourselves fully. Therefore each environment provides a different social context to interact within and will change how we outwardly express ourselves.

Now here’s what I just realized though. My website here is not so much a “space” but instead is more an extension of myself. Specifically an extension of my thoughts and interests. As others like Dave Winer have pointed out, it is more like a conversation “river”. Yet within this river are streams of focused conversations on specific topics of interest. That is the approach that I’ve finally decided upon and will go forward with. One of the main benefits of this approach is that it will allow me to feel like a “whole” person because my one conversation “river” will switch from various stream topic categories. Therefore I might talk about technology one post, culture another, and then computer gaming in the next. In effect, this allows me to relay my full identity, not just a single fragment or facet of it.

And yet the greatest strength of this approach, its wholeness, is also possibly its greatest weakness. A lot of people today are not interested in knowing everything about a person which is why most bloggers recommend having a very focused topic niche for your blog. Instead they recommend creating different sites. I, for some reason, just can’t do this. I’ve tried and I keep feel like I’m fragmenting myself so that people only see certain sides of me to the point of being stereotyped. In addition, I find separate sites a really complex approach for maintaining my conversations, as I’d rather have everything in one location. Therefore, at the very least, if I provide “categories” for my journal, or as I like to call them “topic streams”, people can then so choose to follow only a single conversation stream instead of having to listen to everything I have to say.

Of course, in closing, the hilarious thing here is that the format I’ve now chosen is very similar to the default blogging format that many people use today. In a sense, I’ve come full circle. Believe me though, I still don’t think it’s perfect. I’ve got a few other ideas that I’d like to experiment with but due to the approach I’ll be taking, this experimentation “shouldn’t” alter my current structure but hopefully will instead work with it.

I’m back but with a new direction.

First off, just a quick note to let everyone know that I’m no longer working at Squarespace. In addition, I want to thank Anthony for giving me the opportunity to work with him at Squarespace and letting me see the inner workings of such a great web publishing service such as Squarespace. It was a wonderful opportunity.

With regards to work, I’ve got some of my own ideas that I’m going to be pursuing over the next little while (that still relate to Squarespace though) and you’ll see these appear on my site in the days ahead. In addition, I’ll probably be adding a “Services” page sometimes soon that will explain what I’ll be offering.

“Where’s my journal?” you might also be wondering. I took it down, as I don’t see a need for it right now. Depending upon how things go, I might add it back in the future but I’ll have to see how things go. Instead, I’ve just created this “News” page that will just relay occasional news and updates relating to my site. If you want to get a hold of me and chat though, feel free to give me a shout via my Contact page.

UPDATE: Journal is back up. Think I’ve found a “structure” I can live with.

A very simple article entitled Living Without The Internet on Design Observer seems to have sparked a very heated conversation in its comments about how people use the Internet and does it make them feel connected to others or not.

Personally the Internet itself as a technology does not make me feel connected to others. For me, it is more the people I interact with and the stories that are shared that make me feel connected to people on this planet. The Internet is just helping to make this interaction a little easier than previous methods of communication.

Do I “feel” disconnected from people when I’m off the Internet? No, not at all. As I’ve stated before, I actually feel more connected to the world and the billions of people on it when I’m alone in nature then when I’m online. But could this be because I don’t have very many meaningful relationships online? I mean I have various meaningful relationships offline but I barely can think of even a few online. Maybe this is why I don’t feel disconnected when I’m offline because I’m not truly connected meaningfully to people online. And I guess the next question is should I be?

Or should I taking advantage of the ability to search globally with the Web to help me find more meaningful relationships locally within the city in which I live, similar to what Marko Savic mentioned in the comments of this article.

Perhaps because I’m younger and grew up on the internet my prespective is different, but, the internet is our social landscape. I moved to Toronto for school 2 years ago, and knew nobody. Through the wonders of LiveJournal I “met” many new friends. Ironically, these people are the ones when I met in person, became best friends with, and eventually moved in with. All the people I met “in person” at “social functions” were all friends of circumstance than any true bond. We aren’t in touch any more.

Even more so, should I start using the Web in different ways than I normally think. I’ve been touting that Web 2.0 is more a change of thinking than a change of technology. Maybe I need to listen to my own words? Should I be creating different journals as different ‘spaces” to help maintain relationships with people I already know in real life and possibly even foster new relationships with people who come across them? For example, one journal could be focused towards the public with regards to my research and work. Another could be focused towards family and friends, relayings what going on in my daily life. Another could be a very private journal that I only share with a select group of people and so on. Interesting. Now that I think about this, I had actually thought of this before with my “rooms” approach in terms of structuring content. This takes it step farther though. In effect, each space / room / journal is like a different social environment with different rules of social conduct (with your journal settings effectly helping to set the environment).

In closing, I’d like to finish off this train of thought with a few more words by Marko Savic again.

Between first and second years, my internet friends (I’d met them at this point) and I all moved to our respective home towns, and one of us went to Europe. We used LiveJournal to keep up with the events of eachothers lives while we were apart for 5 months, its like we were with eachother the whole time. We actually orchestrated renting a house between Windsor, London, Kitchener (Ontario) and Scotland from a landlord who lived in New York. He gave us the place over another group after he stumbled upon my blog and decided he liked my character.

And finally, I’ve moved out on my own and purposely didn’t have the internet for the first month, so I would go explore my community. I just ended up reading a lot of books instead. I was overpowered with feelings of loneliness, very disconnected from the world. It’s a strange feeling, but just seeing someone else is online – on MSN or Skype, a LiveJournal post or flickr update, its like they’re sitting in the room with you. Perhaps its a bad metaphor. Sometimes we can’t meet in person, and the internet bridges that gap.

This video by Coudal Partners is hilarious! When it comes down to marketing a product, it doesn’t matter how much money you have for an ad campaign, if the product can’t stand on it’s own two feet, then nothing you can say can really make a difference once you let it out into the “real world” on its own.

That’s because there’s a huge separation from the fictitious make believe world of TV and what we actually experience in real life. I personally don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to walk into a fast food restaurant and say “Can I have a sandwich that looks EXACTLY like that one in the picture there?!” as I point at a picture of their product behind them. Yet what you get from them is a far cry from what is advertised by them. I stopped going to Subway a long time ago because I got tired of the compost heap that was being served to me as a “sandwich”. Sandwich Artists? How about Sandwich Sanitation Engineers?  🙂

The Agency.com video was sickenly hilarious in a sad sort of way as well (if you can persevere watching it all). The “will sell soul for money” feeling just seemed to be so smothered over the video, it was almost as though they were trying to make some kind of sandwich themselves (of what kind I couldn’t be sure). The sad thing is that they were supposed to be pitching a product, yet most of the video all they talked about was themselves. “We rule! We’re passionate about marketing anything, as long you give us lots of money! Hire us!”