Author: Skot Nelson
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Transit: A Toronto Tale
I grew up in Toronto, then spent a bunch of years in Vancouver, and came back just before the pandemic. Vancouver is a small city, and I didn’t have much of a relationship with transit there–a couple of buses I took regularly, but outside of that I spent way more time on a bike, and…
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Hooded Mergansers at the Stone Pond
Humber Bayshores’ Stone Pond can be a bit overrun with birds at times, most of them pretty standard ducks, Canada Geese and a few swans. The Hooded Mergansers are in around this time of year though, and they are very pretty.
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Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France
Today marks the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral. I’ve never been inside–both of my Paris visits came after the fire–but I figured it might be worth looking back on some photos taken both before and after the spire was restored. One of these days I’ll get inside.
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Doug Ford, Bike Lanes and the Truth
I’m a cyclist first–it’s how I self identify. I rode to work in Vancouver pretty steadily for 10 years. My mileage was down a bit this year for a few reasons (you can find me on Strava if you want to check) and working from home had a huge impact, but still..it’s what I am.…
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On Legacy Software and Updating
Legacy software can be a funny thing. I’m fond of reminding people that Salesforce is only built on 30 year old thinking–that’s a long time, but built in a post-web-enabled world it’s managed to remain remarkably nimble. Concur has been around for a longer time, and recently I got this very frustrating error message when…
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Brother Bob Sumner at the Horseshoe Tavern
For my money, one of the finest voices to emerge in the Americana scene in the last few years is Vancouver’s Brother Bob Sumner. Not long after I moved from Vancouver to Toronto a few years ago Bob played a night of music at the Dakota Tavern celebrating the release of his beautiful Wasted Love…
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The Last Waltz – 48 Years Later
If you’re not familiar with The Last Waltz there’s a legitimate question about how we’re friends–if we are. It’s such a formative work of my taste in music that it seems not possible. The concert itself was 48 years ago today, meaning I would have been five years old when it happened. I wasn’t five…
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Power Plant Gallery – November 2024
The Power Plant Gallery in Harbourfront has been a favourite place in the city for a long time–it opened when I was in high school, and offered a more contemporary take on art than the juggernaut of the Art Gallery of Ontario (which I also love, and have had an on-again-off-again membership at.) Admission to…
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Is AI Really Helping Code? Buehler? Buehler?
Over the last couple of years the tech story has been AI everywhere: rumour had it that when people submitted proposals for Dreamforce talks, they basically got replies asking for “more AI” regardless of the topic. It’s rather annoying. I had to sit through a dozen hours of corporate AI training the other day, a…
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A Tale of Two Software Updates
We live, increasingly, in a world of integrated hardware and software. The most obvious example for most is your phone: without the software, it’s a (probably) black slab sitting there doing nothing. There’s not even any buttons anymore. It’s not a question of which is more important–the hardware is useless without the software. A couple…