Notable restaurant update

Just a quick addition to my original post about the gourmet restaurant in our neighbourhood.... If you go, be sure to ask what the soup of the day is. I had been told that their soups are amazing. I was informed that today's was French Onion. How could I pass that up? I'm still recovering. When I took the lid off of the soup bowl, both Darlene and I went "Whoa!" simultaneously.

Best in Alberta, bar none.

Roads with energy to spare

Almost a year ago, I blogged about an American company that has a vision of taking asphalt for roadways and parking lots and replacing that with a special solar sheet. The possibilities of this new infrastructure material are endless, but you may as well watch the video.

Give'r again

If you've ever wondered if there is such a thing as an Alberta stereotype, then you've never seen the cult movie Fubar.

Well, get ready for Fubar II.

Improv ideas for Life - Part 4

In my continuing series of improv ideas for everyday life, I hope these improv mantras can positively influence your experience and help make your life better. Today's topic is:

Focus on the here and now - be in the moment

Philosophically, improvisation focuses on bringing one's awareness 'into the moment', and on developing a profound understanding for the action one is doing. Sounds like Zen Buddhism, doesn't it? Being aware of your actions and thoughts, and what your senses bring in, in your every day routine. This allows the improvisor to react with a range of options that best fit the situation, even if they have never experienced a similar situation. This skill strongly influences one's competence at work and in their personal life.

But let us defer to the masters. Guess who excels at being in the moment? A child. Watch a child as they play. They're not thinking about what happened yesterday, or what they're going to do later. They're role playing, they're building forts and castles, they're fighting bad guys and nothing else in the world exists. If they get mad or get hurt, they overreact, nothing else matters. But they soon return to normal, happy again, the offending situation forgotten without a grudge. We could use children as inspiration and try to be like them sometimes.

Too often are we caught up in the past or the 'what if' of the future while ignoring the present.

"The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post." ~L. Thomas Holdcroft
"It's not what if, it's what now." ~Author Unknown
"Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do." ~Jean de la Bruyere

A message to all cyclists in Calgary

The City is conducting a survey to gather information about actual cyclists in this city. If you are even a part-time cyclist, I think it would be a good idea to participate, since Calgary has little clue what the deal is on cyclists today. Here's the link:

http://www.hargroup.ca/7301p/cycplogn.htm

I'd rather be...

...Parah Salin than Sarah Palin....

[snort]

Busted!

Two marijuana myths were busted this week.

A scientific study proved that marijuana did alleviate pain in the medical patients that smoked it, and a study proved once and for all that marijuana is not a gateway drug as so many would like us to believe.

Improv ideas for Life - Part 3

In my continuing series, here's hoping these improv mantras can positively influence your experience and help make life better. Today's topic is:

Make your partners look like geniuses

This is actually a continuation of the accept all offers concept. Nothing makes an improvisor, a team member, or an individual feel better than when someone else props them up. Everyone likes to hear "good job", but verbal kudos are not the only way to continue to motivate another person. The name of the game in improvisation is to make your partner(s) look good. This would be the opposite of actions taken to make them look bad. I say this out loud because as a society, we revel in doing and saying things that make the people around us look bad - overtly or subtly. Making the people around us look good not only makes them feel better about themselves and what they are doing, but also makes them want to reciprocate. I make you look good and that makes you feel so wonderful that you just want to do something that makes me look good too. Once that cycle starts, the sheer power it can manifest is formidable. OK, but how do you do that?

The best improv happens when people focus on helping each other. If you make an offer, I am going to accept and build on it. If you are taking the scene somewhere, I am going to support and go with you. If you are struggling, I will help you out and pick up the slack. When you seem insecure, I'll tell you how great you are. And so on. When everyone adopts this mind set, then everyone sets everyone else up, continuously.

Could you imagine if everyone’s primary goal was to have fun and make each other look good? Go about the world seeing what you can do to make others look good. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results you see. As an added benefit, when you treat other people like geniuses, you’ll often find that they rise to the occasion. Another huge side effect of using this approach - it builds trust. And a team that has trust in each other is a powerful team.

"I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly." ~Buckminster Fuller
"Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others." ~Mark Twain
"The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius." ~Rebecca Pepper Sinkler

Nature sounds your way

If you're big into nature sounds, you might like this site a lot. You can combine and mix up to 4 individual sounds. Then adjust the volume of each sound and even affect the interval that the sounds appear. Sounds include beach (surf), thunder, waterfall, fire, various birds and other sounds. Darth Vader is thrown in for humorous effect.

The safest car in the world?

Volvo have a nice mission in front of them: "By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo".

I can't argue with a vision like that.

Improv ideas for Life - Part 2

In my continuing series, here's hoping these improv mantras can positively influence your experience and help make life better. Today's topic is:

Accept all ideas

One of the biggest paradigm shifts to deal with while learning improvisation is the powerful concept of "yes and....". The idea is that anything said or done is a valid offer or idea and you must build on that offer or idea and evolve it to its logical conclusion. You can never really know in advance whether an idea is going to fail or succeed (see first post). The problem is that as adults, we've been conditioned into believing that it is natural and acceptable to deny, block and ridicule new ideas, especially if they don't fit within our own reality or don't massage our egos. The natural and proper thing to do is accept the offer, try to build upon it and pass that slightly evolved idea back to the person who made the offer, or off to the next person. Then the building continues. Even if an idea doesn't succeed, there are likely elements that were part of its overall development that stand out as good material to try including in another idea. Not only does this give all new ideas a chance, it also fosters an environment of cooperation and creativity. You become much more motivated and encouraged to offer ideas in the first place if they are all accepted as equals and developed through to their eventual conclusion.

You'll only know that an idea doesn't work once you try it. Every idea should be acknowledged and developed.

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." ~George Bernard Shaw

Do we really need a Cadillac wagon?

The other day Darlene saw the new Cadillac CTS-V wagon. She said "That's ridiculous. If you've got enough money for a Cadillac, just buy a real Caddy and a station wagon as your second car."

I laughed. I kinda feel the same way about the Porsche Cayenne SUV.

Improv ideas for life

While learning the art of improvisational theatre over the past few years, I've come to realize that many of the skills practised in improvisation are applicable and directly transferable to other areas of life, whether it be the work arena or your personal life. I'm sure many improvisors have already figured this out. I'd like to share my observations with you. I hope these mantras can positively influence your experience and help make life better.

What I have collected is too big for one post, so I'll split it up and post each idea on a different day. Today's topic is:

Embrace failure - reject fear

Our society generally teaches us that failure is bad. "Failure is not an option." Not only do we spin a negative context onto failure, but we relish observing others in their failures - witness the popularity of reality competition TV shows like Idol. This is why the first lesson all improvisors learn is the hardest - failure is not to be feared, it is to be embraced - with a smile - even a cheer. There are so many reasons why. We learn from failure. Failure creates an emotional experience, so the lessons we learn stick. Going through failure narrows down the possible approaches to success. Fear of failure stops us even sooner than failure itself. Failure strengthens character. We bounce higher than we fall. Know that with each effort, you grow a little stronger. Taken in the proper context, failure inspires us and others. Becoming more comfortable with failing enables you to take more risks. Failure is better than regret - not trying at all leaves us wondering 'what if?'. Failure leaves us open to better opportunities. Without an awareness of the big picture, it's easy to perceive failure as misfortune. Failure makes eventual success seem sweeter.

Life is too short to be imprisoned by fears – fear of rejection, failure, embarrassment – these fears only hold back your true potential. Nobody has time for your fear, especially you.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~Thomas Edison
"Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits." ~Robert Louis Stevenson
"The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed." ~Lloyd Jones

Hotel Macdonald is officially a huge disappointment

For us anyway. So here's the deal. Two years ago Darlene decided to book us at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton while visiting that fair city. The room had a huge issue with climate control and the noise level from the street made for a restless night. Darlene wrote about her experience to the manager and we received a free upgrade to use the next time we were in town. That next time would be yesterday. We were put on the 8th (top) floor in a Turret Room.

Time for some back story. Fairmont, for those of you who don't know, is a luxury Canadian hotel brand. Among the properties that Fairmont own are the world famous Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Lake Louise, The Savoy in London and many, many more. The brand exudes class, refinement and luxury. So we have high expectations.

Back to the hotel. I will state up front that this is an old establishment and as such, I am totally cognisant of the issues surrounding the updating of very old buildings. On the plus side, the room had the longest jetted tub I've ever slipped into. It was long enough not to have to bend your knees and still be submerged up to your neck. Odd. But nice. Now for the bad news. For one thing, the angled turret windows had no curtains. They did have blinds, but these blinds were opaque. As in, they did let light in - lots of light. No room darkening ability. So much for sleeping in. Although the hotel was nice enough to put out free fancy coffee and one of those Keurig machines for guests, you had to break the seal of the bar fridge to get any creamer. It was bad enough to have to bust the seal on the bar fridge when you had no intention of buying anything just to get a creamer, but the fridge wasn't even working. Its contents were room temperature.

But the worst thing about the room were the beds. I've slept on bad beds in my day and these rank right up there with the worst of them. The beds were so bad that Darlene actually made herself a more comfortable place to sleep by taking the sofa bed mattress and putting it on the floor. I'm not joking. We both woke up with sore shoulders and backs. We have stayed at a lot of hotels over the years and this was below par for a Holiday Inn, never mind a Fairmont hotel. The room is actually worth $350+ per night. We didn't pay that much (not even close), but even for what we did pay, we feel very underwhelmed and this is definitely the last time we'll ever stay there.

Have a great long weekend

I'll be taking a break for a few days. Darlene and I are running off out of town for the long weekend. See you Monday.

I would totally wear these

OK, seriously, wouldn't these custom painted Robin sneakers be cool to wear? Sure they would....

There's a Batman variety too, but I'm partial to these ones.

A slight recalibration is all I need

When technology finally advances enough to where our body parts are being repaired using nanobots, custom made bacteria and enzymes, I have a small request.

I'd like the parts of my motor control system (central and peripheral nervous system, skeletal muscles) re-calibrated so that I stop uncontrollably smacking limbs and extremities against people, desks, doors, walls, furniture and self due to a slight misalignment of the neural pathways.

Thank you.

The Plesz guide to the next Federal election

One definition of the difference between Liberal and Conservative (in Canada):

Conservative: Makes mistakes but would rather die than admit them. Often obfuscates the facts that point to the glaring errors before they show the mistakes being made.

Liberal: Makes mistakes just as often but with a willingness to change, adapt to new data and correct the course to fit with the new information as needed, often to the point of being accused of waffling on issues.

So the question for the next election really is: Do you want people firm enough to follow their decisions through to the end, no matter how ridiculous they turn out to be, or would you rather people who make mistakes, but have a willingness to change direction once those mistakes are pointed out?

Gee, what's with Karl these days? That's 2 political posts in one day...

First there was apathy. Now there's excitement.

When the reality of a civic election in October sunk in, I was not excited. Or amused. It seemed like nothing was going to change. If anything it looked like things were going to get worse. The front runners looked to be Dr. No and Mrs. Doubtfire (Alderman Ric McIver and TV newswoman come politician Barb Higgins). Don't ask, it just popped into my head.

Neither of them inspire me at all. So I was just about to give up on the mayoral race when I came across Naheed Nenshi. All of a sudden, I'm excited again. My views on municipal affairs fall right into line with this contender and with any luck, I'm going to be granted an interview with the guy. Watch this space.

In the meantime, I think this video gives a pretty good introduction to Mr. Nenshi, in case you know little about him. Here's his web site.

This could get a lot of diabetics beaming

MIT is working on a new way of measuring blood-sugar levels using a device based on infrared light.

No more pin prick.

An experiment to make the web more connected

Here's a web concept that is simple yet overlooked. The things we use the web for are disconnected. Here are some examples:

Let's say you're composing an email to some folks announcing a get-together at your house. You can go to a mapping site and get a link to a map of your place, then put the link in your email. Or you could take a screen shot of the map and insert the picture into your email. But you can't just put the whole functional map in your email.

If you want to email some friends about a great restaurant you've been to and want to include the review, you can paste a link to the review, but you can't just put the whole (readable) review into your email that if clicked, opens other reviews on the same place.

The other thing that's inadequate about the web is that if you want to define a word, you have to go to a dictionary site, then type in the word. You can't just type 'define ubiquitous' in your address bar and expect anything useful to appear. If you're on a site and you want to email it to someone, you have to open your email program (or web mail site), find (or remember) someone's email address, add it to the TO: field, then copy and paste the current URL into a new message and send it.

Wouldn't it be cool though, if you could just from the web page you're at type 'email to jon' and it instantly opens your email resource of choice, adds jon's address and copies the current URL into the message? How about you highlight an address and type 'map this' and voila - Google maps provides you with a map that you can then insert right into: your email, blog entry, whatever. Or select some foreign language text and type 'translate this' and the selected text is instantly translated into English (or other language of choice).

Well, Mozilla Labs had been working on just such a project, called Ubiquity. Too bad that it has been abandoned. The good news is that the user community has adopted the add-on and are writing additional commands to make the add-on even more usable. Let's go to the video, shall we?

China gives gridlock new meaning... or The Big Jam

Have you guys heard about this epic traffic jam in China? When I first heard about it, I thought it was one of those urban myths, but apparently not.

The deal is that material destined for Beijing is mostly transported by truck. Normally, this isn't a problem, but this summer there is a lot of construction going on on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway. It started August 13th on a part of the highway that is usually congested, especially after large coalfields were discovered in Inner Mongolia. Traffic has increased 40% each year. Making the problem worse is that unlike in other parts of the world, China's highway system has no redundancy, in that there is no network of secondary roads to use as alternate routes.

The jam stretches 100km (60mi) with vehicles moving anywhere from a half to two kilometers per day. Some drivers get stuck in the jam for five or more days. They pass the time sleeping, walking around, or playing cards and chess. Local villagers were doing brisk business selling instant noodles, boxed lunches and snacks, weaving between the parked trucks on bicycles.

The construction will not be finished until September 17. But almost miraculously, on the morning of August 26th, the jam cleared up. So there you have it, essentially a two week traffic jam.

Solar charging coming to Apple mobile products?

The big news from Apple may not end up being the iPhone 4.

Apple has apparently filed a patent for a full range of mobile devices with integrated touch sensor solar panel surfaces. In other words - solar powered iPods, iPhones and iPads. The cool factor? The placement of the solar cells underneath the multi-touch surface. The recent switch from a metal back on the iPhone to a glass one would also allow for an internal double-sided solar panel. This makes it clear that Apple is moving in the direction of integrating solar cells.

You should buy one

It's never too early to be thinking about Christmas gifts. If you don't buy that statement, then let's just think of this as a potential birthday gift. I was going to say "For your man", but women would love this Leatherman Skeletool CX as well. It includes:

• 154CM Stainless Steel Clip Point Knife
• Needlenose Pliers
• Regular Pliers
• Wire Cutters
• Hard-wire Cutters
• Large Bit Driver
• Bottle Opener
• Carabiner Clip
• Phillips #1 and #2 Bit, Screwdriver 3/16" and 1/4" Bit

It weighs in at a lithe 5 ounces.

Now playing in the playlist - Genesis

Do you se that little jukebox over there on the right side of my blog page? The one labelled Grooveshark? That's a playable list of songs. You'll only see it if you're on the blog page (not looking at my posts via Twit or Faceplant). Once in a while I change what's stored in there.....

This week, I threw in a bunch of Genesis (the band - not the book from the bible).

The new bulb paradigm

The problem with comparing incandescent bulbs to their more efficient brethren is that it's no longer fair to compare using watts of energy used. So the US government made it the law to allow consumers to compare bulbs on fairer terms. The labels you see here are an example of the new labelling to be seen soon (if not already).

We need this in Canada too.

Out in the country

Some friends invited me to tag along while they did a driving tour of destinations south of Calgary in the Okotoks area. The tour was actually part of the Harvest Festival, but these places are open every weekend anyway.

First stop was the Millarville Farmer's Market, which sets up at the Millarville Race Track. A twoonie to get in and I have to say it's probably one of the best markets in the area, if not the best. I picked up some polish baking, rocky road fudge, some home-made bread and butter pickles, Hutterite butter tarts and some bison jerky.

Then it was off to the Chinook Honey Company, just west of Okotoks. We got to see a live hive from the safety of a screened tent. We asked all kinds of questions and the woman running the place had some fascinating insight on the operation of a commercial hive. Some things I did not know:

• Bees can kill wasps by clustering around them and over-heating them.
• Bees survive the winter in a manner similar to penguins, they cluster around each other to keep warm. The inside of the hive can be 20C even while it's minus stupid outside.
• The biggest problem with keeping the hives safe is skunks.
• Smoke seemingly calms the bees down because they think there's a fire approaching and they go into the hive to gorge on honey in case their food supply gets destroyed.
• Among the things killing bees in North America - disease due to a less balanced diet, thanks to the new agricultural mono-culture (not enough diversity of crops in fields)
  

Next stop was a nice little restaurant in Okotoks called Divine. Proud of the locally sourced food they serve, they cooked up a nice bison burger for yours truly. It was awesome. I've never ventured east into Okotoks down Elizabeth Street / North railway and it's a quaint country-style downtown area. Some of the shops are surprisingly big inside and stores sneak up on you with their location. I saw an ice cream shop in a regular looking house, nestled right in the midst of plain old ordinary residential homes.

My last stop was the berry winery south of Strathmore, Field Stone Fruit Wines. The make scrumptious berry wines. I got to try them all and escaped with a bottle of raspberry dessert wine.

All in all, a fun, informative, treat filled day with great friends. Thanks guys.

You never notice something until you 'discover' it

Yesterday I saw my first Alberta license plate with seven digits. I knew they were coming, I just hadn't seen one until yesterday.

Then they started coming out of the woodwork so to speak. It's almost like I had blinders on to their existence, then, once I noticed one, I was able to see them all.

Weird.

The evolution of gons

The new angle on shapes.

A welcome addition to our neighbourhood

Montgomery has been blessed quite recently with the opening of its first gourmet restaurant - Notable. The creation of well-known chef Michael Noble (note his surname framing the restaurant's moniker), Darlene and I were excited to have a potentially good place to eat just a few blocks from our house.

This place is on the ground floor of that new large condo building that was built on Bowness Road near the Mohawk gas station. Inside, it's decor reeks of class and the kitchen is right there in front of you, their wood fired rotisserie roasting anything from pork roasts to whole chickens (man do they look yummy). Outside, you can sit on the patio and watch folks drive by, wondering what the hubbub is about. Could this be Montgomery's first restaurant patio? I think it is.

We went for the first time for some breakfast last Saturday and it was good. But I was anxious to try something I spied on the menu - their burger. You know me and my burgers.... I can now report, it is superb. Thick, cradled in a house made bun and served with....... wait for it..... home cut french fries. Yeah.

Yeah. Welcome to the neighbourhood Mike. I have a feeling that we'll be seeing a lot of each other.