Category — Uncategorized

Looping back to this because I saw it again and forgot to talk about it the first time (and I’m very curious what other people think).  Modern Mrs. Darcy commented that books are coming pre-highlighted. (Scroll down to #7 on her list.)  As in the publisher is telling you what you’re going to want to notice while you’re reading.

I hate this idea.

I don’t even like how Kindle tells you how other people have underlined something.  I don’t want to know what other people think before I’ve gotten a chance to think about what I think.  I don’t want to know what they consider to be the most important sentences to note while reading the text.  I’ve turned off popular highlights and notes.

And then I realize that I do this by bolding words or italicizing them to draw your attention to it.  I’ve become what I despise!

I’ve yet to see a paper book come pre-highlighted, but it would be enough to make me rethink the purchase.

What do you think?  Are you for or against pre-highlighted (or knowing popular highlights) in books?*

* See, I just did it again.

I read an interesting lifehack about creating a system of habit points.  It appealed to me because it was simple: Do X and receive Y points, then spend Y points on Z.  The biggest habits I’m trying to reinforce right now are getting more sleep (5 points for getting to bed before 11 pm?), staying focused at work (2 points for every Pomodoro cycle?), and recording my meals and exercise on My Fitness Pal (3 points…?)

First and foremost, it was hard to assign a points value to the task.  Getting to sleep early isn’t always in my control, and even when it is, it’s hard to manage the evening and make it happen.  It sounds like it should have a high points value to encourage me to put out the effort, even though it’s a pretty simple task.  On the other hand, staying focused is a really hard task, but I do so many Pomodoro cycles in a day that it seems ridiculous to rack up the points just because I work a lot.  Finally, recording my food is somewhere in the middle: a pain-in-the-ass to remember to do, and the point is not just to record but to eat well, too.

I decided to turn to my vices and found that I don’t have many that do not contradict with my attempted good habits.  Like if I’m trying to gain points for staying within a certain nutritional value range, it seems counterproductive to allow myself to blow hundreds of calories on Cadbury bars.  Everything else isn’t really a vice — Reading a book?  Watching a television show?  Perusing blog posts?  And rewarding myself with food sounds like a supremely bad idea.

I am boring.

That’s what I learned from this: I’m boring, and I need vices.

And then there is the other side of it: If I want to do something, I do it because I am an adult.  This is what I waited for as a kid.  Sometimes when I eat ice cream for lunch, I think, “I am doing this because I am an adult.”  I like being an adult.  I do not want to go back to kidville where you have to earn points or good will in order to have ice cream for lunch.

So I’m not trying habit points because I don’t have anything to spend them on.  Though I like the idea a lot.

What are the point values of your good habits?  And do you have anything to spend your points on?

When we left off, we were headed north.  So before every trip, everyone in the family states one thing they really want to do.  The Wolvog chose the Jacobite train.  The ChickieNob chose the Castle of Mey, which is the Queen Mum’s castle featured in the first season of The Crown.  “Sure,” we said, and then we Googled the castle’s location.  It was an eight hour train ride from central Scotland.  When we let the ChickieNob know, her lip started quivering and she told us she would choose something else while she blinked back tears.  Which is how we ended up at the end of the world.

Like it’s literally the end of the world.

It took us eight hours to get to Thurso.  Then another hour to get to Mey, including the mile walk from the bus drop-off point.  It was totally worth it.

It is gorgeous.

And it was so light out up north that we could (and did) take photos at midnight.  And since we were already so far north, we hopped on a ferry for a few hours and went to Orkney, passing the Old Man of Hoy along the way.

We LOVED Orkney.  We got there without a plan and went to the local library, which is where we learned about a fantastic bus that would take us around Stromness and Kirkwall.  We got to see the ruins at Skara Brae…

…and the Ring of Brogdar.

We wandered in and out of shops and learned about the Ogham alphabet.  And I begged Josh about thirty times to let us move there.  Finally it was time to head back to Edinburgh.  We went on a puffin tour in North Berwick and also saw about three zillion gannets hanging out on Bass Rock.

We wrapped up our holiday with a tour of Holyrood, the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh.

It was hard to say goodbye.  We left things undone — towns unvisited, statues unseen — so we’ll have to go back there one day.  The ChickieNob started a Google form so we could choose our next location.  It’s still a hard landing coming home, but thinking ahead to the next things we’ll see makes it a little easier.  The twins have turned into awesome travelers, and there is no people we’d rather see the world with than the two of them.

So… you can probably guess where we went based on the title of this post.  We just got back from a trip to Scotland.  The trip was planned a few years ago and then cancelled when Josh was laid off.  Then it was back on and cancelled when I changed jobs.  But like they say, third time’s a charm?

I like to think that it was even better than it would have been if we had gone when we first planned the trip because (1) the kids were older and able to do so much more, (2) everyone pitched in with the planning, (3) we savoured it deeply knowing that it was cancelled twice.  There were plenty of times on the trip when I burst into tears of happiness, so much so that it became a joke where everyone in the family would stare at me when we reached a spot, waiting for me to start sobbing.  So I got to enjoy those, “I can’t believe we’re really here” moments along with the scenery.  Scotland is just a place I’ve always wanted to go.

Just as we had abnormally cold weather in Montreal, we had abnormally warm weather in Scotland.  Everywhere we went, people commented on how Scotland was never like this.  We never saw rain.  It was 70ish degrees every day.  We spent every single day outside, sometimes until midnight because once we got up to the northern towns, there was (at least some) light almost 24 hours per day.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because we started in Edinburgh.  We chose Scotland because we aim to give JK Rowling 100% of our money, and Scotland held the last few Harry Potter sites we couldn’t cover in England.  We went to Greyfriars Kirkyard, which holds the tombstones for Potter, Black, McGonigal, Moody, Scrimgeour, and Riddle.

We toured Edinburgh Castle, went on the best Sherlock Holmes tour, spat on the Heart of Midlothian, and touched the Flodden Wall.

We went on the Royal Britannia, which is currently docked in Scotland, and rubbed Bobby Greyfriar’s nose.

We saw the hotel room where JK Rowling finished Harry Potter…

…and I sat for a moment at her table when we had dinner at Elephant House where she wrote the earlier books…

…and sobbed reading the graffiti that covers every single inch of the bathroom wall (and ceiling) signed with messages of love from Dumbledore’s Army.

After a few days in Edinburgh, we continued on to Glasgow to do a bunch of Charles Rennie Mackintosh things, including a sneak peek into the newly restored Mackintosh at the Willow and tea at a “Mockintosh,” which are the fake Mackintosh tea rooms in the city.

Next we moved into the Highlands, traveling to Loch Lomond, Glencoe, and Glenfinnan where we saw the viaduct from the Harry Potter movies.

We went out to Mallaig and took the Jacobite — the Hogwarts Express — back to Fort William.

We hung out at the Drovers Inn — which is deliciously creepy — and went out to Loch Ness (no monster found) and Pitlochry and Cairngorms National Park.

We loved hard on the hairy coos.

And then finally… we headed north.  Like really really really north.

To be continued.

This question blew my mind:

Am I a data mine, or am I a data factory? Is data extracted from me, or is data produced by me? Both metaphors are ugly, but the distinction between them is crucial. The metaphor we choose informs our sense of the power wielded by so-called platform companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and it shapes the way we, as individuals and as a society, respond to that power.

I think I’m a data mine because my information is hidden below the surface.  I’m not intentionally producing it for others; it’s something naturally occurring — without my actual input — inside (and technically outside) myself.  I cannot help creating data any more than a mine can choose whether or not it creates its natural resources.  Of course, being a mine means that others can enter and take my data, but my purpose (to me) is not to create data even though other people may see me as a source for data.

The article has a slightly different take on what makes someone a mine or a factory, but both cases clearly can be argued.

So are you a data mine or a data factory?