Month: June 2013

Alan Sawyer, and yes, that’s an Emmy.

By now, you’ve probably heard of author Iain Banks’ passing after his battle with cancer. I enjoyed The Wasp Factory and his “Culture” series of sci-fi novels, and I’m sure that there are glowing tributes to him all over the web today.

I want to write about someone a little less famous than Iain Banks, but still important: Alan Sawyer. He was diagnosed with cancer in early September 2012 and died on Saturday night.

Alan was a part of the Toronto tech scene, and that’s how I met him. He was involved in digital media and content as well as mobile technologies, and we often crossed paths at tech gatherings, and we’d talk about all sorts of stuff: current projects, those crazy CD-ROM days of the ’90s, interesting new places to get a drink in Toronto, possible collaborations, and so on.

When he found out that I was attending the 2011 South by Southwest conference, he sought me out and we had a wonderfully boozy brunch on the rooftop patio of the Iron Cactus in Austin, on the start of what I recall to be a perfect day. We caught up again later during that trip at the Yeasayer concert at Austin City Limits. It was a strange, whirlwind time for me — I’d just been separated, had my own brush with death only a month before, and was seriously contemplating leaving Microsoft. In the chaos of the conference and in my life, and having spent weeks on the road and far away from home, it was great to see a familiar face. I will always remember and be grateful for hanging out with Alan at SxSW.

Requiescat in pace, Alan, and thanks.

According to Alan’s wife Kim, there will be visitations at the Giffen-Mack Funeral Home, located at 2570 Danforth Avenue (at Main Street), on Wednesday, June 12th from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. and Thursday, June 13th from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.. A memorial celebration of Alan’s life will be held on Saturday, June 15th at 10:30 a.m. and will be followed by a reception.

Here’s a little inspiration for the start of the working week: 11 Ways to be Unremarkably Average. As you might have already reasoned, you’re supposed to apply the Costanza Rule and do the exact opposite.

Click the comic to see the original.

Click the photo to see it at full size.

This rudder-“handling” technique isn’t all that far removed from the way you controlled Mr. Garrison’s vehicle, “It”, from an old South Park episode:

A Little Background: Let’s Time Warp Back to Austin in 2012!

This article is more than a year overdue. I meant to post this as part of my diary series from the 2012 edition of the South by Southwest conference, but life and other things got in the way. As a result, the original version of this article has been sitting in draft form for quite some time. Luckily, as the saying goes, if you hang onto something long enough, it finds a purpose!

The annual South by Southwest Interactive conference has grown over the years and doubled in size from 12,000 in 2010 to almost 25,000 in 2012. While the conference attendance has exploded, the number of hotels in Austin hasn’t kept pace. Rooms disappeared quickly, even for speakers — and I was one!  People who’d ended up in hotels many miles away, in places only reachable by highway, a situation made even worse by the fact that Austin just doesn’t have enough cabs to support the hordes that descend on it .

I lucked out, though: I found an amazing apartment through AirBnB that was within walking distance of downtown Austin — the abode of one Caroline Fabacher.

I have friends and exes who are twice Caroline’s age and cannot keep a house anywhere nearly as “grown-up” as Caroline can.

Most ArBnB hosts are happy to just give you the keys — Caroline set us up with a beautiful welcome package, as shown below:

The cowboy-boots-as-containers trick was a nice touch, as were the teeny bottles of tequila!

And I can’t remember the last time a host presented my bedding in a bow. Not even the Ritz-Carlton or Fairmont hotels do this:

Her place made an excellent crash pad, and I all-too-happily gave Caroline a great AirBnB review.

Fast-Forward to Denver in 2013

Is there anything Caroline hasn’t done? She went to Vanderbilt, where she did a double major with honours, joined the Peace Corps and volunteered in Niger and Madagascar, went into the publishing business in Austin and is now pursuing a JD-MBA in Denver. And she wants to do more!

Of course, this sort of ambition means that figuring out how to match professional goals and personal life is a big concern of hers. “I’ll be damned if I can’t have my (homemade, of course) cake and eat it too”, and she’s like to help other professional women do the same. She writes:

I have long been a firm believer that you CAN have what you want, you can DO what you want, if you just make smart choices and are educated about the necessary skills. You can kill it at the office and throw a great dinner party. You can know how to fix that excel formula and know how to make jam. You can discuss hot-button legal issues and the basics of investing and this season’s fashion trends. You can pursue the path to partner and out-bake your (future) mother-in-law.

There are plenty of fashion blogs out there. There are plenty of finance blogs out there. There are plenty of DIY blogs out there. But the fashion blogs fail to provide much content that can be adopted by readers who work in conservative offices or favor sandals with their shorts instead of heels. The finance blogs can feel daunting and intimidating to dive into for those who just want to learn SOMETHING about investing. The DIY blogs are full of amazing projects, but those renting apartments can’t squeeze that cleverly converted palette garden on their patio, or take up knitting just to have that cute coffee cozy.

Taste Bluebook is the answer. It will offer a a little bit of everything for the young women who are interested in a little bit of everything. With posts ranging from style and cooking, to health and finance, Taste Bluebook will provide ideas and advice for tackling just about any project. The content will be as practical as it is entertaining.

While it’s easy for me to fund this blog, it’s because I’ve been at it for nearly a dozen years and between my job and the ads (I make about an Xbox a month), I can easily cover my hosting expenses. Caroline’s a student, so funding a blog is entirely a different matter for her. Plus, while I can get away with iPhone pics, a blog like Taste Bluebook will need photos taken with a real camera.

Hence Caroline’s Kickstarter. She’s looking to raise $1000 to cover the cost of materials to help get Taste Bluebook started, which includes a decent camera and ingredients for food and recipe posts. I believe that Taste Bluebook is an interesting idea for which there is an audience, and I’d like to help Caroline get it off the ground. If you can spare even a couple of bucks to help her out, please do!

When my friend Jamie Gilgen hasn’t killing it on the mountain bike trails or developing software at local development shop Unspace, she’s been working on her project, Yoleo, an online feed reader. Whenever people ask me “Dude! What am I going to do now that Google’s killing Google Reader?”, I point ’em to Yoleo, because it does what Google Reader did and more, and more beautifully. Best of all, it’s free to use, but please consider throwing some money her way, because it’s great software that fills a need that Google left behind, and because Jamie’s awesome.

I’ll do a more technical writeup of Yoleo in my tech blog, Global Nerdy.

My two schoolmates from Crazy Go Nuts University, Ashley Bristowe and Chris Turner, have a son named Alexander, who was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Kleefstra Syndrome. With fewer than a few hundred reported cases, it’s so rare that it only got that name a few years ago — when Alexander was first diagnosed, it bore the name 9q34 deletion syndrome, meaning that the chromosome known as 9q34 isn’t there. This greatly affects the development of a child, and according to the site for Alexander’s fund, it means:

Generally, a person with Kleefstra syndrome will exhibit developmental delay, learning difficulty or disability and low muscle tone. Other common features of the syndrome are: heart conditions, seizures, sleep difficulties, behaviour difficulties, strabismus or other unusual eye features, and respiratory infections caused by aspiration reflux/GERD.

But really, these are all just generalizations and describe the complications of many genetic conditions. The truth is that we just don’t know how Kleefstra’s syndrome will bear out in any one individual because the syndrome is so impossibly rare. Remember, there are only 150 documented cases worldwide.

Because it is so rare there is no clear prognosis and no treatment protocol for Kleefstra Syndrome. This leaves someone diagnosed with no idea of what to expect for the future and no plan for making the most of the life he or she was given.

It also means that Ashley can’t work any more: taking care of Alexander is a full-time job. This complicates matters, as the one place that has proven to be helpful in helping Alexander make progress well beyond the initial prognosis is the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. Ashley’s told me a lot about their program and how far Alexander has come with their help.

This sort of thing costs money — a lot of it — and with only person in the family pulling down a paycheque, they have to raise money. Hence Alexander’s Fund. Here are its goals:

Alexander’s family’s short-term goal is to maximize his achievements both physically and cognitively during the first six years of his life­—a time shown to have the most chance for success long term. Therefore, the short-term goal of Alexander’s Fund is to fund the day-to-day therapy choices made by the family in the first six years of his life.

Since Alexander is making so much progress with the programs he is being exposed to, his therapy needs keep changing. This really makes long-term fundraising goal planning very difficult. That’s why the long-term goal of Alexander’s Fund is to create a community of on-going support—both financial and social—for Alexander as he grows. Ultimately, we also want to be able to offer financial assistance to other families interested in maximizing early intervention therapies for their developmentally delayed children.

If you’re in Calgary tonight and are looking for a good time for a good cause, go to Alexander’s Philly Kitchen Party! They’re planning to put the “fun” in “fundraiser” with live music, stand-up comedy, a live auction, cheese steaks, and more. As they say on the poster, help them send the hardest working 4-year-old in Hillhurst back to Philly!