For 2 weeks, I've hardly done a thing. I haven't ridden my bicycle (or motorcycle). I haven't written, haven't blogged, have hardly even checked email. I haven't chopped firewood or planned a house project. I've relaxed (well, and done a......

So. New Year, new Asian American president. New products. New TV shows. New parade. Woo hoo. Yeah, I’m excited but, four days in, the euphoria has kinda worn off. Now what? We don’t have a lot of moving forward news yet this year. Everybody’s waiting for the inauguration, and kinda ignoring th...

Set 2666 by Roberto Bolano The first big hitter of 2009 is large in every sense: it's a 900-page, five-part epic set in a fictional city on the US-Mexico border where hundreds of young female factory workers have mysteriously disappeared. Bolano, from Chile, has long been recognised as one of the gr...

When I was trying to make a bootable USB flash drive, I had a moment of panic because my Aspire One didn’t seem to boot from it at one point, and at another try at writing to it, I ended up cancelling the writing in the middle. Gah~! But the blog dotkam saved me by teaching me how to restore t...

Today is the last day of Amelia’s first year at school. I can hardly believe how fast it has gone by. I can hardly believe that I have a child who said to me this morning “I wish it wasn’t the end of school.” I thought that would be genetically impossible. So while one is at ...

Daily life in Bolivia requires an enormous amount of time and energy. Food is not “ready-made” at all, so each meal requires a lot of planning and preparation. For example, on a normal weekend in the States, Derek and I would probably make a frozen pizza for dinner. Take it out of the freezer an...

Via Broadsheet I saw this story about an Asian Canadian man who has invented a responsive android that can both do complex chores (including read to you), and also respond to touch (including telling you when it feels pain, and slapping you for touching its private parts.) Naturally, this bot is an ...

by Claire Leheny, Content Development, North America At an executive benchmarking meeting in London last Thursday, I took part in an interesting conversation during our after-meeting drinks. The topic: whether or not to attend the company holiday party. Shaking their heads and looking guiltily into ...

L'autre jour, en entendant à la radio que notre Président de la République allait visiter la structure psychiatrique d'Antony, à vrai dire comme souvent en ce moment, j'ai été instantanéement plongée dans une sourde colère...mais pas muette, parce que dans ces cas là, je ne peu...

We have been spending a lot of quality time at the post office lately mailing things and anticipating the arrival of a package from home. Derek and I decided that the advertising slogan of the Sucre post office should be “Guaranteed to arrive by this time next year…maybe.” (ha,ha!) I guess alw...