Our ability to be productive is the most critical metric that determines quality of life. It’s a fundamental measurement of how the economy is doing, identifys where we are stagnating, and shows where the biggest gains are. There are many factors that go into improving productivity – capital investment in tooling, factories and better software, […]

In business, when talking about writing a business plan, or when a consultant evaluates a business, sometimes a vision or mission statement are things that get discussed. For a long time I have looked at these kind of things as fluff. It’s a bunch of people wordsmithing a document that will never be read outside […]

I have 3 big ideas. The kind of legacy making change the world ideas that are big and bold. These ideas are things I would pursue if I had the means to execute on them but it requires vastly more capital than I have access to, or that others would put me in charge of. […]

For a while now I’ve been finding my thoughts a little more frazzled, and less focused. This is perhaps a little bit to do with having so many projects in the air at the same time. Nonetheless, I want to spend a bit more time getting writing down my ideas and taking the time to […]

The wave of tech disruption has been picking off industries one after the other since the early 70’s. Until today when it’s hard to think of any remaining sector of the economy that hasn’t gone through, or is in the process of being converted into a software driven market. The current biggest industry that is […]

Over the last several woodworking project I have been having a hard time dialing in the accuracy of my cuts. Increasingly the things I want to build are demanding tolerances approaching 1/1000 of an inch. It’s tricky to accomplish this level of accuracy, because it’s not always perceptable until assembly that a cut isn’t straight, […]

When we moved to Ottawa one of the things I had on my mind was to get another motorcycle, and I did. I bought a 2012 Kawasaki Ninja EX250R. It’s an entry level sports bike, enough for the highway but not enough excessive power. Over the last few years it had moments where I got […]

When I was a younger developer I didn’t see the value in writing tests for the projects I worked on. I was focused on being as productive as possible during the day to turn out new features and fix bugs. Tests doubled or more the amount of code that needed to be written, it added […]

This month has started with the large project of replacing the flooring in the upstairs of the house. The old oak strips were squeaky, splintered, worn down and nailed with damaging spiral framing nails (from a previous owner trying to fix squeaks). Having those floors has resulted in a few splinters and lots of sock […]

For the past week I have been binge-watching and reading a ton about welding machines, techniques and project ideas. Continuing on from my last blog post about what kind of projects to build in the garage I think I’m landing firmly on dipping my toe into some metal work. Welding is something that I have […]