I just started a new playthrough of Pokemon Leafgreen– the last Pokemon game I had played through was Ruby, so I thought I’d ease back into playing these games with this one. It’s both a continuation of the series and a game I’m intimately familiar with– it is a remake...

I don’t normally care about celebrity deaths; they’re so remote from my lifestyle that it always registers as a tragedy, but easy to move past. Today, though, Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away, and the loss is felt viscerally in me. Hoffman was likely the greatest working actor around: not only...

I read a blog post recently about LeBlanc’ eight types of fun (as applied to being a good dungeon master for D&D) and, since I don’t DM or play D&D, it got me thinking about web applications and gamification. Although Kevin Warbauch’s Coursera class on gamification was very informative, I...

I have an embarrassing secret: I love self-help books, whether they’re the usual cheesy “believe in yourself” drivel, or coated with a veneer of business or professional material. I don’t think this obsession is all that different from “life hacks” or the motivational posts that litter Hacker News from time...

After the ascendency of YOLO, selfie, and other neologisms, newspaper lifestyle sections are trumpeting the rise of FOMO, the fear of missing out. At once, these articles seek to assuage the reader– there is nothing to be afraid of– but, unconsciously, they sound the alarm: you likely hadn’t heard of...

With the Golden Globes airing tomorrow, Awards Season is almost officially upon us. (The People’s Choice Awards, airing last week, is more akin to hors d’oeuvre, or an aperitif.) Many fans of television, music, and film pretend not to care, but get outraged afterwards when their favourites don’t win– or...

I’m kind of a dreamer sometimes. As many people do, I come up with ideas for programs and applications that I think would be useful and wish existed– sometimes I go farther and plan them. I have the technical background to really know which ideas are viable or not. Unfortunately,...

It’s that time of year when everybody is making resolutions to improve themselves: the start of a new year, the thinking goes, is auspicious for new beginnings, and plus, everybody else is doing it. I’ve been asked a dozen times whether I had any New Year’s resolutions, and I usually...