I wish I could get A Closer Look t-shirt.

Newey to Aston Martin is massive. The man clearly knows his way to a successful car. Could this be how Alonso finally gets his third championship?

There was a time that I would watch the Apple infomercial when it came out. Even be excited about it. I can’t remember a time I was less interested in what Apple has just released. From a computing standpoint I’m good. iPhone Pro has hopefully years of service in it. My 2018 iPad Pro is still a compelling device, 6 years after it was released. My Mac Mini is chugging along, kicking ass and taking names.

The only take I have is that the Apple Watch is slowly turning into a device that I don’t hate. It’s getting thinner and more rounded and less of a mental burden. It’s only taken them 10 editions to get there.

⚽️ Man international break sucks. Especially coming in so soon after a few major tournaments. I’m ok to wait 6 months (a year even?) between any international activity as the scarcity is what makes it special.

Easily my favourite time of the year. The weather is shifting. There is a crispness in the air. In a few weeks everything goes bang and the colours will explode. If you live in a country with seasons don’t take it for granted. This is not the norm for millions.

Finally getting back to writing about the built environment.

Finished reading: Paper Girls Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. I love BKV. He’s brought me hours of joy and is one of the best writers of comics, but this series did not connect with me. I just wasn’t all that interested. Equally I returned the first Incredible Hulk volume by Jason Aaron (another writer I love). Tastes have clearly changed over time and that’s ok.

⚽️ The attack is not coming together at the moment. Just a little off. A little soft. A little hard.

⚽️ The stationary nerd in me wants to grab EtH and upgrade his BIC multi-pen (and whatever paper he is writing on). You deserve better.

⚽️ Close one for United. Glad for VAR for once.

⚽️ This is the big one…so early in the season. My prediction? 2:1 United.

Finished reading: The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway 📚

The perfect scoop. Lemon meringue from Zuzus.

Fjorden acquired by Leica. Totally missed this news, but pretty exciting news for the Fjorden team. Hopefully this means that maybe the grip will slowly get some material science help from the Leica team to improve the wearability of the grip itself (mine is already showing wear in the corners). Also would be nice to see the iconic red dot on the hardware as well - doubt this is on the cards but one can dream :).

Last days of summer.

⚽️ Really close game so far. Should have been ahead (or at least level at the moment). I hope they make a proper game of this and just go for it.

First day back at work. I feel refreshed and ready to go. Game face is on, let’s see how long I can keep my holiday calm in place.

Procreate’s Stance on generative AI. Straight to the point and totally on point. Love this company and both their products.

Finished reading: Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed 📚. Great summer read. Can totally understand the praise this work has received. Fantastically original, great scope, well written and drawn. Celebrating Arab culture as it is now (rather than as it was). Highly recommended.

Yes, People Do Buy Books. I also buy books, but nowhere near as much as I read and listen - mainly because of the insanely great public library system. To get into my personal collection, that book has to work overdrive. Thankfully there are those books, but they are the exception.

Just finished reading the first chapter of Shubeik Lubeik, and it was exceptional. Been a long time since I read a black and white comic with such emotional power.

⚽ I love Onana. Now Sancho messed it up…poor.

Making The Cut. This year I watched the Olympics with my Canadian hat on (typically I’ll root for the Lebanese, the Greeks, the Brits and now the Canadians). I missed the swimming competitions which would have been awesome to watch. The Canadian women’s beach volleyball team has been another highlight. Shame they missed the gold by a few points.

Part of the joy of relaxing on holiday is being given the autonomy to work at my own pace on stuff that matters to me on a personal level. At the moment I’m editing the BEC (Built Environment Compendium) Vol.2. Back into the warm embrace of the Pages app, which I’ve learnt to love, two pens (one to scribble and the other to highlight) and my thoughts. Happy Holidays!

Summer in Ontario.

I’ve been thinking a little about how I can take in more information from the non-fiction books I read. The first tip I’m going to try is The Blank Sheet Method. The second thing that I’ve discovered is the excellent scanning/OCR feature of the Notes.app. It’s not 100% perfect, but honestly I can deal with the occasional missed word or two. Just one note with the key parts of the book scanned and searchable for the future.

Anyone have any other low friction tips to share?

⛈️ Damn is absolutely chucking it down today.

Big fan of Ottolenghi cook books. I’ve used a few of the recipes recently (one today in fact) and it’s exactly the kind of colour and flavour that I absolutely love. The thing is that these books actually benefit from being physical items rather than entries into an app like Mela (which I love). I tend not to buy many books anymore, because of the whole Toronto Public Library thing, but I might make an exception for these books.

Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 📚. Nothing majorly new in this book (for anyone that has been paying to Newport’s podcast, but its nice to find out about all these stories. I also went for the audiobook and I tend to enjoy Cal on his own.

Even after reading The Simple Path to Wealth, it is clear that across all the different countries and their regulations (and bullshit), governments want to keep you poor. If this was simple then everyone would be able to do it pretty quickly. Rather even after someone tries to decipher it all, there is still an immense amount of friction that intentionally makes things harder. It’s even harder for those of us who enjoy a more mobile serial emigrant lifestyle.

Having lived and worked in seven countries, finding a place that will allow me to invest and keep things mobile is actually an exceedingly small number. The only one that I have found is Interactive Brokers - that is available in all the countries I have ever lived and worked in. I don’t know when they expanded into all these countries (or if they always operated in these countries), but this a massive win and feather in their cap.

Can’t really comment on how good a service it is, but having the ability to move my investments wherever life takes me is a truly unique feature and worth other possible pain points.

The only other brokerage that came up in my limited search was Saxo (out of Denmark) and Charles Schwab, except BOTH are not available in Canada, so I would need to move everything over to Interactive Brokers if we ever decided to move.

Aghori Mhori Mei is the new Smashing Pumpkins album being released this Friday!

My sleep has been truly terrible these last few weeks (months?). On the off chance that my phone had something to do with that, I bought this Alarm Clock (although any will do) and somehow I have been getting a full night’s sleep. It has been a stark and instant change. Now every night my phone which is pretty useful in my bedroom (controls the light and adjusts the temperature of the room) is relegated to being placed outside. Best possible life adjustment.

Finished reading: The Simple Path to Wealth by Jl Collins 📚. What a book. It is extremely US centric, but there are some clear truths here that just need to be adapted and massaged to reflect what is possible to me. I wish I had this book 20 years ago, but then most of the things he talks about would be unattainable in the countries I lived in…but not anymore. Highly recommended for anyone looking to get their financial life in order. Been going crazy sorting it out this weekend.

3 min from our house.

I have long argued that our plastic (and other material) trash is part of our built environment. Not in the traditional sense, but it is something that we as humans have contributed to our world and have built one tiny small colourful piece of plastic at a time. Up-cycling this material has never looked this great - although I do find the price a little steep for what it is.

Yesterday was a fun summer adventure with the kids. Japanese stationary. Japanese cheesecake. Art Gallery. Park. Makers pizza and home again. They went swimming on Friday and Sunday brings football in the morning with the other dads.

I’m currently reading The Simple Path to Wealth, which is probably the best book I’ve read about money. I wish I had this at the start of my financial journey, which then makes me think that this is one of those canonical books I want to give to my kids. Which then makes me think what other canonical books would I give (and read with my kids if it encouraged them to do things better than I did)?

🇵🇸 Time will absolutely not look kindly on the US’s blinkered support of the atrocities in Gaza and more importantly Palestine in general.

Having a war criminal presented as a guest of the state is not a good look if you believe you are on the right side of plain human decency.

It may be half a world away, but this is happening with your support and backing in the face of what we can all agree is just humanly abhorrent. Sort it out. It’s just not right and while things have changed (within the US, as the Arab diaspora spreads), this has been ratcheted with even more brazen and unacceptable violations of human right we all can agree on for ourselves. I just don’t understand why this cannot be a consideration for other human beings?

Endearing accents. Call it sentimental from watching too much American TV while growing up, but today had a short meeting with someone presenting from Jersey and it was thick, which kinda made me smile. In the same way whenever a true Canadian says about, just gives me a little sense of place.

Can Paris fix its poop problem before the Olympics? Through engineering, that’s how. I kinda feel that it would have been better if they had built more than a single reservoir, but alas it would be a great way to make things better 100 years after they made it completely terrible. I imagine this must contribute to Paris Syndrome.

Cobra Kai has been a pretty fun show to watch. When it’s great, it hits some really big highs. It suffer from some poor writing choices, but overall the momentum of the show is great. I also kinda like the fact that they’ve split the last season into three five episode mini seasons. Extends the time artificially but I’ve got something to look forward to for another 8 months. I highly doubt they’ll make a spin off, hard to keep mining these characters.

The ANZA 750S by Monday Motorbikes is definitely my kind of urban bike. The fact you can also get two people on this is pretty awesome as well.

Finished reading: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine 📚. This was amazingly endearing. Quick read but also made me cringe and showed me a window of a life I once craved.

Finally, Presto is on Apple Wallet. One less card to carry. I was just thinking about getting one of those three card wallets. Not anymore.

Power outage map for Toronto today was insane.

Yeah climate change is not real. Flooding across Toronto is perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. Absolutely nothing to see.

🏀 Activity number one for the summer evenings is definitely some basketball. I remember loosing 25kg when I was 16 on the back of this daily habit. Let’s see if I can build that habit again.

I think I can likely get a little bit of my attention back now that both the Copa America and Euro’s is over. It’s been fun following along both the matches and then in a number of podcasts. Having said that I do want to concentrate on other activities, so will only really be following a little bit of Manchester United preseason, which is just to see what’s going on.

⚽️ Shame about delay to get the Copa final going. To be fair, this same thing happened 3 years ago in London, at the Euro 2020 (held in 2021).

⚽️ Goal! Super sub Palmer!

⚽️ Wasn’t the greatest showing from Mainoo this game. No moment of genius but solid I guess. Now it has to be all guns ablaze.

⚽️ Ok half. Brother team really going for it yet. Someone needs to score to open the game up.

⚽️ What a block by Rhodri.

⚽️ Jordan ‘Go Long’ Pickford.

⚽️ Shaw’s currently got Yamal in his pocket…

⚽️ Foden for England hasn’t been great. He’s not stepped up really (like a Bellingham has a couple of times). Wonder if tonight is his night

⚽️ Also don’t need to go long for everything.

⚽️ Keep it for longer than 2 passes England. Tiki taka football can get fucking boring.

⚽️ Good to see Kobbie Mainoo on the pitch.

⚽️ Here. We. Go. I really hope this is another classic final like the World Cup final, however something tells me that’s going to be a tall order.

Finished reading: Shift by Hugh Howey 📚. I listened to this one as an audiobook (even though I have the ebook of this as well). This story is just incredibly dense and extremely well put together.

🥐 For the last few months we’ve been relying on Blackbird Bakery for our baked goods on a Sunday. Today Ryan asked for the alternative (when presented with the option) and ended up getting the Bisou bakery. French (or French Canadians) know how to make the better croissant.

When the stars align… ⭐ Lionel Messi’s photo shoot with a baby Lamine Yamal. A 20 year old Messi with a baby Yamal. I mean, c’mon.

⚽️ I know there is no way Canada is going anywhere in this match but it is fun to imagine them getting to the final. What an upset that would be.

Not a bad way to start my Sunday.

⚽️ Predictably we’re in extra time. Thought it was going to 0:0, so glad we got to see a couple of goals. Someone needs to score in the coming 30min.

ProNotes is an extension for Apple Notes. Most notably (for me at least) is it bringing markdown to the app (after a fashion).

⚽️ Not the most exciting match so far. England is playing OK, just not enough passes through to Mainoo and so they’re always going long. ‘GO LONG!’

⚽️ I wish today’s matches were tomorrow. I’m going to have to watch the Spain v. Germany game knowing the score but by all accounts it was as good as expected. Still looking forward to tomorrow’s crop of games.

Thank You! The montage of all the madness is worth the watch alone.

Really looking forward to playing around with Writebook. I guess could do a Digital Ocean thing, but I kinda would like to play around with this, you know as an indie publisher of books and other text and image based products.

⚽️ Diogo Costa is not messing around. Two penalty saves!

⚽️ What an upset it would be if Slovenia make it through…

⚽️ Not going to lie, I’m actually pretty sad for Ronaldo. This was his moment to seal it. Shake it off. Go again.

I was about to get the Crossroads watch (by Trafford Watches, but the ‘loud’ Miyota movement kinda put me off.

I am however really looking forward to the Touring GMT and the three hand version (that they’ve not announced but briefly showed in the latest newsletter).

I like the design language and it’s seemingly a little more affordable to the closest alternative, Farer.

One of the most boring (and thankless tasks) is sorting out all the kids old toys. For the most part we’ve been pretty good at sticking to a lot of wood based toys, board games and Lego. However plastic always makes it into the pile. Still operation reduce is well underway

Saw the first episode of The Bear Season Three. How do you follow-up the season two finale? In an intense way, only this show can do.

Humidity brings out the best clouds.

Another great series by Ed Brubaker. Friday is as good as you expect it to be. Setting it in the 1970s in a fishing town provides the right kind of atmosphere. Marcos Martin brings an incredible clarity to the environment that they are depicting. Just an absolute joy of a series and super excited that the third book in the series is released this summer.

Finished reading: Friday, Volume 2 by Ed Brubaker 📚

Absolutely love the colours in Friday. There is a quiet elegance to the palette used that suits the story perfectly.

God I haven’t listened to Tool in probably over a decade.

Throughline is a historical podcast that is blowing my mind. Impeccably well put together. Makes me want to create audio with any level of production.

⚽️ Switzerland trouncing Italy. Clearly not Italy’s year but damn how far they’ve fallen.

Finished reading: Friday by Ed Brubaker 📚

Yeah this is not what we signed up for Toronto. The start of the long weekend (and the kids summer holiday) begins with a rainstorm.

⚽️ It’s a proper brawl now. Honestly these hot tempered men should chill the fuck out.

⚽️ Dang. Awful penalty from Brazil. I mean seriously.

⚽️ Let’s hope this Brazil game is a good one. Not going to lie, I’ve not been enthralled by the football on display at the Copa America.

Schools out for summer! I wish I was a kid again for that feeling of free time ahead.

Man. A country of 330 million people and these two guys are the only ones available? Give Biden a cup of tea and a nap. He’s served his time. As for Trump, it’s laughable that he’s still a viable candidate. How did you guys get here…

Watching Biden talk about Palestine is painful. You don’t get a medal for providing a nation with more target effective bombs and weapons. You’ve chosen your side. A side that lacks humanity and you do it for terrible ideological reasons. What is happening in that cursed spec of land is a human disaster no matter how you choose to dress it or where your memory begins. Indiscriminate killing of a people is wrong and their lives are no less precious than someone else. Sort this shit out because you can rather than talking hoarsely about your three point fucking plan.

Serves me right for even attempting to buy something from AliExpress. It was a moment of weakness. A moment of curiosity. You get what you pay for and in this instance it’s a nice watch that doesn’t work properly.

There is something magical about going to your public library and picking up three Ed Brubaker books you’ve not only never read but never heard of (mainly because I’ve been out in the wilderness for the last decade).

In the most white collar ‘injury’ ever, I’m carrying some coffee to the meeting and I trip on the stairs. My knees ultimately paid the price to save the coffee and I am totally feeling it now. Turns out those stairs are a known trip hazard (have caught others out which explains the useless stickers cautioning you). Can most certainly feel the pain now.

Ughh. Uber surge pricing can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. Happens to me every few months for no rhyme or reason.