Last year today I embarked on an epic rail journey from Montreal to Chicago via Vancouver and Seattle.  This time of the year is pretty much the only time I can completely escape startup life (and Internet connectivity), and a year ago I seized the opportunity to do something I'd been dreaming of since childhood: take "The Canadian" across Canada. Sat down with a beer and watched my videos from that trip (see playlists below) which brought back very fond memories not only of the trip itself, but also of Startical 1.0 which involved a similarly ridiculous Montreal to San Francisco rail journey. The playlists: "The Canadian" - Toronto to Vancouver by rail "The Empire Builder" - Seattle to Chicago by rail Also reminds me of my  Rails and Reels: History, Infrastructure and the IoT blog post from 2013, just after we had become "World's Best Startup".  Somehow rail journeys bring out the philosopher in me...

There was fugly wallpaper on BOTH of those walls... ...the last to (soon) be painted white. Only just today realised that our new office, which is on the corner of Sherbrooke and Parc streets (Parc is French for Park) could cheekily be called PARC.  XEROX PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) is effectively the birthplace of much of the core technologies we continue to use today (tablet computers, graphical user interfaces, mice, object-oriented programming...).  See this reelyActive blog post .  I've been calling the office Sharc to date, but PARC is not only awesome, but also fitting since the intent is to use it as a living lab and showcase of all the emerging tech we have developed and continue to develop. It may seem silly, but this is the highlight of my day and unbelievably motivating!

It's rare that I can justify an entire day to reading.  Being on the mend from my cold, and not being in a state to be efficient at much else, I was somewhat able to justify taking the time to read Kauffman's A World Beyond Physics just about end-to-end.  Although at many moments along the way I felt guilty about all the other things that I was "supposed" to be doing. Nonetheless, the timing of this read was brilliant.  I've always been fascinated by evolution and emergence and the broader application of these concepts.  I read Kauffman's 1996 work, At Home in the Universe, and this latest (2019) work attempts to add the missing piece in his theory of the emergence of life as we know it. I realise that reading helps me cope with a distinct loneliness I feel.  In continuously advancing toward the vision of reelyActive (my startup) I get further and further away from what might be considered the normal or established context.  In other word