On meteorology

"We could all take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism."
Author Unknown

On living vs. existing

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde

It saddens me to think that Mr. Wilde may have been right. How many people around us, after all, are so wrapped up in the mundane details of making it through the average day that they forget to stop every once in a while to realize what a trip this life thing can be? A good shake to the soul might be in order, a reminder that we only see beauty if we first make the effort to do so.

From where I sit, it isn't a glass-half-full-glass-half-empty equation. My glass is half full of water, the other half air. How I choose to perceive it - as a source of life-giving water, an optical-photographic plaything, or anything else - is entirely up to me. Having that choice is priceless, and I'd hate to think I'd ever squander it.

Your turn: How do you spread joy?

Facebook goes public. Someone gets poked.

It's sorta-official: Facebook might file papers for its long-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) as early as next Wednesday. The "sorta" part is because Facebook hasn't actually announced it. The Wall Street Journal is reporting this, citing an anonymous source. In journalistic parlance, it's "a person familiar with the matter." Which could mean the janitor who cleans Mark Zuckerberg's office, his pool guy, a disgruntled former employee, or his mother who simply wants him to call her more often than he does.

Whoever this "person familiar with the matter" is, he/she has touched off a firestorm of coverage. The big number could fall between a $75 billion and $100 billion valuation, with the company aiming to raise some $10 billion from the offering. This would make it larger than the GDP of some small-ish nations. Or some larger ones with banking, um, issues (Greece, consider yourself poked.) And around the same size as McDonald's (grease?)

Sure, at this point it's all speculation and hearsay. But the Journal's been pretty bang on in the past, and if all this plays out, the monster deal will significantly change the way we view social media. Why? Because the little baby once used to find hot dates on an Ivy League campus is all grown up, and most of us these days are only too happy to immerse our lives in a growing wave of services we once dismissed as trivial.

$100 billion is anything but trivial. And as Google panic-spends its way to parity, it's clear the social media future is Facebook's to lose.

Game on.

Your turn: Facebook...good or evil? Why/why not?

Play. Move. Live.

Pure joy
Delray Beach, FL, January 2012

About this photo: Thematic explores movement this week, and I hope you'll join us. Click here to get started.

There's something to be said for taking a few steps back so you can watch your kids be themselves. I don't do nearly enough of it during the day-to-day routine that defines our day-to-day lives. Too busy working, grocery shopping, shuttling and worrying to unplug and just enjoy them for who they are. That has to change, because moments like this one on the beach are fleeting.

There's also something to be said for doing instead of just standing on the perimeter looking in. So after I took this picture, I put the camera back into its hermetically sealed bag and dove into the surf with our kids. No pictures or video. Just a vivid memory of an all-too-brief afternoon on the beach when we disconnected from the real world and enjoyed the moment.

Your turn: When's the right time to put the camera down and dive in?

On darkness and light

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."
Aristotle Onassis

Mr. Onassis's words resonate especially deeply with me today, and I'm not entirely sure why. As far as I can tell, I'm not surrounded by darkness. I'm riding a pretty fulfilling wave that sees me engaged in work that jazzes me and touches others. My creative voice has never been more vibrant.

Yet I'm keenly aware of how quickly life can turn, how cruelly it can all be taken away, how even when we're bathed with light it behooves us to know where the shadows are, as well. Because life doesn't follow a predictable path, and it probably doesn't hurt to know what we'll need to do if the darkness suddenly descends on us.

Your turn: Keeping the darkness at bay. How?

Vignette - a morning I don't want to forget

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Albert Camus

I was up at a ridiculously early hour yesterday. I hadn't slept as much as I simply lay in bed staring at the clock, so worried I'd oversleep that I simply avoided sleep entirely.

The two co-CEOs of Research In Motion had quit the night before. The tech world was buzzing and I had been asked to do an early morning interview with Canada AM. It's CTV's flagship morning show, and as much as I've for the most part gotten used to the whole being-on-TV thing, this is television on another level, the best on-air and production talent you can imagine. I was equally jazzed, humbled and honoured.

I quietly moved through the usual preparation. Shower, clothes on, pat the dog, kiss the sleeping munchkins, juice, read, read, read, then out the door. I've done early-morning interviews before, but this one somehow felt different. As I stepped off the porch, I felt as if I was drinking things in in something beyond HD. The air felt particularly crisp, the darkened landscape almost three-dimensional as my now-wide-open eyes took it all in. It had rained the night before, and the ground was still slick, a chilling wind whipping through the now-bare trees. It was weird, but in a good way...I felt so incredibly alive and in the moment.

On the drive down, I pulled up next to someone at a red light. For some reason, the traffic lights reflecting off the road caught my eye. I wondered if the person in the other car noticed it, too, or wondered how something as simple as a traffic light reflecting off of a wet road can seem worthy of attention at this ungodly hour. I felt like I had a secret, that that driver had no idea I was about to do something blindingly cool before most of the rest of the city would even be awake. I didn't even want to blink, didn't want to miss these few quiet moments of an apparently special day when I was going to kick open a few more doors for me and my still-sleeping family. I wiped away a tear, maybe two, because in an instant I knew that this was what "right" felt like.

It's moments like this that you want to stuff in a bottle forever, when you realize you don't know what you did to deserve it, but you're still glad you did whatever it was. Of course, moments don't work that way, and neither do bottles. But that doesn't mean we can't hope to find a better way to freeze the snippets that matter most.

Before long, I slowly drove up the winding road to the studio on the hilltop. The bright lights shone like beacons in the night, signalling a place I've somehow made my own in recent months, a place where I feel like I can turn pretty much every journalistic dream I've ever had into an amazingly fulfilling reality. We all have places where we excel, and this is one of them for me.

I headed inside and handed myself over to the care of a local producer who knows what I need before I even say I need it, and a faraway director who on mornings like this calmly speaks into my ear and won't ever let me drop the ball. Outside of the focused circle of bright light that surrounded me, the rest of the studio was hushed, dark, serene. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and waited for the countdown to hit zero. I was ready.

Your turn: What does "right" feel like to you?

Thematic Photographic 180 - Movement

Flared
Delray Beach, FL, January 2012
[Click photo to embiggen]

Quick note: The leadership change at Research In Motion continues to put its stamp on my existence. Click here to see the latest. Or read on for a little photographic diversion. Because when the big news stops, a little camera time is good for the soul.

Photography is an incredible thing. It can freeze virtually anything in its tracks, and in the process allow us to imagine movement when, in fact, there is none. It plays with the mind, brings it places far beyond the screen mere inches from our nose, forces it to ponder what it must have felt liketo be Right There.

It's always a wonder to me that I can stop time with a mere click. I can explain the physics of it, but that doesn't make it any less miraculous.

Your turn: For the next week, Thematic will be sharing movement-themed pictures. Either take one that suggests the theme and then post it, or find one you've already shared online. Leave a comment here letting everyone know where to find it. Visit other participants to share the joy (and accept my apologies for being so slack lately on that last part. Time is not my friend these days. I'll work on that.) And above all, enjoy the process. Because this is all about loving what we do when we grab our cameras and head out who knows where.

Oops, almost forgot: New to Thematic? Click here and all will be explained. Well, almost all.

RIM leaders quit. Future remains uncertain.

So it's finally official. Research In Motion's co-CEOs and co-chairs Mike Laziridis and Jim Balsillie are stepping down from their posts (press release, WSJ, Globe & Mail, National Post). Current COO Thorsten Heins has been elevated to CEO, while former Royal Bank of Canada Barbara Stymiest becomes RIM's first-ever independent board chair. The now-former leaders will remain as members of the board.

What does it mean? Well, without much new products in the pipeline - new BlackBerry smartphones based on the next-generation BlackBerry 10 aren't due until the second half of this year, and the PlayBook is still languishing in the tablet-market equivalent of oblivion - not much. RIM needs renewal, and the leadership changes are only the first step in this process.

Worse, while I'm sure Mr. Heins is a superbly experienced industry vet - he was most recently RIM's COO, and has been in the telecom space for 30 years, including a stint as CTO at Siemens - he remains a RIM insider. If the company had been truly serious about reinventing itself, it would have looked to someone from either another company or another industry entirely. It's been done before - think Ford and ex-Boeing chief Alan Mullaly - and it could have been leveraged here, too.

I'll have lots to say on this in the days ahead, including a hit with CTV's Canada AM at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow (Monday). I'll add links to this entry as they hit the web.

Your turn: Thoughts?

Where I'm writing:

• My op-ed in Tuesday's Toronto Star (!) Suggestions for RIM's new CEO as he settles in
• My op-ed in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and the Guelph Mercury (RIM's HQ is in Waterloo, so the KW paper is its hometown paper.) New leaders face new challenges (alternate link here)

My articles for Yahoo! Canada:

• Is Lazaridis/Balsillie exit enough to save RIM?
• Heins's first 100 days: Crucial window for new CEO starts now
  
• Life after RIM: What's next for Balsillie, Lazaridis?
  

Where I've been quoted/interviewed:

• I chatted with Beverly Thomson on this morning's CTV Canada AM. Main story link here.
• Spoke with CKCO Kitchener's Abigail Bimman via Skype for their 11:30 p.m. newscast.
• Havard Gould included my comments in a piece he aired on CBC's The National.
• Spoke with Kieron O'Dea for a piece for Global National.
• Bantered with CTV News Channel's Jacqueline Milczarek and Dan Matheson.
  
• Appeared on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin.
• Spoke with Aaron Rand of Montreal's CJAD, because radio in my old hometown is just that special.
  
• I spoke with the Toronto Star. RIM's Mike Laziridis and Jim Balsillie resign. byline Michael Lewis.

Additional links/resources:

• At Research In Motion, a new CEO vows to silence the doomsayers
• Bowing to critics and market forces, RIM's co-chiefs step aside
• Meet Thorsten - RIM blog post on their new honcho.

Where so many others have walked

By the day's early light
Pompano Beach, FL, December 2011

About this photo: We continue to explore anything that glows, and we hope you'll consider doing the same. Just click here to join in.

There's a certain sense of peace associated with walking along a quiet beach just after the rising sun has begun to paint the sand. What was cold to the touch just a few minutes ago is suddenly alive with radiated heat, as if a ball of hot gas some 93 million miles away can somehow bring immediate heat to your feet - and by association, your soul. Amazingly, that's exactly what happens as the sun rapidly transforms this place from the murky colors of pre-dawn to something that's decidedly more alive.

It's a change that you can feel as well as see. And as I focus in on the sidelit relief of the sand, I notice the traces of countless unseen souls who've walked here before me, and I get the feeling that I'm not the only one who's been drawn here. I wonder who all these other people are, and whether they felt the same sense of reverence that I'm feeling now. I wonder if they wonder anything at all, or if they're simply content to spend a few quiet minutes here before rejoining the real world as it shakes off the night and prepares for whatever it is that comes next.

I don't know what awaits me as the sun continues its relentless journey toward the top of the sky, but that hardly seems to matter as I slowly turn for home. My wife's probably awake by now. And breakfast awaits. I quietly think to myself that more days should start like this. Maybe...

Your turn: What does your ideal start-to-the-day look like?

How are you changing the world?

While walking the dog earlier today, I found myself wondering about the whole meaning of life thing. My inbox has had more than a few sad messages from afar this week, reminders that this gift we've all been given is both fleeting and finite. It made me think.

And as my mind wandered back, I was reminded of the late Steve Jobs, and his well-documented desire to leave a dent in the universe. His dent is an obvious one, but what of the rest of us? What are we - individually and collectively - doing to change the world? How are we leaving it a better place than when we first got here? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

On work-life balance

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
Bertrand Russell


I thought this would be a fine way to end the work week - after all, we all need the occasional reminder to stop taking ourselves so seriously and learn the definition of manyana.

Your turn: How are you planning on ending your week?

A place where nobody goes outside

Who sits here?
Pompano Beach, FL, December 2011

About this photo: Thematic is glowing this week. You can glow, too, by following your mouse here.

Oversized balconies overlooking the pounding surf as the sun begins its daily climb above the horizon. Not a soul to be seen aside from the occasional runner dodging the last gasp of each wave before it crashes for good against the slick sand. I look up and wonder why more people who stay here don't grab a mug of something comforting and head outside to take in the view. Because I think I'd have a permanent outdoor spot for my own mug of something comforting if I lived in this phenomenal place.

For now, I'll have to be content with the way the early morning light plays on the concrete. The sun really does paint differently down here. Pity no one else is outside to notice.

Your turn: Are you an outside or an inside person?

Is this what an alien invasion looks like?

Glassblower's delight
Deerfield Beach, FL, December 2011
[Please click here for more glow-themed insanity]

You find some really surreal sights in some really surprising places. Any guesses where I found this one?

On playing, aging, and death

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

(I'm guessing this applies to both genders, too.)

Your turn: How do you stay young?

As the end approaches

Soon to fall
London, ON, October 2011

About this photo: Thematic. Glow. Here.

In a matter of hours, we've gone from delightfully and unseasonably warm to brutally cold, icy and snowy. Twitter's heating up with complaints from the winter-unconverted. As I sit in the predawn house listening to the winds howl just outside my window, I readily admit I wish I could be back on a beach, my toes digging into the warm sand as the rest of me does not a whole lot else.

But wishes are just that. And it'll be a while before I'm warm. So for now I'll content myself with this dying scene of a dying season, of a moment where if I blinked my eyes just so, I could hold onto the last slivers of warmth before this leaf finally fell and the darkness once again took over.

There's beauty in the darkness, too. We just have to look a little harder for it.

Your turn:

Wikipedians hate SOPA, PIPA, and liver

The Internet is abuzz with buzz over the mass protest against the proposed legislation - the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act - that are currently working their way through the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. Wikipedia goes dark tomorrow in support of a growing protest designed to get the proposed legislation squashed. Copy-and-paste-addicted high school students everywhere should be suffering withdrawal symptoms by lunchtime.

Supporters of the SOPA and PIPA legislation say something's got to be done to rein in piracy, to give law enforcement the ability to reach beyond national borders and shut down copyright violators who use servers stashed in the Cayman Islands to avoid prosecution. Opponents say these acts, if signed into law, will drape a layer of draconian, Big Brother-ish censorship and centralized control that will destroy the open and collaborative Internet as we know it. A number of high-profile sites, including the English-language arm of Wikipedia, will go dark tomorrow to protest the acts and encourage users to fight them. Still others, like Google, will remain operational, but till add content onto their home pages to help spread the word.

Who's right? Well, everyone is. Copyright owners - like Hollywood studios and record labels all the way down to the suburban-dwelling guy who writes on his MacBook late at night and shoots pictures by day - deserve to not have their stuff surreptitiously ripped off and made available for download by shadowy web services in a shadowy country (on a shadowy planet...) People and organizations who create content deserve fair compensation - profits, salaries, careers, whatever - in exchange for their efforts.

Likewise, content distributors - carriers, web sites like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter and distributors like Internet service providers - deserve to do business over an open, collaborative, creativity-inspiring Internet without fear of being waylaid by an endless wave of lawsuits brought forward by the same litigious doofii who turned the McDonalds drive-through into a never-ending source of cash for ambulance-chasing (and coffee-dropping) lawyers everywhere.

There's got to be a middle ground somewhere that at least keeps some of those involved happy some of the time. There's also got to be recognition that it's a problem that will likely never completely go away, that the cops-and-mouse game of stealing electronic content or otherwise using it inappropriately will never end, that technology will always be a step or two ahead of the legislation designed to control - and make fair - its use. Similarly, the planet deserves a solution that replaces today's ineffective patchwork of national legislation with something that allows law enforcement to prosecute criminals wherever they may be.

But as long as partisan bickering dominates the agenda, it's hard to see any of this improving anytime soon. Which is a pity, because the utopian promises of technology deserve a fair shot at coming true. Like reaching for the stars, we know we'll never quite get there. Indeed, we won't even get close. But just striving for fairness and balance should be enough no matter what side of this issue you may be on.

Your turn: Got any SOPA/PIPA thoughts? Hope you'll share 'em. I'll post links of my own later on.

Related links:

• CTV Canada AM. I was on-air with host Marci Ien. Video here.
• CTV News Channel. I chatted with Sandie Rinaldo. Video here.
  
• CFRB/Newstalk 1010 Toronto. I'm on-air with John Downs tonight (9:45 ET) and again tomorrow morning just after 7:20 ET. (Live feed here.)
• Newstalk Radio, Dublin, Ireland. I'm talking transatlantic - right before tuck-in on my side of the sea is morning in Ireland - with Ivan and Chris from The Breakfast Show. Show page here. Live feed here.

Seriously...this stuff is neat.

Thematic Photographic 179 - Glow

Daybreak
Pompano Beach, FL, December 27, 2011, 7:12 a.m.

Our new Thematic theme, glow, should be a fun one. If it glows, emits light in some way, or even figuratively suggests the concept, then go ahead and share it. That's it!

This particular shot was taken 12 minutes after this one. At the time, I promised to share more, and I may have some additional perspectives from the beach through the coming week. Let me know if you get sick of them.

In the meantime, I suspect you all know what the Thematic deal is, and what your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be over the next week. If not, click here for details. And have fun with it, because that's what Thematic Photographic is all about.

Your turn: Shoot, share and comment. Repeat. And smile.

The one posed shot of the year

Sitting still. For now.
Deerfield Beach, FL, December 2011

About this photo: This pic wraps up our week-long exploration of the "after dark" theme - here. Our new theme, "glow", launches later today, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

It isn't often that I get them in the same place at the same time. Even more rare is having them do so without some kind of mugging for the camera. Which is no surprise given virtually every picture of me at their ages had me making some kind of funny - or in some cases not-so-funny - face.

I've ruined more pictures than I can count, and am likely the one responsible for my mother's grey hair. So it's somewhat poetic, nay fair, that our children should do the same thing to me. Still, they consented to this one moment of family normalcy when I told them their grandparents would be really, really happy. I also bribed them with chocolate, and am perfectly willing to accept my unparent-of-the-year award in exchange for that moment of photographic/familial desperation.

It's rare that I do the posed photography thing. But every once in a while, it's good for the soul to freeze them in place as a reminder of how you got so lucky to have them in the first place.

Your turn: What do you think happened next?

Where the lights are always on

White, not green
Toronto, ON, December 2009

About this photo: We're sharing "after dark" photos for another day - new theme launches Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern - so you've still got a snippet of time to share your own. Here's where the fun begins.

I had been in the big city for the day because while most of my work as a journalist is somewhat virtual - television hits done from remote studios, stories emailed to editors, and even pyjama-clad radio interviews phoned in from my driveway and - sometimes you need to be front-and-centre. This particularly clear and cold December day was one of them, with a corporate video shoot that I definitely couldn't do from my home office. Or in my jams.

After the session was done, I had a bit of a walk back to my car. So I slowed my pace down a bit, held my camera in my hand and waited for ideas to present themselves. It didn't take long for this abstract-looking building to grab my attention. I couldn't stop thinking about the psychology of modern living that treats empty, fully-lit office buildings as entirely normal elements of the nighttime sky. Owners claim it's in the interest of security, but it still strikes me as a typically arrogant disconnect from respectful use of often-non-renewable resources.

Still, there's an abstractness to this scene that stopped me in my tracks on the sidewalk. I can rail about eco-unfriendliness until the cows come home, but on this night, it meant getting a shot that wouldn't have otherwise been possible. That would have to be good enough as I tucked my camera back away, buried my near-frozen hands deeply in my pockets and headed for home.

Your turn: Who works here?