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I’m alive! (And to prove it I’m here)
Sep 2, 2026 · original
[Post title from a Rutles song that inexplicably popped into my head as I sat down to write this.] Early in the already-accursed year 2026, posts by Dave and Anne-Marie had me wondering if I had gone a full calendar year without posting to the home blog. I posted for the first time in 2001, so while I can’t lay claim to being an active blogger these days, missing a whole year would have made me a little sad. I have many un-blogged artifacts about not blogging ready. My pal, co-DJ , and TRU video producer Jon recently reminded me of this video we made for the OERu (#RIP) where I tried to express why I thought blogging was valuable. The ending almost moved me to tears… of laughter remembering how much fun we had that day shooting it along with our pal Brandon. https://barabus.tru.ca/oeru/media/brian_lamb.mp4 I think part of why this video never got fully released was because I ended up ove
Blog? Questions! Challenges! 2025!
Jan 24, 2025 · original
Damn it’s quiet here. I’ve had two giant posts in the draft folder for some time. One of my blog-heroes Tom Woodward has tagged me on a vintage Blog Questions Challenge in hopes of offering me an “an easy post to write”. A kind sentiment which prompts rueful laughter from me… I can make any post difficult, which is partly why I have so much trouble finishing them. But I see a little new juice to affirm blogging #4life … Maybe this will be the little bump that breaks the slump, so here goes… Why did you start blogging in the first place? 2001, I was a year or so into my first dedicated learning technology job (RIP TechBC ), but still had the dream of being a working writer. I had taken classes and made a few ineffectual moves seeing if I could become a freelancer for magazines, but lacked confidence and connections and had a baroque writing style. I’d created websites via HTML/FTP (I reme
I have nothing to say on AI and I am saying it
Jul 9, 2024 · original
“Suppose he had espoused his opinions on AI, I reflected: they probably wouldn’t have carried the weight he fervently hoped they would—significant opinions, even halfway significant opinions, even insightful opinions, being so exceedingly rare. Anyway, I decided, if there was anything the human race had a sufficiency of, a sufficiency and a surfeit, it was opinions on AI, the Niagara of viewpoints, the rushing rivers of hot takes, of oceans of perspectives, the tons and truckloads and trainloads of thoughts and arguments being shared across the internet at that very moment, with only a handful worth reading, let alone taking seriously. I began to feel that it was admirable that he hadn’t written about it. One less set of opinions to clutter up the discourse, one less perspective to add to the noise and echo endlessly from forums to social media to news outlets and back again, ad infinitu
Irwin
Feb 1, 2024 · original
Irwin DeVries passed away last week. He will be missed so much, by so many of us. His career in education spanned five decades: he was at the Open Learning Agency in the early eighties, and over the years he made immense contributions to the Justice Institute of BC, TRU Open Learning (retiring as our Associate Vice-President), Royal Roads University, and elsewhere. But his influence and impact goes far beyond the places he worked. He was a true leader in the educational community, a fantastic collaborator, and a thoughtful and passionate practitioner. His values and his work live on with the many people he mentored, guided, encouraged and assisted. “Open Learning” was not just a place to Irwin, nor was it simply his profession. If you were lucky enough to know Irwin, you know that he approached open learning as a calling, a set of noble principles, and these were things he lived up to in
Nairobi
Oct 24, 2023 · original
TRU participates in a program called Leave for Change , which “matches the needs of partners in developing countries with the skills of Canadian partner organizations to build capacity at both ends”. Essentially, employees donate vacation time toward volunteer assignments managed by the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and TRU covers additional expenses. I know a few people who’d done LfC assignments in the past and heard nothing but good things. A few months back there was an announcement to staff that this year’s deadline for applications was impending, so I took a look at the available postings and saw that a couple of them involved e-learning skills, and impulsively tossed in an application. Flash forward a few months and I find myself in Nairobi, Kenya, on a three week assignment as an E-learning Development Advisor with a truly inspiring organization called RefuSHE . It wa
Hits, misses and runs
Mar 10, 2023 · original
Some things I might have posted to Twitter… if Twitter wasn’t run by this guy . So yes. Elon Musk picked a fight with a wheelchair-using Icelandic entrepreneur with muscular distrophy on a public twitter thread, hoping to humiliate a parasitic do-nothing employee, and instead revealed the damage done as he continues to smash his $44 billion toy against the pavement because it doesn’t make him feel as good as he hoped it would. But at least he is a genius at tech. To be fair, his “make it up as we go” approach to change management is seemingly organizational best practice at this point. They’re given contradictory advice and directions based on Musk’s ever-changing whims. Some have been told key data centres or offices will be taken offline or closed to save costs and taken preparatory work to do that, only to have orders arrive that the decision had been reversed as their owner panics at
Preamble, post-ramble
Mar 6, 2023 · original
People responded kindly after that last post , and otherwise been reaching out and asking about the trip south with Jim Groom, which is appreciated. One week ago, after an epic jaunt that included nine stops across California and Oregon, I returned home late at night, and woke up the next day to a full inbox and plenty of the life I’d been putting off to catch up on. As the week progessed, my general sense of pleasant exhaustion gradually gave way to a cold, and I have spent the past few days mostly prone and in a foggier state than normal. Even as we were in motion, I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to capture what was happening. Even a simple “tour diary” post would quickly sprawl into a mass of impressions and anecdotes that would defy any sense. Beyond the amazing tourism, I felt like this was a rare opportunity for shared reflection not only with Jim but with an array of friends wh
Departures
Feb 11, 2023 · original
Sitting here in the quiet cozy confines of the departure lounge in the Kamloops airport, and it feels like a significant departure point in other ways as well. I’m about to head off for a two week jaunt along the US west coast, much of it riding shotgun for the Bava’s game repair scavenger hunt . Starting with some days in Los Angeles, hitting the desert, and then slowly and raggedly making our way north. Expect to see some other folks along the way. Other than a few short trips within the province, this is my first travel holiday in almost exactly three years, when I was in Mexico with my mother. That was a weird trip, news was already emerging about this strange virus circulating in China and the lockdowns there. By the end of the holiday, I was working much of the days because I knew there wouldn’t be much time once I got back to brace for impact. I did have a three week stint off wor
The day that Don McLean died
Aug 11, 2022 · original
Preamble soundtrack: Bat Hearse, “The Day Don McLean Died” One of the ways I’m a bad blogger is failing to post about the good stuff when it happens. Usually because the best moments are the hardest to get right, and I worry about seeming obnoxious in celebration, showing the right amount of gratitude, or trying not to leave anyone under-recognized. In life something shitty usually comes along soon enough, the good vibes recede, and the opportunity is lost. So what follows is an attempt to recapture a little of one such time. Readers know of my long connection with freeform radio station WFMU , which goes back to reading the book Radiotext(e) in 1992 and then becoming a fanatic listener shortly after they pioneered online streaming in the late 90s . The station’s ethos and eclecticism shaped how I thought about music and the internet, and I admired station manager Ken Freedman for how he
When the wheels come off, inhumanity reigns
Aug 3, 2022 · original
Today, in “blog posts that probably should have been a Tweet”… Reading Adam Johnson’s “People ‘Feel Unsafe’ Because Visible Poverty Is Everywhere” last night hit me hard, and I haven’t been able to shake it. A few key excerpts: Homelessness is used interchangeably with crime despite it not being one—beyond a social one inflicted upon homeless people, rather than carried about by them. Countless headlines and news broadcasts daily conflate poverty with crime. It’s so routine one hardly notices: … There has been a sharp rise in Visible Poverty in urban areas . As disruptions by the pandemic created a whole host of externalities, pandemic aid was cut by bipartisan consensus, and rent prices spiral out of control, there are simply more visible poor people. … When the average person is accosted by someone suffering from Visible Poverty and mental health issues outside of a Starbucks, their re

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