Malcolm's Ramblings

Blog

  • Canadian Federal Political Platform Imaginings

    As I did with a quasi-Provincial level platform, I wanted to spend some time thinking about what a Federal platform for me would look like. I started this before our last election and have been working on it on and off for a while now. I am sure there is still a ton of learning Read more

  • Health Tracker 2,000,000 – Building a Simple Web Tool for Family

    My sister-in-law wanted a simple tool to track water, fruit and vegetables, and protein intake kind of like what she and others are used to with WW (WeightWatchers) and so my wife asked if I had the skills to build something like that. It seemed like a cool and quick little project, so I started Read more

  • 1 Million Calories Final Summary

    Well, as I write this, 2019 is ending and so is the year I spent tracking my calorie intake for my 1 Million Calorie Challenge. I fizzled out on a bunch of parts of the project that I thought I was going to enjoy, like recording videos, taking photos of food and really sticking hard Read more

  • Affordable Houses in Canada

    My wife and I are struggling to own a home and have been for some time and I recently saw an article that compares places to live at a $600,000 price point across Canada that made me feel inadequate and frustrated. My first response was, “what does something more reasonable look like?” What is reasonable? Read more

  • Christmas Letter 2019

    What a year it has been! At the end of December 2018, I decided that I would challenge myself this year to track my calories and make sure I ate less than one million calories. It was a fun challenge, at first, and then the grind set in. I managed to keep tracking, but the Read more

  • NIT vs Basic Income: My “Basic” Thoughts

    I want to preface this by saying that I am no expert in anything related to politics, the economy, finances, social structures, etc. I am just a regular person trying to provide my personal view on these topics and that as my understanding increases my opinions may change. So I recently had a comment on Read more

  • Thirty-Seven

    It’s my birthday today. How do I reflect on the past year? With this calendar decade coming to an end and a reminder with this birthday that I’m quickly approaching forty, how do I measure my life so far and the goals I had and have? When I was a teen, I never expected to Read more

  • Coming Back to The Forgotten Vanir

    Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly, in spurts, writing The Forgotten Vanir, a novel about runic tattoos that enable certain people to cast magic. I am currently back working on the book and have added a few thousand words the last couple of days. My hope is to get the majority, if not Read more

  • Understanding Food Through Documentaries

    I have been listening to some documentaries while working and I feel like there should be a documentary that focuses on the media’s influence on eating and food choices as well as the quality of food that exists today. I’m concerned that most documentaries and diets overlook the societal issues and current food quality thus Read more

  • Electric Car Options

    A family member recently experienced a major issue with their vehicle, a vehicle that is a one year older version of the same make and model that we have. It got me thinking about our next vehicle. We haven’t yet paid off our current vehicle loan. We got zero percent financing from Kia when we Read more

  • CUPE Job Action and Strike – My Thoughts

    This is one of those times where I have a fairly strong opinion on something that is happening, so I figured I had to write about it. In one word, the job action being required by the CUPE members is outrageous. Before you pick up pitch forks or raise me on your shoulders, I need Read more

  • Giving Points to Points in Federal Election Platforms

    So, as I mentioned yesterday, I’m very interested in politics. I’ve taken the time to go through both BNN Bloomberg’s and Maclean’s federal election platform guides and I scored each party on their different platform points. I gave a zero if they didn’t have anything listed at the time I read the article, and then Read more