Ken Schafer

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:58:17 -0400

My key takeaway from watching the Final Destination movies is the appalling state of American infrastructure.

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 10:28:34 -0400

I tried using a generic non-heated mug for my coffee this morning. I have no idea how I ever survived this in the past! I hadn’t realized how much better my Ember experience was until I went back to the old way.

Tue, 27 May 2025 17:00:39 -0400

Jon Evans' post reflects my thinking on where we’re at with AI.

I was around for the beginning of the consumer Internet and the start of mobile computing, and I think this will be far far bigger and even more world changing.

It’s going to be a wild ride!

Jon Evans' “Join The Enthusiasts!"

Tue, 27 May 2025 11:23:44 -0400

I’d like a “+1” emoji.

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:30:09 -0400

The ideas in this house are really fascinating. It’s “small” definitely but I think it’s also really unique and stretches the concept of “house” in interesting ways.

youtu.be/bTfZIvhUj…

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 10:30:29 -0400

Hey Ontario!

youtu.be/n6zD88yOu…

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:04:10 -0400

First episode of season two of Severance just went live on Apple TV!

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:53:48 -0400

I missed my website’s 29th birthday a few days ago. 1996 is so long ago it really was a different world.

The first 4 years of its life it was a website for my consulting business and for the last 25 years it’s been a blog, running on many different blogging platforms.

schafer.com

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:43:12 -0400

I just bought my ticket to see the newish Eno generative documentary film, which is being shown as a 24-hour online event on January 24th.

I’m a longtime Eno fan and this is the first chance I’ve had to see the doc and I’m stoked.

www.ohyouprettythings.com/new-produ…

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 11:05:31 -0400

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream wherein I scrolled on my phone, used a laptop, or watched TV. Maybe dreams can’t keep up with the information density of digital devices. Or is that just my dreams?

Have you ever dreamed of screens?

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:52:27 -0400

I’m pretty sure I was an adult before I knew that reindeer were real.

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:29:24 -0400

Weird seeing a typo in a New York Times puzzle. This is from today’s Zorse - which is their latest word puzzle, still in beta.

Or is it right and just too clever for me to get?

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 14:07:59 -0400

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Dick Van Dyke and Coldplay

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 14:38:55 -0400

Finally saw my first Cybertruck in the wild.

At ~CA$150,000 this is no small investment. Especially when it’s parked outside a townhouse here in Kingston.

I’m getting used to them, but doubt I’ll ever like them.

Ilse Schaefer (1921 – 2018)

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 18:10:31 -0400

I posted this on my old blog and wanted to keep it online here because a) I love my mom and b) I was really happy with this tribute to her I wrote when she died in September of 2018. I hope you enjoy it. You would have liked her.

My mother died two weeks ago. She was 97.

I think the 35,668 days she spent on this planet covered an incredible range of highs and lows both for humanity and for her personally.

There were two billion people on the planet when she arrived and seven and a half billion when she left. She lived to see widespread adoption of refrigeration, automobiles, radio, TV, mobile phones, and the Internet, as well as the eradication of many diseases through vaccines and improved hygiene, the spread of democracy around the world and so much more. Also, depressions, fascism, communism, gun violence, terrorism, economic inequality, and the continuing oppression of women and people of colour.

She lived through many personal hardships like hyperinflation in 1920s Germany, the rise and fall of the Nazis, hiding her newborn daughter in the woods when the air raid sirens sounded, emigrating to a land where she did not know the language, working in a fish factory or as a cook at a hospital to make ends meet, and losing her husband and child to the cruel hand of cancer.

Ultimately, I think she was happy with her life and with her death. She ended her working life in the scientific journal acquisition department at the University of Waterloo, living in comfortable apartments with all she ever wanted materially. Once she retired – 35 years ago – she travelled, painted, learned to swim, fell in love twice more after her husband’s death, and lived to see her granddaughters graduate university and start their adult lives.

She’d been physically fit and living independently until this Spring when she had a rapid series of strokes that left her bed-ridden, unable to care for herself, and with limited communication abilities. This was exactly what she’d been hoping to avoid, praying that she’d be taken swiftly when the end came. She’d talked of ending her own life if she was ever unable to look after herself, but my mother didn’t think she could do much more than stop eating, and when she tried that a month after her stroke, it proved much harder than she imagined.

Fortunately, in talking to her fantastic care team, I discovered that Ontario’s laws had been changed in the last year or so to allow for Medical Assistance In Death (MAID) in particular circumstances. This was what she’d always been hoping for, a way to end her life with the dignity, privacy, and comfort she had always sought in life.

It took about a month to go through the process to have her approved for the medical procedure. That’s lightning fast for a medical process with government oversight, but a lifetime if you’re waiting and praying for the end.

We found out on a Monday that she’d been approved and that her death would be at 9:00 PM on Saturday, September 8th. This is a rather bizarre thing to know. Our society does not have the rituals to accommodate awareness of your own or your loved one’s time of death. It made for an odd week, but it was wonderful in that it gave us time to say our goodbyes and to make plans so that the experience would be pleasant for her.

When the time arrived, she was at home with the lights down low and soft music playing in the background. I held her hand as the doctor administered a series of drugs via IV injection that made her sleep, then become numb, then stop breathing. It took less than five minutes and she went from saying “I’m not sleepy yet” to eyes closed and no more motion or pain or fear in moments. I’m so thankful we allow this most humane form of ending one’s life and I hope this becomes available to everyone everywhere.

For all the commonalities the 7.5 billion of us on this planet have, I think we are all essentially unique. I’ll miss her uniqueness in this vast world. I keep thinking of things I want to tell her about how my day is going, or how the kids are doing. I’m sure I’ll get over that in time, but for now, I appreciate those moments to remember her connection to and love for us all.

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 16:50:13 -0400

We could do this people!

If the US adopts “Canadian Thanksgiving” (second Monday each October), and Canada celebrates “US Thanksgiving” (fourth Thursday each November), we both get two days to be thankful and eat turkeys.

win-win!

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 11:29:59 -0400

Have you played crokinole? Have you even heard of crokinole?

If so, you’re probably from Southern Ontario.

If it’s new to you, let Pudding Cool give you an interactive introduction to this lovely game.

pudding.cool/2024/10/c…

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 17:08:01 -0400

I’ve been testing the Apple Passwords app and while it works okay, I think I’ll want to wait an iteration or two before leaving 1Password.

Dealbreakers for me are the inability to customize password type and length, and no way to include credit cards and other non-password information.

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 15:19:39 -0400

Does Apple have to comply with GDPR requirements for data portability* for Messages?

If so, where and how do they do it?

I’d love to download my message history in a user friendly format. I’ve got a decade+ of family conversation in Messages that I’d love to archive for future generations. I think it’s the best representation of how we conversed.

gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gd…

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 15:05:31 -0400

The post-Twitter social media landscape has settled down for me. I’m active on three separate networks, spread across Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, in that order of preference. I think I’ll be able to take Threads out of the mix fairly soon, as people continue to migrate over to Bluesky.

And I’m also happy that I’ve dipped my toes into blogging again using micro.blog as the host of schafer.com. I’m now fully aware of what a challenge getting myself out of “lurk mode” will be.

My next task is to delete my Twitter account which still exists even though I haven’t posted there in close to two years now.

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:51:29 -0400

Micro.blog has cross-posting to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads built in to it, so I’m going to give it a try.

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:25:14 -0400

Micro.blog has cross-posting to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads built in to it, so I’m going to give it a try.

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:49:23 -0400

I liked Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” from the first time I heard it. No matter how many times I hear it on oldies radio (ha!) or in a rickroll I still really like it. I hope people who only know it as the punchline to an easy online prank realize what a banger that song still is 37 years after its initial release.

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 14:55:31 -0400

Hello (Again) World!

I’ve owned schafer.com since 1996 - over 28 years. Since 2000 it’s been my personal blog.

Moving toward 2025 seemed like a good time for a fresh start, so I pulled down an archival copy of the WordPress version of the site covering all 24 years of blogging and replaced it with this micro.blog site.

I’m hoping the new, radically simpler platform will inspire me to post more. I guess we’ll see!