Snook.ca

Taco Reviews Launched

2026-08-19T00:00:00Z

I started up a little project to go to most of the taco joints in town. I say most because I’m not going to every place that has tacos on the menu, like chain restaurants. I’m targeting taquerias and places that feel close to qualify as one.

Ottawa is more known for shawarmas than tacos but I figured this would be a fun little quest. I’ve created a section of the site dedicated to the taco reviews. It even has its own RSS feed, if you feel like following along. I don’t think I’ll be posting more about it here until I’m done the project.

I separated it off into its own thing because most of the people who follow me don’t live in Ottawa. For those that do, or visit Ottawa on occasion, perhaps you’ll discover a place you’d like to try.

This is also giving me an opportunity to play with different design elements including photo presentations. Speaking of, I need to get my opengraph image customizations done at some point. (I have some reading to do.)

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Connections, Part Two: Social Connections Without Social Media

2026-08-18T00:00:00Z

I went out to dinner and a show with a friend the other day, enjoying some pizza and then wandering over to watch a mediocre blues/country/folk band. This friend was my first roommate from when I first moved out at 19. He lamented that being in his fifties, it was harder to develop new friendships.

Around those formative years of my early teens, I moved around quite a bit, from Calgary, to Toronto, to Ottawa. In under two years, I went to four different schools, needing to make new friends each time. It’s not easy being an awkward 13 year old, trying to fit in.

Perhaps trying to make friends can be difficult at any age.

For me, technology has always been a fruitful avenue for connection for much of my adult life. That roommate? I met him on a BBS. Many of the friends I’ve since met have been through technical avenues like work, conferences, and blogging.

Blogging throughout the aughts connected us to others around the world as we shared what we learned through our creative endeavours. Those connections led to employment, career advancement, and friendship.

As we rolled into the 2010s, much of that community had moved to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I say moved because while our sites may have continued to exist, the conversations were no longer happening there. We were blogging less and tweeting more. (E.g. in 2013, I only wrote two blog posts.)

In my head, I have associated social media to a form of advertising. They are a way of continuing to stay top of mind in each other’s lives. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as they say. [Perhaps that feels icky to hear. Nobody likes to be reduced to or thought of as advertising.] The connection isn’t formed by having an account. It’s not even in the follows. It’s the conversations that happen. Social media makes it easier because it allows for social (and parasocial) relationships to develop due to semi-regular volleys back and forth—like a public chatroom.

It’s been frustrating to see these platforms shift away from connecting people and optimize for an algorithm that puts random content in front of me. With the recent transition away from social media—by others and myself—I’ve wondered how to keep those connections and form new ones.

I’ve realized that in simplifying this blog, I’ve made it harder to create and maintain connections. No comments means it is harder for people to quickly respond to a topic. Sending an email creates enough friction that many people avoid doing it. People don’t necessarily want a one-on-one conversation with someone they’ve never met. It also privatizes the conversation preventing others from joining in. No analytics or webmentions means that I don’t see when other people are responding to me, making it harder for me to reply in kind. No webrings or blog rolls makes it harder for people to discover other people. That hyperlink was and is a foundational part of the web and I’ve not taken advantage of one of the best tools to promote connectivity in this medium.

The simplicity I have created to maintain this blog has made it more difficult to maintain connectivity in the world.

Is this blog about more than just being a loudmouth, voicing my own thoughts, stories, and opinions into a vacuum? Should I be doing more to build connections? And to be clear, these connections aren’t just for me; they are for you, too. You might find a new site to follow and eventually a new friend because of those links.

Knowing me, I’ll end up somewhere in the middle. I’m not starting a revolution or a movement. I’m not looking to raise my pitchfork and ensure everybody has a blog. There are easier things that can be done, though. I can spin out more tendrils, more links, more connections to others.

It’s about consideration—not in some attempt to recreate a nostalgic past that has been lost. It’s about consideration in how we curate and connect. There are many amazing people, a few of whom I’m grateful to call friends, and this blog (and yours, and others) is one of the ways in which we can build and maintain a space that feels genuine, authentic, and connecting.

Postscript: it’s interesting to see how my relationship with social media continues to seesaw over the years, as I’ve observed with others, as well. Like therapy, sometimes it takes me years of chewing on an idea before I can fully digest it. Or maybe it’s like advertising, where I need to see the same thing over and over again before I buy into it.

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Connections, Part One

2026-08-14T00:00:00Z

When the pandemic hit and nobody could travel anywhere, I, like many others, found connections through Zoom calls. I had multiple scheduled calls with different groups: a daily morning call, a weekly Friday call, two board game groups, a poker night, a Call of Duty group, and semi-regular calls with various individuals. I am very grateful for the friends I have made over the years and that those friends were there over the pandemic helped avoid the feelings of isolation many felt.

Now that most people have moved back into old (or perhaps new) routines, the regular online calls have mostly disappeared. And with a decision pre-pandemic to stop speaking at conferences, I haven’t been attending them, either. That has meant missing out on one particular avenue of connecting and reconnecting with people that I’ve known for years. Long gone are the days of hanging out in the hallway of a conference chatting with people in between sessions. Or going out for tacos and then to a bar where somebody is dancing in a head-to-toe Batman costume. (Yes, that happened.) But even conference attendance is down.

Pre-pandemic, I’d often be visiting a city and then put out word on Twitter that I’d enjoy meeting up with people and sure enough, I’d be at a table with a handful of fellow web practitioners enjoying a lovely meal and listening to their experiences and sharing mine.

The scattering to the smattering of social networks along with those abandoning social media altogether has made this, too, more difficult. It takes a more concerted effort to stay connected. Yet Another Social Media Site doesn’t seem like it’s going to solve this.

This was one of the factors that spurred me to re-engage with social media: to maintain these loose connections, albeit perhaps more loosely than before.

I have close friends with whom I speak to near daily. I have friends with whom I speak with every few months. And then I have those people with whom I’d normally have connected with in person and those in-person connections are happening less and less.

I don’t know that I have any answers. I don’t know whether this is even a “problem” that needs to be fixed. Perhaps it’s just a fact of life that some connections are lost to time.

Postscript: This post was written in August of 2023 but I never posted it. I started writing another post that was very similar and decided to post this first. Not sure why I never posted this years ago.

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Slash What Now?

2026-08-07T00:00:00Z

Hey, it’s the inaugural post for the RSS Club on Snook.ca!

I was working away on my site, adding content that I thought might be relevant to some, like an AI statement and a privacy policy. Most people probably don’t care but for those that do, it’s there and it shows that I care about those things, too.

I never really had a name for these types of one-off pages but I came across slash pages and with this redesign, I’ve been considering what felt relevant to include or not include on my own site.

Why Now?

Some of the items like /now seem like they should be actual blog posts. Like this one. This is what I’m thinking about now. My next blog post will be about what I’m thinking about then, which will be now.

Want to know what I’m up to right now? I’m writing now. But when you read this, I’ll no longer be writing this. I’ll be doing something else. Maybe I’m sleeping, or making coffee, or out walking somewhere, or sitting on the toilet.

Why Not?

I realize I’m being silly. Sometimes it’s nice to catch up with what somebody is up to. It’s answering the question, “hey what’re you up to these days?” It’s surfacing information without requiring people to understand the entire lore about what led you to this moment in time.

For example, I subscribe to a couple newsletters that are like a /where page. They update people on their travels while also giving a life update around why they might be on a particular trip, or why they might be at home. Maybe my friends would like to hit up my /where page to see where I might be given all my travels. (I don’t have a /where page.)

Slash away

For now, I have my slash pages plus a couple undocumented ones like my old /speaking page that remains more like a historic artifact found just under the surface. Today, I added my privacy policy.

I think that’ll be it for now.

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Secret RSS Posts

2026-08-04T00:00:00Z

I've seen Dave Rupert do posts that only appear in the RSS feed. He called it the RSS Club. In his words,

It’s like a newsletter delivered to your feed reader to celebrate the medium of RSS and breakaway from social media.

I like that ethos and am choosing to do the same. What posts will qualify as part of the RSS Club remains to be seen. Maybe they'll be more personal. Maybe they'll cover topics that don't need to be directly linked from home pages and index pages. Maybe I'll get bored of the idea and we never hear of this again.

And it's not like they'll be sooper-dooper secret because there will still be a web page that will be generated. You could still share and link the page, if you wanted. At least, for now. It's just that they won't be linked to from any of the index pages. Perhaps one day I'll look into creating content purely for the RSS feed that doesn't have a permalink generated for it. That'll require some tweaks to the RSS feed since it relies on the URL for things like the ID.

Consider this an invitation to subscribe to the RSS feed—if you haven't already—and perhaps some interesting content will find it's way to you.

Technical Bits

This site is built with 11ty. Every file—okay, not every file; I'm simplifying here—gets added to a collection. Files can be added to a specific collection using tags. When I first built this site, every blog post was tagged as a post. Then, I told the home page to grab the most recent posts. And the index view to grab all of the posts. And then the RSS feed should grab the ten most recent posts.

What I've done is added a new collection called rss and I changed the RSS feed to only grab items from the rss collection.

tags:
  - post
  - rss

This allows me to create content that only appears in the RSS feed or only appears on the site or appears in both. This system will be used for any new thing that I add. For example, if I add photography, I can create a photo tag and add the photos to the RSS feed or choose not to. I can add the photos to the Everything and Nothing index or I can create a separate photo feed altogether that just pulls anything tagged photo.

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A Mid-summer Night’s Update

2026-08-02T00:00:00Z

We’re into the thick of summer and the days have been long and hot—just the way I like it.

Pushing the One and Only Edge

Back in March, I mentioned having some ideas but wanting at least one edge to push. Turns out, the only edge I pushed was using scroll-based animations. Dullest edge pushing ever. I did the bare minimum and what do you know, I’m happy with it. I’m happy to have the new design, the new tech, and being able to write more regularly and feeling less constrained—especially tech-wise.

I’ve continued to tweak things since the launch. Still on the to-do list is to update the favicon and take a look at view transitions. I’m also considering different post styles or themes that are specific to content types. Some of the ideas I have might mean that I toss out the scroll-based animation on the logo but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

New MacBook

Speaking of tech, in my long running series of “how can I simplify my life”, I had given away or sold my old Mac gear, leaving me with just a Mac mini for my day-to-day computing and development needs.

For writing, I can use my iPhone or iPad, since I can write markdown pretty much anywhere. But the new post publishing process uses a desktop (or laptop) computer configuration to handle updates via Git and sync them to the server. I’m sure I could jury rig a setup that would allow me to publish from a mobile device but I imagine those solutions are going to feel like sandpaper and I want buttery smooth.

That means that if I want a portable post publishing process then I need a portable post publishing personal computer. Like, say, a MacBook. I’ve had this Mac mini for about five years now, so I don’t feel like I’m being frivolous with a new purchase. I stopped in at the local Apple store and after reviewing sizing and features, I settled on the 13” Air. They didn’t have the configuration I wanted in stock so I ordered online and will need to wait a couple weeks for its arrival.

Travel

Speaking of portability, what a better way to use said MacBook Air than on a trip. And yet, not a lot of travel planned for the near future. Perhaps a trip out to the west coast for some food adventures and catch up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile.

The last few months have included a number of trips including an Alaskan cruise to celebrate my mom’s birthday and get her one step closer to finishing her bucket list. (Huh. It would seem my mom is also a bit of a completionist.)

There were also a few trips mostly centered around food: Plenitude in Paris, Sushi Sho in New York, and Pearl Morissette in the Niagara region. All of them were spectacular meals and definitely worth going out of your way for, if you get the chance.

It wasn’t just food, though. My girlfriend booked us a tour of the Palais Garnier in Paris, the home of the Phantom of the Opera. (Fun fact, PotO was the first music CD I ever bought.) In New York, she got us tickets to see Cats: The Jellicle Ball. I watched the original Cats before going and thought, “how was this ever a hit?” The Jellicle Ball, on the other hand, felt like everything worked. The concept actually made sense and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Position Sticky

For now, things are quieter as I am enjoying sticking around and basking in the warm weather and slower routines.

Since I am around more, I’ve finally settled on a new challenge, unsurprisingly centered around food: try all (well, most) of the taco places in Ottawa. Ottawa isn’t really known as a hub of Mexican cuisine. For the longest time, it felt like the best we had to offer was mediocre Tex-Mex. The Mexican community has grown and along with it have been a number of new taquerias. I have a list of almost 30 places to try. I might document this adventure here on the blog, hence the desire to play with theming. I’ve already been to two restaurants on the list over the past week so I better get cracking!

Minus One

Being within walking distance of most things, I don’t drive much anymore. As such, having multiple cars was a little ridiculous. And as such, I decided to sell off my 1979 Porsche 911 Turbo. I enjoyed the car but I always felt a slight sense of anxiety while driving it. I would never think to take it on a long road trip and it wasn’t the most versatile for short trips. It was loud and smelly. Which, when I just wanted to cruise for an hour, I enjoyed. Driving it maybe five times over the summer before having to put it away for storage for the winter just showed me it was time to find a better home for it.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m content with having had the experience, even if it was a lifetime dream. Owning a classic vehicle like this was wonderful to have experienced but I feel no sense of loss now that I’ve sold it. I have the memories and that is enough.

Enjoy the Summer

Other than that, life continues on uneventfully—delightfully so.

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The Walk Back

2026-07-30T00:00:00Z

I am a cocktail and four wines in as we step out into the cool autumn night after a hefty dinner. My sweater and the alcohol and her hand will keep me warm on the walk back.

“The directions say to turn right here,” she says, as we stand in front of a church that caps the street. I recognize the church from earlier in the day. “Yes, but we can go left,” I redirect.

She follows along, her hand still in mine. She gives occasional glances to her phone, perhaps hesitant in my ability to direct us back in my inebriated state. She suggests crossing the street. “I think we need to go under the bridge,” I recommend.

Sure enough, the path under the bridge leads us back to our hotel, completing the evening and giving us rest for more adventures to come.

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Chimed, I’m sure

2026-07-28T00:00:00Z

A decade ago, when I was still speaking at conferences and heavily marketing myself, I’d often think of personal branding ideas. We’ve seen the trends. The business cards. The t-shirts. The stickers. The buttons. The socks! Can’t forget the socks. My logo is branded across not only my sites but my computers and my slide decks, too.

I also liked using colour to reinforce my brand. I’ve continued that tradition with green threading throughout the latest redesign. I even considering wearing green for all my conference talks. Thankfully, that ended up being a short-lived idea.

At one point in my career, I was getting interviewed for a number of podcasts and considered starting up my own podcast. One of the ideas that came out of preparing to start my own podcast was how to brand via audio. I liked the idea of doing chimes like the NBC chimes so that’s what I did:

It’s five dings in the pattern of how I spell out my last name: Ess Enn oh-OH Kay.

Had I implemented this, I had considered using it to intro my conference talks. I likely would’ve integrated it into the site somehow as well. Maybe clicking on the logo rings the chime as the letters of my name pop in sequence.

For now, I’ll simply document this little artifact of time.

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Collections

2026-07-25T00:00:00Z

In 1985, at the age of eleven, I bought my first comic book: The Transformers #9. From there, I went on to collect nearly a thousand comics over my teenage years, mostly in the Marvel universe like Spider-Man and X-men. Lots of Groo the Wanderer (which my mom always enjoyed) and then into stuff like Watchmen and The Sandman. Bill Sienkiewicz was one of my favourite artists with his work on The New Mutants, Stray Toasters, The Shadow, and Dazzler.

About a decade ago, I got into whisky. What started with a few bottles of Balvenie slowly grew into a 200+ bottle collection. Then over the pandemic, I got into cocktails and my cupboards burgeoned with amari and liqueurs.

I’ve noticed this pattern where I feel the need to “collect them all”. It’s by no means limited to physical things, either. Pokemon Go was addictive for a hot minute, I tell yah. At one point, I had collected everything in The Simpsons: Tapped Out. And then they’d release more things. I spent every day going into the app to complete all the daily tasks. Until one day I tapped out. I deleted the app and never went back in.

Same thing happened in Pokemon Go. A raid was happening nearby and I considered getting in my car to participate. That’s when it hit me that it was time to stop. Boom. App gone. Never went back in.

I always hit a point where I stop. I got rid of all my comics. I stopped playing Pokemon Go. I stopped buying whisky. I reach a stage where I realize that the collecting is unsustainable.

Last year, I considered getting into vinyl. The idea of popping a record onto the player and chilling in my lounge chair had plenty of appeal until I considered the logistics. Knowing myself, I didn’t want to suddenly have boxes and boxes of records on my shelves. No record player was purchased that day. Or since. I can sit in my lounge chair and listen to a streaming service just as easily.

(I recognize that there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground where I only purchase a handful of records and play those on repeat, instead of building a huge collection. There were other reasons I talked myself out of a record player.)

That’s not to say that I don’t have that completionist streak still in me. Nor that I’m not willing to spend lots of money on the various quests to complete things. My restaurant adventures are a testament to that. It is handy, for me at least, to be able to know when a goal is no longer serving its purpose and to be okay with moving on to new things.

Postscript: When I originally started writing this post—much of which was written last year—it was with the intention of recognizing my own habit of “collecting”. It is amusing me to have just written that last line and realize that I seem to be having a recent theme of endings and beginnings.

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They Don’t Need to Go On Forever

2026-07-21T00:00:00Z

I came across this fun little comic titled We Didn’t Lose the Plot. It has a straightforward conclusion: more things should come to an end. The “things” referred to here is media like books and movies and television but I’d extend it to many other things as well.

Like web projects.

So often, things are built in the attempt to have infinite growth. And like cancer, they seemingly grow to the point where the entire thing eventually dies or becomes useless at the problem it originally set out to solve.

I like projects that have a definitive end. One of the things I liked about doing the Fifty project was that it had to finish. I don’t need to do a Fifty: The Refiftying, or Fifty 2: Fifty Boogaloo, or 2 Fifty 2 Furious. The project is done.

It’s likely why I enjoy building concepts or mini-apps. They’re quick and solve a specific problem or answer a particular question without needing to be grown, sold, serviced, or maintained.

I’ve been considering potential projects that would have a specific end in mind with which I could build a mini-site around. I don’t have anything planned yet but I’m looking forward to the possibilities.

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Snook.ca

Taco Reviews Launched

Connections, Part Two: Social Connections Without Social Media

Related:

Connections, Part One

Slash What Now?

Why Now?

Why Not?

Slash away

Secret RSS Posts

Technical Bits

A Mid-summer Night’s Update

Pushing the One and Only Edge

New MacBook

Travel

Position Sticky

Minus One

Enjoy the Summer

The Walk Back

Chimed, I’m sure

Collections

They Don’t Need to Go On Forever