Solar Eclipse 2024

On Monday April 8, Sarah and I drove to our neighbouring province of New Brunswick to see a solar eclipse. And what a sight it was! We drove about 4 hours to Shediac, New Brunswick to stay in an Airbnb. We drove up on Sunday evening, but I played in the church band that morning, […]

South Africa Part 3 – Kirstenbosch and Table Mountain

Today we started early, and went to a beautiful botanical garden area called Kirstenbosch. It was a very large green area near the side of the Table Mountain Range which pushes into Cape Town. The views of the various mountain peaks were stunning, the plants were really cool, and as usual, we found lots of […]

South Africa Part 2 – Intaka Island and Undersea Cables

On day 2, our plan was to go to Intaka Island. And then if we had time and energy afterward we would do something else (turns out we didn’t 🙂). Here we go! Intaka Island Intaka Island is in a part of Cape Town called Century City. It’s an inland, human-made island with a canal […]

South Africa Part 1 – Flights and the First Travel Glitches

This year, Sarah and I went to South Africa! Sarah’s cousin was getting married close to Cape Town, and we decided to go to the wedding and also take a couple weeks of vacation to see some of the country. It was a great trip, and in this series of posts I’ll be sharing what […]

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Last week my team at work met up in Sao Paulo, Brazil! I had never been to Brazil, or anywhere in South America before, so I was excited for the opportunity. I left Sunday afternoon, and arrived home the following Sunday morning afternoon (more on that later). I arrived in Brazil on Monday morning, met […]

My Chess Studying System

I started playing chess when I was pretty young. My dad taught me, and I used to play with him a lot, along with my friend Patrick. I stopped playing so much around high school age, but about a year and a half ago I picked it back up. I’ve been really enjoying studying and […]

Round 1 Game Analysis – Remembrance Day Open 2022

This year I played the Remembrance Day Open in Halifax, NS. It was a fun tournament, albeit humbling. My round 1 opponent was rated just under 1400 CFC. My rating is currently 1473, but it’s provisional and, I suspect, a bit too high (and will likely decrease after this tournament). So I was ready for […]

TIL – My Tunnel Vision in Chess

Today I played the second day of a chess tournament, and I spent a little bit of time analyzing my games. I lost both of my games today, unfortunately, and I’ll write up a more full analysis of them when I get to it. But something I learned quite poignantly, is that I seem to […]

Book Review: Start with Why

I had heard of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why for some time, and had seen his TED talk. But I hadn’t actually read the book until recently. I found it pretty inspiring, and wanted to outline some of the ideas that I found helpful. The Golden Circle The key illustration of the book is the […]

Tenable CTF Writeup

This past weekend, Sarah and I took part in the first CTF competition hosted by the cybersecurity company Tenable. The competition ran from Thursday to Monday, and had a lot of really great challenges. We had a lot of fun with it, and managed to place 56th out of over 1700 teams on the scoreboard. […]