The highlights of my week were the conversations I had. From hot
chocolate at Farcoast with Driss (whom I’d last met at the Wikinomics
event in February) to hot chocolate at Linux Caffe with Michael (whom
I’d just gotten to know over blogs and e-mail) to tea with Ian and
Gabriel, my week was just packed with interesting conversations. Add
to that the e-mail conversations I’ve been having and the connections
I’ve made… wow. Great week learning more about this connecting
thing. =) More thoughts on that later.

My work permit arrived! I’ll be starting on Oct 15. I also took an
English language test to prove my proficiency for the skilled worker
permanent residency application, and I renewed my social insurance
number as well.

Reading and writing – I’ve been catching up with a number of
Enterprise 2.0 blogs. Because Google Reader allows you to view past
blog entries by scrolling down, it was easy for me to read, say, all
of Luis Suarez’s posts on Elsua.net. I’ve
also been working on my book. Less writing this week, more playing
around with Emacs. I took another look at Org-mode and realized that
it has a number of cool features that I’d wanted to do in Planner, so
I might move more of my config over—maybe even make it more of the
focus of my book, as it’s built into recent versions of Emacs.

Speaking of code: I added many features to my interviewbot in Second
Life. I sent the latest version to Stephen Perelgut. It includes a
factory that creates an interviewbot based on a stored notecard and
personalized for a particular avatar.

I tried out the static trapeze last Tuesday. Although the static
trapeze was closer to the ground than the flying trapeze I tried a few
months ago, I found it scarier because I didn’t have a safety harness
on and had to rely on the instructor spotting me. I didn’t complete
the two-hour lesson because my hands hurt so much that I couldn’t hang
on to the bars, but that’s just because I haven’t developed calluses.
It’s great exercise and upper-body conditioning, though, and I’m
looking forward to going back next week. Thinking of the trapeze has
also helped me build more exercise into my daily schedule. Today I did
100 crunches, which will come in handy when I need to get my knees up
and over the bar!

As for cooking: we made lemon chicken last Friday, and we made
sinigang today. Yummy!

Random Emacs symbol: combine-after-change-execute – Function: This function is for use internally in `combine-after-change-calls’.