Remember when my Nextbit Robin mobile phone crashed to the floor of a VIA Rail car while I slept?

Well, rather than using this as an opportunity to buy a brand new phone, I took Nextbit up on its offer to replace the phone with a new one for $99. This process was conducted professionally, but required me sending back the smashed phone to Nextbit HQ in California, waiting for it to be examined, paying a PayPal invoice for the replacement phone, and then waiting for the replacement to be couriered to me. It just arrived, and it’s waiting for me at home.

In the meantime I needed a way of staying in touch with the people and machines in my life, so I took my old Nokia N95, purchased nine years ago, out of retirement, and I’ve used it as my everyday phone for the last two weeks.

It’s a testament to the robustness and backward-compatibility of the mobile telephone network that I was able to simply stick my SIM card (with a snap-on enlargener to accommodate the older full-size SIM format) into the N95 and, presto, it worked just like it did in 2008.

Well, not just like it did in 2008.

I could still make and receive phone calls and text messages, and sort of connect to wireless Internet. But it turns out that the world’s gone SSL in the years since, and the ciphers built into the Nokia web browser are old enough that the phone was unable to establish a connection with most websites other than Google. So I couldn’t surf the web. Or upload photos, or check my email.

In other words, it was a credible recreation of early-millennium mobility. And I loved it.

Not having the ability to do any of the distracting things that our modern phones allow us to do meant that I was forced to ruminate in the coffee line rather than check the CBC headlines or refresh my Instagram likes.

And the experience showed me the truth of the recent study Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity:

Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity.

As tempted as I am to stay within this peaceful garden of distractionless freedom, there were just two many practical downsides to not having my data at my mobile fingertips to make this a sustainable lifestyle.

I need to be able to connect to borked servers, to look up phone numbers, to get urgent Slack messages, to use Google Maps, to have 1Password at the ready.

While I was able to stumble through life for the last two weeks without any of this, doing so was only possible through a combination of borrowing others’ gear (I had to borrow Hon. David MacDonald’s iPad on Tuesday morning to do some emergency online banking so that Oliver could pay for art class), and using my clunky old iPad 2.

So as much as I’m mindful that my cognitive capacity is going to suffer, this afternoon I’ll dive back into the smartphone waters. Wish me luck.

Careful readers may have noticed that I’ve been dropping the occasional sketch into the blog (and into my erratic Instagram feed).

This all started back in March with a sketch of Oliver and Ethan. As I explained briefly then, I was sent off down this road by an online course called How to Draw Without Talent that I found my way to via the Dan Misener-helmed Work in Progress podcast (an estimable effort in its own right; you should subscribe).

Beyond the dulcet tones of Dan Misener advertorially singing its praises, the thing that drew me to the course was the “Without Talent” part.

I have long thought myself without talent for sketching, drawing, painting, and related arts because I was so abjectly unsuccessful at them during my public school years. I’m pretty sure that there was an implicit “we understand you have no talent, so just try your best” vibe from my public school art teachers that only reinforced this.

The capper was when I took my portfolio to Portfolio Day at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto in the late 1980s. I did this not because I thought myself talented in the “fictional fine arts,” but because I’d cultivated an interested in graphic design and typesetting and was seeking to further this. The reviewer of my portfolio, from the Rhode Island School of Design as it happens, opened my portfolio, filled with posters, newsletters, broadsides, and booklets, and their first question was “where are your drawings?” At which point I was forced to admit having no talent in this regard and thus no drawings. Their reply was something along the lines of “your work is intensely typographical.” Which, I think, was a way of saying “you have no talent” in as gentle a way as possible.

Suffice to say that I did not pursue a fine arts education. And my sense of having no talent was cemented.

It’s for this reason that taking a course with “Without Talent” in the title was a beckoning door for me. I figured that, for $39, what did I have have to loose.

And so, in a hotel in Halifax on a cold March night, I payed my tuition, got over my “gross misuse of the letter K” issues with the Skool spelling, and started to draw.

And I’ve been drawing every day since.

I’ve drawn my house and my family and my family’s houses. I’ve drawn churches and buildings and many, many cups of coffee. I’ve drawn flowers and hair brushes and Ethan the Dog.

I have no delusions of having talent, but I’ve decided, goaded on by the excellent tutelage of instructor Danny Gregory, to set that aside as a reason for not taking the pen out for a ride.

The effect has been transformative: while my degree of talent may not have changed, my eyes certainly have. I now look at buildings–or people, or hair brushes, or dogs–and see things I’ve never seen. This is a hard thing to describe with any degree of accuracy, but I feel, sensorily, as though I am able to taste food for the first time.

As I wrote in a fan letter to Danny Gregory:

And here’s the revelation: the source code for sketching is all right there. Staring me in the face. Which isn’t to say that it’s easy nor automatic, but it is, much to my surprise and delight, possible.

I’ve come to realize another important thing: having lived with a truly-talented artist for the last 26 years, I’d ceded the role of artist in the relationship to her, carving out my creative identity through typographic means. I’d always thought, subconsciously, that daring to do anything more overtly artistic would be like Julia Child’s husband cooking supper.

It turns out that the great thing about art is that there’s enough of it to go around: anyone can do it, and one person’s doing of it doesn’t detract from another person’s doing it.

My father asked me, on a recent visit, what Catherine thinks of my work. I told him that I didn’t know (other than her generous habit of Instagram favouriting). But it doesn’t really matter in any case, as I’ve also discovered that sketching is a pursuit that, like so many other things, has more to do with the doing than the consuming.

This is all a very long-winded way of saying (without any incentive other than wanting to share) that Learn to Draw Without Talent is on sale for $23 US this week. If, like me, your grade 7 art teacher made it clear that you were an art-loser, and you want to get over that, I cannot recommend this as a gateway drug more highly.

Let me also take this chance to recommend Danny Gregory’s books An Illustrated Journey: Inspiration From the Private Art Journals of Traveling Artists, Illustrators and Designers, An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration From The Private Sketchbooks Of Artists, Illustrators And Designers, Everyday Matters and A Kiss Before You Go: An Illustrated Memoir of Love and Loss. The latter two are powerful ruminations on life’s challenges and have been enormously helpful to me in a way that transcends their visual inspirations.

I’m so happy I found my way to this pursuit; it makes me wonder what other assumptions about my limitations I’ve internalized. So much more to learn…

Clarks shoes, orange socks, new trousers. An early morning sketch at Receiver Coffee on the waterfront.

I came across this envelope on the side-table this morning, a letter to Catherine from her mother.

We lived at 50 Great George Street in Charlottetown from 1993 to 1994, so it’s more than twenty years old.

The great revelation in making this sketch was that buried deep in my muscle memory is the ability to write cursively.

The former Coast Guard base on the Charlottetown waterfront has yet to be completely touristified; there are still delightful remnants of its past.

Like this fire box.

I was very tempted to open the door to see what would happen, but there was a 5% chance that choppers would be despatched to my location, so I opted against.

I set out after work last night for an address on Fitzroy Street for an appointment to swap one of my maps of Charlottetown.

As I walked farther and farther down Fitzroy, the advance of the house numbers appeared to slow to a crawl, and I realized that I was in danger of being late for supper; so I gave Catherine a call.

“This house is a lot farther from town than I realized!” I exclaimed.

And therein revealed not only that I’m Charlottetownocentric, but that my world can be described by a circle that extends only a view blocks radiant from my house; everything beyond is terra incognita.

I made a quick trip to the Atlantic Superstore last night to pick up a few things; we’re a Sobeys family, but, driving by the Superstore, I was reminded that they sell rather tasty smoky tempeh strips, and I temporarily switched my religion to accommodate.

The tempeh section of the Superstore is right beside the pharmacy, and while I was making the rounds I noticed a “wellness station” there.

While on the surface this looked like a version of a blood pressure station of the type that most pharmacies have these days, it turned out to be a more complete “personal analytics” pod that measures, in addition to blood pressure, pulse, weight and body fat percentage.

Starting a session requires an on-screen enrollment: creating an account with email address and password, and answering a few questions (height, sex, etc.)

The machine then measures blood pressure and pulse (using the traditional left-arm-in-cuff method), weight (you raise your legs to a bar and the scale measures you through the bench you’re sitting on) and body fat percentage (you hold onto a couple of handles, and are measured using bioelectrical impedance).

You get your results both on the screen and, if you like, via yourwellnessstation.ca:

The Superstore isn’t doing this for altruistic reasons: in addition to building foot traffic for the pharmacy, the privacy policy for the service discloses a range of other possible uses, including marketing back to you using the information gathered:

To support the Wellness Services, which we provide at no cost to you, we may use non sensitive Personal Information and data collected through cookies and similar technology to deliver Loblaw and third-party interest-based advertising to you on and off the Wellness Services. We will obtain your permission before we provide individualized Body Measurement data or sensitive Personal Information to third-party ad networks to deliver third-party interest-based advertising outside of the Wellness Services. Please note, and you agree through use of the Wellness Services, that we may personalize your experience, including by showing you advertising, on the Wellness Services using data we learn about you.

So one can anticipate ads in the style of “we noticed your blood pressure is higher this month, ask your pharmacist about Paltroxitron Alpha.”

Which makes “no cost to you” a semantically shaky statement to make.

Indeed, the technology driving all this is made by a U.S. company called Higi, and their marketing materials made it clear that this is the goal:

Users engage on our platform, track progress at our stations, online at higi.com and via mobile applications, engage in challenges and connect with their health community via higi’s omni-channel platform. For those with a stake in the health and wellbeing of their community, higi is a gateway, allowing our partners to:

• Engage with patients for better outcomes
• Drive at-risk patients to the pharmacy
• Find at-risk populations and become their partner in health
• Use our marketing channels to promote products and programs

The creepiness of this makes me think that personal analytics of this type are the sort of thing that we should consider investing in public infrastructure to support: if we install public analytics pods in places like community centres and libraries, and allow users to store the data gathered in a medium that they control, then we could have much more confidence over the privacy and security aspects of the tool, and could have complete, transparent control over who we choose, if anyone, to share the data with.

I’d be much happier having the option to share my personal analytics with the office of my family doctor than I would handing it over to Loblaw’s.

All that being said, looking under the hood of the yourwellnesstation.ca site, it turns out that the data gathered is conveniently available as JSON; for example:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "REDACTED",
      "userId": "REDACTED",
      "serviceId": "higi",
      "referenceId": null,
      "deviceId": "14694",
      "categories": [
        "Health"
      ],
      "timestamp": "2017-07-06T20:01:41.000-04:00",
      "timestampUTC": "2017-07-07T00:01:41.000Z",
      "createdUTC": "2017-07-07T00:01:43.995Z",
      "updatedUTC": "2017-07-07T00:01:43.995Z",
      "selfReported": false,
      "anomalyCodes": [],
      "metrics": {
        "height": 1.85,
        "weight": 91.625658742027156,
        "pulse": 76,
        "fatRatio": 22.21,
        "hydration": "0.35",
        "bmcResistance": 665.2,
        "isAthlete": false,
        "systolic": 103,
        "diastolic": 74,
        "checkinHigiStation": 1,
        "gender": "m",
        "age": 51,
        "bpClass": "normal",
        "map": 83.666666666666671,
        "mapClass": "normal",
        "pulseClass": "normal",
        "bmi": 26.77,
        "bmiClass": "overweight",
        "fatClass": "acceptable"
      },
      "hasGps": false,
      "gpsUrl": "",
      "kioskInfo": {
        "kioskId": "49043",
        "mergeId": "14694",
        "address1": "465 Univerisity Ave",
        "address2": null,
        "city": "Charlottetown",
        "state": "PE",
        "zip": "C1A 4N8",
        "organizations": [
          "Real Atlantic Superstore"
        ],
        "gps": {
          "latitude": 46.2513,
          "longitude": -63.13864,
          "address": null
        },
        "type": "Retail",
        "hours": "{"Mon":"7:00 am-12:00 am","Tue":"12:00 am-12:00 am","Wed":"12:00 am-12:00 am","Thu":"12:00 am-12:00 am","Fri":"12:00 am-12:00 am","Sat":"12:00 am-12:00 am","Sun":"12:00 pm-8:00 pm"}",
        "weeklyHours": {
          "Mon": "7:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Tue": "12:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Wed": "12:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Thu": "12:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Fri": "12:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Sat": "12:00 am-12:00 am",
          "Sun": "12:00 pm-8:00 pm"
        },
        "timeOffsetMins": -240,
        "dma": "",
        "dmaName": "",
        "serial": "CSA-2016085107",
        "mapVisible": "true",
        "status": "Deployed",
        "locationId": "C1A4N8-002",
        "storeNumber": "Real Atlantic Superstore #00376",
        "storeDivision": null
      }
    }
  ],
  "paging": {
    "current": "https://coreapi.higi.com:443/activity/users/FRs6hh7KDUatmMMiIcG1kg/activities?sort=timestampDesc&metrics=weight%2cbmi%2cfatRatio&includeWatts=false&includeDisplayMetrics=false&includeKioskInfo=true&pageNumber=1&pageSize=200&cacheKey=pxB35KoiX0KVlLhUBdVhsg",
    "pageNumber": 1,
    "pageSize": 200,
    "total": 1
  }
}

This means it would be trivial to develop an app to harvest this data and use it for personal rather than corporate betterment, using the pod with a throwaway email address and thus taking advantage of the infrastructure without being subject to the sketchy marketing aspects.

On the chopsticks at Ta-Ke Sushi on Queen Street, instructions for use (emphasis mine):

Hold first chopstick in original position move the second one up and down now you can pick up anything.

The “Maki Lunch Special” at Ta-Ke is a bento box filled with a nice assortment of food. Recommended.

I found an interesting 2015 research paper from Montreal titled Identification of the minimum size of the shared-car fleet required to satisfy car-driving trips in Montreal, the abstract of which reads:

This paper examines how many cars would be required to fulfill all car driver trips in a metropolitan area if these cars were shared rather than privately controlled. It proposes a twofold analysis regarding the use of cars in urban areas using data from a large scale Origin–Destination travel survey conducted in the Greater Montreal Area in 2008 as case study. In a first step, the use of privately owned cars and their level of usage are assessed through indicators such as the proportion of daily time parked at home location, parked elsewhere and travelling. In the region, 27 % of the owned cars are not used during a typical weekday. According to the estimations, a car will, on average, be parked more than 95 % of the time. In a second step, the research simulates a full-scale mutualization of cars in the region. Cars required to fulfill all car driver trips observed in the survey are generated based on two hypotheses of access distance to the shared cars (250 and 500 m cells). It was found that between 48 and 59 % of the current fleet of privately owned cars would be sufficient to fulfill all car driver trips at the metropolitan level.

I like the phrase “full-scale mutualization.” I think many aspects of our lives could benefit from mutualization.