In Ann Arbour for #RLDM 👩🏼‍💻

Today we had our first HWC in Edmonton. We had four people in attendance; everyone was either building their own personal sites on the university server, or helping people navigate the basics of building a site.

The plan is to have a weekly to bi-weekly meeting where we provide people with the tools to build their own sites. I'm starting with University pages, as it's something people should just have in general, but I'm going to write up some tutorials to motivate and guide people through the hurdles of getting involved in the indieweb community.

Today in grad-school: robot tea parties.

Blossom season in Toronto is beautiful #yyz

Well, it looks like House of Cards will mirror the original series.

Man, AirBNB hosts can be awful.

I went on an adventure looking for two things in Toronto: coffee and yarn.

I wanted to explore the city through it's cafes---something Edmonton doesn't have enough of. Finding odd coffee shops around town in the different neighbourhoods was a way for me to scratch my caffeine-addiction itch while planning my way through the different villages.

This is the building RBC reasearch and a number of other startups are based out of. It's right next to UofT campus and was apparently the first hospital in Upper-Canada. The research team is based out of what used to be the surgery room. Rumour has it unlucky patients were shuttled across the street via underground tunnels to the former biology building.

Up until this point, I hadn't had a chance to explore the city very thoroughly, so my impression of Toronto was based off of the university and it's downtown core---condos and offices. However, if you head in the right direction, a couple blocks away from the lab the high-rises immediately disappear and you're left with small houses and duplexes.

I ended up at yarns untangled, a small knitting store on the edge of Kensington market. One of the challenges of I've had in Edmonton is finding a knitting community that's close enough to where I live. I figured that in Toronto I might be able to find interesting hand-dyed Canadian yarn---stuff I wouldn't be able to get in Edmonton. I wasn't wrong. I just finished a jumper, and was looking to start a cardigan. They had the most beautiful green yarn. After petitioning the patrons on colour choices, I walked out with the buttons and wool to start a new sweater.

One of the things that really impressed me, was the number of people who were just knitting and socializing in the store. They really had a community going---everyone seemed to know each other. It was like a hub for near-by knitters.

Someone complimented me on my handshake: apparently it's the best in the room.

Where I'm living for the next two weeks. #yyc

Day at the art gallery.