Benjamin Wallace's Blog, page 9

An Unfortunate Accident

We went to a couple of open houses this weekend. It’s been years since I’ve done that and I was surprised how quickly I became comfortable with walking into a stranger’s home and rooting around, judging them for their taste and questioning their design choices. While each home had its quirks, after a while they […]

How To Be A Great Boss

I’ve been my own boss for a while now and I thought I was pretty good at it. But I found myself back in a corporate environment a few times over the last few months and it reminded me exactly what makes a great leader: Halving things, animal metaphors and having hard stops. That’s it really. […]

Love Death and Robots

I sat and watched the entirety of Love Death and Robots last night. Morbid curiosity got me through the first  three episodes. But I’m glad I stuck with it because I really enjoyed a lot of the stories in the series. If you’re not familiar with the Netflix series, it’s an animated collection of science […]

Rad and the Fall of the Iron Curtain

The Color of Money. Creed. Cobra Kai. I love these shows because they give us a look at some of our favorite characters twenty or thirty years later. And with the success of Creed, I’m starting to get my hopes up for a continuation of the movie Rad. I’m sure you all, like me, have […]

Revenge and Killer Whales

Revenge of the Apocalypse is now available in audio. The book takes place in Niagara Falls so I thought I’d talk a little about my experience with the city. Growing up in Canada was a lot like that episode of G.I. Joe where Steeler, Flint, Lady Jaye and others find themselves in a world where […]

The Strange Case of Edwin Twitmyer

I was explaining Pavlov’s work on classical conditioning to my daughter the other day and I had to do a quick search to recall Pavlov’s first name. (It was not Teddy, which was my first guess). While doing this research I learned that a psychology professor named Edwin Twitmyer actually posted similar research a year […]

Recent Read: Deathstalker by Simon R Green

I’m enjoying this one now. Owen Deathstalker, last of the Deathstalkers, has just been outlawed by the Queen of the Human Empire. So he’s on the run and is going to start a revolution to get his life back. Fun stuff so far.

Recent Read: Our Oriental Heritage (The Story of Civilization Book 1)

I’m taking this one slowly so I don’t throw my back out, but I’m really enjoying it. It was written in 1935 and the full series sums up all of history right up until Napoleon. Someone warned me that archeological work done in the past 80 has proven that some of Durant’s theories were wrong. […]

Recent Read: Based On a True Story by Norm MacDonald

There aren’t a lot of people from the Ottawa Valley I can look up to. Norm is the exception. And just by looking at that cover I’m sure there’s no danger whatsoever in admiring a comedian because they will never let you down. This book instantly earns a place next Bruce Campbell’s How to Make […]

Recent Read: Hard Sell by Piers Anthony

It wasn’t until I was done reading this that I discovered it’s actually several short stories put together. When I learned that, it made more sense. Still, it’s hard to go wrong with rocket cars and Martian real estate. From the cover: Mr. Fisk Centers has it made: a personal fortune of three million dollars […]