Now that fall is about a month away, and I don’t often carry a camera with me, I’ve decided to curate a couple Twitpics from the summer:

08/22: An intriguing-looking house on Gonzales Beach.

08/02: Pedo Bear at the Peace Arch.

08/07: Truck Music in Gastown (Michael Connelly reference, BTW)

You can see my complete Twitpic stream here.

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The End of History from BrewDog on Vimeo.

These entrepreneurial brewmasters have thrown down the gauntlet against the “German sausage-eaters” (their words, not mine) to produce the world’s strongest beer at 55% abv. They didn’t stop there. These guys embedded the bottle inside the body of a squirrel.

How’s that for fresh thinking?

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1. What do you love doing most?

2. How can others benefit?

3. How can you do it massively to reach other people?

4. How can you do it intelligently?

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Believe it or not, you’ve only got six months left in 2010. To be sure, BP will make the highlight reel — but this blog post is not about world events or stuff out there, it’s about you.

Now, when you read that you had six months left, did a little voice inside say, “I’ve got six months until my next New Year’s resolution”?

What happened to this year’s? Did you finish already? My guess is, probably not. If that’s the case, you just broke a promise to yourself. Do you find yourself breaking promises to yourself often? “I won’t eat that extra slice of chocolate cake.” “I’m going to lose 10 pounds.”

Do you find you keep making those statements to yourself over and over again? Here’s the deal: You need to stop making New Year’s resolutions. Stop it. Any promise worth keeping — to yourself, no less — is worth making and acting on NOW.

Notice I also wrote “acting on.” A promise is worthless unless you take drastic and immediate action. Maybe you throw out all your cake recipes or draw up a daily fitness schedule. The fact is, unless you’re willing to make a change, you will continue the cycle of broken promises.

You’ve got six months. Do it in three. Act now.

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It’s Canada Day! That means the Dominion is 143 years old. I thought it would be a great to dust off a couple clips from the Ministry of Public Information’s archives. This is Canada. Right here. Enjoy.

The Log Driver’s Waltz

I smell burnt toast, Historica Moments

Body Break with Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod

Degrassi High opening

Gunnarolla – Canadian, Please

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photo credit: Dru!

Sure, we all need to get outside a little more. I even blogged about being more active just a couple days ago. Now, here’s proof it will really do you good.

Researchers at the University of Rochester found that test subjects who were exposed to nature on a daily basis felt better about themselves. They felt more energetic and had a greater sense of vitality. Now, tell me you won’t perform better with out that? While everybody else is slurping back coffee, you’ll have the real mental edge.

Here’s what’s great about the power of your mind in all this: participants who merely imagined a natural setting on a regular basis felt this same sense of vitality and energy — as if they had gone for a walk in the woods!

The power of visualization works! Imagine taking 10 or 15 minutes from your busy day to just wander through a forest in your mind. You don’t even have to get out of your pyjamas.

A couple minutes a day is all you need for a greater mental advantage over your peers. You will do better in your professional life and better in your personal life with this renewed sense of energy.

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You’ve all heard the advice your mom or dad would give you when  you were young and got angry: Take a deep breath and count to ten. I don’t know about you, but I’d always feel angry — maybe even angrier.

Research has shown that individuals who can parlay their anger into the right kind of energy are more likely to succeed. Rudyard Kipling was right. Keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs will certainly go along a long way to prove you’ve got what it takes to succeed as a leader.

But there’s more to it than that. Anger is a form of pain, and pain is the greatest motivator. When you feel angry about something — say you lost an important client — use that energy and that pain to motivate yourself to improve. Don’t blow your top and go stomping around the office, although you may feel like it. Instead, ask yourself how you can do better next time or what it was about your plan that went wrong.

Next, find something positive about the situation, no matter how contrived. Maybe that client will be better served and happier with a different company (although you would have done a better job, naturally). Maybe the company you were competing with will feel good about themselves. You can feel good, too. This is pleasure.

Use the combination of pain and pleasure as motivators, and improvements will follow.

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photo credit: ZarrSadus

Gamers who spend their days in front of a computer have the lung capacity and cardiovascular fitness of 60-year-old chain smokers — Gamers in their 20s!

Now, you don’t have to be a gamer to be in rough shape. You can have any job that involves sitting in front of a computer for hours on end. Know anybody like that??

The key to lifelong health is to make sure you exercise every day. You heard me. Every. single. day.

Since my 13th birthday, I’ve been lifting weights. My parents bought me a Weider weight set that came with an instruction booklet from the 1970s full of pictures of juiced-up Venice Beach bodybuilders. I worked at it and eventually graduated to the gym. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t look like the guys in the booklet — I still don’t — but I gave it my all. I even use some of those same weights in my apartment when I don’t have time to hit the gym.

The reason I’ve stuck with it for so long is because I created a positive association to getting in shape. The motivation of being fit, looking fit and feeling like a million bucks was enough to keep me going. It kept me working through the pain.

How many of you break a sweat and then call it quits? Or, how many of you work out for a good two weeks and then skip the gym for two months??

Find the exercise that works for you and do it every day. Your quality of life will improve in the long term, and you’ll feel great in the short term. What are you waiting for? Get off your butts and start today!

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