Hotel Existence

Ode to my Miyata Civicross Bike

Richard Audette — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 2004, I was living in Toronto near Bathurst and Eglinton, and commuting by TTC to my job at a company that built control systems for pipe organs near Woodbine & John, in Markham - about 20 km. As spring approached, I thought it might be fun to try commuting by bike. I wasn’t 100% committed to the idea, so I was looking for something affordable - I found a used Miyata Civicross for which I paid $175. The Civicross is a hybrid entry level bike, made in Taiwan, sold in early 1990s.

The Joy of Shipping

Richard Audette — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This post was first published in The Evolving Analyst, a collection of writing on business analysis compiled by Marcus Udokang and Emal Bariali. Marcus and I discuss The Joy of Shipping on his podcast, The Inquisitive Analyst, which you can watch on YouTube.

Epigraph

“At Microsoft, there was no peer pressure to do anything except work and ship on time. If you did, you got a Ship-it Award. Easy. Black and White.” - Douglas Coupland, from his novel Microserfs

OpenClaw. Meh.

Richard Audette — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

When I built my blogging bot in 2023, I spent time thinking about how to make it interesting - the best results came from making my bot sum up forum threads. But there was no discussion, no personality. I then tried creating bot-bot discussions. I’d thought about having it participate in Twitter threads, but decided it was one thing to post what we now call slop, another to try to engage with slop.

Creating a game with the OpenCode Coding Agent

Richard Audette — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I was looking to spend some time to get a feeling for the current state of AI/LLM software development tools, and decided to try building a simple game using the OpenCode agent connected to the Claude Sonnet 4.5 LLM. I set out to build a 2 player lunar lander type game in the Godot game engine. I had never used Godot before.

The Build

Using OpenCode is a bit different from asking LLMs/ChatGPT to write code snippets. There is a plan mode and a build mode.

I Brought The Ages Home by Charles Trick Currelly

Richard Audette — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Download I Brought The Ages Home by Charles T. Currelly epub

I read Charles T. Currelly’s autobiography, I Brought The Ages Home, a number of years ago. I found it to be such an interesting book - he was a real life Canadian Indiana Jones, leading archaeological digs and acquiring artifacts. He describes the late 1800s/early 1900s in Canada as a time full of promise and opportunity.

Charles T. Currelly (January 11, 1876 – April 10, 1957) was the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1914 to 1946, and acquired much its initial collection. As he passed away over 50 years ago, his autobiography fell into the public domain (note: on December 30, 2022, the general term of copyright protection in Canada changed from 50 to 70 years after the death of the author, but this did not affect works that were already in the public domain). I created an ebook version, as it’s an interesting public domain work that I haven’t seen shared elsewhere and we all benefit from a work with some historical importance being freely available (see /create-epub-from-paperback/ for how it was created). A scanned copy of the book is available from archive.org.

Creating an ePub ebook from a Paperback

Richard Audette — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Since reading about James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s work entering the public domain in Canada in 2015, I’ve thought about creating public domain ebooks that I could share online. At the time, I picked up a copy of Octopussy, and scanned it. I ran it through the OCR software bundled with the scanner I was using, and the results were pretty mediocre. At that time, the OCR process was certainly faster than typing, but the output required a lot of manual review - I abandonned the project. In short order, the Canadian Gutenberg team created excellent James Bond ePubs, and I note now that other ones are available from Faded Page.

Easy fix for Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II Broken Case

Richard Audette — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Headphone Rant

I have been frustrated with earbuds since mobile phone manufactures dropped the 1/8" inch headphone jack - I think this trend started with the iPhone 7 in 2016. After playing around with headphones with proprietary connectors and adapters for almost a decade, I decided to buy wireless ear buds in April 2024. I chose the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II. I haven’t been impressed - mostly due to frustration when they refuse to pair with my phone (my Sony portable speaker is flawless in this regard). My wife/kids seem to do better with various Anker soundcore models. But… the noise cancelling on these Bose earbuds is awesome for sharing a small space, walking in loud urban areas, and traveling on public transit. I had planned to use them until they stop working altogether.

My Scottish Roots

Richard Audette — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I was fortunate to be able to spend time with one of my great-grandmothers, who lived until I was in my early 20s. We great-grandkids knew her as GG. GG was born in Lerwick in 1907. In 1912, her parents moved the family to Scotland’s mainland. She had my grandmother in 1928, and they left Scotland for Canada in 1930. So in 2024, when my wife and I were planning a trip to Scotland, I reviewed GG’s memoirs and added the places she wrote about to our itinerary. Here’s what I was able to find.

An LLM re-write of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Richard Audette — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I was looking for something to read in June, and decided to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, the author’s account of his leading the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The book was made into a movie, Lawrence of Arabia. As the author died in 1935, the book is long out of copyright, and I downloaded a free copy from Standard Ebooks.

Paddling Toronto

Richard Audette — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Paddling is something I’ve associated with canoes and cottage country outside of the city. Living in a small space in Toronto, it didn’t seem like an activity I could take up, even though Toronto is located on the shores of Lake Ontario. That changed when a friend picked up a deeply discounted inflatable paddle board at Winners (an off-price department store) and I got the chance to try it out. It was a blast, I was sold: I picked up a couple myself in 2021.