The Real Sweat Lodge Experience
A few of my friends have raised concern about my attending the sweat lodge ceremony due to recent events in the US. Upon further reading, I see where everything failed here. 1.) The “leader” was a self help expert and not trained in the ways of Native American tradition. The group I sweat with are from the Turtle Clan of Mohawk Nation. We have the knowledge of the ancestors that was passed down through generations. We build our lodges in the traditional way and follow tradition. At our last ceremony, we actually talked about how there are people trying to adapt traditional Native American practices for new age healing techniques. This ain’t yoga; people ca

GeoIP Redirect with Maxmind
I’ve been working on implementing (or trying to implement) GeoIP redirection for a few days and nailed it yesterday. It took a while to figure out how to do it, but was a snap to implement. The documentation that comes with it is not very good, but I found a script on some obscure site that hooked into MaxMind’s CountryIP database. Worked like a charm!

Tattoo Me – Baphomet by Chris Moniz from Integral Temple
Here are a couple of videos of me getting tattooed: Number one – shading Number two – colouring I got the inspiration from an image (below) I saw from Art On You Studios representing Baphomet – an imagined pagan deity that is also associated with Satanism. I gave the concept to Mo, he took care of the rest.

2009 IDEA Conference Wrap Up and Thanks!
WOW When I approached Russ last year to bring the IDEA Conference to Toronto, I had no idea that it would have turned out into the amazing experience everyone has told me that they’ve had. The reason I pushed hard was because of the many conversations with local Toronto experience design practitioners I had previous to having planned it – they wanted to have something of their own and they wanted to bring their friends to their city. I would like to thank everybody that traveled here for the conference – it demonstrates not only the dedication to your field of practice, but also your commitment to congregate with your “people” and participate in the c

Tattoo Me
On Friday, I’ll be getting my first of what will probably be a fair amount of tattoo work done over time. Why? After my recent sweat lodge, it became clear that I needed to do this. I’ll be 40 in February. I’m effectively right in the swing of things that may be attributable to a mid-life re-awakening. I didn’t go out and buy a Ford Mustang, I haven’t bought a motorbike (although still entertaining that notion), but I think that now is the right time for a tattoo. One of the things most of us have control over is our own body. A number of people chronicle events or milestones through tattoo work. it helps remind them of things good or ba