During one segment of the film, the filmmakers explore the period in which Rush were recording and promoting their landmark 1981 release, Moving Pictures. Through a part of that segment, the song "Tom Sawyer" played in the background.

For whatever reason, my brain latched onto those lines from the song and I realized that they so suscinctly sum up how I try to approach just about everything. As a designer, drummer, music enthusiast, and I hope, well-rounded human being, it's exactly that which drives me to do over-extend myself in my own work -- to hope for the best, to try to do more than I'm able -- or at least think I am. To push myself and others toward new things and to never sit still for too long.

The big news, aside from that we're doing something new is that we might do things differently this time based on the frankly overwhelming reaction to the Ampersand print. This could go a few ways:

1. A first limited edition letterpress run. Possibly at an extra-large size as we now have a line on a printer than can handle letterpress work up to 28" × 38" (I know -- wow!)
2. An in-person only conference exclusive (Hint: Typecon) since Luke, Grant and I will all be in attendance to sign and number the prints and pose for glamour shots
3. A second general run based on a smaller print size and possibly different inks and stock

We haven't finalized anything yet but will shortly. While we don't want to give the game away too soon, we'll no doubt toss a few Tweets out and provide some sort of early info via either Twitter and/or Dribbble.

Over the years many, many articles and studies illustrating this have been written and smart people have come up with approaches to at least attempt to counter the constant barrage of information, requests for our time and attention. These things each conflicting with our basic need to be in the moment or to be able to just get on with it.

I've been struggling with these things over the last few years myself as many people know. They directly relate to my experiences with burnout. Recently I started to notice that my particular burnout buttons felt like they were being pushed again -- little by little.

This time though I'm ready.

I like to think I generally learn from my mistakes. As a result I'm taking a proactive approach and closely monitoring those particular triggers. This means changing routines and taking an objective look at how my days have been and are generally structured.

In doing just that, what I quickly discovered was that I'd become lazy about certain triggers. In other words, someone left the water hose on and the dripping was turning into more of a trickle.

To counter this I've started setting new rules for myself and going back and revisiting ones I let slip. Simple as that. For example:

• Very deliberately breaking my day into managable segments
• Turning off all social media distractions throughout the day
• Setting specific times when I will check and respond to email
• Taking deliberate breaks to clear my head
• Setting limits and reinforcing how long I'll allow myself to work on something
• Maintaining a clear work-home boundary (with obvious exceptions when required)
• Prioritizing tasks more effectively

These rules and others that I've been attempting to set up around myself are simply to ensure the time I need to be creative is carefully guarded. If that time isn't protected and nurtured, it's easily trampled on by others, whether intentionally or not.

If you feel like you're days are too often spent in a reactionary tailspin, you might want to take a hard look and do some of the same.

I was told it was fractured, or rather my fifth metacarpal was. And so now for the next few weeks I get to enjoy being somewhat useless due my being right-handed. Fantastic.

Using a mouse is near impossible, or at least comical, especially as I try to compensate with my left. Writing or drawing with a pen is equally pointless mostly due to an inability to move my wrist because of the splint. My Wacom hasn't proven to be much help either.

What I realized though was that this was going to be a good opportunity to use my iPad to it's maximum potential. I can type reasonably well with one hand (I wrote this entry as such in Simplenote) and can doodle with my finger using Adobe Ideas or Drafts. Anything detailed is pretty much out of the question though which is going to prove challenging knowing what I have to accomplish over the next few weeks.

This time I suspect will also turn out to be somewhat of an exercise in better empathizing with the accessibility needs of those with reduced motor skills or inability to use a mouse; if for no other reason than for the next few weeks I more or less am one of those people.

As much as I'm in favour of worthwhile new technology, the designer and anthropologist in me desperately does not want to see the physical object -- the "artifact" -- go the way of the dodo.

High Fidelity

Contrary to the music industry where fidelity has started decreasing -- from CDs to MP3 and M4A audio formats, digital books are moving in the opposite direction and becoming higher resolution than their paper counterparts. Text on paper doesn't scale well, but digital text does.

An important counterpoint though is the issue of photos and illustrations in books -- those things will likely go the low-resolution route in the short-term.

Dots on paper require high resolution to output any semblance of quality. Pixels can be a bit more forgiving, though that is less true as displays increase in resolution and artifacts begin to become more apparent. Early HD television is a good example of this occurrence.

As technology and publishers' familiarity with electronic format options improves, along with a bit of experimentation, this will likely change. There's a lot of promise in digital books, but they should be handled properly now to avoid bad precedents leading the way. For example, as Wired magazine is (hopefully) learning right now, a digital publication made up entirely of JPEG images will not fly. I'm willing to give them a pass on the first attempt -- because at least they're trying something -- but it's not a viable long-term strategy.

Illustration by Brian Stauffer, from The Atlantic Monthly - April 2010

We'll be starting with Laws of Media written with his eldest son, Eric, along with The Gutenberg Galaxy with the goal of releasing both either towards the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011 in order to coincide with Marshall's centenary. Not coincidentally, a much needed new site for the McLuhan Estate will also launch around the same time.

What about his other books? The answer is complicated, but ultimately "we don't know... yet." We've started necessary conversations and hope those will be available in due course.

That said, as was discussed today during our talk, and subsequently, some books may demand a physical artifact. They may not be 'translatable'. Art books or highly art directed books for example; at least not in the open-source ePub format which is how we'd like to see these digital editions released.

This is arguably an experiment and will not be easy for many reasons -- sorting out electronic publication rights (in at least one instance), editorial and design challenges, as well as handling divergent digital formats.

If important books such as McLuhan's are going to make the jump to digital successfully, they deserve to have the same care and attention put into them as their printed counterparts -- and we're in the best position to ensure that happens.

The event is being held at the University of Toronto iSchool, which is appropriate given the timing and content of my portion which will be both relevant to the institution itself (and/or may tick some people off in the process) as well as recent exhibitions from the Scotiabank Contact Photography festival. Our session will be at 2pm in room #2 in case you were wondering.

During my bit, I'll be making the official public announcement about a couple projects that will be occupying a significant portion of my time throughout the next year or so.

One of these has been in the works for some time, but the stars have finally aligned to do something about it. The other one might ruffle a few feathers at U of T. Enough about that for now. I'm sure there'll be more to say in a few days time.

BookCamp 2010 is sold out but there's still a waiting list up at EventBrite if you're interested in attending. I haven't done this type of public speaking in a long time -- it's not quite the same as design presentations to clients, so if you'll be in attendance, please be gentle with me.

But that's slowly changing and things will get back on track. That said, we were all pleasantly surprised to find out the other day that the Ampersand Print was selected as one of the 10 winners (out of about 800 submissions) of a 2010 HOW Poster Design Award.

I'd say the award is further validation that we're on the right track with the idea in the first place. We're in good company with the other winners too -- a hearty congratulations to each of them as well.

To quote competition judge Steve Hartman,

Overall, I was impressed by the posters I was given to review. In the end, I picked posters that met three criteria: What did it do for the overall brand of the organization (if applicable)? Was it something I wish I had designed? Would I hang it on my wall? I have to say that what I chose fits all three. Really nice work, all around.

Thanks to Steve and the fine folks from HOW from all of us involved in LL&S.

Since then I've hummed and hawed about what to do about the website -- the one that became a true testament to the state of the shoes of the cobbler's children.

Until recently it was still getting a fair amount of organic search engine traffic as well as new and repeat referrals, but this whole time it's pretty much been left out in the cold.

Despite neglecting it, there were a few parts of the 'ol site that felt important and I've had tasks in Things since last year to do something about them. As it would happen though, I either haven't had time or enough interest to actually do anything about it. Until last night at least.

Late last night I decided that traffic, and more importantly (to me at least) my interest had dropped off enough to just redirect the domain entirely and be done with it. And so after a couple minutes of changing DNS settings and updating a virtual host configuration, wishingline.com was essentially gone.

I'd say there's a tear in my beer but that was long ago. I'm much older than that now.

Based on the general reaction of the media, celebrities, and probably most of my US-based friends, Apple's new iPad device sure sounds like a winner. Hardly surprising given Apple's basically unbeatable track record over the last few years.

Now if only us Canucks could get our hands on one... Nope. Not feeling left out at all...

As much as I and others have been a bit blasé about it since '09, Southby is still something I think most of us look forward to every year -- it's that one big opportunity to catch up and exchange ideas with the web/interactive world as a whole. It's more than a simple conference or "geek spring break". The last couple days have had me thinking that this year is going to be a little different, maybe a little special somehow. I'm not yet sure what that means exactly but we'll see.

Based on conversations via Twitter, it definitely feels like more people attending this year will be in Austin even less for the conference sessions than for the bits that happen in the hallways, coffee shops, bars and restaurants. I'd say that's largely true for me even though after finally looking through the panels and talks, there are certainly some potentially good ones. Potentially.

Butter Me Up

Part of the excitement might just be around some of the changes that have been underway for me over the last few months, one of which being my working more with Luke on ButterLabel projects and planning what's next with Ligature, Loop and Stem.

Luke and I have all kinds of schwag to hand out -- some lovely foil stamped business cards, stickers, buttons (ButterLabel and LL&S), and even a few ButterLabel tees. I think we'll be pretty selective about who those go to. All are definitely first-come, first-serve though.

On top of that I've got a few copies of Life in the Dead of Winter, my band's 2009 EP with me (on 180g vinyl no less) for any vinyl enthusiasts out there. For anyone interested in a digital download, let me know and I'll arrange to get you a special download code.

Extracurricular Activities

I would remiss to not finally mentioning that messieurs Hutchinson, Dorny and I will be hosting this year's annual SXSW Found Type Photowalk event on Sunday morning in the absence of the illustrious Mr. Rubin who is currently in the UK.

Information is available on the Flickr group page, the awesome Sitby.us app by Weightshift, and Eventbrite through which you can RSVP to attend -- there's no cost and it's always a good time. I believe Grant even has a little treat for those that do... Just sayin'.

For those in attendance -- see you around Austin over the next five or so days. Who's buying the first round?

This is the fourth time SOTA has undertaken such an effort (hence the title 'FontAid IV'), this time using ampersands to represent the idea of "people coming together to help one another". Who says celebrities, musicians and actors are the only ones who can make a difference?

My contribution to FontAid IV, dubbed "The Anchor".

Personally, this was an opportunity to be part of something significant, and over the course of an evening, I sketched out and refined an idea that eventually became my submission to the project. More time would have allowed me to submit another if for no other reason than to keep my pal Grant, who donated his time toward the work in assembling the final font, even busier.

Where to Buy

The resulting font, dubbed "Coming Together", which includes more than 400 glyphs from designers, typographers and artists around the world is now available in cross-platform OpenType format for a mere $20 from several popular font distributors with more being added later this week.

• Buy from Veer
• Buy from Ascender Fonts
• FontShop (coming Tuesday, February 16)
• My Fonts (later this week)

I've bought my copy, now it's your turn -- support SOTA and purchase the font for yourself, a co-worker, family member or a friend.

Although the feedback was all extremely positive and validated that we were on to something interesting, I tend to guage expectations with at least one foot in reality. In the end though, the response completely blew my expecations out of the water with that first collection of products selling out in under 3 days.

When we finished shipping everything I gave myself a little project -- to map the orders. The reason was simply to put a little visual context around what we just did. The end result looks something like the preview below.

Click the preview above to view the project.

Due to other committments and even though this has been sitting on the server for a few weeks I just haven't had the time or energy to talk about it, not that there's really that much that's not self-explanatory... For me it was a fun little diversion and a good chance to tinker with version 3 of the Google Maps API. If it's interesting to anyone else, that's a nice bonus.

For those wondering what's next -- I'll have a bit more to say about LL&S and some other things soon.

It all means a great deal, so thank you super nerds: @gordasm, @neilio, @robotjohnny, @jmcnally, @paulkyte, @fyang, @gmacgregor, @saila, ButterLabel, LL&S and former Wishingline co-conspirators: @luxuryluke, @splorp, @carywood, @mrwarren, @annamazon, @theinterned, and internet friends, peers, clients and all around awesome people: @sugarfreejones, @SharaK, @slowtron, @derekbalmer, @simplebits, @adactio, @feather, @nicepaul, @ktamura, @orderedlist, @drinkerthinker, @tiffehr, @mezzoblue, @TheAdnostic, @greghoyboy, @pws, @kenschafer, @jeffsmith, @renaud, @nathanborror, @vpieters, @mrs_hicks, @gleyseele, , @thedoeeyes, @kfinlayson, @danielseaman, @stickel, @louderthan10, @joshualane, @KuraFire, @breppy, @briandelicata, @kellysims, @katanma, @mattbrett, @soopa, @retodd, @adarowski, @dcharrison, @geoperdis, @andrewdotcom, @mintchaos, and @jaygoldman. Yes, even you too @kennymeyers. Jerk.

Needless to say it was one New Year's Eve we won't soon forget.

As it turns out we spent the night at Women's College Hospital, not too far from home under the wonderful care of nurse Rebecca, who along with the other fantastic staff there helped deliver our new baby boy.

Our special little guy was born at 10:21PM and came in at a healthy 8lbs and with a pretty full head of hair, just like his big sister Gillian. We didn't know in advance whether it would be a boy or a girl, so now comes the fun part -- picking out a name.

Thanks again to all our friends and well-wishers -- we can't wait to give you a proper introduction!