James Zhan in real life.
James Zhan in real life.
James Zhan
Hi, I’m James, a full-time videographer and video editor at University of Toronto, a YouTuber, a former audio engineer of 10 years, and someone who majored in English and writing, loaded with opinions. This is my personal blog where I write opinion pieces, personal reflections and articles about rabbit holes I’ve gone down, and share what I’m currently up to.
Latest Posts
My wife and I switched from Facebook Messenger and RCS to Signal almost a year ago for all our messaging needs. We have no plans to stop using Signal, but to be honest, Signal kind of sucks as a messaging app: No call notification on...
This week ended with the news that the trade talk between Canada and the US collapsed. Once I read why, I was immensely grateful that we (Canada) have someone like Mark Carney at the helm. The negotiations must have been incredibly...
I was just attending a virtual academic conference, where, frustratingly and annoyingly, 9 out of 10 sessions were about AI. But then, in one of the sessions that discussed human writing vs AI writing, I saw this slide: Human Writing...
What brought me joy New coffee! I’ve had this coffee resting for 4 weeks and it’s finally ready to be opened! Opening a new bag of coffee is always exciting. I’m a few brews in and I’ve found that I prefer it brewed with the TORCH...
What brought me joy New coffees!! Got some new medium-dark roast coffee for espresso and my first ever bag of decaf beans, both from Propeller Coffee in Toronto! Sometimes, in the evening, I crave the act of brewing coffee and so I...
I don’t know how I can live 31 years of my life and not have a solid task management system for anything, but I really don’t. The only “system” I’ve had is called “pick-up-a-new-app-use-it-for-3-months-and-ditch-it-for-another-app.” Some...
What brought me joy I discovered the indie typeface, Missive Serif, last week and started using it for headings and UI elements. This week, I set it for the blog list page as I found that I much preferred it over Rosario (font for body...
Writing my response to Michael Harley’s blog post arguing against the merits of weeknotes has, ironically, had me think more about weeknotes and seek out more weeknotes to read. I’d toyed with the idea of creating my own weeknotes for a...
I came across orchids’ post sharing their conflicted feelings on whether or not “No AI” statements are genuinely necessary, helpful and/or useful. In their post, orchids argues that the onus is on the viewer/reader to distinguish...
Heads-up: This post is a bit of a bummer so stay away if you’re looking for something positive. When I went to open the bedroom curtains this morning, I did not expect the outside to look like it was lit by a giant night lamp. This is a...
Early this year, a blogger, Christian Lauf, expressed dismay over my decision to remove all the comment sections in my blog. Christian explained that he wanted to link to a blog he encountered in a comment on my post and was disappointed...
This post is part of Robert Birming’s JulyReply, a blog connecting event. I recently came across this post by Michael Harley: “Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts?” I started writing a reply in the post’s comment section...
main ul.no-multiline > li, main ol.no-multiline > li { margin-bottom: 0; } My blog has a ton of lists, some of which contain only 1 line per item while others can have more than 1 line per item. I find that for the latter, the list...
I published “Thank You, Canada” yesterday morning, on Canada Day, listing a bunch of things I appreciate Canada for, and the first thing on the list was universal healthcare. Well, 6 hours later—thanks to the forces unbeknownst to us—I...
Last year, my citizenship ceremony just missed July 1 by a couple of weeks, so today is my first Canada Day as a Canadian citizen. I moved to Canada in 2013 and have since completed two postsecondary degrees, had three different careers,...