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10 Ruble Russian Coin featuring cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (Photo by Mike) Today is “Day of the Soviet Space Program (Cosmonautics)” for Russians – a day to remember the cosmonaut and national hero Yuri Gagarin, who on April 12, fifty years ago, was blasted into orbit from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. [...] It was with great excitement that one day early this summer a search for “Douglas Coupland” at the Toronto Public Library website yielded an amazing find: “Extraordinary Canadians – Marshall McLuhan.” This is a book by Coupland which explores the life and ideas of a most iconic Canadian. And if you are familiar with Douglas [...] The opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup is taking place right now, and it’s reminiscent of the large-scale ceremonies I remember from the Vancouver and Beijing games. The stadium is ginormous and hundreds of Africans, primarily women, are performing synchronized dancing as performers do songs blended together in medleys. I just saw the singer [...] Can my site rank higher than Facebook and Yahoo? Yes, in the right circumstances, and with a terrifically crafted post on a specific subject. The Contact Photography Festival just passed and my blog’s Google rank was higher than EYE weekly magazine and both the Facebook page for the fest and a page in Yahoo Business. [...] Toronto author and publisher Michael Redhill Michael Redhill is a Toronto-based author and publisher. He has taught at the University of Toronto, where he is also presently the “Writer in Residence.” A few years ago, I was fortunate to have him as my instructor for a Creative Writing (Poetry) course. He has written a [...] Mike and "Driver 8" magazine – Hot off the Press! Photo by Ian Robertson I’ve been involved with publishing and DIY enterprise for a long time— almost two decades! A colleague recently scanned some negatives and I thought I’d share a cool photo with you. This was my first apartment in Toronto, circa 1990, and [...] The branding and identity work for the Olympics features some stunning illustration. Kudos to the Vancouver Olympic committee! Today I fired up Google Chrome and saw the Olympic graphic (or “doodle”) Google created for their homepage. (It’s pictured at the end of this article). The image is subtle and appealing. It doesn’t even [...] Ferris wheel in Chernobyl amusement park Yesterday, the Metro newspaper ran a column by Julie Dimon, the resident ‘Travel Junkie,’ about the infamous Chernobyl nuclear site in Ukraine. It’s a pretty odd place to travel and reading the article reminded me about my first exposure to Chernobyl (forgive the pun) about a year ago, [...] Martin Wong and Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot magazine I have been a freak for magazines for a long, long time. My love for mags is varied: I’ve been a subscriber to high-brow magazines like Walrus and when I was in my twenties I couldn’t get enough of Big Brother (the skateboard magazine that also birthed [...] |
Mike Simpson is a teacher, writer, musician and designer from Toronto, Canada. He is a new media enthusiast and has been "strongandfree" since 1996. Mike is working on new graphic design, developing websites and multimedia, and leading training workshops on weekends. Check out Strong+Free for his Design and Media work. Check out Mike's Edu-Tech Workshop site. Please contact him at this address: mike | strongandfree.ca 
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