James Piper, Author

Friday, February 18, 2011 ... no gift tax in Canada, but beware ... W hile at the gym the other day, someone asked me what the limits were for gifting property to his children. I told him there were no limits. "Maybe you're thinking of the U.S. They have a gift tax," I said. I didn't want to bother him about the gift tax details and how it was designed to thwart tax planning for the U.S. estate tax. "So I can give any amount to my kids?" I nodded, "But there's exceptions." Too many I thought. First, I explained under the Income Tax Act how he and his children are related. Dah! Seems obvious, but the act defines who is related and sets out rules that kick in between related persons. When it comes to gifting property from one related person to another, the act says the disposition occurs at fair market value and that means a potential capital gain on the gift. "But I'm giving him cash, how can there be a gain?...

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 ... a milestone reached ... I wonder where this will end. On the weekend I hit 20,050 songs in my iTunes library. 131 gigabyles of data. Almost 57 days of continuous music. If I were ever offered a last meal, I asked to listen to music as I ate. The thing is I still have stacks and stacks of CDs to rip and add to my library. I'm storing all these files on a 1 TB external hard drive. There's a second drive for back-up. There's enough space left for about 140,000 songs. If I ever fill up the hard drive, I'll be amazed. Posted 2010/04/13 at 11h11ET in Itunes.

Sunday, April 11, 2010 ... one To Do is off the list ... I recently completed a task that was completely irrational. It was a fixture on my To-Do list because I always put it off. This week I decided to change that. I dug through my files of sketches and drawings and scanned them into my computer. A simple concept, sure, but tedious and time consuming. I suggest wearing latex gloves or buying hand lotion, but maybe that's a personal choice...Anyway, I now have a folder with 1.2 GBs of JPEG and PSD files. Here's an example from 1992. Right, where's that To-Do list? I want to sketch a line on it. Posted 2010/04/11 at 13h54ET in JamesPiper.com.

Friday, March 26, 2010 ... a cautious move back to exercising ... " You could blow a gasket." Those were the precise words a cardiologist said to me a week ago. My BP was somewhere around 190 over 110. Far too high to be exercising and hence I stopped. It didn't matter a GP told me the exact opposite a week earlier. "All the cardio you want, it's good for you." Based on the GP's advice, I continued to exercise. There's a certain irony in exercising to be healthy and risking instant death in the process from a heart attack or aneurysm. At the moment, I'd like to avoid those thoughts. In the past week I've been on BP meds. First 25 mg of atenolol each day and now 50 mg. I've been reading my BP and HR at intervals and my BP has come down. I've had readings of 140/80 in the last couple of days. That's the target. As a result, it seemed safe to get back to the gym and I did. I wasn't pushing myself, was...

Thursday, March 25, 2010 ... where do the good ideas come from? ... H ere's a quote from someone's Facebook wall, Just when I think of a great script idea...I search and find out it is already 'in production' for 2012! I know the feeling. I once started work on a story only to plop a DVD into the player and discover the story I started, the great idea I molded, was already a movie and before that a successful novel in hardcover. Ugh! There was no point continuing with the same idea because it had been done--even though I had thought it up on my own--it didn't matter. I had to move onto another premise, another idea. After I soaked in enough frustration from being deflated, I felt better when I realized I had come up with a clever idea for a story and others thought enough it to publish a book and make a feature film. That was something. Much better than no ideas or tired ones. But any idea, clever or derivative, is nothing until it is forme...

Monday, March 22, 2010 ... a new plateau on Itunes ... I continue to add albums (of course, they're called CDs) to my iTunes library and I went past both the seventeen thousand song mark and 100 gigabytes. The numbers seem small and I have many more CDs to add. This can't be good, but I do like to listen to music and these days, it's rarely anything played over the radio. Posted 2010/03/22 at 21h47ET in Itunes.

Monday, March 22, 2010 ... don't need that ... I was browsing some web sites looking for info on a Bax symphonic recording and came across this web site . Here's another example of an unessential that, I must confess that I was never particularly happy with this disc... Since you don't need that, just cut it out, I must confess I was never particularly happy with this disc... You too can do it and say, I don't need that. Posted 2010/03/22 at 21h47ET in Don't Need THAT.