I’m going in a field …
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006… To survey.
It’s lovely weather for it. Just a few weeks ago, it was bitter up here.
Strange coincidence: one of the surveyors, Joy, knows our friends the Bowyers.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
a wee corner of Scotland at Ellesmere & McCowan
Saturday, March 18th, 2006Serendipity: took a wrong turn coming out of the
federal building, and found ourselves in Scottish culinary heaven (which is not an oxymoron, I assure you). At the corner of Ellesmere & McCowan is The But ‘n’ Ben Butchers; they sell all sort of quality Scottish foods. So far, we’ve sampled and can approve their butcher’s pies, plain bread and empire biscuits. They’ve also got a supply of UK Heinz Beans, which knock the gummy North American beans into a cocked hat.
Next door but one is St Andrews Fish & Chips. They’re amazing. I think the chips (hand cut, of course) are deep fried in some unhealthy, but tasty, animal byproduct. And they have Irn Bru, too …
Standard Offer is Go - March 21
Friday, March 10th, 2006From OSEA:
The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived! The Ministry of Energy, the Premier, David Suzuki and OSEA will be announcing the Standard Offer Program on March 21st. We are organizing a celebration and press event in partnership with the Ministry of Energy that will take place at 3 pm at Exhibition Place, Toronto, home to Ontario’s first community wind turbine.
Please mark this date in your calendar and watch for further notices (via email and at www.ontario-sea.org) on details regarding location, speakers and entertainment.
This is a celebratory event - please everyone, let us celebrate the positive role the Standard Offer Contract program will play in Ontario for renewables, for community power, for cost effective power, and for our air quality and health!
Thanks to everyone for their efforts!
If the province has got this right, we really will see a lot more wind power in Ontario.
second place
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006… but not very surprisingly, the Raptors came in second. Again.
I don’t think we have enough tall Lithuanians on the team.
J P Martin Speaks!
Sunday, March 5th, 2006Tony Bannister writes in liontower that James Currey gave him some tapes of J P Martin reading some of his Uncle stories. He hopes to restore the tapes and release a CD.
Uncle: His Master’s Voice!
We have turbines running at Kingsbridge!
Friday, March 3rd, 2006We have turbines running at Kingsbridge! Here’s the official news release.
(I had a picture here, but it wsn’t very good. Sorry.)
green drinks Toronto
Thursday, February 16th, 2006Green Drinks Toronto was good last night. Had a chance to catch up with Jim Prall, too.
shavin’
Sunday, February 5th, 2006They’ve just discontinued my razor of choice — the Wilkinson Sword/Schick Diamond — so I’ve decided to go old-school. Now that Wilkinson Sword has the four-blade Quattro, and Gillette their five-bladed monstrosity, I’ve realised that the whole multi-blade thing is a load of hooey.
Consider this: if the first blade was supposed to do most of the work, then draw the hair out a bit to be cut below the skin level, further blades would have less and less effect. It’s just as likely that the whole multi-blade cartridge thing was a scam to sell more, and non-standard, blades that could easily be made obsolescent by the time generic manufacturers caught on — the old Instamatic effect.
So I bought a Merkur safety razor (from Toronto Salon Supply, at Bay and Dundas), and a bunch of Merkur blades. I didn’t shave particularly close today, but it’s just as close a shave as the old twin-blader I used to use.
The plus side is that I’m throwing away no plastic with every blade, so I’m shaving the planet.
wan nuhin nuhin wan
Tuesday, December 27th, 2005I’d just like to say that this is my 1001st blog posting. Yesterday’s wee rant hit the big M.
I’m averaging 1.068 posts/day.
chilly
Saturday, December 17th, 2005A real BBC News headline: Cold Weather Hits Scots Fixtures
<insert obligatory kilt-related humour here>
cheap powermeter
Monday, December 12th, 2005I snagged a UPM EM 100 Energy Meter at crappytire yesterday. It was a good bit cheaper than the old standard P3 Kill A WATT. We’ll see if it’s useful.
(So I guess I’ve answered my own Talk Energy post.)
The Scarborough Popular Front
Friday, December 2nd, 2005Went to a Community First Scarborough meeting last night. I have no other comment to make at this time.
something went wrong
Monday, October 31st, 2005
The mapping application I use did a bad thing. This was supposed to a grid overlay on a map.
ex dexit, or trying to be
Monday, October 3rd, 2005Coo, was I really all fired up about Dexit, like I appear to have been in January 2004? ‘Cos, basically, Dexit sucks.
The coffee place I get my morning fix got rid of its unreliable Dexit machine when it changed hands. So I’ve got nearly $70 sitting on the useless Dexit tag, doing nothing.
Today I called for a refund, and discovered that Dexit won’t refund your balance. I wouldn’t have signed up for it if I’d known there’d be this in the ultra-sneaky Dexit user agreement (PDF):
Only in the event of your death (and upon receipt of such documents as Dexit reasonably requires in such circumstances as to whom is entitled to your estate funds), or Dexit closing your Dexit Account without cause, will the remaining funds in your Dexit Account be repaid to you. “Cause” will include any violation of this Agreement, any fraud or attempted fraud, any other operation of the Dexit Account or use of a Dexit Tag in an unsatisfactory manner, or non-use of your Dexit Account for over three (3) years.
So, do I hafta kill myself to get my money back?
Oh, and Dexit’s phone support staff are untruthful. I needed to speak to a supervisor. They promised one would call before 8pm this evening. It’s 9:55 now, and I’ve heard nothing.
keepin’ it, since 3760 BCE
Monday, October 3rd, 2005Happy Rosh Hashanah!
blog entry for dad
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005My folks have been visiting for the last couple of weeks (we’re just about to leave for the airport), and Dad asked for some links we discussed. The following will probably make little or no sense to other readers:
- Google Maps UK, including a link to a place they’ll know well.
- The Caravel Web Content Management System, from the Mennonite Church.
- AVG Anti Virus.
- Tax Refund for Visitors to Canada, the official fee-free one.
- Collected Works of Caruso.
clicking like the trilobite
Wednesday, August 31st, 2005
Darn it, but my iRiver, with this recent firmware upgrade, now records a click about every minute it records. See the regular peaks? It hasn’t completely ruined my recording of Of Montreal, but it hasn’t helped.
(and apologies for the relatively huge file size of the image; I’m just learning my mac-fu.)
… and I thought that it’d hosed the recording of the encore by killing the wav file header. But some digging with sox parameters fixed it:
sox -V -t .raw -s -w -c 2 -r44100 broken.wav fixed.wav
I’ve seen ‘em; have you?
Sunday, August 14th, 2005
breaking ground at Erie Shores
Friday, July 22nd, 2005We’re having the official ground-breaking ceremony at AIM PowerGen/Clean Power Income Fund Erie Shores Windfarm today. Cue important people wielding suspiciously clean shovels. I suspect I might even get to play with a shovel, since I’ve spent the last year and a bit designing it.
there is no nuclear revival
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005Nuclear Power’s Scorned Small-Scale Competitors Are Walloping It in the Marketplace (PDF-100k)
Lovins Debunks the Notion That Nuclear Energy is the Best Investment Against Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Global Climate Change
Snowmass, Colorado, June 20, 2005 — Rocky Mountain Institute researchers today doused the hype about “nuclear revival” in an icy bath of real-world data. They documented that worldwide, the decentralized, low- or no-carbon sources of electricity — cogeneration and renewables, all claimed by nuclear advocates to be too small and too slow to help much with climate change — are already bigger than nuclear power and are quickly leaving it in the dust.
