Tag: talk

  • all did go well in Sarnia

    Well, I talked myself hoarse (must learn to project!), and I think it went well; no-one feigned death or sudden illness.

    The ATI Remote Wonder performed flawlessly. It may be ugly, but it works.

  • more wind in Sarnia

    I’m giving my wind talk to the Lambton Chapter of the PEO tonight: Wind Energy for the Perplexed.

    If all goes well, I’ll be able to use my ATI Remote Wonder to control the slides, as I found an OS X driver for the Remote Wonder. Yay!

  • I’m learning a lot about Jessica

    Someone on the GO train is talking very loudly at their phone. It sounds like there’s a disciplinary hearing perhaps involving the caller, and/or a Jessica and an Elaine. There are a Steve and a Val involved somehow, and the loud talker is discouraged. There are appeals and continuances, and Acts (non-biblical) are being cited. It’s all very interesting, in the way that spectacularly dull things are. I can’t wait to get off the train to MAKE IT ALL STOP – gahh!

  • “It will feel strange …”

    Leo Marks, on hearing of an old couple who died within days of one another, and were buried together:

    It will feel strange
    Not to nudge you
    Or to talk to you
    Or keep you warm
    When you’re lying there
    Only a few feet away
    Or perhaps even less
    But we shall get used to it in time
    Of which we’ll have plenty

    We always treasured silences
    In which we said everything
    We shall continue to treasure them
    And to say everything
    Throughout the longest silence of all.

     — from Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s Story 1941-1945.

  • spiked!

    Took advantage of the holiday to scoot down to The 12th Fret to have my banjo looked at. I’d managed to do a bad thing to the tailpiece (which I’d rather not talk about, thank you), and had Grant fit capo spikes at 7, 9 & 10.

    While working on the fretboard, Grant confirmed that these really were model railway track spikes — or more correctly, model railway enthusiasts use capo spikes to hold their rails down!

  • that was easy

    upgraded mac

    I upgraded Catherine’s eMac last night, which up until then was probably the last Mac on the planet running 10.1. It now talks to the network better, and runs quite a bit faster.

  • we’re talking fish

    Called in at Finatics Aquarium (599 Kennedy Rd, Scarborough, ON, M1K 2B2 – 416-265-2026) yesterday. The owner, Mike Bandura, was very helpful for the complete novice fishkeeper. I think we’ll be stocking our new aquarium from there.

  • … with raspberry vinaigrette!

    Paul and I often talked of doing this, but I see someone’s done it for real: they hacked the GO Train scrolly LED signs to read Stephen Harper Eats Babies.

  • Free the Laserjet 4!

    I love the HP LaserJet 4+. Built like a tank, good print quality, and now available used/refurb for pennies. Sure, they weight about as much as a Sherman, and suck power like there was no tomorrow, but one of my 4+s has nearly a million on the page count, yet prints crisp and clean.

    Last weekend I scored a 4+ with built in duplexer from eBay for very little. It didn’t want to print at first (giving a cryptic 13 PAPER JAM error), but removing the rather beat-up full-ream paper tray fixed that. It may need a new cartridge (at almost twice what I paid for the printer), but I’m happy.

    Wonder if I can direct-connect one of them to the ethernet port on Catherine’s eMac? I know my router won’t talk AppleTalk, so we can’t network just one printer.

  • cheap powermeter

    I 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.)

  • IEEE Toronto Talk

    Looks like I’m waving my hands in the air and talking to the IEEE Toronto Section on Thursday October 27, 2005, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. It’s in the Business Building, Room BUS 108 at Ryerson University.

    They fed me an exceptionally keen meal on Saturday night in advance thanks, so it’d better be a good talk from me.

    Update, October 27: the slides are here — scruss.com/talks/02005/ieee_toronto — still in a kind of draft state. I used Eric Meyer’s fabulous S5 again.

  • esr@microsoft.com?

    You’ve maybe heard about this ‘open source’ thing? You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in.

     — the enormous ego of Eric Raymond, responding to a job offer at Microsoft.

  • stewart speaks!

    When: Thursday 10th March 2005, 6–7pm

    Where: Bahen Centre BA 2179 (40 St George St., Toronto)

    What: As part of the ESC/EWB Power Shift lecture series, I’m giving the following talk:

    Stewart Russell currently works for Zephyr North, a wind energy consulting company. As an executive of Windshare, he contributed his years of experience in the Scottish wind industry to establishing the TREC wind turbine now installed at the CNE. His presentation will contrast the case of large, industrial wind farms with the technological solutions that are appropriate for developing countries. He will outline the special issues that arise when siting and designing modern wind farms in Ontario, and discuss the special challenges of creating simple, small wind turbines out of locally available materials.

  • Sustainable Energy Fair

    I survived the University of Toronto First Sustainable Energy Fair. The weather was pretty grim, despite the cold and the rain. Maybe some of the solar cooking events didn’t happen, but that didn’t dampen the spirits of all involved.

    There was a good crowd, and I talked myself hoarse on the WindShare stand. There were some interesting people there, including the irrepressible Tom Karmo, and UofT‘s own cyborg, Steve Mann. And yes, I am really responsible for getting Winton Dahlström into wind energy; mea maxima culpa.

    I have pictures of the sustainable energy fair here.

  • Stewart gets another chance to make a fool of himself in public

    Wind Power Symposium Poster
    (click on the above for a larger image)

    Yes, I’ll be speaking at UofT on 20th February.