Toronto Autoshow

I went to the Toronto Autoshow with a group of my colleagues from work. Being an automotive company, they gave us free tickets and an afternoon off to go check it out. We walked around for about 5 hours looking at all the different cars. Being a hinge designer, I took the time to check out some of the ways that the different car makers design their hinges for the side doors, hatches, and hoods. It was interesting to see the various implementations, but I think most people wouldn't even notice.

There were some interesting concepts but, sadly, no electric cars. GM had their Chevy Volt car there, but it was pretty obvious that it's still in the early development stage. They had a cover hiding the interior of the car so you couldn't see the console or the controls. I suspect that the interior is largely unfinished and the cover was there to hide the ugly prototype functionality that they had in there. I'm not even sure if the car could be driven or not. Here are some pictures of it:







I recently read an article about how the GM head of product development believe that global warming is a farce so I really don't think that they're taking this car too seriously. I think it has more to do with marketing than anything else. I'll be surprised if it makes it to production by 2010.

There were some other interesting cars out there like this one:




We also checked out some of the products that our company makes like this step on the Ford F150 tailgate. Naturally, we had to stop and take a few pictures:



Describing the versatility of the MultiPole:


The Lamborghini exhibit showing the history of their line of cars was pretty cool. It was interesting how the styling has changed over the years. I managed to get this picture of one of their newer models:



There was also a neat little motorcycle section showing some slick Ducatis and other bikes:







I had a thought of having a small truck as my next vehicle so I decided to check out the Chevy S10. I stepped on the rail they had on the truck and felt it move. I took a closer look and found that it was loose and kept getting looser the more I put weight on it. I pointed it out to some of the guys...you show a bunch of engineers something and they jump on it like kids on a jungle gym. One of the GM show people came over and said that it was show quality rather than production quality. I thought it was ridiculous that they showed something that flimsy at the premiere Canadian autoshow. Here's a video showing how flimsy the thing was.




Overall, the show was pretty good, but after 5 hours of looking at cars I was beat and ready for some dinner.

Lens hack and the Toronto Zoo

Ever since reading an article about homemade tilt-shift lenses like this one, I've wanted to build one and try it out. I browsed through ebay for a while and eventually settled on a Xenar lens from an old Korelle SLR for about $75.

I kept my eye open for some sort of bellows and even researched building one. One day though, one of the guys at work had some rubber boots for car suspension struts lying around and he donated one to me. I found some time a couple weeks ago and hacked something together using electrical tape, cardboard, and the base of a busted teleconverter.

Here's what the monstrosity looks like:







I got a chance to try the thing out recently at the Toronto Zoo. Focusing was a little tricky and I was worried about it falling apart. It held up well with the snow and dampness. I used a roll of Kodak C-41 black and white film. The pictures turned out fairly nice for the most part. Here are some:







I really like this one though:


I really like the lens...there's some dirt in it too that adds to the antique soft focus look to the pictures. I used it again at the Toronto Autoshow last week too with a roll of colour film. I noticed that it started to fall apart after a while and probably let in some extra light so I don't know how well the pictures will turn out. In the meantime, I'll have to think of a more robust method of building the lens.

PBS e2 Documentary Series

I caught an episode of the e2 (e squared) PBS documentary series one night and found it intriguing. That particular episode dealt with renewable energy and how it can be implemented in different ways. I kept an eye out for it for a while but never managed to see it again. So I decided to buy the DVDs from the PBS store as a Christmas present to myself.

I've been watching the series over the last few weeks and its a really good documentary series. The first two seasons have mainly dealt with architecture and how to design sustainable buildings. It's a little surprising, but it turns out that buildings account for about 48% of greenhouse gas emissions. There are some neat ideas presented in each episode about managing water and solar energy in buildings.

A whole episode is even devoted to renewable energy efforts in China. One vision they shared was about bringing agriculture into urban areas through the use of rooftop farming. China definitely has bad environmental image on top of a bad image in terms of human rights. Dirty smog-filled urban areas come to mind. Even with this image though, one architect made the point that once a totalitarian regime gets hold of the idea of relying less on fossil fuels and implements more sustainable energy systems, the whole country can be transformed very quickly. They even built a test building that implements numerous ideas for sustainable design that developers and architects can visit, learn about these ideas, and put experiments into place. It's not all pleasant though; there are some alarming numbers about rural to urban migration and coal consumption. It'd be interesting to see how China develops in this regard.

India, Tibet, and Columbia are mentioned in addition to American cities. No Canadian content so far. It seems that we're lagging behind in innovation in the area of sustainable development even though the environment gets a lot of air time on the news here and politicians seem to talk about it a lot.

The only downside is that each episode starts with an ad by Autodesk. They sponsored the series so I guess it's not a bad thing. You can always fast forward through them.

Anyways, the e2 website has previews of episodes and worth going through. It's a fairly new series so most libraries probably don't have it yet. I'm definitely going to pass my copies around, but the DVDs are not expensive and definitely worth the money.

No Ads

I checked the Google Adsense account for this blog and found that no one had even clicked on anything...ever. I decided to remove the feature; thought it was a bit of an eyesore anyways.

Booo! on Flickr

I tried showing someone at work some pictures from my travels only to find out that Flickr would only show the latest 200 or so pictures unless I signed for an account with a fee of around $25 per year. When I transfered my pictures from Yahoo!Photos to Flickr, they didn't mention this deal.

I'm a little miffed about it. In know it's not a lot of money, but I'd rather pay for online hosting and setup my own web gallery. Time to do it is the primary issue.

In the meantime though, you can see some of the pictures in this blog here (a lot of the photos from India were not included for some reason). I also replaced the link to my Flickr photos with the same link.

In the meantime, I should slowly start on the web albums...

Book Review: The Unexpected War, Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang

In the fall, I read "The Unexpected War, Canada in Afghanistan", written by Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang. I'm not sure but I think Mr. Lang is a journalist who writes for the Globe and Mail. Ms. Stein regularly appears on tvo on The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Mr. Painkin's show is excellent and really worth watching if you want to know more about the world and the major events that happen in it).

When this book was published, it got a lot of coverage on the news. It got a lot of fanfare and some good reviews. The authors were interviewed on the different news networks. I'd been following the news about Afghanistan and its effect on our Canadian politics so I was curious about the book and decided to read it.

The book is a story on how Canada got involved in Afghanistan. The authors interviewed the principal people involved in the decision to go there from the politicians to the military personnel and even former prime minister Paul Martin. .

The story has some surprises. In 2003, when the US was getting ready to invade Iraq, a lot of Canadians (including me) were proud that our government made the decision not to go along and be part of the invasion force. It turns out that the American military didn't really want or need us to help in a military way, but rather was looking more for public moral support and help in convincing other countries to join. Apparently they didn't think our military capability was sufficient enough be much good to them. Other surprises in the story regard the way the decisions regarding Canada's presence in Afghanistan were made.

When Jean Chretien did not play along and declared that Canada would not be joining the invasion force, there was a lot hand wringing in the military and political circles around Ottawa that relations with the US were being damaged and we would suffer economic and political consequences. The book argues, with some interesting quotes, that our presence in Afghanistan was primarily a way to placate the US and show that we support them in their response to the airplane attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

The big surprise to me was that, according to the authors, the decision was made to go to Afghanistan without knowing anything about the country or it's people, an idea of the exact role that we would play, nor the real military capability to be effective in that area.

The initial strategy was "early in, early out"; meaning that Canada would be part of the initial push to set up in Afghanistan but would rotate out after a year or two. A fairly short term commitment, but politically beneficial for relations with the US. This is very far from the current idea of a brave noble mission to bring peace and democracy to a people ravaged by 30 years of war and oppression by a militant group of fundamentalist muslims. The book paints a picture of an exclusively European effort in a more peaceful region in northern Afghanistan telling the Canadian group to find their own mission somewhere else. It seems that there were no plans at the time for the Kandahar region so that's where our military and political people decided that Canada would play a lead role. That decision was made before anyone from the government or military had even visited Afghanistan !

An interesting chapter in the book is titled "We Don't Know Anything About This Country" in which the authors briefly explain the history of Afghanistan and describe some of the tribal relationships in the area. They also used this chapter to illustrate that the decision to go to Afghanistan had more to do with make people in Washington happy than helping poor impoverished Afghanis.

There are some interesting side stories. I've always thought highly of Bill Graham and the book shows that he was an excellent foreign minister. You wouldn't know it by watching news clips of him, but the story also describes John McCallum as an excellent defense minister. General Rick Hillier also gets a good mention.

Overall, I found the book to be a good read. It helps that I'm interested in the topic anyway, but I think that anyone with the slightest interest in Canada's role in Afghanistan would find the book interesting. I also think that the topic of Afghanistan will play a major part in the looming federal election. Given that, I think that the general Canadian public should be aware of how we got to Afghanistan, what exactly we went there to do, and how that differs from what we are doing there now. Reading this book is one way of gaining this awareness.

Highly recommended reading.

Neglected Blog...

I've been meaning to post something on here for a while but haven't gotten around to it until now. I've been busy with work on a project for Chrysler and a lot of work needed to be finished before Christmas.

I thought I'd have time to sit down and write something over the Christmas break, but I was too busy eating cookies and watching tv...the couch had a deathgrip on my butt too.

I've got a bunch of thoughts and ideas that I'd like to put here, so I'll try to make habit of posting regularly on here this year.

Buggin'

A bug got caught in one of my lamps the other night. It seemed like it was on its last legs and wanted a warm spot to stay in. It caught my attention while I was watching Spiderman 3, funny enough. So I decided to pause the movie and take some close up pictures. It stayed still for the most part, but started buzzing and flying when I got too close with the lens. It's a little startling when you're looking at a bug up close. It's a harmless insect but still freaky. Here are some of the pics...I think the eyes are the freakiest part:

It's been a while...

I've been pretty busy over the last few weeks and haven't really had anything to write about so this blog's been neglected for about a month.

The weather's just starting to turn cold after a balmy Thanksgiving weekend (Canadian thanksgiving weekend is in October). So I may have more time to ponder stuff and write about it.

My photography hobby is pretty much at a standstill. I haven't explored Toronto nearly as much as I would have liked to, but hopefully the pace will slow down a bit soon. I did manage to capture some good moments of our thanksgiving dinner in Fort Erie like this stitched panorama:



It's a good one of the after dinner mood. My brother made it in from Vancouver, my aunt from Florida, and my uncle and his family from Toronto. It was a good time and I think everyone thought so too. Good memories, hopefully we'll have more family members join us in the coming years.

Dirtsurfer

On the subway ride home from the class I saw a couple of dudes with these things. I was pretty curious about the boards so I asked them how you ride the things. Seems interesting...I'm not sure that I'd find it as much fun as those guys...

Back to School

I was thinking about going back to school for a while now mainly to take a fluff course to meet some people...particularly women...and get my social life going a little bit. I decided that I'd go to Ryerson University because it seemed like I'd get more value than at Seneca College or a similar college. Then I started thinking that as long as I'll be spending the money (not an insignificant amount), I may as well take something that I'm interested in.

I ended up registering for computer science 1. This may come as a surprise to some, but it's not exactly a field that's dominated by supermodel-type women.

The first class was yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to get down to the campus. I'll have to leave work a little earlier next week because leaving at 5pm put me right in the middle of peak afternoon traffic. I didn't have enough time to grab a small bite for dinner. I pretty much parked my car and hopped on the subway downtown.

Anyways, I'm pondering getting a certificate for programming applications available through Ryerson's continuing education program. I figured I'd try a course out to see if I like it...it couldn't hurt and I can get a bit of a tax credit for the course tuition.

The course itself is an introduction to programming and uses Java as its base language. The first lecture covered the basic concepts of classes and objects. It moved along pretty slowly...in my opinion, the content could have been covered in one hour instead of three, but that's the way courses are.

I got a little amusement out of listening to the professor. He's got a very robotic voice and way of talking that sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking with a Slavic accent. He also lacks almost any form of facial expression except for the occasional blink.

It should be an interesting course anyways...who knows what it'll lead to.

I'm now thinking that if I pursue the programming certificate I should also balance it with some other courses where I'll have a significantly better chances for dates...something like fashion 101 or the like.

Ruby on Rails

I started playing with Ruby on Rails. It's a combination of an easy programming language and a web application framework with database linking that allows you to quickly develop web applications. I started looking into it a little deeper because I was interested in knowing how to make e-commerce sites (online catalogues and the like).

A friend of mine in Ottawa had initially told me about and my brother piqued my interest after he explained how it worked. I went out and bought a couple of books (RoR for Dummies and RailsSpace)

In hindsight, the Dummies book may have been a bit of a waste of money, but it may prove useful down the road. RailsSpace, on the other hand is pretty neat. The book has an online portion to it were you can look at the code a little easier and copy/paste to save you the typing.

The Ruby syntax is pretty easy to learn so far. It's fairly intuitive and a lot of the coding is not cryptic at all...you kind of write down what you have in mind. Have a look for yourself: this site lets you try it out.

The person who wrote that tutorial definitely has a unique brain. Obviously and out-of-the-box thinker. He/She wrote the strangest guide book. I'm not sure how useful it is for learning code, but the pictures are pretty entertaining.

Anyways, I'll slowly be chipping away at the RoR stuff. My interest in it got me thinking about what it would be like to be a programmer for a living. I decided to try a programming course to get a better taste for it.

JMo

JMo is one of the engineers in my department at work. He's into music and does some DJing on the side. He's got a few mixes out on this site. The music's a little too clubby for my taste, but if you're like club / house / techno type of stuff, check it out.

Cornucopia Regatta

I went sailing at the Cornucopia Regatta at DYC over the Labour Day weekend. I got an email from SimonK who just bought a Kirby 25 for a really good deal and he needed crew to sail it at the regatta. It turned out that the boat had been sitting for a while and was in no shape for a regatta. Fortunately, Undercover wasn't in the regatta yet so he managed to convince Theo to sign up and he organized a quick crew with Derek and myself. It turned out that I had the most experience at helming a boat in races so I was the helmsman by default.

For a crew that was just thrown together on a new boat, we did fairly well. We had some awesome starts, great point and speed upwind, and had some cool downwind battles. We were in the running for a respectable 5th place, but a couple of key mistakes on the Sunday hurt us since we had a DFL finish on one race. We ended up in a tie, but got 7th place since Ruby's best race was better than ours. I've been waiting for someone to post some pictures, but so far nothing yet on the Kirby site.

It was an awesome weekend and it was great to get back in there again. I didn't get out enough this summer. I'll have to figure out something so I can get out there regularly next summer. There's another Kirby regatta in Barrie this coming weekend, but I don't think I'll be going. The Cornucopia was probably my last sail for the season.

Some Macro Photos

I decided to scan some negatives that I've had for a while as a test run for the scanner. Mainly macro photos that I'd taken a while back. Here's a little selection...

Some of my mom's plants:












I also had blue and red light bulbs that I played with one night:








I plan on having a couple of these printed for the walls in my apartment. I'll get around to it one of these days...

New Scanner: CanoScan 4400F

I finally picked a new scanner. I had my mind set on this one by Canon but was overwhelmed by its size when I finally checked out. It has the capacity to scan 35mm film, slides, and 120 size film.

I'd originally thought about getting into medium format photography using my Yashica 12 TLR. The large negative format offers the ability for some really detailed pictures as this page shows, but it's also more expensive than 35mm film. Working life and living in Toronto means that I have less time to walk around and take pictures so I haven't really done much in terms of photography.

I decided to scale back and settled for this smaller scanner. It's limited to 35mm negatives and slides but offers the same resolution. I also like the film holder that comes with it. It's easy to load and it holds the film pretty flat.

The scanner also automatically scans each frame individually and shows a preview. You can then select the frames that you want scanned and have them saved to a directory. It works pretty well and the scanning speed is reasonable.

I haven't really looked into using it with linux so I have to boot into Windows to scan photos. The one thing that I don't like about the system is that you have to select an application to load the pictures into after scanning. The system comes with ArcSoft photo editing software so I selected it just to get it to work. I didn't use the software really because I'm used to editing photos in GIMP now. I tried getting the Canon scanning toolbox to load the scanned images into gimp directly but kept getting a .dll error. It's annoying but not that big of a deal.

Overall, I find the scanner works pretty well. I'm going to get a lot of use out of it since I have two bulk rolls of 35mm Kodak Tri-X to use...once I get around to taking some pictures on a regular basis.

Yummy Curry...

For some strange reason, I've had frequent hankerings for curry over the last few weeks. I finally got around to making one tonight...my first Curry.

I found this recipe on the food network's site (a great resource btw) and modified it slightly. The store near me didn't have any fenugreek seeds so I left them out. I had some green chilis in the fridge so I used 3 small ones instead of the scotch bonnet (probably a good idea anyways). I didn't have a lot of fresh thyme, the little plant I have on the balcony doesn't seem to grow very fast (I think it needs a lot more sunlight). I added a bunch of oregano instead. I also used bouillon cubes in hot water instead of the chicken stock and added potatos and a green pepper just because...

I followed the cooking instructions and let it stew for about an hour and a half. I made some basmati rice with a pinch of garam masala to go along with the curry. It was a long wait and I got pretty hungry. It was worth it though...not the best curry I've ever had, but pretty good for a first try. I'll have to keep the recipe in mind and try to find ways to make it better. It'll be a good dish to have in the winter.

I've always looked closely at the pictures in food magazines and tried to see how they were set up. I decided to take some pictures while waiting for the food to cool off a bit. With a compact digicam, it's hard to get a really short depth of field, so I used gimp to simulate it. Here's what the dish looked like:



I may make a habit of taking pictures of some of my culiary creations...see how creative I can get.

Book Review: The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery

I've been reading a lot lately. The latest book is "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery. I'd heard a lot about this book so I finally picked it up.

It's a really good read and Flannery's writing style is very informative and the topics are organized well. The book is divided into five parts: Gaia's Tools, One in Ten Thousand, The Science of Prediction, People in Greenhouses, and The Solution.

The first part deals with the Gaia idea brought forward by James Lovelock that our planet is one large organism that we and all other life on the planet are part of it. It's an interesting idea that has some merit. Once you start looking into the mechanisms of nature, it's easy to see how everything is interconnected and how plants, animals, and people both affect and are affected by the weather.

He goes on to an explanation of the structure of Earth's atmosphere and how greenhouse gases affect the overall temperature of the planet. A key chapter in this first part of the book deals with the carbon balance on the planet and how plants, soils, and the oceans store carbon. He also explains how coal, oil, and natural gas are a form of long term carbon storage. The rapid rate at which we are consuming these fossil fuels means that we are transferring carbon from these carbon storage media to the atmosphere through combustion and the release of CO2.

As I understand it, the major problem is not that this transfer is taking place, but rather the rate at which carbon is being transferred leads to a relatively rapid increase in the Earth's temperature resulting in a rapid change of climate systems. This rapid change means that biological systems (arboreal forests, rain forests, savannas, etc.) do not have enough time to adapt to the changing climate. Consequently, a significant portion of animal and plant life on the planet most likely face extinction. Another problem with the rapid rise of Earth's temperature is that it brings instability into the climate systems that can lead to the disruption of the Gulf Stream, changes in rainfall patterns, more extreme weather in some parts of the globe, and milder weather in others. It's too complex a topic to describe here, and in any case, Flannery does a better job at explaining it than I ever will.

The book also takes time to explain the rigorous peer review system for publishing climate change data. There are several review stages done by hundreds of scientists so any published scientific data about climate change should be taken seriously because it has the consensus of a large group of scientists. Flannery also takes the time to explain predictive methods and how they are used to get a good idea of possible outcomes of a 2 to 5 degree Celsius increase in the average temperature of the earth. The picture doesn't look good for the majority of the world, but places like Canada and Russia will likely benefit from the warmer climate in terms of increased agricultural production, milder weather, and an expansion of more hospitable land.

Other sections of the book deal with the naysayers of climate change and how propaganda is used to cast doubt on the scientific studies and findings. This issue is not new, it's a dirty method that's been sued before and will likely be used again wherever massive corporate profits and public interests diverge.

Flannery does offer up solutions to reducing CO2 emissions but the information is already well known and he doesn't offer up anything new. He mentions hybrid cars and the french compressed air car that I wrote about in an earlier post. Solar, wind, and wave power all also have a role to play in replacing fossil fuels as renewable energy sources.

Apart from the science of climate change and the politics surrounding it, there are some nuggets of information about the wonders of nature including this frog that changes it's stomach from a digestive organ to a brooding chamber for it's young.

In terms of the climate change topic, it seems to me that the forces of government and corporations will be to slow to react to the growing danger of climate change unless the public exerts pressure on both parties. There is a lot of debate still going on even in the face of volumes of scientific information dating back at least 3 decades. The poeple muddying the issue will be successful in delaying any seriuos reduction of CO2 emissions unless the worldwide public gets more informed as to the nature of the problem and what it takes to solve it. Getting more aware and informed can begin with reading this book.

Walkabout around Toronto...

I was hoping to go sailing at a regatta this past weekend, but plans fell through. I didn't bother showing up because I didn't really have a ride. So I decided to go wandering around downtown Toronto on Saturday.

I started at Kensington Market, which starts west of Spadina and north of Dundas. I ran into the Chinatown festival on my way there. It was a little too crowded for my taste and it didn't seem like much of a cultural experience for me. I stopped briefly to check out some food deals that they had on the street...BBQ Pork on rice for $2 was a good deal, but didn't seem that appetizing.

In any case, another block onwards and I was in Kensington Market. It's a neat place that's different from the big buildings and business suit areas of the downtown core. It's got an alternative artsy feel to it...some strange people too. The small fruit markets are nice and there are a couple of army surplus stores as well as some safety clothing/equipment shops...you could probably find a good deal if you looked hard enough.

I stumbled onto a gem: The House of Spice. The strong smells hit you as you step in the store. They've got almost everything to suit your culinary needs. I thought I might find some Filipino spice mixes like sinigang and tinola mixtures, but they didn't have any. Lots of other stuff though. I ended up buying a pack of bay leaves (I didn't have any at home) and a loose leaf mix of Masala Chai. Reasonable pricing. It's good to know there's a place like that around town. Here are a couple pictures of the place:





I kept wandering around the neighbourhood looking for a decent place to eat...there were some interesting looking places but none of them appealed to me at the time. I just kept on walking and taking pictures along the way. Here are some interesting shots:







The art gallery of Ontario is in the neighbourhood too. I stopped in because there were a couple of exhibits I was interested in. One was an exhibit by Chuck Close, an artist who does some wacky and large portraits of people. For this particular exhibit, he used Daguerreotype photographs as a base and painted his portraits from there. Interesting exhibit, he collaborated with a poet to have some verbage alongside the images.

The other exhibit I was interested in had to do with modert art from India. I found them unremarkable to be honest, and the exhibit itself was modest. The other two exhibits on display had to do with medieval art pieces that were mainly christian artifacts and some First Nation artifacts. The latter was interesting but not very informative with captions such as "Bowl with a Beaver" and "Frog on a bowl". Overall, I may have spent 20 minutes in there, but not much more than that. It was a nice way to cool off a bit, but not worth the $15 admission fee...

After that, I found a place that sold shawarmas...unfortunately my excitement faded after I payed $6 dollars for the combo that just included a drink and the shawarma wasn't traditional. The handwritten sign offering Motza Ball soup for $2.50 should have been a clue, but I was already pretty hungry.

I thought about walking across town to check out some camera stores on Queen St. E, but decided against it. I was starting to get tired...been walking for around 4 hours by that point. There was lots going on around town that day...here are some pictures from the walk to the subway station:







I was pretty tired when I got home. I had a small bite to eat, drank lots of water, and then settled down for some reading. It was a good day...the weather could not have been better. I'll have to decided on another part of the city to check out.

Book Review: It's The Crude, Dude, Linda McQuaig

Linda McQuaig is a canadian journalist who currently is a columnist for the Toronto Star. I've always found her articles interesting and usually agreed with what she had to say, but not always how she said it. I think sometimes a little less attitude can carry a message farther, but that's just me.

In any case, as the title suggests, McQuaig's book "It's the Crude, Dude" is about oil. The book, naturally, begins with the invasion of Iraq and examines the reasons that were given for the invasion. She then goes into an explanation of the oil resources in the middle east and how profitable the Iraqi oil can be given the current levels of demand for oil.

She builds a strong case that the reasons for the invasion of Iraq was more about the control of a very valuable oil resource and how that resource can be used as a weapon to control not just the middle east, but other regions of the world. The book gives a detailed picture of history of the oil industry and correlates it with the political histories of the countries involved.

It gives a history of the oil business and its growth into its current massive state, includes the history of attempts at unity by the oil producing third world countries through OPEC and the Arab league, and illustrates how profitable the business can be for both parties. Along the way, though, McQuaig takes a detour and gives an account of the development of the SUV as subsidized and highly profitable product for the North American automakers in the face of the influx of Japanese cars that are more efficient on gas, more reliable, and of higher build quality.

While I liked the content of the book, I don't necessarily like McQuaig's writing style. Even the title itself seems a little juvenile for the topic. That shouldn't take away from the content though.

Here's a short list as to why I think people should read this book:

1. To get a better understanding of how the invasion of Iraq came about.


2. It has a good account of the history of the west "spreading democracy" in the middle east.


3. It offers a good explanation of why the west, and particulary the US, is so hated in the middle east.


4. It contains an insight into Hugo Chavez that you'll rarely see on mainstream news (the man is quite the character with some really good ideas).


5. It tells you exactly how you are getting ripped off if you buy an SUV.


6. You think you're getting ripped off at the gas pump, but not quite exactly sure how.


7. Reading a book is infintely better than watching tv.

Personally, I liked this book for several reasons. There's a lot of history that I didn't know, particularly about Venezuela's leadership in the formation of OPEC and as a catalyst for the oil producing countries obtaining better trade deals from the oil companies. I now have a deeper understanding of the economics of the invasion of Iraq as well as a new appreciation for what it would mean if we did find an alternate renewable energy delivery method capable of competing with oil. (Wind and Solar energy can currently compete with oil as energy sources. Storing and then delivering the energy for transportation is still a bit of an issue).

This book is definitely worth the read. You can find it here or here...or even better, step into a library and borrow it.

Here's a more detailed review of the book.

Google Tools

I've been reading about Google's Adsense and wanting to give it a try in the hopes of making some money off of this blog. I applied for it the other night and the application went through. I think pretty much any site will get accepted unless there are a bunch broken links or the site content is pretty foul. There's a ton of fine print to go through. I skimmed through it and basically I'm not allowed to click on the ads on my page and I'm not allowed to direct page viewers to the ads visually (through fancy flashing arrows and the like), verbally (asking people to click on them), or through the code (forcing viewers to click on something before viewing content).

I'm not sure exactly how Google picks out the ads to display. I tried looking for a setting where it would only display ads for canadian outfits, but couldn't figure it out. I'll have to do a little more research some other time.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it all works. Who knows ? Hopefully I'll make some pocket money for a coule pints here or there...

Another neat little Google tool is Google Analytics. I recently signed on the other night and am starting to see the results roll in. It's pretty amazing. All you really do is insert some javascript code in you blog template and Google uses it to track interaction with your page. Again, I'm not sure how it all works, but the numbers it collects are neat. Here's a sample of my dashboard:



There's a lot of data in the underlying layers and it's presented in a neat fashion. It could be pretty useful for some web designers, but I have it mainly because I'm interested in how my blog is being viewed. Again, who knows where this will end up, but it's a neat piece of technology.

The Fresh Kids...

It was the 80's, we were kids, and we were breakdancing in the middle east.



I know I'm going to hear about this from a few of my friends, but I've recently gotten in touch with people from my days in Jordan so I figured it would be nice to share this.

My parents had this picture on their mantle. I was in a bit of a rush and used my digital camera to capture it rather than scan it, hence the poor quality.

Labels...

I decided to make use of the label feature on posts. I turned out to be a tedious process since I had to go through all the posts since I started the site. You can now see the post categories in the side bar. I did it mainly for my sake so I can find stuff a little easier.

One tough bit is finding broken links in the older posts. I did a little searching for some online link checkers. I tried a couple sites, but the reporting wasn't that great and I had to dig through my posts anyways. There probably are some broken links still...

Moth Sailing

I'm starting to seriously consider buying a single-handed dinghy like a Laser or Finn. So I went on YouTube to check out some videos there about these boats when I came across this and this.

They look like they're flying on the water ! It looks like a ton of fun too. Probably not cheap either...

There's lots on YouTube about these boats, but here's one good one that seems to be a marketing video of sorts.

A used Laser is probably the route I'll go with. There's lots of boats around and a bunch of regattas in areas close by. I can load one of them on the top of my car too...probably best to put in a roof rack though. Buying one this year is probably out of the question, I'll see what my finances are like next spring. In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye open for good deals...

J105 Sailing

I recently managed to get some sailing in on the weekend with Rob and Sandy on their J105 boat for the Port Credit Yacht Club regatta this past weekend. Manuel, the webmaster for the J105 Fleet 4 managed to put the word out for me and Sandy got a hold of Friday.

It was great to be out there on the water again. The J105 boat itself is pretty big compared to the Kirby25s that I started on. It also uses a small jib compared to the 150% genoa usually on Kirbys as well as an asymmetrical spinnaker. The setup makes tacking and jibing fairly simple. You don't have to jibe the spinnaker pole on downwind jibes and it's easier to manage the small jib on upwind tacks. Nevertheless, like any boat, it takes a bit of skill to sail fast and beat the fleet consistently. Our boat handling wasn't much of an issue, rather our trimming and courses put us in the middle to rear of the pack.

I got confused about sail trim rules during some of the discussions on the boat. Being out of practice and trying to recollect what I'd learnt the previous 3 years, I got mixed up as to what kind of sail shape you need for different wind speeds and water conditions. In any case, I found some resourceful links after I got home.

The performance sailing articles on Sailing San Francisco site is a good resource: Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
The Vega sailing manual is a good one as well.

I learned a few new things about sailing a boat over the weekend and hopefully I can put them to good use fairly soon.

In any case, here are some pics from the weekend:

















Incidentally, the ontario crew bank is a good place to sign up if you're looking to get on a boat somewhere or if you have a boat and are looking for crew.

Flickr Photos

I recently logged in to Yahoo Photos to add a picture and I got a message that it'll be shut down. As a result I had the option of transferrring my pictures to four different sites but I settled for Flickr because I thought it was the best.

Here's a link to my photo sets.

I still have to organize my pictures into a proper album. Now that I have a proper computer desk to sit at, it makes it easier to get back to sorting and editing the photos.

Old Class Picture

Thanks to the facebook phenomenon, I've had a few old classmates from Jordan get a hold of me. It's a bit surreal to think about, it seems like a lifetime ago that I was living in Amman and going to school with them. It might be nice to travel back there again and see how the place has changed over the last 15 years or so.

My parents have some old photos from those days...here's a class picture from Abdul Hamid Sharaf in Amman:



I did a little search online and found a wikipedia entry for the school. It seems a disgruntled student managed to add a few vulgar lines at the end of the writeup.

Montreal

A few of the us drove up to Montreal for a weekend of shenanigans for the stag of one of my good friends. It's a fun place to visit. The city is pretty scenic in a variety of ways. It's cosmopolitan and has a lot of character to it. The old part of Montreal is especially nice. We couldn't have asked for nicer weather...wasn't too hot or cold, just right.

There's an unwritten rule about not taking pictures on a stag so I didn't take any, unfortunately.

Here are a couple noteworthy places to visit if you're in the area:

Restaurant La Banquise: Best Poutine I've ever tasted. Very unhealthy but tastes great at the end of a night out.

Med Bar and Grill: A trendy and expensive place but the food is really good and the place turns in a bit of a club at the end of the night. No dress code, but a snazzy outfit doesn't hurt if you go there.

No visit to Montreal is complete without a stop at Shwartz's deli. It's a landmark in Montreal and serves the probably best smoked meat sandwich you'll ever have.

There are a lot of places in Montreal and these are just some of them. I hear that Jazz Festival up there is a really good time...we were a week too early. Maybe next year...

NOD regatta in Ottawa

I drove up to Ottawa a couple of weekends ago to sail in the annual NOD regatta. It was a little different this time around. I'm not sailing regularly on a boat so I basically was trying to get a ride with someone. I hadn't sailed all year and watching the wind and enjoying the warm weather gave me the sailing itch.

So I left early on the Friday and drove up by myself to Ottawa to meet up with people. I've got a soft spot for the city. I lived there for two great years and had a great time up there. Unfortunately, the economy took a downturn around 2003 and I lost my job and had to leave for work. I try to make it up there at least once every summer and every time I go I start thinking about living there again...who knows if that will ever happen, but it's a nice thought. In any case, my favourite spot there is the patio at the Lieutenant's Pump on Elgin St. I used to live around the corner from it and hung out there a lot...stopping by the Shawarma's King or House of Georgies (gravy on pizza...sounds gross but sooo good) on the way home. If you've never had a shawarma before, you're missing out. It's the Lebanese version of fast food...try one when you get a chance, you won't regret it. But I digress...the pump is also famous for a drink they serve called the smiling jerry. Doesn't sound like a good drink and looks even worse, but it's good. Just don't drink too many of them and make sure you have a ride home after you start drinking them. I managed to meet up with some friends there saturday night and downed a couple of Jerries before heading back to the sailing club.

Chuck was nice enough to have me on his boat "Nemo". He's new to the boat class and I tried to pass on the knowledge that I had. The sailing itself was a mix of good and bad. There was basically no wind on Saturday so no real sailing. The fleet decided to stay out there for the most part and try to enjoy the day without getting too roasted in the sun. Six boats ended up rafting together and throwing an anchor down. Almost everyone donned a life jacket as shorts and bobbed in the water with beer in hand...makes for effortless swimming and a great way to cool off. Here's what the scene looked like:







There was a ton of wind on Sunday though and some pretty good racing as a result. Our crew had never sailed together before and Chuck's regulars were still new to the boat. We put up a good show but had trouble keeping up with the lead group in the heavier winds. We had a couple of good placements but were back of the pack for the most part. Here are some pictures from the weekend. I'm in there somewhere...

Horizon Kompact Panoramic Camera

Hmmm...I'm considering saving my loonies for this camera. It's a nice little simple camera to get into taking panoramic shots. It's all mechanical...no electronics. Single aperture of f8, and just two shutter speed settings: day and night. A really simple camera. It looks like it's mostly made out of plastic so I wonder how long it'll last. You can opt for the scaled up version with a full range of aperture and speed settings, but at double the price.

There's some interesting photos on the web including these on I found by searching flickr for "horizon kompact".

I'm not sure I'm into the lomography culture...it seems like it's mostly hype and sells some pretty cheap looking cameras for fairly high prices. Then again, it really doesn't matter what kind of camera you use as long as you're taking pictures and having fun, right ?

I'll keep checking out prices for these and keep an eye out on ebay...maybe I'll luck out and get a good deal on one. For now though...the loonies will have to go towards a new scanner.

Compressed Air Engines

I've been really interested in compressed air engines lately. They're interesting pieces of technology. They're basically similar to a regular internal combustion engine, but without the internal combustion part. The air is compressed externally to high pressures and the release of that pressure drives a piston, which then turns a crankshaft. In an internal combustion engine, the air pressure is created by the ignition of a fuel/air mixture.

Here's an interesting video from Australia:



You can read about the MDI engine here. I still haven't gotten my head wrapped around how the Engineair motor works, but you can read about it here.

This seems like a far simpler way to reduce emissions produced from cars. There are no expensive electric motors or heavy batteries. The fuel infrastructure could be very easily and inexpensively put in place...almost all gas stations have an air compressor now. It wouldn't take much to install bigger capacity compressors. You don't need any fuel to be trucked in on a regular basis. The power needed to drive to compressors could come from several clean sources...solar/wind/wave.

City transit authorities such as the TTC could save a lot in terms of fuel costs by having their buses running on compressed air. They could easily refill at the bus stations every time they cycle through their routes.

Anyways, you can read about some homemade projects here and here. These guys make it seems so easy. Spinmaster Airhogs toys have been powered by pneumatic engines for a while. You can read about how their tiny engines work here.

Neat Technology

My friend Todd send me this link about some really neat technology going on in the software world. What they show in the presentation is pretty amazing. It's easy to think of a bunch of new spin off applications. I think a new kind of desktop interface is coming up. I also think browsing the web will change pretty fast too. Really cool stuff.

Poo....

Sad day. The Anaheim Ducks just beat the Ottawa Senators for the Stanley Cup. It was a great run for the sens...too bad they couldn't put up a better fight. Great season though...Hopefully they'll be just as good next year.

Hockey season's over now...I'll probably cancel the cable sometime over the next couple of days. Time to see what life is like without TV.

Manufacturing in China

Someone had this video at work so I copied it to put on here. Have a look at this:



It's hard to imagine being in this kind of work environment. It seems like a scene from the beginning of the industrial revolution where Europe and North America had child labourers and all sorts of poor conditions for workers. Wages were also pretty low.

A lot has happened in the west in terms of workers rights since then. Some would argue that unionized workers have it too good and point to examples in GM or Chrysler where the unions have pretty much choked companies through fat pensions and high wages. Beyond that, however, there are a lot of safety regulations, inspections, quality assurance auditing, paid vacation, minimum wage, and other basic benefits that are a given for people working here in Canada. The cost for all of these, along with taxes, electricity, water, building maintenance, and other administrative departments, are carried by any company in the form of overhead costs. They work to increase the cost of any product or service being sold.

In the video, apart from the obvious lack of safety measures, there are 6 people running a single machine. No North American company producing similar products can afford to put that many people on a single machine. The hourly wages of the people alone would make the parts too expensive. Instead, automation and other methods are used to reduce the manpower hours on a production line to produce parts at a lower cost. Machines are significantly cheaper than people in the long run.

What can we do to compete with Chinese labour then? That's too big a topic to write about now. In the meantime, please consider that India has close to a billion people right now and, like China, has a large pool of cheap labour to draw on. Also consider that they are growing rapidly in the IT industry and now have the 5th largest steel company in Tata Steel. So the question now becomes, how do we compete against both India and China ?

As a final note, here's a little example on the reality of cheap Chinese labour:
During one interview that I had in Kitchener, Ontario, the company was having welded metal carts manufactured in China. I asked them why, since it was a pretty basic item and there are plenty of local companies that could produce these carts. The interviewer said that the cost of having them made in China was 30% of the cost of having them made locally in Canada...and that included the cost of shipping the carts half-way around the world.