The $1 price point has long been touted as the holy grail for solar technology. At that price, it is basically comparable to fossil fuel based delivery of electricity, making it an economically viable replacement for current technologies. On Tuesday, that price point was finally reached. That doesn’t include the cost of installation currently, but it does show some real progress in that area. ...
That’s Rebecca and Teddy at my place in Chilliwack. Teddy was given to me by my grandma when I was less than a year old. I’ve had him ever since, and have been keeping him around for when my first kid is born. As a kid, Teddy and I went through lots of hard times, and it’s pretty encouraging to know he’s still around to see me through the bad times, even as an adult.
When my grandma went into surgery years ago, I thought I’d return the favour, and left Teddy under her arm in the recovery room at Chilliwack General. Since then, she’s made sure to see how he was doing from time to time, ...
I was doing a little research on carbon offsets this morning, and just for yucks, wanted to price out what it would cost to be a supplier of carbon offsets in Canada. There are various ways to offset carbon, but a fairly standard one is to plant trees in exchange for money. How many trees can you plant on an acre of land? Well, turns out this guy has it all figured out, at least for poplar trees. If you space them 10′ x 10′, you can get around 436 trees on an acre.
The average tree consumes about 1 ton of CO2 over it’s lifetime, which according to this website is around 80 years. So over ...
I saw this over on Matt’s blog and thought I should write about it too. Captured on digital film is the Vancouver police department tossing a pile of someone’s belongings into a garbage truck. The person who filmed the footage is David Eby, the Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
No doubt, police officers have a difficult job. They are asked to protect, to serve, and to make real-time decisions that are never easy. That being said, given the current conditions in the lower mainland with respect to violence and gangs, one has to question the actions of these officers, ...
My walls in my new place are still pretty bare, and that’s something I’ve been trying to fix lately. I went down to Ikea a few weeks ago a bought a pile of frames, but unfortunately finding anything to put in them has proved to be fairly difficult.
The first problem is that I don’t really have great photo backups of shots I’ve taken. If I were smart, I would have been uploading everything to Flickr at full resolution so I could use that as my archive. Unfortunately, I haven’t done that, so most of my photo originals are scattered amongst various DVDs and directories. I’ve always found ...
A few years ago I sat down to write my very first WordPress plugin, and ended up writing Crossroads. My goal at the time was to integrate Flickr comments into the normal comments on my blog, which was something I ultimately did. Unfortunately though, some of the limitations of the Flickr API made that feature fairly slow to use, and so it’s something I ditched on my own blog a long time ago.
A few days ago I sat down and started working on version 2.0. It’s a 100% complete rewrite, which given the state of the old code is definitely something that’s going to improve it. I’m writing it ...
Last night I was fortunate enough to be invited to a social media gathering in the penthouse of the Loden Hotel In Vancouver. The reason for everyone coming together was to discuss how social media can help the BC Children’s Hospital annual “Chip’s Not Dead Yet” Memorial Mile fundraiser that takes place in Vancouver
The actual event is a one mile race where everyone is welcome to participate. Part of the fun is that people can dress up in whatever costumes they want and simply participate in an effort to help raise money for the children:
Think of this as part run, walk, parade and party. ...
This is actually a pretty big deal. Most people don’t realize it, but North America is one of the few places in the world that uses high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to sweeten drinks and other items. Most other places in the world use pure glucose, which is the main sugar our bodies are built to run on. Fructose is far sweeter than glucose so you can use less of it to sweeten a product. High fructose corn syrup is typically composed of around 55% fructose and another 45% glucose. If you order a coca cola in the Caribbean, you’ll notice that is has a very different (and far more enjoyable IMO) ...
I’m always amazed when I see what the larger voice over IP (VOIP) companies are charging these days. Last time I looked at Vonage, I believe they were charging around $30/month, plus an activation fee and equipment fee of around $70 at the start. So while you do get a lot of bells and whistles included in that price (caller ID etc), it’s still rather expensive in my mind.
If you’re looking for something cheaper, and you have an Internet connection at home, here’s what you can do. First, you’ll need either a SIP softphone or an analog telephone adapter (ATA). A popular SIP softphone is ...
Well, given that Rebecca has Surrey covered in terms of blogging, I might as well take the reins here with Chilliwack. I’ve spent most of my time here at home since I moved back, but I’m going to start venturing out more and more.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for Wi-Fi spots in town, and wanted to present a list for anyone ever looking for where they are. I’ll keep updating this post over time as Chilliwack slowly emerges from the dark ages.
Starbucks out in Vedder Crossing – (paid hotspot) | map
Java Hut (near Future Shop) – (free hotspot) | web | map
Major Leagues 2 Sports Pub – ...
One of the reasons I ultimately moved back to Chilliwack is because I wanted to sort of take a well deserved rest from the last ten years of my life. Basically since leaving high school, my life has been one non-stop rollercoaster ride. My time in Ottawa was spent doing 60 hour weeks mostly at work, and I don’t even really remember that period of my life. During my master’s degree I was doing lots of research at school, and I also did a part time job on the side to help pay some bills. My first few years at CounterPath were crazy hectic as well, and most of us spent the first few years of ...
Well, well. After nearly a lifetime of waiting, Raymi and Phil have decided to officially tie the knot.
You guys are awesome, and I wish you nothing but happiness in the future! Congrats! ...
My friend Jason sent me a link to this video this morning, and I thought it was pretty cool. I contacted the guy who made it, and he gave me permission to show it here. It’s a time lapse out a window during an airplane trip.
Video by James Leng, All Rights Reserved. ...
At the current population growth rates, by the year 2500 people will be standing shoulder to shoulder on every piece of habitable land on this planet. So while our immediate problems have to do with global warming and obvious aggressions in various parts of the world, at some point population is going to become a focus as well.
It seems somewhat obvious to me that at some point there needs to be a type of population control on this planet. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how to implement something like that that doesn’t have any massive moral implications, and truthfully, ...
One of the major initiatives I’ve taken upon myself since moving back home is to actually eat at home for all of my meals. The last time I think I consistently ate three meals a day that I actually made for myself was probably back in high school.
Since moving out here, I’m happy to say that I’ve been fairly successful eating at home. It does take a lot of effort though, and I find I have to hit a grocery store every second day or so just to top up produce and what-not. The nice thing about being out here though is that it’s easy to bounce between various specialty stores in the same trip.
In ...
I saw this featured on a news program this morning, and thought it was pretty cool. It’s a website where they track the progress of all of Barack Obama’s campaign promises and see how he’s doing on the Obameter. Check it out. ...
I was over at Derek’s blog this morning reading his article about the BC Liberal Party and their sponsorship of the Northern Voice social. Given that the BC Liberal Party was also a sponsor of WordCamp Whistler, and that I was one of the organizers, I thought I should share my thoughts on this.
First, I want to point out the logistics of an event like this. Organizing WordCamp Whistler was literally two months of solid work. A few days prior to the event I was fielding well over 100 emails a day trying to keep the boat afloat, and pull everything together so that the conference would be successful. ...
As I’m pretty beat, I’ll post in more detail about WordCamp Whistler over the next few days. But I wanted to just say that it was a really great success in my opinion, and for the most part, went off without any hitches. I want to thank John Bollwitt and Rebecca Bollwitt for all their hard work over the last two months to help make it possible. I also want to thank all of the sponsors, speakers, and of course, the attendees who came up and made it a success.
Photo by John Biehler
We were hoping that at least 50 people would ultimately show up. The official turn out was somewhere around 105 ...