resistance to persistence

earth hour is this saturday at 8pm. register online at wwf.ca/earthhour or earthhour.org to let them know you’re participating so estimates can be kept for those involved.

i plan on turning out the lights, lighting some candles and relaxing. i’m going to try turning off as much electronics as possible, even turning off the computers. maybe i’ll do some battery-powered PSP gaming.

I bought a MacBook Pro on the weekend (post to follow soon) and I’m moving my life from my PC to Mac. Previously, I did everything on my Mac Mini, except for all my email and surfing which I did on my PC laptop. Now that I’ve got a portable Mac, all of my life is going on there.

I use Thunderbird for email on multiple accounts (blainekendall.com, Gmail, a few Yahoo accounts, a few other domains,etc). I managed to find some tutorials on easily moving mail accounts from the PC to Mac. But there was just one problem…Yahoo POP access. A few years ago, Yahoo started charging for POP email checking. They want you to go through their web pages (for advertising revenues). Thus YPops was created to continue giving POP access by running a small server on your local machine and screen scraping your email out of Yahoo. Sadly, it was Windows-only although the source was available for those who wanted to try to convert it to Mac/Unix/Linux,etc. Not being able to check my Yahoo mail except for on a webpage was just a hardship I’d have to deal with.

Until today. I did another search and found something that claims to solve the problem. MacFreePops looks to do the same thing as YPops, yet runs on the Mac. I’ll definitely be giving it a shot tonight. It’s the one remaining thorn in my side keeping me from a complete transition.

the wardrobe becomes a desk

with the recent clearing of the home office to make way for the baby nursery, i had to find a spot to put the couple computers, photo gear, and store all the normal paperwork, magazines, bills, etc that are necessary in life. but i wanted to do it in a slightly clever way and keep the future home in the basement clutter free and organized.

i spent an afternoon wandering Ikea, looking for the largest storage possibilities i could find. in the end, i found my solution…a wardrobe closet, Pax. The closet is very deep and wide with lots of possibilities for customization. When I saw the possibilities for rolling drawers, I knew I had a winner. This would allow for a pullout keyboard drawer and other drawers for each of the computer components.

i dedicated half of the 2m (6.5 feet) wide closet to being a working desk area and photography storage. the other have would be storage for paperwork, bins with electronics gear, etc. this would keep the clutter away from the daily working area.

it definitely wasn’t the cheapest solution as it rang up about $850 for everything but at least it’s clean and clutterfree. this way my basement den doesn’t look like an office and i can close the sliding doors and hide everything.

view a slideshow of the building process

I think it’s safe for me to finally get rid of this old computer

with all the changes and preparation for the baby on the way, i’ve really been focused on downsizing my life. very critical about sorting out the stuff i need to keep and get rid of. minimizing anything i don’t need. i’ve become much more pragmatic about things i own as well and questioning new purchases if i really need them. in the past 10 years since graduation, i’ve never really had to worry about impulse purchases and restricting my spending on the latest gadgets. the new baby has a big effect on the budget and financial planning.

but mostly i’ve been cleaning out my existing goods. ever since i was a little kid, i’ve always formed an emotional attachment to goods. i treated my toys like gold and would never scratch them. i placed a lot of value in them and wouldn’t part with them until long after they worth anything to me or anyone else. looking at anything, i could still find value it it somehow. for example, when recycling a plastic bin that something comes in, i would think to myself…”I can keep some stuff in that. i’m not sure what, but at some point i’ll need to store something and that bin will be perfect”. there’s also an environmental aspect to it - i hate to throw things out when they can be repurposed. everything has value, just maybe not to you at this moment. if only there was an efficient way to find someone who absolutely needed that bin at that moment in time.

so we’ve sorted a lot of electronics, books, clothes, etc and tried to find new owners for things. donated computer gear to friends and family. selling stuff on ebay/craigslist. clothing has been donated. books given to friends to read. i even gave away a very old Playstation and all my original games to goodwill. I wish I could have found some young kids to give it to directly to brighten up their holidays.

when making decisions on whether to keep or get rid of things in my life, I think about what my friend Ben would do. he’s always been very free about getting rid of everything. very minimalist. even when packing for trips, he has very little to lug around. whereas I’ll pack a laptop, my ipod, magazines, a book, portable game system, portable dvd system. i fear boredom. other than furniture, if you asked him (before he was married and had a kid) to pack his life in a box it would contain a laptop, a camera and some books. oh, and of course a snowboard. everything could fit in a carload.

so in this paring down of my life, it’s being done to lower the maintenance and overhead of all the gadgets and “stuff” that takes time out of living your life. this was very reminiscent of when i moved from a PC to a Mac. I found I no longer had the overhead of maintaining a PC. I could just get on doing what I wanted to and not have a burden of maintenance and upkeep. that’s what i’m looking for in my life. less maintenance, more time for doing things and less things to distract from living.

in new purchases and anything around the house now, I question if I really need one more thing in my life. knick-knacks and toys that clutter the shelves and closets are no longer kept. presents that i can’t use will be returned. excess gifts for the sake of giving are not needed. there are only a few things i truly want and outside of those things, i do not need. global society is consuming too much and it needs to slow down. my brother in law made a good point on the weekend as we were wandering through a store. “do there really need to be more candles made? can’t we stop making candles and just buy up the existing ones?” I laughed and it made sense. every big and little store sells candles yet only a small percentage buys them. there’s probably 4.62 candles per person in the world, i think we can cut back on the candle store stockpiles until someone starts buying these things. and if you get candles this year for christmas, it’s likely the person who gave you the candles probably got them as a gift from somebody else the year before.

so next time you’re out wandering the stores ask yourself if you really need more in your life. and can you share the things you already have with someone who might need it more. then you can focus on the more important things like friends and family.

Walking my usual route this morning, I cut through Berczy Park by the Flatiron building on Front Street. I saw a bunch of film crew gear setting up, which is never a surprise in Toronto, but always interesting to watch. Reflectors were being setup, a camera was being mounted on a large boom arm. But no lighting yet. Usually there’s a lot of lighting setup and that got me interested to as I was walking past, I kept looking around. And then I spotted something very interesting in yellow and red.

I watch Amazing Race a lot. I love seeing the challenges, travelling the world, and reality tv in general. So I have the sight of the yellow and red checkpoint markers burned in my retinas. And that’s exactly what I saw today when I passed the park.

Amazing Race is in Toronto

The box has a lock on it. I think it’s probably so that the word doesn’t get out on who’s left in the game before the episodes are aired or where the next destination is. I’m sure there’s betting pools out there and information like that could come in handy.

I might wander back to the park at lunch time and see if anything else is happening. Here’s the map location.

I’ve posted a larger version of the image on Flickr.

UPDATE: I went back later the same day and the post was there, but no cameras. Interesting…Is Phil hiding in the bushes with the camera crew? Nope. There was a sign on the box that revealed it wasn’t the tv show, but a local adventure company running a “team building” event based on the Amazing Race concept. Run around Toronto gathering clues and your company will work better together.

I was out at lunch time and came across this sweet ride, the first time I’ve seen one in person. The Audi R8 looks awesome.

Check out that engine

Big 19s

Carbon fiber air intakes on the side

R8 badging even on the brakes

The car is so much wider than it appears

D300…I can’t wait to own you

Nikon announced their new D3 and D300 cameras today. The D3($5000 USD) is a high end, almost full frame pro photographers camera. The D300 ($1800 USD) is the less advanced version, yet surprisingly still packed with a lot of the same features as the more expensive D3. 12.3 MP, 51-point auto focus system, LiveView shooting, 3″ LCD, advanced scene recognition, 6-8 frames per second and even a self-cleaning image sensor.

Read and see some images of the new D300

I read this article below on Boing Boing…and it makes me very sick. Months ago, we stopped using plastic bags from grocery stores and bought plastic bins and reusable cloth bags. It’s really made a difference in the amount of bags that pile up at home. I also refuse plastic bags at many stores and just put anything I buy in another bag I already have. The thought that every single plastic bag I’ve ever touched in my entire life is still out there floating around somewhere is horrifying. Out of sight, out of mind. But soon they won’t be out of sight for much longer. I’d like to see photos of this mass of plastic floating in the ocean. Leave me a comment if you’ve seen photos.

Salon has a heart-rending feature on the ubiquitous, eternal plastic bag. These things last forever, and they’re piling up so fast, they’re choking us. Americans throw away 12 bmillion oil barrels’ worth of plastic bags every year.

Once aloft, stray bags cartwheel down city streets, alight in trees, billow from fences like flags, clog storm drains, wash into rivers and bays and even end up in the ocean, washed out to sea. Bits of plastic bags have been found in the nests of albatrosses in the remote Midway Islands. Floating bags can look all too much like tasty jellyfish to hungry marine critters. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic. The conservation group estimates that 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In the Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there’s now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that’s twice the size of Texas, including fragments of plastic bags. There’s six times as much plastic as biomass, including plankton and jellyfish, in the gyre. “It’s an endless stream of incessant plastic particles everywhere you look,” says Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of education and research for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which studies plastics in the marine environment. “Fifty or 60 years ago, there was no plastic out there.”…

The problem with plastic bags isn’t just where they end up, it’s that they never seem to end. “All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces,” says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade. That means unless they’ve been incinerated — a noxious proposition — every plastic bag you’ve ever used in your entire life, including all those bags that the newspaper arrives in on your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn’t a sliver of a chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and will exist long after you’re dead.

Read the article…

I went to the dentist this morning for a routine cleaning. I’m back in tomorrow for a rescheduled jaw appointment that just coincidentally happened to be the day after I was just in there. Whatever, it’s on my way to work and I’ll at least get to watch another movie while laid back in the chair.

But this morning got me thinking. I spend so much time every year at the dentist either getting checkups or doing maintenance on existing dental work. I’m not in there that much… probably 5 hours a year. But compare that time spent on such a small area of your body with how much time you spend getting the rest of your entire body checked out. At my general doctor, I likely spend 45 minutes a year at the very most with my doctor. And that’s for my entire body! A yearly checkup takes about 20 minutes which consists of checking my height and weight, checking flexibility (I’m not kidding) and a couple of coughs out loud. “You can touch your toes, you must be fine”.

What’s the number one killer in North America? I believe it’s cancer. Possibly heart disease. How come even a fraction of the yearly time you spend making sure your chompers are their pearly whitest, we as a society aren’t doing the same for cancer? Why aren’t there doctors or clinics you visit every 6 months to make sure you don’t have skin cancer or a tumour growing that you don’t find out about until it’s too late?

Personally, I’d trade my teeth over having cancer anyday.

I watched Michael Moore’s SiCKO last night. Living in Canada, I’d never understood the whole pay for service bit. And The US Healthcare Insurance business was confusing as well. A few friends of mine moved to the States after University and I’d always thought that if you move to the US, you’re fine as long as you get health insurance. I’d previously contemplated moving to the US and figured as long as I worked with a large enough company, they’d arrange for health insurance as part of the work benefits package. After watching Sicko, it appears it’s not that easy. Health insurance doesn’t appear to always cover all of your bills, and if there’s a loophole to get out of paying it, you’re stuck with the bill yourself. I’m sure the movie showed select cases and it’s not as bad as Michael Moore portrays. But it’s likely close enough and that scares me.

The movie makes me appreciate the Canadian health care system much more now. It’s never been something I’ve ever had to think about. When we were on a recent cruise ship, I wasn’t feeling well and went to see the medical doctor. At the office, I was presented with a menu of charges. It was such a foreign concept to me. Talking to a doctor was $100. Some stitches was $150. A broken leg another few hundred. If you had a serious medical illness, you’d definitely be in for some huge bills.

What amazed me even more was learning about the British and French health care systems. They’re even better than Canada’s. If you have a baby in France, you can have a person show up at your house to do laundry, cook some meals and clean up for a few hours each week. Daycare is $1/hour. I know a lot of people that pay a good chunk of their salary for the first few years of daycare. France even has a 24-hour doctor service that does house calls for minor illness. Very impressive.

If you’re an American, leave some comments… Is the health system as bad as Michael Moore makes it seem? Would you want government paid health care for everyone if it cost you extra in taxes? And what the heck is a HMO? I hear that term all the time and we don’t have these in Canada.