Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

This kind of thing can’t help but bug me. Why don’t we use metric for our paper standard sizes?

The international paper size standard, ISO 216, is based on the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. Using the metric system, the base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1 m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series A1, A2, A3, and so forth, are defined by halving the preceding paper size parallel to its shorter side. The most frequently used paper size is A4 (210 × 297 mm). An advantage is that standard A4 sheets made from 80 grams/m² paper weighs 5 grams, allowing one to know the weight - and associated postage rate - by counting the number of sheets used.

This standard has been adopted by all countries in the world except the United States and Canada. In Mexico, Colombia, Chile and the Philippines, despite the ISO standard having been officially adopted, the U.S. “letter” format is still in common use.

No pardon me while I go the extra mile and rant a bit about my height and weight. I’m just shy of 6 feet, and am well under 200 pounds. How tall am I in cm, and how heavy am I in kg? Beats me, I forget :-O Gosh, darn, Americanized lingo has permeated my brain. At least I know it’s just 12 degrees C outside today, and we had several millimeters of rain.

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I took this afternoon off work to attend the funeral service for Joan McGonigal. She was one of my teachers from elementary and jr. high school. She passed away last month. We’d stayed in touch several years after I finished high school because she bought a computer from my dad, and I was the local tech support provider.

It’s possible to pasteurize your water using only the energy from the sun, using a simple solar heater. There is also the even more low-tech method of painting a bottle half black and leaving it in the sun for 6 hours straight. Water doesn’t have to boil to kill the harmful parts listed in this “how to”.

Why is this important? Because waterborne illness kills millions of people every year, and if you are ever stuck in the unenviable position of needing to ensure your own water safety, you can use easy to find supplies to make microbe contaminated water safe for human consumption.

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Also interesting was David Suzuki Tuesday on CBC’s noon hour news program. He came out against the sale of plastic bottled water, and gave congratulations to London, ON for banning the practice among city run venues. I’m going to reevaluate my participation in an office “water club”, and perhaps get a Brita filter for the workplace so I can use tap water instead (that doesn’t taste of chlorine) in my stainless steel mug.

Sudbury is taking a less pro-active approach.

I hate to think how something like this policy clashes with a La Loche, SK beer bottle ban, when glass is one of the drink containers touted by Suzuki as more workable than plastic!

I was invited with many other bloggers to do an on-the-record phone conference with Stephane Dion of the Liberal Party of Canada. Here are some of the results:
- 3:15 PM MDT:
Things are yet to get underway. The bloggers are talking about people’s mothers and other inside jokes (ie. “Blogfather”) they are joking that no one should hear about, but are secretly hoping someone will talk about on their blog so they don’t have to.

- 3:20: Someone was admiring Nagy’s bilingual signs in the byelection.

- 3:21: Dion is on the line and giving opening remarks, but keeps them short because of short time. He expects blogs reach the young generation “big time”.

-3:23 Steve V - Far N Wide asks why isn’t there more Dion appearances in Quebec?
Dion responds that he has been in Quebec, but wants to do more. He is finding the size of Canada makes it difficult to get to every province as much as he’d like.

Drew asks about Via Rail?
-Dion says he strongly believes in transit and trains as a transportation solution for Canada.

3:27 - Dion is continuing his talk on train infrastructure. He claims Liberals have grown rail use, traditionally. Unfortunately during the 1990s, I saw the reverse trend in my province.

3:30 - Danielle had the next question.
Dion is talking about rural energy use now.
Unfortunately someone is unable to mute their phone and it’s drowning out some of Dion’s answer. Technology isn’t perfect yet, even though it’s 2008 and we have flying iPhones.

3:31ish - My blog host dies for the next 20 minutes until the call has ended. But I took notes!

3:50ish - And here’s what happened while my blog was offline at the worst possible time:
knb asks what the plan is for the provincial premiers opposed to the Green Shift.
-Dion answers that he has a long history of building relations between provinces and the federal government He sees the Green Shift as good for AB, Nova Scotia, and all provinces. And the changes proposed are federal jurisdiction anyway (income tax reduction for instance).

[Will explains in detail in the comments] I missed who asked the next question which was paraphrased by Dion as:
Will Conservative propaganda about green shift work?
Answer: Possibly. Harper will a “use dismissive and simplistic approach” to climate change.
Dion is not intending to use attack ads.

(We all know the Liberals will use some anyway since they are generally very effective at convincing poorly informed Canadians to swing their votes around like a madman with a gun surrounded by police.)

Jason Cherniak (who is probably glad that Ezra Levant wasn’t also in the conference call) asks – Harper is threatening to call an election, which is either unethical or illegal (given his supposed desire to fix election dates in advance), but the Liberals should not use that argument, correct?

Dion responds - The press conference today was where he gave his answer to this question. The country is not prepared for the slowdown of the economy. “The country will discover more and more the kind of tricks” done to the country by Harper and the Conservatives.

And finally my question (because I asked last and late):
How do the Liberals intend to respond to the Conservatives’ use of 10%er mailings into targeted ridings like Ralph Goodale’s in Regina Wascana? I’ve been Conservaspammed with “communication” propaganda from more than 7 different Conservative MPs this year alone! It’s a crass, Conservative waste of taxpayer money.

Thank you,
[Saskboy]
He fully agrees and the “answer is in [my] question”. The Liberals will denounce it, show the government is partisan, and not respecting the letter of the law or parliament.
It’s a cheap and low blow attack against parliament. Many of his colleagues are working hard to stop it from continuing.

They really will have to do something, because even if the Liberals win, the Conservatives could still abuse their communications budget as opposition MPs, and spam ridings they don’t have a seat in.

I think a pledge to continue to responsibly use the communications mailing budget should be one step of the Liberals. Past government’s “communication” doesn’t bring up any memory of misuse in my brain, to the Liberal’s credit. Oh wait. Adscam? Not quite the same thing. Not at all actually, but I guess it shows that any government, Conservative or Liberal is prone to a few (or a lot) of bad eggs willing to misuse taxpayer money for their own advertising benefit.

Dion also mentioned that his staff reads Liblogs, and so too do his wife and daughter.
So… hello Dion family. I hope you enjoy my window into the world of western Canada.

–
Scott has some more thoughts on the call.

She makes at least as much sense as McCain does, and she’s “hawt” to boot. Too bad her “limited” off shore oil drilling plan won’t work since it won’t produce a DROP of oil for at least 10 years. Al Gore in the mean time says America can be oil-power FREE by the time those same 10 years are up!

I know Gore’s plan can be done - the States built a fleet of the world’s most feared and powerful military planes and military vehicles in less than 5 years (and that was 60 years ago!). They can do the same (minus the fear part) with their existing civilian fleet of cars and planes, and rejuvenate the Rust Belt at the same time. Better still, they don’t have to ship the new fleet over to France, Germany, and Japan because the point is to use them at home instead.

There is a very good reason to be wary of emails that come from Facebook, especially the ones that ask you to add an application. In fact, it’s poor email use to log into a website after clicking a link inside an email (which is exactly what Facebook trains people to do every time it sends out a message).

Yesterday I noticed a spike of visitors looking for information on a “facebook virus”. Since I wrote about the last one I noticed, they found my blog. I’d certainly recommend my information over the details provided by CP/CTV about the latest trojan that uses a Facebook friend’s list to find new victims.

Can. Press describes the virus “that can infect users’ `friends’ lists [sic].”
It doesn’t infect the friends’ lists, it uses the list as an address book with which to spread to a targeted audience. The “lists” can’t be infected, unless the virus were to modify the list in some way so that people who befriended a user with an “infected” friend’s list (account) would automatically infect the new friend.

“The virus sends out an email message from `friends’ lists and asks users to download a plug-in to watch a video.”
That’s one fairly standard method of becoming infected with a trojan horse.

“Tech expert Marc Saltzman says the plug-in, which purports to be a new Flash player, is actually a virus.”
Indeed it is.

Saltzman says Facebook users might click on the download link because the email message appears to be from a friend, whose Facebook photo is attached. ”
Oldest trick in the email virus book; Pretend the message was sent from a friend, and it’s more likely to be opened than if it comes from a strange name.

Unfortunately, the latest version of this virus can be used by an attacker to upload other viruses onto a compromised machine, so if you’ve become infected with this so called Facebook virus, the only complete fix that guarantees a secure system is to back up your data, and format the hard drive(s) to install from scratch. Antivirus software run from a live CD will clean most or all of it up though. I’d recommend the UBCD for doing that scan and cleanup.

Isn’t corporatism fun children? Yay Turner Broadcasting and Mothercorp! Get your personal blog approved by a manager, just in case… you know… we want to fire you for it later.

Meanwhile, The Teamakers are back, this time under a new author with an occasional axe to grind with the CBC, “Fake Ouimet” AKA Joe Clark of blogging fame.

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And… Tag, I’m it…
Tag : You’re It

Thanks to Roshan for passing this tag to me. I’ll tag a few new bloggers who don’t get enough comments yet on their interesting writing.

Instructions: What you are supposed to do…and please don’t spoil the fun [unless you want to]…Click copy/paste, type in your answers and tag four people in your lists! Don’t forget to change my answers to the questions with that of your own.

(A) Four places I go over and over: Regina, Saskatoon, Wood Mountain, Winnipeg.

(B) Four people who e-mail me regularly: Jesse, my parents, Patty, Alvil, my blog (if it were a person).

(C) Four of my favorite places to eat? My home, Patty’s home, parent’s home, other peoples’ homes.

(D) Four places you’d rather be? Ottawa, London (England), Moon, Mars

(E) Four people I think will respond: All of them?

(F) Four TV shows I could watch over and over: Star Trek (all), This Hour Has 22 Minutes/Rick Mercer Report, Medium, Lost.

This tag is passed to: Megan, Huffb1, Zach, Orgie.

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Here’s something interesting about light pollution in Saskatoon. As someone who likes to look at the night sky, light pollution is a major drawback to living in the city.

2:20PM there were still warnings issued for Regina and area for tornadoes. I saw funnel clouds 20 minutes prior to then. I’ll have photos up later this evening (if I’m not blown away). It’s sunny sky to the west, and dark dark dark to the east right now.

UPDATE:
The warnings ended within a half hour of them being issued.

A video may come later, depending on the time I have to put it together.
UPDATE 2:

Check out the lightning at 31 and 51 seconds, and there’s more too.

The World Wide Web is easy to get tangled in. I started out looking at photos of the Moon transiting Earth, as seen from space! And I ended up reading about False Morels.

From there I started wondering about what the far side of the Moon looks like, since I haven’t really bothered to commit it to memory when I’ve seen it on a poster years ago. Many people refer to the far side as the “dark side”, but they are not the same thing except when the Moon is full (as seen from Earth). On a New Moon, the near side that we typically see, is the dark side of the Moon.

It is completely amazing to me that we hadn’t seen most of the far side until the space age. It’s not like we’d have another way, but it just seems wrong that we’d know so much more about the visible features of distant planets like Jupiter, and nothing about the size of the South Pole Aitken basin crater on the Moon.

From that page I started reading about the Clementine probe, because the name was familiar. And then I was learning about the toxic rocket fuel that I’d heard about before — Monomethyl Hydrazine. The name of the fuel was familiar to me after hearing of the spy satellite several months ago, that was shot down.

It turns out that monomethyl hydrazine is found in trace amounts in False Morel mushrooms, and also the kind you can buy at your local store.

An no, Table Mushrooms don’t grow on the Moon. But in an odd sort of way, they kind of help us get there.