Category Archives: Travel
The time.
Fort Edmonton
1905 Street, Fort Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Corliss Steam Engine
This beauty is just inside the entrance to the Reynolds-Alberta Museum, Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada. I prevailed upon her good-self to stop off here for a few hours.
Speeding fines
I travel one of three different routes into work every day. i tend to follow one most of the time that brings me onto the Waterford City outer ring road. Now, given that I’m not exactly the slowest driver on the road, and have been known to do the odd doughnut myself, I’m astonished at the speed many many cars overtake me at. If there was ever a speed trap, they’d be done for (and I would probably get a telling off).
Imagine my surprise over the last few days, with the icy threat of mashing their car off a roundabout or off someone elses vehicle, that I’ve been overtaken by precisely 1 driver in the last 3 or 4 days of driving into work.
So my disturbing conclusion is that the speeding fine and penalty points are of little interest to habitual speeders, and that the fine should be increased substantially (think of the price of replacing a panel or wheel or maybe a front bumper).
Now, what can we do with the folks that just drive too slow and hog the white line?
Electricity Usage.
I’d been meaning for ages to purchase something to measure power consumption in the house. Earlier this week, a work colleague reminded me about it, so I went and purchased one. My Current Cost Envi arrived just before 8am this morning (thanks Mr. Postman) so I hurriedly plugged it all in before going to work.
This evening after dinner I found the data cable and plugged it all in.
[3383512.421973] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[3383512.580255] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[3383513.033716] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[3383513.034024] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
[3383513.034271] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[3383513.034276] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
[3383513.146668] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[3383513.146703] pl2303 1-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[3383513.146930] usb 1-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[3383513.146942] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
[3383513.146946] drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver
Excellent, the device was recognised to begin with. I found this web page by Paul Mutton, describing how to generate graphs from it with RRDtool. Some minor modifications, courtsey of “Q” and we have a result.
To quote from Paul’s page:
Then you can sit back and be amazed at how much electricity you waste when you leave a computer on to monitor how much electricity you are using 🙁
Beavers Eye View.
We departed Whistler this morning after there had been over 2 inches of snow overnight (nuts!).
We arrived in Vancouver just in time for lunch. Seeing as it was such a nice day, we wandered down towards the waterfront for a look around, where we came across a Air Charter company. As I had never been in a floatplane, I just could not resist, though I couldn’t persuade Dee to join me. So after some organisation and a quick cup of hot chocolate, Peter (the pilot), another gentlemen and I, headed out to our DHC-2 Beaver (below) for a scenic flight around Vancouver.
The smoothness of the take-off and landing really surprised me (Peter informed me that it had not the smoothest take-off as he had to avoid some debris), though it has been quite a few years since I was in a light aircraft. The landing was the gentlest I think I’ve ever experienced. I guess I have been conditioned by the bumpy landings that are almost normal now in commercial aircraft.
See the obligatory pictures here.
Whistler – Day 2
What a blast! Solely due to the patience and enthusiasm of our instructor Larry, and his ‘shadow’, Alex, our entire group made progress today. I managed to improve my turns to be more HGV like, rather than 747 like, woohoo! Unfortunately our education is now on an indefinite ‘hold’ as we are heading back to Vancouver tomorrow. Just to make it more annoying, it started snowing this evening, so tomorrow will most likely be one of the best skiing days of this week. We’ll just have to come back someday.
Whistler
Ohmygosh it is cold, very cold. I’m not made for this -11 this morning, rising to -8 this afternoon, looking forward to a balmy -2 tomorrow.
So far, learning to ski other than being cold, has been good fun, though pains are occurring in strange places this evening. We’re heading out tomorrow for another day of ‘learning’ at the conclusion of which, I hope to be able to turn a tighter circle than a 747, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Let the vacationing begin
IETF is over, and boy was it a tough week, acronyms everywhere, drafts and protocols being the main topic of conversation (the odd bit of sci-fi trivia), quite intimidating for a newbie, though all-in-all very interesting.
Today, Dee and I began our vacation, this morning we headed out to Capilano Bridge to see what it was all about, then came back into downtown, and headed across to Granville Island. The Granville market was almost Bazaar like, though not quite on the same scale. Very enjoyable to wander through. We even managed to pick up a few items so that jolly-fat-guy will have something to ho ho ho about over Christmas.
Last Wednesday evening I attended a meeting of the Vector Emergency Communications group. It was an AGM so I didn’t hang around too long, though I did get a quick tour of the EOC from Fred, VE7CX, before he had to tend to his AGM duties.
Early Thursday morning, I headed out to Burnaby Communications for a few more items for that jolly-fat-guy, and while there John, VE7AYP and Bill, VE7CIM, strongly suggested that I should attend the North Shore Amateur Radio Club’s monthly meeting. So after a evening pass from herself was obtained (through sniffles), I headed out to North Shore. Leif Erickson, VA7CAE and the rest of the club made me feel very welcome and during a break in the talk showed me around their communications centre. The speaker for the evening was Mike Andrews, VE7MPA, regional manager in the BC, Ministry of Public Safefy and Solicitor General, who gave a very interesting presentation on the concept of Disaster Response Routes, an overview of Disaster Response, and how Amateur Radio operators fit into the overall plan. Very interesting indeed.
Next stop, Whistler!