PERSPECTIVES ON A PLANET with CBC’s Bob McDonald

Sault College is hosting a free seminar, yes FREE!!!!!!!

PERSPECTIVES ON A PLANET with CBC’s Bob McDonald

• When: Monday, May 30th
• Time: 1:00-2:30 PM
• Where: Sault College Multimedia Center (room B1170)

To register, please contact humanresources@saultcollege.ca

We live on a single living organism called planet Earth. By planetary standards, it is a small world, with only one quarter of its surface poking above a salty sea, frozen poles and spotted with brown deserts. When you think about it, there really isn’t much room for 7 billion humans to live on. Yet according to our current knowledge, there is no other world like it. Of the more than 500 planets found around other stars, and the other seven planets in our own solar system, none of them are suitable to life as we know it. We live in the garden of Eden.

Bio: Bob McDonald has been communicating science internationally through television, radio, print and live presentations for more than 30 years. He is the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, the award-winning science program with a national audience of nearly 500,000 people. He is also a regular reporter for CBC Television’s The National as well as Gemini winning host and writer of the children’s series Head’s Up. McDonald has also hosted Greatest Canadian Invention and the seven-part series Water Under Fire.

As a print journalist, McDonald has authored three science books and contributed to numerous science textbooks, newspapers and magazines including The Globe and Mail, Owl Magazine and many others. His latest book is Measuring the Earth With a Stick, and he has written the introductions to The Quirks & Quarks Question Book, The Guide to Space: 42 Questions (and Answers) About Life, the Universe, and Everything as well as Nasty, Brutish and Short, the Quirks Guide to Animal Sex.

Beyond his work in media, McDonald is Chairman of Geospace, an exciting new environmental centre and planetarium for the Toronto Waterfront.

McDonald has been honoured for his outstanding contribution to the promotion of science in Canada as the recipient of the Michael Smith Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Sir Sanford Fleming Medal from the Royal Canadian Institute and the McNeil Medal from The Royal Society of Canada. McDonald was also the recipient of a 2008 Gemini Award for Best Host in a Pre-School, Children’s or Youth Program or Series.

He has received six honorary Doctorates.

Evolution mail isn't Exchange 2010 ready

After years of using Evolution to access Exchange mail via webDAV sadly it no longer work. MS has dropped the webDAV support in Exchange 2010 and native clients are expected to use MAPI. However the SOAP access methods hold hope for open source projects like Evolution to regain a foot hold in business mail /calendar suites.

For now I've had to resort to using the native MS Outlook client or it's web access cousin. Clearly a de-Evolution in many ways. Gone (or may as well be) are the powerful mail processing, simple access logic and efficiencies that open source tools provide. Outlook's clumsiness and awkward menu structure do not make for a productive, easy to use product.

The inability to:

• view headers _easily_
  
• open and edit 'as new' previously sent messages _easily_
  
• Change the layout _easily_
• utilize multi signatures _easily_

are just a few annoyances that make using Outlook frustrating. Thankfully Thunderbird/Seamonkey via IMAP can restore better INBOX management and the Lightning calendar extension with the The Microsoft Data Provider for Thunderbird Lightning restore calendar access.

Not a perfect solution, but certainly a more open and flexible one that ensures a much better work flow.

Now if more SOAP clients would start to appear...

Eye candy working again in E17 Ecomorph

After a recent upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx and rebuilding E17 and Ecomorph the cool effects wouldn't startup in a dual monitor setup. I kept getting...

Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Checking screen 1Comparing resolution (3840x1080) to maximum 3D texture size (4096): Passed.
Checking for Software Rasterizer: Not present.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Got Desktop Geometry 0x1
window managed: 0xc0598f : 0x3800022
- XTerm
Floating point exception

A single monitor setup worked fine.

The important line is "Got Desktop Geometry 0x1" Which I ignored because I thought

it was a status result of Hex value one - which could mean an error but could also mean

True. Which is what I thought it meant True or Yes or Yay, Got Desktop Geometry.

What it actually refers to is how many screens Horizontal by Vertical.

In any case it should never read zero by anything since the first number is used for division in the window.c program....Long story short, I hacked it for now to force it use 1x1 but I will look at the code in more detail and try to fix it properly.

More details are at http://code.google.com/p/itask-module/wiki/Stuff

Glen Thomas / Mike Cliffe project

Well, first off, I refuse to write about this since Glen did a brilliant job of it already !

Head on over to the Barking Eye blog to read about the music project that The Freq and AudioFumes are working on :)

http://thebarkingeye.blogspot.com/2010/09/mike-cliffe-glen-thomas-project.html

I thought this would have been obvious :P

From: CFIA Master
Reply-To: CFIA Master
To: FOODRECALLS_RAPPELSALIMENTS@www.agr.gc.ca
Subject: 20100903b - HEALTH HAZARD ALERT (botulism) / DANGER POUR LA SANTÉ (botulisme)
Date: 10-09-04 02:30:45 AM


HEALTH HAZARD ALERT

SHITOR SAUCE SOLD AT THE AFRICANA GENERAL MARKET MAY CONTAIN DANGEROUS BACTERIA

OTTAWA, September 3, 2010 The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Africana General Market is warning the public not to consume Shitor sauce because this product may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum. Toxins produced by this bacteria may cause botulism, a life-threatening illness.

Affected product, Shitor sauce, was sold in 500 ml and 250 ml glass jars with no lot numbers or UPC. The Shitor sauce was sold only at the Africana General Market store, Kingsway, British Columbia.

There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of this product.

Food contaminated with Clostridium botulinum toxin may not look or smell spoiled. Consumption of food contaminated with the toxin may cause nausea, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, headache, double vision, dry throat, respiratory failure and paralysis. In severe cases of illness, people may die.

The manufacturer, Africana General Market, Kingsway, British Columbia, is voluntarily recalling the affected product from the marketplace. The CFIA is monitoring the effectiveness of the recall.

For more information consumers and industry can call one of the following numbers:

Africana General Market 604-434-4555; or
CFIA at 1-800-442-2342 / TTY 1-800-465-7735 (8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, Monday to Friday

Quality? Inn Ormond Beach - continued

The issue is now resolved. A few phone calls to the hotel and a few e-mails later the general manager and her assistant reversed the charges. They have invited us back at a special rate for our next stay to ensure our satisfaction. After approximately 25 years of 'hoteling it' I've learned my lesson - take photos of everything upon check-in and take photos of everything just before you check out and scrutinize the bill carefully. Also, let the hotel staff know of _anything_ you're not happy with - no matter how trivial YOU think it might be.

We were almost the victims of someone else's carelessness but I'm glad it turned out in the fair and correct way.

Quality? Inn Ormond Beach

So we're on vacation and check into a Quality Inn in Ormond Beach for 3 nights. Reserved it over the Internet no problem. We arrived early, prior to the standard 3PM checkin and we were told by SS that we were "way early"- it was obvious we knew that because I mentioned that we were early and just wanted to confirm the reservation but SS figured it must have been necessary to exaggerate the fact in a eye-rolling, nose raising sort of way. So I merely confirmed the reservation and we killed time until about 3PM. From that point on, the stay at the hotel was OK. The hotel was alright, a fair bit of exterior wear and tear but inside our room nothing out of the ordinary - at least nothing that we'd formally complain about.

Upon arrival we noticed the following: There was some frozen meat in the freezer - hot dogs I think - nothing that we'd consider eating. There were a couple of pamphlets - you know the tourist kind, stuffed in the top of a lamp. We easily removed them. There was food bits on the floor from the previous occupants and the room smelled of recently 'nuked' bacon. The stove top had bits of food on it but again, nothing that we'd formally complain about since we had no intention of using the stove anyway and we were only there for 3 nights. There was also a curtain holdback thing beside the patio doors that was broken off and sitting on the floor. The plumbing fixtures were a bit naff too - loose, dirty but again, we were there to swim in the ocean, walk on the beach, dine etc.

Other than that the room was fine. The continental breakfast was fine.

The view was great from room 401 as was the location. All in all a place I'd return to.

On day, after housekeeping had finished cleaning our room (we were out for most of the day) the towels and garbage sat in a chair outside our room for 24 hours until the next cleaning shift. The next day, we told housekeeping not to bother with a 'complete' clean but rather just take the garbage and replace the towels.


Upon checkout there was nobody around to do the honours. The breakfast attendant CG was able to check us out and was the friendliest staff member we'd met so far. Her hospitality skills were exceptional. Our bill was pretty standard, even with the additional room safe charge per day, but since we used the safe - no biggie.

A day later I get e-mailed a 'new' bill showing

8/10/10 ITEM MISSING FROM ROOM DAMAGED FITTED SHEET 20.00

For starters I'm thinking what? 'missing'? or 'damaged'. If it's missing - it's missing and unknown whether it is damaged or not. If it's damaged, it's still there and not missing. Which is it? and why, for the sake of humanity would I even bother to take one 'fitted sheet' ?

Obviously the hotel has mistakenly charged us for this and I have asked them as well as their head office for a reversal. I'll update this as I hear of more about this....