iPhone comes to Canada!

The new G3 iPones were announced today and as a result has made accessing the Apple site and Rogers fairly slow and hard.

One of the coolest things besides the G3 speeds and the [[GPS]] is its enterprise ready so your exchange server account will work perfectly. You also have the delima of choosing black or white. What one will you choose?

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

Source: http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/features/

How Much Does a Traffic Jam Cost?

got the idea for this project when I was obviously stuck in a traffic jam. I began to first wonder why no one bothered to help push the stalled car off the road. Second I began to wonder why the city doesn’t come out and tow the problem vehicle and avoid the headache of having intersections blocked by cars that got caught by the gridlock ahead.

Keeping that in mind I started to come up with an estimate of how much it would cost the city to simple move the vehicle vs. the time and money wasted by the people affected by the delay.

Gas costing what it does and lets not forget that time is money. So I came up with this little calculator that takes the fuel cost, the time it took to get though the traffic jam, as well as the length, and how many lanes of traffic were effected. Take that figure out how many sets (time to get thought divided by total time of the traffic jam) get thought and that should give you a total average cost of the traffic Jam.

I did make some speculations such as the average car being about 14 feet long and being about 3 feet from the next car in front of it.

The average wage numbers came in my case from Stats Canada.

The information collected on this site will possibly go towards a national average or total cost of all traffic jams entered in the site.

Traffic Jam Calculator

Spring snowstorm slams northern Alberta

Spring is in the air, or is that snow? We went from +15 to -15 with about 8″ of show in 2 days and it apparently isn’t stopping any time soon. Lovely weather too! nice and windy.

I have been riding the past 3 weeks to work and now I’m back on the old bobsled.

Usually Eastern Canada gets the spring dumb, but mother nature is making up for all the years of good weather we have had.

Link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/04/21/snow-storm.html

Plane quarantined after 8 passengers fall ill

Turns out that the family effected had submissions that some of there drinks may have been drugged with the date rape drug. 3 other people from the air plain were also quarantined because they were in the vicinity of the family and were also quarantined, turns out the work in the same office as me.

to show them our support we surrounded there work area in polly, looks like something from ET or Outbreak.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A Canada-bound plane is back in the air after being forced to make an emergency landing in Florida because of sick passengers.

Eight passengers felt sick sometime after the flight took off from the Dominican Republic. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport spokesman Greg Meyer says Air Transat flight 477 was quarantined on the runway after it landed late Tuesday.

The ill passengers turned out to be family members who had eaten together. All are hospitalized, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that their illness wasn’t airborne.

The flight continued its trip to Edmonton, Canada, early Wednesday.

Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23481456/

Last Lunar Eclipse Unitill 2010

Last night i was lucky enough to get a few phonographs of the Lunar Eclipse, the sky was clear but the moon was low in the horizon and thus taking a good sharp photo was next to impossible. But at least i managed to gat a nice exposure of it.

Had i known how long it would take before the moon was totally eclipsed by the earths shadow i would have stayed indoors for at least another 30 min before venturing out side.

Starting at 8:42 p.m. ET (7:43 p.m. CT, 6:43 p.m. MT and 5:43 p.m. PT) and lasting for three hours, the last total lunar eclipse before 2010 was visible anywhere in North America lucky enough to have clear skies, according to NASA. It was also visible in Europe and Africa.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth’s shadow blocks the sun’s rays from hitting the moon. The three bodies must be perfectly aligned during a full moon, a rare event because the orbits of the moon and Earth are not on the same plane.

Source:
http://www.ctv.ca/

Morning Light

I love the morning light, especially in the fall, you don’t have to wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning (at least in northern Alberta) to get it. As part of the fall to winter cycle in Canada we are nearing the 6-7 hours of daylight for the winter season. Its not all bad though, we get amazing sun sets and sun rises. The bad would be the constant -25 or -35 on some days.

Interview with Dan Barham

I was first introduced to Dan Barham at my old job, he had just moved from Manchester, U.K. I just thought he was another guy in a bike shop until the speaker at the seminar we were at recognized him from the U.K. She had said how he took some amazing photos, so I got to talking with him. Dan was pity modest about his talents, I realized something was up when he said he had a Canon Mark II DS. I have grown up around bikes and computers so we had a lot in common.

Dan has had a number of cover shots on top bike magazines as well as features in many more of them. Bike Magazine, Dirt Rag, Mountain Bike Rider, and Mountain Biking UK to name a few.

Dan doesn’t limit himself to just mountain bike photography if you have a look at his Flickr Gallery. I really like looking at peoples more raw galleries, not the portfolios because it’s a glimpse into the every day life of an artist.

Dan has since moved on from the bike shop and Edmonton to Live in Canada’s Famous North shore (Vancouver) were covers the biking events all over British Columbia.

Dan was nice enough to do this interview with me, and i hope you enjoy it.
Read on..

Dan Barham Cover Shot

After Crazing the magazine stand looking at the bike mags i came across my old friend Bike Mag. while looking through the September issue at home i saw that the cover Shot was from another old friend Dan Barham. To top things off the photo was also shot in my home town of Edmonton, Alberta.

After looking at Dan’s Blog to check things out its fitting that he got the cover for September because his birthday just happens to fall in that month.

Happy Birthday Dan :)

Canada targeting dirty two-stroke engines

I found this interesting, if you were to run your lawn mower for about 1 hour it will produce about the same amount of pollution as a car that has driven 500km.

Using a two-stroke lawn mower to cut a decent-sized lawn can produce as much smog-forming pollution as driving a modern car from Ottawa to Toronto.

If Canada wants to have the average household drop there green house emissions then lets have a look at some flexible numbers.

It took me 1hr to mow my parents law, thats 50′ x 100′ lot, thats more or less the average size of an older lot in Edmonton (before the housing boom) so in that hour the lawn mower potentially released as much pollution as driving a modern car 500km. The grass usually gets cut at least once a week. So in a month thats 2000km most people don’t drive that much in city conditions.

It make sense for Canadians to look into more efficient small engines, i would assume this would account for small boats, dirt bikes, chain saws, and land escaping equipment.

People also seam to want the perfect golf course looking law, cutting the grass so its 1″ long. Believe it or not having your lawn cut that short will cause the lawn to loose moisture and is actually hard on the grass. Remember its a plant, grass grows long, so leave it longer. This will allow it to shade its self keeping i’m moisture and reducing your water bill.

Source:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/news/?/news/2001/03/26/ott_lawnmowers010326