Dreaming of the Perfect Lens

I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’ve got a hole in my lens collection. I need something that squeezes nicely between the 50mm that I try and use with some regularity, and the 17-40 that I don’t use enough. I need close, I need big aperture. I need this……

I’m dreaming about the

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Standard Zoom Lens



In my camera bag………

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Medium Telephoto Lens


Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM Telephoto Zoom Lens


Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens




Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens

Aliant Beats TELUS

...... in the Facebook Hockey Pool, silly.

:-)

8 Weeks to Saving the Planet : Week 3 : Thoughts On Where Things Go

This week, and all the activities have done, has got me thinking about where things go, and what happens to them. Of course, this then lends itself to the question of "how bad are the things that *leech* out into the environment? As usual, I've got more questions than answers.

1. Where do the chemicals go that I've used to colour my hair? What are the impacts of them in the environment? If pregnant women aren't supposed to *chemically colour* their hair, because of risks to their fetus, what are the chemicals doing to the wee DNA in our frogs?

2. It used to be that you would be very careful with what went down the drain at the cottage, because you were using a septic tank, as opposed to a municipal sewage system. Now, with the overtaxing of municipal sewage, I've got a feeling that the same habits I've got at the cottage need to be carried home to the suburbs.

3. Human drug concentrations in water: You've seen the reports on CNN: an increase in human medications being found in urban water supplies. Water treatment plants have never had to think about treating water for pharmacological additions. How do we get that *out* of the water? So much for flushing old prescriptions down the toilet.

Each day in Ontario, residents and businesses flush 5.7 million cubic metres of sewage down their toilets and drains.⁴ Many of the different materials that make up sewage pose environmental and health risks. Paints contain toluene, a compound that affects speech, vision, and hearing, as well as phenols, which are poisonous if absorbed or ingested.⁵ Oven and drain cleaners contain sodium hydroxide, a compound that is also poisonous by ingestion and may irritate the skin.⁶ Human waste can contain disease-causing agents such as bacteria and viruses. While scientists generally know what risks each individual element in sewage presents, they know less about what new dangers arise when the components are all combined. A hazardous compound may be altered to pose greater health and environmental risks when combined with other compounds. The reaction of two ingredients may produce a new product that poses an even greater threat to the environment than each ingredient held on its own. Clearly, sewage is a dangerous product of human activities and so the handling and treatment of this mixture is a very serious matter.
From: Environment Probe

Now, what are you going to be thinking about this week? :-\
Technorati Tags: water pollution, ontario, prescriptions, Environment Probe

Update on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 07:58AM by jules

I just found out where my sewage waste goes…. eventually it makes its way to Lake Ontario. I’m not even kidding.

Facebook, Privacy and Rolling the Dice

And while Facebook says it advises its users to “employ…precautions” when downloading applications, any Facebook user will tell you that most applications simply won’t work if you don’t agree to give the developer access to your information.

Office of the Privacy Commissioner

It’s articles like this, from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that makes me regularly delete Facebook apps from my profile.   A slim Facebook profile is the new black.

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Tags: Facebook, Privacy, Canada

Neat New Wireless Feature: Roam to Home

Telecom Trends

Rogers is continuing to leverage its GSM infrastructure advantage to launch innovative devices ahead of its competitors. Tomorrow, Rogers will be formally announcing its first fixed-mobile converged handsets - allowing customers to roam from mobile onto WiFi networks - and Rogers will announce its Fido Uno and Rogers Home Zone rate plans.

You knew it was just a matter of time. Fixed Mobile Convergence.As a Plus - the service works with any wifi - it doesn't have to be Rogers Red.
Technorati Tags: Rogers, Roam to HomeThe downside: calls started wireless and roam to wifi are billed, even if 90% of your call happes via wifi. Calls that start wifi and roam to wireless are free for the whole duration.

Sugar Cube

PBS Junkies: Overmedicating Children

The Wiz and I are genuinely addicted to PBS. Frontline in particular.
Over the weekend, when not watching Nature shows, we caught a particularly interesting segment: Medicating Kids.
The premise is that with over 1,000,000 kids being medicated for psychological disorders that may or may not be diagnosed accurately, what sort of future are we creating, and what impacts are being had on young brains.

For the longest time, pharmaceutical companies had never tested the effects of adult drugs on children, and it was only when President Clinton *bribed* them with patent extensions, that drug manufacturers ponied up for the tests.

Now today, Fox news has an interesting article about a study that indicates US kids take anti-psychotic medicines at 6 times the rate of UK kids.

Questions come to mind:

1. Is there a relationship between the capitalism of US healthcare and the inappropriate proscribing of medications?
2. Is there a relationship between parenting and overmedicating? In the PBS show, they followed 3 families - 2 of the 3 looked like they'd been spending a considerable amount of time in the shallow end of the gene pool.
3. Is medicating a child a cop out for lazy parenting and even lazier medical specialists?

One of the girls chronicled in the PBS special was given anti-psychotic medication simply because she had *illusions of grandeur* and talked of things *not consistent with reality*. She was 4. A 4 year old girl was medicated because she had an imagination.

I'm looking for comparable stats for Canadian Children. If anyone has seen any - leave a comment!!
Technorati Tags: PBS, FoxTV, Medicating Children

testing of Scribefire

for the past week - scribefire hasn't worked.Does it work now?Did the last update fix something?

Forget the Wallet, Bring Your Finger

TNS surveyed 4,500 consumers in Canada, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan and Spain in February. Forty-one per cent said biometric fingerprint identification has “high appeal.”

Canadian shoppers forsee fingerprint scanning > Identity Management

I would relish the idea of fingerprint scan instead of debit card.  The ease of it all, especially in this day and age when any greaseball can pop a card reader on a bank machine or debit reader and poof, all your savings are gone.   Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine lost over $700, right in Ontario, because of a scam like this.  Fingerprint and PIN.   Easy as snapping your fingers.:-)

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Tags: fingerprintscanning, debit, shopping

Hell Hath No Fury.... Like a Telecom Scorned

Senior bureaucrats were called upon to defend the way Peel tenders out contracts on Thursday after several telecommunication firms accused the region of unfair business practices.

Imagine that you’ve lost an RFP (request for proposal) to provide services to one of your customers.Now imagine that you decide to accuse your customer of unfair business practices. Publically, officially, and likely with some measure of prejudice. That’s exactly what Black Box Network Services and Allstream have done with the Region of Peel over the proposal of a new telephony system for the municipality. 

Avaya Canada was awarded the contract, but both Allstream and Black Box Networks are calling foul with regards to the decision making process.  Let’s take a step back:  What sort of message does this send to Allstream’s or Black Box Network’s customer base?   What sort of damage does this action have towards other relationships with municipalities? Perhaps one good thing will come out of this: structured decision making criteria.   Shame on the region of Peel for not providing it, and shame on the bidders for not demanding it. :-)

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Tags: Allstream, Avaya, Region of Peel, Black Box Networks, telecom

8 Weeks to a Greener Planet: 50 Ways to Help the Planet

50 Ways to Help the Planet  To supplement my 8 Weeks to a Greener Planet, I thought I’d share 50 easy ways to greening.  Chock full of common sense ideas, 50 Ways to Help the Planet is easy on the eyes, provides options that are easy on the expended effort to *greenify* your life. 5 ideas I grabbed:

1. Don’t pre-heat your oven
2. Turn off your computer at night
3. Go vegetarian once a week (no, this isn’t suggesting that you *eat* a vegetarian!)
4. Banning bathtime in favour of showers (i’m already working on this one with the chickadees)
5. Buy second hand - I’m going to publish a list of neat second hand places that you might not be aware of in the region in the coming days.

So - go easy - go green!

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Tags: Environment, Planet, Green

Pizza Pizza vs Pizza Hut: Head to Head

About 7 months ago, I wrote about being plagued with bad pizza, and bad pizza on-line order tools.I've got an update: Pizza Hut now has a reasonable on-line order tool. Well, perhaps I'm being too kind - but atleast NOW they've got an online order tool. The first time I ordered, I utterly screwed up, and ended up with 2 extra large, cheese only pizzas. :-) The entire household looked at me as if it was my first day on the internets ;-)I'm still blocked by Pizzaville, so they are still out of my bookmarks. But now I've got options for dinner :-)

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Tags: PizzaHut, Pizzaville, PizzaPizza

Plug In Cars: Just in Time

With gas prices hovering at $1.20/litre, it's a little tingly to read about what automakers are finally doing with cars, technology and the environment.  Today's Globe and Mail has a neat announcement about California pushing the industry into the 21st century - a la plug-in cars.It's a bold move - California mandating the minimum number of hybrid, or plugin cars that manufacturers have to have sold - starting 2012.By then, gas will be at $2.50/litre ... and we will be looking for some sort of respite in travel.

This week, auto parts maker Magna joined the race to build a plug-in hybrid and said it plans to have a prototype on the road next year or in 2010.

globeandmail.com: globeauto.com California jump-starts the plug-in race

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Tags: California, Plugin Cars, Hybrids

Summize: Your Twitter Friend

I’ll admit it - I’m not so good with Twitter yet - I want to be. And then I found Summize And wow.  I’m not on twitter enough to be good.  I’ve yet to find the perfect Twitter tool.  The Flock Twitter bar is a bit lacking. :-)  And I’d rather not download a client if I don’t have to.  I know I should.. but still. 

I really want to tweet on things of interest, not any old thing.  And I never knew who was tweeting about things I was interested in. Until now.  You can do twitter searches in Summize that simply can rock your world.  If you belong to a company, and want to put your real ear to the grapevine, the things you can hear being discussed are mind boggling… ahem, Rogers. :-)

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Tags: Summize, Twitter, Flock

Miley and Hannah: Alter Egos

Alter egos? Multiple Personalities? How else can you explain the faux pas of the week with Vanity Fair’s photo spread of Myley Syrus that has the internets up in arms, and parents wishing for the simpler times of Mr DressUp?

I’m curious to see the not-so-PG photos of Miley, but really only because Annie Liebovitz was the photogapher. If you are going to cause a stir, might as well do it with one of the most interesting photographers on the planet ;-)Still, we are still just recovering from the announcement of Jamie Spears *delicate* condition.  Disney must be rethinking their contract language for their teen stars. Can anyone say *morality clause*? So much for role models for pre-teens. :-)

Behind the Scenes with Miley Cyrus: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

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Tags: MileyCyrus, Hannah Montana, Disney

How Come No One Told Me About Splashup!?

I’m on page 28 of Connect! and stumbled across a photo editing web app that I’d never heard of before…. Splashup. It was 2 minutes before I powered up the Mac and dove right in. Splashup is to Picnik, as PhotoShop is to Paint.net. If you want to do standard editing, and take advantage of a zillion neat filters and effects, then Picnik is your pal. If you need to make something from scratch, and have all the power of layers, then Splashup is your buddy. Holy cow. Technorati Tags: Connect!, splashup, picnik

Book Review: Things I Learned About My Dad In Therapy

I am not a book reviewer. I am a book reader. Fortunately for you, gentle reader, this fact isn’t going to stop me from sharing the love for Heather Armstrong’s new book: Things I Learned About My Dad in Therapy. One word: HOLY.

Heather has managed to cobble together with love and literary harmony a dozen or so essays, written by real people (who coincidently have a real knack for writing), chronicling their experiences either with their fathers —or with being fathers themselves.

I tried to read it slowly. I ended up finishing it in less than 24 hours, and when I closed the back cover, I gently rubbed the spine and found myself with a silly, melancholic grin. You don’t have to be a father to appreciate this writing, you only have to have been born.

I’m of the school that father’s tend to get the short end of the stick. The short and dirty end, when it comes to parenthood and glory. This book illuminates the specialness of being a father, having a father and will likely leave you with a silly grin as well.

Rogers to bring iPhone to Canada - Happy Tuesday!!!

Rogers announces deal to bring the Apple iPhone to Canada. "We're thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can't tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned," said Ted Rogers, president and CEO of Rogers Communications Inc., in a statement issued today.

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Tags: Rogers, Canada, iPhone

8 Weeks to a Greener Planet: Week 2

You know them: the wimpy “wanna-be” plastic bags that litter the bottom of your refrigerator crisper drawer. Those bags that protect your “fruits and veggies” from the regular grocery cooties. Grocery stores like them, they make the checkout process easier. There’s no chasing of grapes, no parsley shrapnel, no leaking of *just misted* celery. Those wimpy wanna be bags. You can’t even re-use them effectively for lunch bags or poop bags. Who needs them?

You need a fresh fruit and veggie bin, the perfect accessory to the green grocery bags that you’ve undoubtedly purchased over the past few months. I’m boycotting the wanna-be bags from here on in. The hard part - convincing Grocery Gateway to cut out the plastic. They’ve got a habit of bagging every darn thing. Stay tuned on my progress. Technorati Tags: Grocery Gateway, Greener Planet

Striker No Striking

Within less than 36 hours, all union folks are back to work in Toronto. Legislated, of course, which might be the same as  getting grounded by your parents. One might infer that the whole purpose of the strike was to scare the bejesus out of Toronto, and have the province pass legislation that would bring both parties back to the table under very auspicious circumstances. Of course, now the serious debate begins on whether or not the TTC is an essential service. I’d say that after the brou ha-ha that ensued this weekend, it’s hard not to consider it essential. Plus, if deemed an essential service, gone is the sting of the union. Technorati Tags: TTC, Strike, Essential Services