The Unreasonable Man

Snow, ice. My transformer in Mono blew - fortunately this was on the roadside, so it was not my cost, and my generac generator kicked in. This was the weather:

The transformer blew around 9pm; Hydro One trucks arrived before 11; a third truck with the new transformer arrived around midnight; and everything was fixed by 12:30am. Then I sat in my car for half an hour while the house cleaned itself enough for the CO warning to stop blaring. Builders installed the generator exhaust right by the house air intakes. Nice.

Mumbai in flames-  or at least, parts of it. 80 dead, hundreds injured. Fires in hotels. Hostages. So will the typical hotel environment no longer be safe for western travellers?

Who knows. Is it terror? I wonder - it could just be local gangs. But this looks more like terror. Or perhaps it is gangs, but the gangs are “Muslims” and “Hindus”?

We will have to see. Either way, the bullies are using new tactics. Police cars shooting at people - very clever and very evil. If this is indeed terrorism, it once again in my mind confirms how dogmatic religion is a force for evil. If not, it just confirms how some people are evil.

I just received the Rogers bill for the second half of my UK trip.

So. UK Data usage. I checked email every now and then (only every now and then: usually I was on WiFi). Total wireless used: 33 MB. Thirty-three megabytes. Not gigabytes. Megabytes. That probably represents a few web sites and a few dozen emails.

For that data usage: $1,001.40.

Yes: one thousand and one dollars and forty cents. Plus tax on top.

Thieves.

Aided by the Harper government, which has specifically excluded the possibility of competition in the telecoms field. Remember that, the next time you vote conservative, thinking “at least they understand the market”. As long as telecoms companies are shielded from real competition, we will continue to see this kind of usurious charging for essential business services.

My new car, click for larger, is cool:

Its manual is not It will take me a year to read. Mainly becasue of this:

It is badly written, without any design sense. Worst of all, it is littered with warnings. Don’t drink the fuel. Don’t reverse over little children “as it may cause them to become injured”. Don’t close the hood onto your hands. Don’t close the windows while your neck is stuck out. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

They must really think their customers are morons. Why don;lt we just say no to the lawyers?

It often seems that I zig when the world zags.

I buy mutual funds just before the stock market takes a downturn. I join a dot com startup a month before the dot com crash. I buy a betamax the week before betamax is cancelled. I plan major career switches just before the economy crashes. And now, I buy a diesel car just as the cost of diesel skyrockets: diesel now costs 20% more than gasoline.

http://www.wheels.ca/article/473699

So my timing is bad.

But as always, things aren’t that simple. Even with diesel prices high, buying a diesel car makes sense. Fuel economy is up to 30% better, so that price differential can be overcome. Plus, the alternative is usually premium gas, so the differential between that and diesel is smaller. And there are significant other benefits. One is the longer engine life: a diesel engine lasts much longer than a gasoline engine, and it is simpler. Another one is that a full tank lasts longer: in my case, around 1,000km. Less refilling, which in an Ontario winter is going to be kind of nice.

So while you zig zag, I think I’ll just continue.

Germans have car brains, but not electronics brains or computer brains.

The interface in my Mercedes is soooo dumb. No touch screen. And to delete a name from the address book, for instance, takes eight key presses for each deletion - after you get to the right mode, that is. And the memory card music reader takes SD cards for music - but only up to 2 GB. That is in a 2009 car, and 2 GB cards are about four years old. And so on - many more examples.

I have no ideas why these guys don’t get it - they build up expectations and by doing nonsense like this they immediately show that they have the brains of a 90-year old.

I suppose they build all this stuff in committees.

So there is one vendor of satellite radio left.

Great idea, Satellite radio, But in a market with one vendor you expect the service level to be somewhere between that of the Post Office and that of a collective farm in the Soviet Union. Which appears to be the way it is. Satellite radio is a great idea, but the vendor doesn’t quite seem to get it.

• It is expensive for what ought to be a free resource. Another $10-$20 a month: will it never end?
• The content is addled with compulsory “Canadian content”.
• There are too few stations - like 150 or so, and in odd categories (try to find classical). Why so few news stations? Like BBC, CBC and PBS, and a few TV feeds?
• The web-based version of Sirius radio is an ActiveX and needs Windows Media Player. You have a Mac? Sucks to be you: you cannot be a customer.
• You need to pay twice if you have two radios, three times of you have three, etc.

Clearly, satellite in North America is the way to go. But when the government here insists on compulsory Canadian crap content and the service level is Soviet, this will fail. Which is why one company already failed.

As Wikipedia says:

Contrary to some initial expectations, CBC Radio 2 and Espace musique are not included, at least in part because, as their terrestrial CRTC licenses^[2] allow nearly 80% of “special interest” (i.e. classical, jazz) music to be foreign, they would not be in compliance with the CRTC’s mandate that Canadian-produced satellite radio channels carry 85 per cent Canadian content.

Sirius Canada’s license prohibits them from broadcasting “localized” content such as local or regional newscasts, weather forecasts or traffic reports. As a result the Radio One feed does not include local programs or weather forecasts. Instead, the network’s local programming blocks are filled with repeat airings of other CBC programming.

When the government here imposes restrictions on what we hear that are mor suitable for Cuba and North Korea, we have a problem. So we’re not there quite yet. Who’s got satellite out there? After my six month trial ends, not me, I fear.

So Chrysler Canda wants $1b to survive, according to the papers this morning.

Why are we not also giving Toyota a billion then? A failign North American car industry will be painful, but I see no reason to give these guys - especially the unionised ones - a break while not giving the efficient compnies a break, too. And why stop at car companies? How about my company? Yours? Or the maker of my new toy?

I do hope the US and Canadian governments will avoid the temptation to “do” politics and hand out tax money to dinosaurs. Bad performance should not be rewarded unless it would cause a general meltdown, like in the banks’ case.

Again, a high key image, shot using just a single speedlight - on the handheld camera:

Impossible, you say. No, I say. One flash on the camera. Turned so it aimed behind me at a white wall/ceiling. Using manual onthe Canon 1D MkIII, with FEC (Flash Exposure Comp) set so the right side of the histogram just does not reach the right extreme. View in large size (click) to see detail.

So how difficult is flash?

On a modern camera: not difficult at all. Just put a big flash on your camera hot shoe (e.g. a 430EX II if you use a Canon camera, or an SB-600 if you are a Nikon user), turn the head away from the subject, and reflect off a wall or ceiling, and shoot. Done! You can even use Program mode without “slow flash”

To illustrate that again, here is a nice gentleman on one of my courses the other day. He asked me for the picture but never emailed me with his address, so I will put it here for him instead.

First, how not to do it: aim straight at the subject. Oily skin, flat face and harsh look with many shadows will result. Click, and look at the big image to see what I mean.

Better: aim the head up and bounce off the ceiling. Especially for women, but for men too. Bounce behind you if you are close. Result. much softer light, and you get some light into the background too:

And to introduce character (especially for men), aim at a wall instead, above the subject. You now get this:

Easy. And it is unforgivable if you use the pop-up flash on your camera after seeing these images.