Delissio Pizza: easy to bake but extremely salty. "If it's not delivery it's Delissio, Oh, D'salt!"

If you know me, you know that we cook almost everything from scratch. This includes pizza. When Delissio pizza went on sale at a local big box grocer, 2 x 900g pizzas for $6CAD, I thought I would give their Deluxe a try. Overall impressions were that they are far inferior to home made pizza, but to my Little Weed an inferior pizza is better than no pizza at all. Of note was the fact that the pizza was so salty. I know salt is cheap, but if this pizza was so tasty why not let the ingredients speak for themselves?

Our home-made pizzas start out with store bought dough, which we let sit on the counter for 4 hrs in order to rise. From then on it is all home made: pepperoni, Polish sausage, green peppers, onions, pineapple, tomatoe paste, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, salt, pepper, garlic, all can be included. We form a congo line of ingredients. Set the oven at 425F and bake for 25 minutes. The results are excellent, and therefore out expectations of pizza are high.

Delissio Pizza Instructions: Easy to understand, even if you don't know English. Great usability, with understandable pictures.

In terms of convenience the Delissio pizza is super easy: It comes shrink wrapped in plastic. Cut the plastic open, slide out the cardboard bottom, shove it into a 325F oven, and 25 minutes later you’re good to go. Instructions on the box are clear, highlighted, and easy to find. Even if you do not know a speck of English, there are large helpful pictures to assist you. Usability of the instructions were exceptional. It would be difficult to mess up this pizza.

Delissio Pizza: How can the Little Weed resist this? Ornamental cheddar cheese added.

The proof is in the tasting, and this is where the pizza has trouble. To my Little Weed, any pizza is better than no pizza at all, and the Delissio got his seal of approval. Then again, when asked in comparison to our home-made pizza, he preferred eating our stuff. I admit that these results are not scientific, not statistically valid, and could be construed as biased, but I reaffirmed one salient fact: Kids will eat anything that resembles fast food, and actually enjoy it. This is why we are called adults and they have a whole lot more learning to do. Due to their total lack of quality control, we adults need to be doubly on guard for the good of the family.

Delissio Pizza: Objet d'art up close and personal

No doubt that this Delissio round “objet d’art” is indeed an edible artifact more commonly called a pizza. In general the crust is thin and lacking in taste. The tomatoe paste is a tad excessive and the pizza is extremely salty. Eat enough and you’ll need to drink a lot of water, prompting you to visit the loo early into the next morning. Still, we did not get sick, and it did taste good, though not as good as home made. I rate this pizza a “B”.

The Little Weed can eat almost 1/2 the pizza, or 450g. The nutritional information on the package indicates that a slice (1/6 of the pizza, 155g) contains 970mg or 40% of the recommended daily intake of sodium. This means that the Little Weed will consume 2.82g of sodium, or 116% of the daily recommended daily intake of sodium for an adult by eating this meal alone. No wonder this pizza tastes so salty.

Recent studies have warned that Canadians are eating too much salt, most eaten in prepackaged foods.

…Canadians eat more salt than they need. Too much salt is linked to high blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease and stroke.

Much of the salt we eat comes from processed food… source

This pizza is a prime example. I am sure that many people like salty foods, but we are not included. Less salt on the pizza and a salt packet for those that want more would be better for us.

As for Delissio Deluxe pizza, I think I will pass.

As with all large construction projects, schedules are a moving target, as are project additions such as a line from Meadowvale to the Zoo and a rail yard near Sheppard/Nielson. Here’s a list of possible LRT stops.

This is as current information as I can find. When more info is published I will update. I would think that others are eager to learn about this schedule, but I had to search on Google for a couple of hours before I found credible information.

Sheppard Ave East is the busiest street in Scarborough, dominated by the automobile. Sheppard is the epitome of urban sprawl. I hope that the new LRT line will usher in a time where public transit, bicyclists and pedestrians are also welcome and safe while using Sheppard. Pack more living into less space. Allow locals to feel safe when they ride their bicycles to nearby destinations. Cycling on Sheppard today is scary dangerous. No doubt that today the car is king on Sheppard, and they know it and show it. The LRT should change this.

City of Toronto, Jan 2010

LRT Construction Schedule
Plans for LRT construction are currently being developed. As soon as details are confirmed the website will be updated.

From powerpoint presentation:
2009-2011: Birchmount to Progress (E of Markham)
2011: Morningside – Meadowvale
2011-2013: Don Mills to Yorkland
2012: Yorkland – Birchmount
2012: Progress (E of Markham) – Morningside

Roads going eastbound: Don Mills, Yorkland, Victoria Park, Pharamacy, Warden, Birchmount, Kennedy, Midland, Brimley, McCowan, Markham, Nielson, Morningside, Meadowvale. Since Progress starts at Kennedy and goes to Markham, parallel to Sheppard and south of the 401, then turns north to Sheppard, I am unsure what this means for the schedule. I will assume Progress, east of Markham road, whenre it intersects Sheppard.

TTC Sheppard East LRT conceptual view, looking west on Sheppard just east of Victoria Park. Currently Johnny's is on the south east corner, Coffee Time is on the north east corner, and the Food Basics mall is on the north west corner. Believe it or not.

Agincourt Go Grade Separation, east of Kennedy, looking east. Sheppard will be rebuilt under the north-south Go train tracks. Currently there is a condo on the south-west, small commercial buildings on the north-west and south-east.

Current view of the Agincourt Go Grade Separation, east of Kennedy, looking east.

David Fisher, updated Dec 25, 2009

Phase I As I see it at this time is building a new grade separation for GO Stouffville line that service Sheppard Ave at the Agincourt station.

Phase II Will start at Meadowvale Rd as that where TTC plans to start the building process in the first place.

Phase III This is to cover the extension to the Toronto Zoo that is north of Sheppard Ave off Meadowvale Rd. There is to be an EA for this extension as well one to connect to Scarborough Town Centre to the south.

Phase IV This is to cover the building of a new Carhouse yard for this line, but not sure of the location at this time since TTC has not made that location known.

Phase V This is protection for the Scarborough-Malvern Line that could see the top haft built from Sheppard Ave south to the on that will house the oylimyia Pool for the PAN AM Games in 2015 since this line has be deferred to 2020 at this time. With Toronto getting the PAM AM games in 2015, there is a chance the whole S-M line running from Kennedy Station for the Bloor-Danforth Line could see construction for it and this phase will not be require..

Backgrounder: Governments of Canada and Ontario invest in Sheppard East Light Rail line, May 15 2009

Phase 1 (McCowan to Neilson Road) begins in July 2009

Forum, Oct 2008

A) Proposed grade separation of Sheppard Avenue East and GO Transit tracks east of Kennedy Road

B) A 2.2 Kilometre section of track and roadway located between McCowan and Neilson Roads.

Preliminary engineering on the next phase of project (Birchmount to McCowan) is expected to begin in April of 2009.

The most-significant issue currently facing the project is the determination of the recommended design for the LRT connection at Don Mills subway station.

Other reference material includes Regular Expressions in Yahoo Pipes, but is a tad dated. The Pipes forum is very helpful, especially hapdaniel.

*Remove all outside []

Feed Validator

Sunforce 12v Power Sports Charger 50014 is but a battery maintainer, not a charger

Solar power has always been enticing idea. You point a panel to the lovely sun and it returns usable power. With few exceptions the sun rises each and every day, so theoretically you have unlimited access to power. Unfortunately the reality of economics creeps into the equation, initially taking the shine off solar power. Wanting to play with the technology, a Canadian Tire sale on small solar panels allowed me to try it out.

Early solar devices were nuisances. These include solar powered night lights. Not only were they so dim as to almost be non-existent, and did they usually not last very long, they provided just enough contribution to Toronto’s light pollution problem: We can no longer easily see the stars at night.

I have a battery that I only use in the summer. During the winter it sits in my garage, dormant and losing power each month. Left to its own devices, when spring rolls around the battery has lost sufficient charge as to not work, and needs to be recharged. Every other month I need to remember to put a charger on it for 14 hours or so.

My solution is a Solar battery maintainer. Pointing to the sun, it puts out just 80maH, but for 12 hours a day, varying its output with the sun. I am hoping that this will be enough to maintain my battery throughout the winter. We shall see. The key word here is to maintain a battery’s charge level, but not have the ability to recharge it.

In researching solar power it is evident that solar panels sufficient to recharge a large car or RV battery are quite expensive. You need a couple of large photo-voltaic panels, along with a voltage regulator. The voltage regulator tests the battery to ensure that it will not overcharge the battery and cook it dead. You also need deep cycle batteries, which are expensive. And lastly you need to severely restrict your power consumption on items such as your microwave oven, iron and hair dryer. To get the maximum power from the sun the panels need to automatically turn towards the sun as the sun turns. This requires a motor and power. Add this all up and it spells expensive. The conclusion is that getting off the grid is expensive.

Hot water from a solar system is used all over China, so I was thinking of looking into it. For Toronto I don’t think we have enough wind to justify a wind power system, even more expensive than solar.

No, solar has far to go to solve the world’s power crisis. Still, it is a step in the right direction. I’ll still need my plug in battery charger, though.

Note: In another feat of marketing trickery Sunforce offers a 5 year warranty on this solar panel. In the fine print the solar panel is actually warrantied for only a year. The solar panel, if it survives, is warrantied for 5 years only for power output. In other words, buyer beware.

Human rights violations in China are numerous and well documented, so there is no point in defending the indefensible. Locking up citizens because they blog their views is a human rights violation, but not because they use the internet: Their rights are violated because they are not permitted freedom of speech. The fact that they use the internet is incidental, as they could have wrote a dazibao (large character poster), or used some other media.

For the U.S. to link the restriction of Internet access to a human rights violation is puzzling to me. I have heard sounds bites of Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, say much the same. Particularly odd is this International Herald Tribune op ed commentary in the New York Times:

To pull the plug on the Internet for 20 million of its citizens is not simply bad policy, it’s a violation of human rights. And although for now China is unlikely to change its heavy-handed approach to Internet censorship, it is appropriate to remind the Chinese government that persistence in these policies will result in the same phenomenon happening in Xinjiang — exodus.

While I largely agree with the article, the insinuation of a human rights violation for Xinjiang’s 20M citizens is difficult for me to swallow. There will be no exodus for the residents of Xinjiang as most have no financial means to move, and if they did they would not be permitted by the Chinese government. Nothing has and nothing will happen in the future solely because of the lack of internet. There are many countries and areas of the world that still do not have widespread internet access. Are their human rights being violated?

There are few things in life you need to live. Food, water, shelter, clothing. There are other things in life that allow dignity as a human being. Then there are the “nice to have”. The internet is clearly in the last category.

Al Jazeera covers news on China. Nice!

The year 2009 was marked by significant news coverage of Al Qaeda attacks, soldiers and civilians getting blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan, much stricter airport security and, here in Canada, increased wariness of those from the Middle East. In the middle of this morass was the news agency Al Jazeera. Most people here in Canada actually did not recognize the agency until tapes from Osama Bin Laden were released only to Al Jazeera.

We have people of Middle Eastern heritage here in Toronto, but so does many other parts of the world. With all the negative publicity coming out of the Middle East, it is not unreasonable that Canadians would be wary of the news agency. When they applied for a TV station license there was an uproar, saying that Al Jazeera was the mouth piece of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. I don’t know much about Al Jazeera, the Middle East or Al Qaeda, but I am glad they received their CRTC license. News coverage from the Middle Eastern perspective can only enlighten Canadians.

Here is what Wikipedia explains on Al Jazeera:

Al Jazeera (Arabic: ???????? al-?az?ra IPA: [ald?azi:ra]), meaning “the Island” in Arabic, is a Middle Eastern news network. The name refers to the network’s geographic origins[1].Al Jazeera is a television network headquartered in Doha, Qatar.

Here is a news article from Al Jazeera covering Chinese New Year in China. They write nothing extraordinary but I appreciate their coverage none the less. A Middle Eastern perspective on China would also be great, but I am having difficulty finding reputable news sources. At least I recognize Al Jazeera.

New perspectives are always good. It is interesting to see “Mecca Time” on Al Jazeera’s web site. And welcome to Canada, Al Jazeera.

The RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Logo. RSS is so useful but abused.

Should not an internet feature with the label “Really Simple” in its name, be in fact really simple? After working with Really Simple Syndication (RSS), unfortunately this is not or is no longer true. In fact wider variations of this very useful tool threaten to reduce the effectiveness of this useful tool.

Wikipedia has a great definition of RSS:

RSS (most commonly expanded as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

For for content publishers and webmasters not familiar with RSS there is a great tutorial online.

Surprisingly the last near “approved” standard was RSS 2.0, agreed upon and published by the W3C in August 2002. Harvard Law also published this standard but dated July 2003. I will not nitpick these dates in the context that we are now in the year 2010 and RSS has splintered badly. it has been 8 years since and it shows.

There has been some undated work by Aaron Swartz on RSS 3.0. I see no widespread agreement for his proposal. While this is disconcerting, I note that his proposed spec also greatly diverges from how RSS is used today. In fact, you really need to dig deep into Google to find his document.

So how does RSS work? When you publish a document to the web, RSS allows you to also publish a “teaser”, which includes your document’s title, a short description and a link back to your document. These teasers are collected to make a “feed” for your web site. Feeds are collected or aggregated when other readers, search engines or others subscribe to your feed. As you publish a new document, all those who have subscribed to your feed get informed and can then read your document. You need not tell others you have created a new document. In a way RSS is like a one way document messaging system.

Unfortunately RSS has evolved away from a simple and efficient messaging system to a content delivery system. Instead of providing a short and sweet title, description and link of a document, many web publishers are providing their whole document in the RSS feed. This often includes images, HTML markup and a whole lot of superfluous content. Many RSS feeds are now very heavy, and as a result, this slows down the free flow of information to subscribers. If the original document changes there is also no way to go back to all RSS subscribers and change their content.

Long ago a feed would include a title, short description and a link to the document. To me a short description is a at most a couple of sentences. Today’s feeds can have text descriptions of 500 characters, far longer than the much shorter 140 character tweet. Can we have some restraint here, people? Write more efficiently. Some webmasters copy their content:encoded field (see below) into the description field, so now you not only get tons of HTML markup but also images and unnecessary weight. Remember, people, the description should be long enough so that your subscriber can decide if your article is worthwhile to read, and then will LINK to your document. It’s not there to deliver your 40k document. Short and sweet is best.

The content:encoded field is most contentious and makes me the most upset. Firstly, it is not part of ANY RSS standard that I can find, including the proposed RSS 3.0. Who created this is unknown, but it seems to have spread faster than the swine flu H1N1. I would estimate that about 50% of all blog RSS feeds now have the field item.content:encoded. In fact, even my own blog, the one you are reading, has this field in the RSS feed. Did I add this field to my feed just to provoke myself? Why no, all Wordpress blogs do RSS this way. No wonder this field is spreading like wildfire. It is hidden underneath the beautiful exterior of the Wordpress facade.

The purpose of item.content:encoded is to slam the whole document, HTML markup, images, attachments and all, into the RSS feed. No wonder that the RSS feeds are big, fat and of course slow to read. Worse than providing your whole document into the content:encoded field is to copy, verbatim, all contents into the item.description field. Why provide your complete document twice? Why do you feel the need to provide your complete document even once? When someone like myself reads your RSS feed, parses your description, decides a 50k description is too long and therefore truncates the first 200 characters, all that is left is useless HTML markup, resulting in no description being sent to your subscriber. Thankfully Wordpress provides the first 100 characters of text, sans images, in item.description, and self truncates.

To those that like to aggregate many web sites using RSS I have some pointers:

• You need to examine each new feed to determine if the description field is too long, if content:encoded is present, and if there are any surprises in the RSS feed. Expect surprises, as in the World Bank blogs (see below)

• Truncate item.description at 200 characters. For the feeds that simply copy their content:encoded field to description you will get mostly HTML markup, which means no description. So be it.
• Delete the content:encoded field. Rename it to something non-standard and the feed reader should drop it. The feed will lose a LOT of weight and processing will be much faster.
• Delete any other non-standard field, including all those that provide the whole document. Delete any HTMP markup, as it is useless in RSS.
• Hope that a new RSS standard appears in the future.

What was designed as a highly efficient internet document messaging system has now bogged down. We need not see your whole document in the RSS feed, as the reader can follow your provided link and get to your original document. Put the “S” of simple back into “Really Simple Syndication and the world will be a better place.

Apart from certain feeds not providing a published date, the most “infamous” RSS feed has got to be blogs from the World Bank. The field description has the whole document in HTML markup, including photos and attachments. The World Bank introduces three new fields: itunes:keyword (tags), itunes:subtitle (a 200 character summary of the article), itunes:summary (the whole article in text without HTML markup or images). Why provide new and non-standard RSS feed items for only this new technology? Why is there a need to provide content twice and not put the summary in the standard RSS field? A note to anyone that mashes the World Bank blogs RSS: delete the itunes:summary field, copy the itunes:subtitle field to item.description (then delete the other itunes fields) and lighten the RSS feed by at least half.

RSS is remains a very useful internet document messaging system that allows for the free flow of documents throughout the internet. Please let us not abuse the system.

LCD TV Wall Mount Bracket, probably Made in China. It's cheap at $21US from Amazon.

Some day I will buy a flat panel LCD TV and will need a wall mount. The wall mount will probably be made in China. I do care about the safety of the employees that make my purchases, wherever they may me. They are just like the rest of us, working to squirrel away enough cash to put their kids to school. Particularly galling are safety conditions in China’s factories. The fact of the matter is that the lives of people in a far off land are not front and centre for us. While we give the proper lip service to be socially acceptable, they work in unsafe conditions so we can buy products at a cheaper price. We should care about how the products we buy affect workers in China.

This particular LCD TV wall mount from Amazon is only an example. I don’t know if it is made in China, but while shopping for electronics goods it is hard to find products NOT made in China. I note that on most product descriptions of such wall mounts, country of origin is always missing.

This Chinese worker is stamping out tv brackets with a 5 ton press. He wears no protective equipment such as eye and ear protection. There are no safety guards protecting his hands from amputation. Does he look happy?

This factory worker in his spiffy blue overalls dutifully stamps our parts for LCD TV Wall mounts. His machine, a 5 ton press, is dangerous and loud, yet I see no personal protective equipment such as eye or ear protection. There is also no safety guard on his machine that would prevent him from amputating his hand or arm if he has a small lapse of concentration.

Would you send your son or daughter into this factory to work this machine? Not on your life, at least not in Canada. We have laws against this type of unsafe environment that protect employees. If an employee gets hurt the factory would have to compensate the employee. This worker protection makes fabricating similar products in Canada more expensive. As the price of products rises, orders diminish, as buyers move to countries like China, where they can get their product without the costs of protecting their workers.

This young worker is spray painting rods for automotive use. His personal protective equipment consists of a cotton gauze mask and gloves. The spray area is confined. This is unsafe.

This young worker looks spiffy in his black and yellow bee shirt. He does not even have overalls. He is spray painting some metal rods to be used in an automotive application. His personal protective equipment consists of a cotton gauze mask, gloves, and a baseball hat turned backwards. He works in a restricted space. Surely someone in charge of this factory would know that this is extremely unsafe.

Here in Canada we would not do this even in our private garages. We buy N95 ventilation masks to protect the fine particulate from entering into and damaging our lungs. We also use eye protection. In professional applications they spray in a negative pressure room that exchanges the air quite quickly. No such luck for this guy. I wish him a long life, as he will need it.

This young worker is grinding down metal on a lathe. No ear, eye or other protection. This is unsafe.

This young worker is grinding metal down in a lathe. He uses no ear, eye or other protection, risking both life and limb for his job. Sparks from the metal can catch fire. Lathe bits sometimes break, sending hot and sharp metal in all directions at high speed. You never know when an incident will happen, so you should protect yourself. At least he is not putting his fingers or face close to the grinding wheel. With no ear protection he should be deaf in short order.

Maybe complaining about unsafe factory conditions in China is a useless exercise. Is there nothing we can do? As consumption in the West continues to accelerate, should we not think about who is making these products and the subsequent human costs that we do not pay? Today there is no way of guaranteeing that a product was made in a safe factory. Still, I wish there was some way to know.

P.S. Here is an interesting factory tour by Alex Hofford, a HK based photographer. He talks about how this factory tried to implement safety standards but were rebuffed by employees.

And now an article on Worker safety by China Daily, Copied verbatim by People’s Daily.

In the past Beijing was racked by spring time sand storms that came down from Mongolia. Fengsha, as it is called, is a very fine yellow particulate that permeates the air and lands on all surfaces. it is so fine that it gets through closed windows. You can clean all you want, but it’ll still get through. As it does get into your food, maybe it helps digestion, I do not know.

Outside the sand would sting your eyes and face. The best protected were the women, who wrapped their heads with see-through scarves. The kids got the same treatment.

Beijing air is polluted and is hazardous to your health

Asia Society’s China Green project (you will need Flash) has a great set of photos showing Beijing pollution. I can attest to the terrible quality of Beijing’s air, though have not experienced the worst days. Frankly I would rather live elsewhere if I can help it. Prolonged exposure to poor air quality can only be bad for your health, contributing to lung ailments.

The photo to the right uses the identical location in Beijing, but spaced three days apart. How would you like to wake up to that kind of environment?

No matter. There are 9-12M people living in Beijing, all seeming content to live there. There are other more polluted places in the world. If I have a choice, and I do, I will live elsewhere.

At first I thought that it was some type of tricky RSS programming used so their articles would be featured most prominently. This has occurred on a couple of RSS feeds that include: James Fallows of the Atlantic, Middle Order of the Hindustan Times, Quality-Wars, and China Online Marketing. A large “thumbs down” to all of these sites.

The alleged deviousness of these errant RSS feeds turned out to be an omission of RSS information. Both errant feeds do not provide a “Date Published” field, so my RSS program assumes all articles as most recent, putting them, annoyingly, at the top. If there is no pubDate field, no RSS reader can differentiate old or new articles. James Fallows has a syntax error in his pubDate field.

An advantage of using popular blog software is that standards such as RSS information are rigorously complied with, saving the world much trouble. While I would like to read and retain both RSS feeds, there is no easy way for me to comply, apart from having to do fancy RSS programming. This I will not do.