Since installing an over the air (OTA) antenna and getting a digital TV here in Toronto, Canada, we have been somewhat out of the reach of the Canadian government’s CRTC legislation because we can now watch U.S. TV without mandatory Canadian content commercials. This new tool, American TV, has given me some new insights of our American neighbours.
Race: Clear in American TV is the predominance of Blacks and the lack of multiculturalism we have here in Toronto. Neither good nor bad, this black/white split is simply different and certainly does not reflect my neighbourhood nor Toronto. Watching US TV is like visiting a foreign country, which it is.
Sell I do, on occasion, on Craigslist and Kijiji. Nothing large or fancy, just little stuff we now do not need. The little cash we get is really inconsequential. There are, however, some hints and tips, to doing it efficiently and to avoid undue risk. Here are some of my guidelines.
Simple I am, unless there is complexity required. Why mess with simple if it works and you need nothing else, I say. Such is the case with the WordPress theme “Default Enhanced”, now seemingly defunct. I still like it, so I changed it. Here are my documented changes.
Make a Child Theme: The first thing to do is to make a child theme. This is pretty easy, so research it. You really need only two files: style.css and functions.php. If the theme writer ever updates the theme for security or other reasons your changes will not be wiped out but overlayed on top of the update.
Ikea Aventuria chrome 4 light ceiling lamp is popping fuses. I have switched to the T8A slow blow type.
Damn Ikea, your stuff is cool looking but would it hurt you to have a catalogue of your old stuff? Some of us continue to use it and not simply throw it away when it breaks. When I cannot even find more than one image of my lamp on the Internet you know something is wrong. Anyway, Little Weed’s Aventuria halogen chrome ceiling lamp needs a T8A 5x20mm slow blow fuse. Fast blow is not acceptable.
Sometimes you cannot forsee something coming until you get hit with it. The Big Weed downloaded the Android app Transit Now for TTC. Our next Wind Mobile bill came with a special charge of $0.10 per use of this app, unbeknownst to us. We were surprised.
I gave Rogers the heave ho, for both cable and internet, and feel better for it. Scummy, predatory, their service was. Over the air TV has replaced cable. It is not what we are used to, but saves us over $70 each month. Overall I would say that we are much better off without Rogers cable.
Over the air (OTA) TV is not all fantastic, though I did not know all the disadvantages and underestimated the advantages. I will discuss all I learned. With OTA we get 17 channels, which includes a couple of duplicate HD and SD channels, a French channel, though it comes in stunning HD, and a religious channel, also in stunning HD.
Overall the Pinboard 1.0.7 and 1.0.10 themes for WordPress is a really lovely theme. It has lots of features and nice functionality. However you really never know a theme until you put a site into production and stumble upon its features and flaws. For Pinboard, I struggled with formatting the top banner for hours, until I discovered it’s secrets. While there is a forum for Pinboard, their help was sparse.
Site Title and Tagline: I wanted an image banner the width of the screen, or close to it. Pinboard has an option of a small banner coupled with a text site name and tagline. Since my graphic banner would include my site name and tag line, I turned off this feature.
Dynam RC Flight Simulator USB is cheaply made. Wire in the cable broke internally, rendering the unit dead, and replacement necessary.
Little Weed really wants to learn RC planes. He has been through RC cars but got bored. The challenge of flight has drawn him in. Instead of destroying and losing many planes and lots of cash, it is recommended that we learn on a flight simulator program. To make the interface easier we bought a Dynam RC Flight Simulator USB, a simulated radio, which connects USB to your PC. At $40 I knew it was pretty cheaply made, and I was not surprised when it started glitching. We flew it for a few months before it stopped working, but from the beginning it has issues with reliably connecting to the PC. I knew something was wrong.
Mobile phone service is unquestionably complex, needing a lot of research about both the phone and your service provider. After an exhaustive search of all the providers in the Toronto area, we found that Wind Mobile had the best cell phone plans to suit our needs. Yet the devil is in the details. Choosing a phone and the specific plan is trickier than we initially thought. There were other issues to consider, including cell phone coverage, unlocking the phone, buying the phone outright, and how Wind does their tab. Specifics of the Wind plan can change at any time, so this post is valid today in August 2013 and will change in the future.
Looking for a way to stream HD news from China, I asked a Chinese friend for a recommendation. He said try Funshion.com. They have a downloadable program that I thought would facilitate streaming their movies. What I got was a program that was parasitic, spammy and hard to remove. If you are considering using Funshion, do not download this app.
The download went well, but at once I started getting a huge amount of popup boxes usually blocked by Adblock Plus. My bandwidth went up by a lot as well. Then I realized that the damn program installed not in my program files directory but in the main directory, all without asking. When I went to uninstall the program it said I had no access to do this.
