Hilarious! This is a Chinese idiom, but this translation given to Froog is much more colourful.
“The seemingly bright and colourful overcoat could not possibly cover up the patched underwear beneath.”
金玉其外, 败絮其中
jīnyùqíwài, bàixùqízhōng, or “gilded exterior, shabby and ruined on the inside (idiom)”, or my dictionary says “rubbish coated in gold and jade”.
Old machinery is ugly, strongly made of metal, is serviceable and lasts a long time. This is the case of my Viking Auto dryer, made by the T. Eaton Company (long defunct), model no. EDX22RW1181. This dryer came with the house and has been working pretty well until recently. Ten years ago or so it stopped heating, so I took it apart and fixed the broken heating wire. Now it runs but the heat shuts off after about 20 minutes, so our clothing takes 3 hrs to dry. Why did I wait this long to repair the dryer? Because others in the house did not tell me of the problem until recently. Now that I cleaned out all the lint from 10 years it should run well again.
Riding a motorcycle is hazardous to your health if you are not very careful and conservative. As a rider this is unsurprising. Yesterday here in Scarborough/Toronto, Ontario, Canada I made a riding error that involved a bus. Luckily for me I did not crash, there was no traffic behind me, and very little traffic around me. Still, I give pause to analyze my actions, improve my riding and ultimately to ride another day.
Disbelief is what I felt when I first saw two pedestrian texters walk straight into each other, head to head. So engrossed with their lives that they could not spend the time to watch where they are going? As a technologist I am always interested in the social effects of technology on society. Distracted walking shows that the vast majority of people cannot do two things at the same time, that multi-tasking is really not feasible for most people, and that this behaviour can be potentially dangerous to the person and those around them.
Anyone who lives here in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto, can tell you that incomes have markedly dropped. We see it in our schools and neighbourhood. A Toronto Star article on the widening income gaps here in Toronto brought me to a couple interesting maps by Dr. J. David Hulchanski. His paper “Report: The 3 Cities within Toronto, Income Polarization, 2007” gives much food for thought.
Dr. Hulchanski’s paper includes a couple of maps of Toronto by change in income from 1970 to 2000. It is a very sobering map for those of us who live in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. It is not that we are special, because other suburbs of Toronto have also experienced similar income drops.
While I consider myself a project manager, I can also play the role of business analyst. Situations often occur in life that scream for the need to re-engineer the business process.The Little Weed has attended the same summer sports camp here in Agincourt for the past couple of years, and each year there are many inefficiencies related to the initial first day of camp: registration. I have written about these in past posts, but today I will re-engineer the registration process that I participated in this year, 2012. Note that I do not work for the camp nor am I in anyway related, other than the Little Weed participates, and therefore I am only a consumer. Please note that this and other articles on this camp should not be considered a criticism of the camp. The Little Weed and I have verified that this camp is largely well run, the kids have a lot of fun, and to me, this is much more important than the inconvenience and inefficiencies that parents experience on registration day.
Xavier Ovando of Montreal uses a two-plunger ear protection to protect his hearing during a Montreal protest march. Maybe more Canadians should join him.
We in Canada are not prone to protest. On the contrary we Canadians are more pacifists, and some say worse, that we have no backbone. Maybe the current economic recession will help change our attitudes. Our young people are getting slaughtered when they leave school, and what should they do? Be passive and simply accept it? No, this cannot do. It was interesting to me when average Canadians started taking up the cause of Quebec students, who are protesting tuition fee increases. Do they belie a more significant rot in our society? Should we average Canadians in the rest of Canada join?
It is never easy to admit fault, but only through acknowledgment of an error can said error be corrected. In Toronto’s G20 summit in 2010 Toronto and other police and RCMP beat up and violated the rights of over 1,500 Canadian citizens. The police became the criminal element. It is only the passing of almost 2 years of time that this wrong is beginning to turn. Maybe.
In my quest for more information about North-East Toronto, Canada, specifically Scarborough, here is information about walkability. The City of Toronto has published a report about how easy it is to walk about the city. The theory is that ease of walking contributes to better health and well-being, and therefore better living overall. How does my area of Toronto, heavily biased towards Mainland Chinese, rate on walkability? Overall, not very well.
The Walkability project is interesting to me in that I would rather walk or ride a bike to shop or go places yet I live in the suburbs, a statistically less walkable area of Toronto. While we do have better air and a far greater supply of Chinese groceries, I hope that my neighbourhood’s walkability will increase.
There is a whole lot of information on the internet about using the Arduino with Eclipse on Xubuntu 10.04 LTS, much of it out of date. Here I document my experience in the hope that this process becomes more smooth.
I followed documentation from a couple of very key people, which helped a lot. Still, there are certain issues that threw me off. I have added my experiences where I had issues. The Arduino IDE is the standard method to connect to and program the Arduino. It is simple to use. If you want a more rich programming environment you can also use Eclipse, with the Arduino plugin. Either method can be used to program and run the Arduino. Here are the steps:
