QotD: I’m Going Green

Happy Earth Day!  What are some of your favorite ways to reduce, reuse and recycle?

Well, this question couldn’t have at better time for this mini rant…

One of my favourite enviro-friendly things I do (one of the ones I’m prouder of too) is my no-styro rule. I (in general practice*) refuse to use Styrofoam anything. Especially daily consumed “anythings”, like coffee cups, takeout containers, plates… either way, you get my point. At work, I even have a small Rubber Maid container for when I don’t bring my lunch and have to buy food from one of many local vendors… an trend that has caught on with others in my office. At one point, I think we had five of us toting around these reusable containers, often getting weird looks from the vendors until they got used to us. I also have a mug at my desk that I use when I go to get coffee.

My wife, ladyshark, and I tend to on the same page for a lot of the enviro issues, which is great. Infact, we both have these heavy duty Thermos travel mugs that we use when we allow ourselves to indulge in the increasingly frequent occasional latte. In addition, we usually tried to steer clear of establishments that use Styrofoam cups. However, yesterday we thought, “Well, we have our own cups… what’s the big deal?”

What’s the big deal, indeed…

Nothing really, unless (whilst your partner is concurrently returning shoes at a different store, you look away briefly to tend to your toddler who has managed to explode the bulk of a large muffin over his new sweater) the person making your latte uses two SEPARATE Styrofoam cups to measure out the soy “milk” for your drinks. I couldn’t believe it… but didn’t say anything because at that point, I knew those cups where destined for the garbage and, as a general rule, I’m not out to make enemies. Thus my silence. However, I briefly look back at Little “L” to again tend to the muffin shrapnel in his hair when once again, I look back to see her preparing our drinks in TWO OTHER Styrofoam cups… seriously, “WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY” (WTF) LADY!

Times like this I wish I were “slightly” more confrontational… I mean, COME ON! We brought our own bullletproof mugs that will last us forever so that we could avoid using disposable cups that  would end up just sitting in the landfill forever.

“Oh, oops. I forgot [to think about what it is that I’m doing to the environment every time I throw one of these cups in the garbage]!”
Shut up. Please.

****SELF-RIGHTEUOS-RANT WARNING****

People please, if you are going to go out and buy coffee/tea everyday, purchase yourselves a nice mug that will last you a while. Most places (in Canada anyway) will even give you a 10-15 cent discount on your beverage. So this way, instead of throwing out over 240 disposable cups a year (multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work) you could be saving almost $40 a year (now multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work).

At least Oprah has hopped on the bio-deisel-bandwagon with her show last week about all the little things we can do to be a bit more environmentally friendly everyday… Now, an entire flock of people will ONLY NOW start thinking about these issues thanks to Oprah. Holy “Friday” that woman has a lot of influence… Of course now, she’ll probably get sued by slew of companies that produce disposable products. Sorry “Swifter”, Oprah just knocked your stock down a few pegs… Time to sue. Make some of that money back.

Okay, okay. That was a serious digression.

Long story short… buy a nice mug. If you and nine other people in your office decided to make this change, you would collectively be contibuting 2400 fewer disposable cups to the landfill every year. If ten people at ten different companies did the same, there would 24,000 fewer… and in ten different cities, 240,000 fewer… 10 provinces/states, 2,400,000 fewer… and then if all of this were carried out across a mere 10 countries on this planet, 24,000,000 fewer disposable cups would be added to the landfill every year… Multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work.

Now go hug a tree… they’re a big reason you breathe.

steelie

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Homepage Gets a Facelift… Oh, goody…

I have to say that I’m not really a fan of the new approach to the VOX Home-page…

I’m really missing the Recent Comments and the old format… I mean, the new content has value too but the previous iteration was customised to me and my neighbourhood. Now, “my” VOX Home-page shows me more or less what VOX has chosen for me to see.

I feel that the current state of the Home-page is better suited for the Explore page… in fact, it would be perfect for the Explore page. People would immediately get an overview of highlighted posts and images, see what the recent favourites are and scroll through the most recently listed posts.

I know others will dissagree but I greatly preferred the set-up the way it was before the facelift.

Of course, the ultimate would to offer multiple modules that people could choose from to customise their Home-page to be how they wished… similar to LiveJournal’s “portal” page.

VOX, why fix something when it’s not broken… of if you are going to change something, why not adding enhancements or modifying things slightly instaed of removing almost all of what everyone is used to seeing.

steelie

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I turned thirty years old today (AKA Birthday Rant)…

<rant>
As the title says… today, I turned thirty years old… and I’m actually very excited about it.

I’ve been very lucky in my life — luckier than many, I continue to discover… I come from a great family that has never been well-off but has always been supportive of everything I do and dream. I have a decent job that has afforded my family a house and car — the house is old and needs work and the car is used but I have a home and a means to get from there to most places I need to. I am in overall excellent health, and today, I have been granted the privilege of making it to my thirtieth birthday, still breathing with blood pumping strong.

I wanted to emphasize the word “privilege” because I feel that this is exactly what being alive is… a privilege.

I have heard/observed a number of people in the last little while complaining about life and how it sucks and how getting old sucks and how “thirty” is a good time to “check-out” because thirty is old and remember getting old sucks and blah fuckin’ blah blah…

Yeah… I’m a bit irritated by this type of talk… I know everyone is entitled to their opinion and I rarely force my opinion, thoughts or beliefs on anyone semicolon however comma “it’s my party and I’ll rant if I want to”.

There are so many people that die everyday, way before what seems like should be “their time”. Whether it be from terminal illness, war, unfortunate accidents or any number of other things their privileged life was taken from them. Again, I say privileged because at any given point someone who decides that they are having an especially shitty day/life could choose to end yours. The almighty Cancer could pay you a visit and make your last days miserable for you and your family. Someone could drop their coffee in their lap and react by jerking the steering wheel and redirecting their vehicle into a head-on with yours. I could go on but I’m starting to depress myself…

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to live more than one hundred years… Over ten years ago I was having severe chest pains and doctors found a spot on my lung… I thought I would never make it to twenty, let alone thirty. Forget three-digits. Turns out it was nothing. I’m fine. And you know what? Until I got the news that I was fine, not once did I think, “Oh, thank God… I was afraid I was going to have to endure ‘thirty’. Man that would have sucked!” And I’m willing to bet that if you got hit by a car on the eve of your thirtieth birthday and the doctors told you that there was nothing they could do for you, you’d smirk and breathe that sigh of relief, “Whew! Thanks Docs. That was cutting it close, wasn’t it.”

I realize that there are people in the world who are so much worse-off than I am that I’m not going to pretend to be able to fathom an inkling of what their personal hell lives must be like. I am quite sure that many victims of war, grave sickness, abuse, poverty, etc… might whole-heartedly disagree with me but this is partially my point… The life you have right now is a privilege and any one of a number of people/illnesses/things can take it from you in a heartbeat.

SOOO… the next time you get all angsty about your life and getting old, take a good long hard look at the cards you’ve been dealt… and if you really want to complain about turning thirty or getting old, go to the palliative care wing of your local childrens’ hospital and tell them all about it — I’m sure some of them would give anything to trade spaces with you to have the chance to live to see their tenth birthday. Or even go to your local senior citizens' home and tell them all about it — I’m sure some of them would give anything to add a few more years to see the birth of their first great-grandchild.

Fuckin’ live, dammit!
Keep breathing and live.
</rant>

steelie

PS: Thanks to Julé, Jared and Jen for the warm birthday wishes. Thirty is awesome.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

“Compose” test using Apple’s Safari 2.0.4 + latest Webkit build…

Okay, I have to admit… I’ve been known to be one of those pain in the ass people who occasionally feels it necessary to inform VOX of my thoughtful suggestions to make the site better (even though the more I use it, the more I realise how much it just kicks ass). Well, I think I may have posted ± three separate ”feedbacks” complaining about how Apple’s Safari’s incompatibility with VOX has been a source of frustration for me.


As per VOX’s suggestion (every time I try to compose a post in Safari) I finally decided to try Firefox. While it does allow most/all of the composing features one would need to successfully compose a post in VOX, it is thoroughly less pleasant to deal with on a regular basis… it's clunky… it doesn't do really some really simple things that you get spoiled by over in Safari.


For example…


When you go to type in the address in the URL bar it will auto-complete the entry with your most visited site with the same spelling AND provide a pull-down list of all other options — in order of most visited by ME. With Firefox you are presented with a pull-down list of the most recent places you’ve been which rarely includes my most visited places.


In Safari, I can choose to block or un-block pop-up windows from the FILE Menu or by simply pressing a keyboard shortcut… same for emptying the cache… and deleting history can be done from the HISTORY menu. There is no need  to open the preference panel  every time you've visited your online bank and you need to empty the cache of your personal information or delete history… novel ideas, I know.


The tabbed-browsing feature has the “close tab” button on the tab itself as oppose to the other side of the screen so you can close a tab in the background by means of this little button. Plus you can toggle from tab to tab using key-commands. With Firefox, you either have to highlight the tab then go click the button to close, or you have to right-click the tab and choose close from the pop-up menu… both ways take three to four times longer — I know, I know, we're only talking seconds here but they add up to frustration and interface friction.


Of course, you can install various extension to Firefox to increase its functionality including ones for closing the tabs and adding key-commands to allow for tab-toggling but the interface is still clunky.


In Safari, one of my favourite interface features is the Address Bar which is also the Progress Bar. So, as soon as you’ve entered your destination URL and pressed enter, the blue progress bar travels along the back of the Address Bar giving immediate feedback that things are working to get you where you need to go. In Firefox the progress bar is a bout an inch wide and tucked down in the bottom corner where you have to go searching for it every time…


ANYWAY…


Following another “suggestion” from the VOX team (more like a “swim at your own risk” statement than a suggestion really) I installed the latest nightly build of Webkit which promptly crashed Safari… brilliant. After restarting, however, I was pleased to find that I can now at least use some of the basic formatting tools. Specifically, the following: bold, italics, underline, left-align, centre-align and right-align. Colour me excited…


Oh well, it is getting there, slowly but surely… just too slowly for my liking.


BTW, for any one who cares, this entry was composed entirely using Safari with the latest nightly build of Webkit, except for the hyper-links and spell-checking, which were done in TextEdit.


Goodnight all.

steelie


[UPDATE]

I did a bit of searching and it turns out that you can also download an extention that will allow Firefox to combine the Address and Progress bars and it can be found here. It is way more intuitive than Firefox’s default Progress Bar so I (personally) highly recommend it.


I guess the personal goal for this will now be to try and make Firefox as Safari-like as possible.
I’ll start a running list of all the extensions I find to make life more Safarifox and bearable.


steelie

Read and post comments | Send to a friend