The Summits of Canada Expedition is “the single largest expedition of discovery and adventure in Canada” with a goal of “putting the first Canadian team on the summit of every province and territory.”
Here is the route planned for the summit of [[Prince Edward Island]]’s highest point, at Glen Valley (map):
Take Highway 2 to Fredericton to Glen Valley. Turned left onto a dirt road and park car. GPS to a small forest beside a potato field.
Is it any wonder that Islanders are humble folk.
Most Tuesday mornings I read the Sunday edition of the New York Times at [[Beanz]]. And one of the features I like reading are the wedding announcements.
I noticed this morning that the Times has added video to the web version of the announcments, including this video about how Aislinn met Jeffery.
This is an interesting example of how web and print work well together: I can’t imagine deriving any pleasure from reading wedding announcements on the web but I like having the option of going to the web to learn the story behind the story.
It says here on Al Gore’s website that:
Number of gallons of gasoline is multiplied by the emissions factor of 19.6 to convert to pounds CO2, or 22.4 for diesel vehicles. These emissions factors come from the Energy Information Administration, Fuel and Energy Source Codes and Emissions Coefficients.
According to Terrapass, the fuel efficiency of my 2000 Jetta with a manual transmission and standard gasoline is 24 miles per gallon in the city (which is where I usually drive it).
This means that for every one mile I drive I use 0.0416 gallons of gasoline and emit 0.81536 pounds of C02. Assuming my car is out of tune, and has aged somewhat after 40,000 km of driving, and so has poorer gas mileage than that, a figure of 1 pound per mile driven is probably a reasonable ballpark.
The round-trip from our house to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market is 3.2 miles, so if we drive we emit roughly 3.2 pounds of C02. Over the course of the year, assuming we drive every week, that adds up to 166 pounds of C02 (or 0.08 tons).
The carbon calculator tells me that my personal carbon emissions are 8.1 tons per year (the big contributors to that are flights to Europe and New England and oil heat in our house).
While we’re heavily abstracted from real numbers by this point, it seems like that driving to the Farmer’s Market every week would contribute about 1% of my annual C02 emissions.
It’s interesting to note that when we moved from rural Kingston to urban Charlottetown seven years ago, I cut out a 6 day a week commute of 20 miles return, resulting in a reduction of roughly 6,240 pounds (or 3 tons) of C02 emissions per year.
Please point out the errors in my math and logic if you find any.
I took some time this afternoon to craft together [[JaikuGrowler]], an AppleScript that uses Growl to alert you every time you or any of your contacts emits something into [[Jaiku]]:
The script, which you can grab here, takes advantage of Jaiku’s new RSS feed capabilities. I created it as a sort of poor man’s Twitterific.
Massimo Vignelli explains his 1972 NYC Subway Map, an outtake from the movie Helvetica. In four minutes you can learn almost everything you need to know about design. Almost. Link from Fabrica.
See also Mr. Vignelli’s Map from Design Observer and the map itself. And if you’re passionate about this sort of thing, read Mr. Beck’s Underground Map, which is one of my favourite books.
It hasn’t been the best week for [[Charlottetown]]’s water department. First came the lead problem and now the news that the new sewage plant is giving off a smell that’s covering the neighbourhood. The CBC reports:
The smell is not a total surprise. During the plans for the upgrade, consultants for the city warned that the plant might start giving off a bad smell. The consultants’ concerns were noted, but because of a lack of money nothing was done to stop the problem before it started.
“Okay, so you can get the smelly model for $18.7 million, or you can upgrade to the smell-free model and pay $19.2 million.” The mind boggles.
Days like this it’s possible to get really really sad that spring on [[Prince Edward Island]] is really still 2 or 3 months away. Sigh.
I’ve posted a small selection of photos from our trip to Lisbon. Between the three of us [[Mom]], [[Catherine]] and I took more than 1300 photos; these are just mine, and they’re just the highlights.
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or receive a daily digests of posts by email.