Day One

Today is day one of trying to get off the white stuff, again. It was a pretty good day as I completely avoided the sugary gummi treats in the developers' ghetto of which I had more than my fair share last week. There was also a fresh box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts which didn't crack my resolve. My only indulgences were a hot chocolate and a smallish slice of warm chiffon cake, baked by 老婆. I'm not gong from zero to hero here but I'm trying to make a change.

This morning I crushed the scale at a massive 87 kg. I'm aware that's not massive but it's far beyond where I'd like to be and I don't want to hit rock bottom by being wheeled in on an industrial strength dolly and crying to Maury or Tyra Banks. Rock bottom should have been one month ago when I finished last in a cyclocross race; nearly two laps down after six laps despite pushing an average of 93% of my maximum heart rate.

I got through high school at about 73 - 75 kg and maintained that until my metabolism slowed down just a few years ago. I then hovered around 76 kg except for a December 2001 trip on the boat that had no edible food from which I returned at 72 kg. It was Xmas so I was able to get back to 76 kg in a hurry. Except for a couple little dips due to the rigours of travelling in China, I maintained 78 kg from 2004 until Xmas of 2005. 老婆's first Xmas in Canada meant tons of sweets and treats at Mom's and I kicked off 2006 at 81 kg. Another year of falling activity and increased eating helped me top out early in 2007 at nearly 90 kg. A little contest with the co-workers enabled me to drop to 85 kg but the end of the contest has meant the end of any declines in my weight.

I'm feeling healthy as of late, no more back and hip pain which I experienced continuously to some degree for a number of years, but the belly giggling like a bowl full of jelly is not making me jolly. I'm lifting weights more regularly in the past few weeks and I'm hoping to keep that up. I'd decided that Dr. Atkins isn't the quack I thought he was a few years ago because of material I've been receiving from Men's Health and a book review on Quirks and Quarks. For me, carbohydrates mostly meant simple sugars so limiting them isn't a bad plan. Recently, a muffin or cookie too many, even long before bed, would keep me awake with heart burn so I think the messages my body is sending me are finally loud and clear enough. I'm going to cut those carbs and make sure meals have some meat and vegetables. I think I'm also going to try easing up on the rice and pasta.

So, now it's out there. I'm fat and I'm trying to do something about it. How far this goes all depends on how I feel. According to official charts, my ideal weight is supposed to be 70 kg but I don't think I've been there since junior high. I've always carried a little extra muscle in the legs and have been surprisingly heavy for my size. The little red mark on my scale is at 84 kg and it's too surprising that I've been above it for so long. The green mark is at 75 kg. My driver's licence says 73 kg.

If it sounds too good to be true...

The Rick Mercer Report on Tuesday did a story about ZENN cars; made in Canada cars but currently illegal to drive here. ZENN stands for Zero Emission, No Noise. While the cars look great and don't create any pollutants themselves, I hope people realize that something needs to be done upstream to reduce their carbon footprint.

One litre of gasoline yields about 35 MJ of energy and I typically drive my car less than most people so I use around 50 L of fuel per month; that's 1.75 GJ of energy I put into my car. If I owned a ZENN car and used a similar about of energy, at 8¢/kWh that I get with EasyMax, I'd send Enmax an extra $39/month but I wouldn't be giving that money to Husky. Based on energy usage, that's like paying 78¢/L but my EasyMax rate is locked in for the next five years. Of course, I wouldn't drive the ZENN nearly as much as my Jetta because the range is 56 km on a charge and the car tops out at 40 km/h. I can almost ride my bike faster than this car. And at four hours for an 80% charge, the drive to mom's would take 27.5 hours; only 7.5 of that actually driving.

What people need to realize with all these "zero emission" vehicles is that the energy has to come from somewhere. Yes, the ZENN itself produces no emissions but, if I plug my car in in Edmonton, all that energy could come from the Genesee coal-fired power plant. I hope no one tries to tell me that is zero emission. Of course, if Enmax allowed reverse metering, I would install a wind turbine on my home 'cause it's always windy here. I only checked a few sites and my friend who's trying to manufacture and sell wind turbines here hasn't got back to me with his numbers but, if the wind speed averages 20 km/h for the month, I could generate up to 400 kWh (1.44 GJ) of electric power. That's slightly off the 500 kWh (1.8 GJ) my home used last month and also slightly off what a ZENN car would use per month but I don't mind giving Enmax $32 less per month. They'd make it up with their distribution fees, service fees, unfair fees and taxes.

If we're going to make use of electric or hydrogen cars, we need to improve how we generate the power we use in our homes. I'd love the government to anger big business by helping home-owners install their own solar or wind generation systems and allow the consumer to bill the company when an excess of power is generated. As unpopular as it is, nuclear power is also an option but has anyone calculated the planet's uranium reserves? I guess I'd better get back to work on my cold-fusion experiments.

Photographic tips

I've been listening to Chris Marquardt's Tips From the Top Floor on my iPod while I ride the bus to work and there are lots of useful tips and tricks for aspiring photographers like myself. One trick I learned recently and has become my favourite is using the fully manual setting on my camera when shooting in consistent light conditions.

I like trying to use natural light through windows when shooting indoors and it is relatively consist for Julie's entire attention span while she's being my model. Since my ist D L2 tends to underexpose my photographs in indoor, natural light conditions, I like to correct for this so there is less post-processing to do. I can set my shutter speed and aperture and the camera also indicates if it thinks the settings are correct or not. I typically overexpose by one full stop to get results I like.

Another great advantage comes during the post processing. Since conditions do not change, all the photos I take are similarly exposed. Ergo, if I'm still not happy, I can batch correct all my photos quickly. I use iPhoto for most of my general corrections and Elements for anything that needs particular attention. iPhoto allows me to copy and paste edits between photos.

My only word of warning is to watch the ISO on the camera. If I take a few shots to start with, I use the P setting and then switch to fully manual when I see that Julie is in a good mood and going to give me a lot of cute faces. The camera remembers the P settings when I switch to M but the ISO resets itself so my first manual shot is horribly underexposed if I'm not paying attention since the P setting with an automatic ISO will often select an ISO of 1600 in low light. My minimum ISO is 200 so I'm typically three stops underexposed if I don't force the ISO to something higher or adjust my shutter speed or aperture.

I'm currently switching from Picasa to Flickr so you can check out those sites if you want to see more of my photography (read: Julie). If you use a news reader, you're probably better off subscribing to the Flickr feed. And check out the Tips From the Top Floor podcast.

Chinese Philosophy

Despite the West's objections to a law imposed on a society by a basically totalitarian government, I have to say I agree with China's one child policy. Though, I'm also glad my parents-in-law paid the fine when my wife was born as their second child. Before anyone asks me any "what ifs" because my wife is around only because of her parents' disregard for the law, you can ask "what if" about any decision anyone makes in life. I try to just make the best of the current situation. Hmm... What if I hadn't gone into geophysics? We'll never know.

Anyway, awhile ago I was listening to Dr. Bob McDonald on Quirks and Quarks talk to Alan Weisman about his book, "The World Without Us." I haven't read the book yet but I intend to and the idea I present here was presented during the interview so, if I don't have the facts of the book entirely straight, I'll try to straighten them out soon. I also apologize for skipping to the end of the book, but Alan Weisman suggests a worldwide one child policy.

If you consider the rapid and unsustainable growth of the human population, reducing our numbers a bit would make some sense. With 6.6 billion people in the world today and 9.4 billion expected in 2050, I don't see how the Earth can keep up with providing for all the humans. Each new person put on this planet requires a certain amount of resources.

Obviously, we're seeing today that the Earth cannot keep up and the ideas put forth about how to be sustainable/environmental without putting a limit on the number of humans on the planet are just ridiculous. The false environmentalist propaganda I like the most comes from the auto industry. Prices at the pumps were low across North America and then Hurricane Katrina blows through. Fuel prices take a big jump and the next day all the car ads have a new voice-over claiming this vehicle is now fuel efficient. Now everyone thinks hybrid cards or ethanol will save the planet. Take a gander over at Ford.ca at their Escape Hybrid. The regular model will set you back 10.7 L/100 km in the city and 7.7 L/100 km on the highway. The hybrid model uses only 5.7 L/100 km in the city and 6.7 L/100 km on the highway. I believe the reversal of economy is due to the sustained power to propel yourself down the highway is way too much for the electric engine so you're burning fuel the whole time. With a price difference of $7500 and assuming you do a lot of driving while gas still costs you around $1.10/L, you'll pay off the extra cost in a mere 136 000 km of city driving or 682 000 km of pure highway driving.

But I'm not concerned about how people are punished for trying to save the planet; I'm concerned about the pure consumption of humans. If I have two children and buy them each a Ford Escape Hybrid and they each drive 100 km per week in the city, they're using 11.4 L of fuel which is more than if I had only one child and bought her the regular Escape. Of course, it's also $41 000 cheaper to buy just one regular Escape. Someone else can do the math to see if two Toyota Priuses are more economical than one regular Toyota. That's also an argument purely based on fuel. The blog at Quirks and Quarks also pointed out that every car loses rubber from its tires which gets washed into the gutter and into our rivers, drips lubricant and requires its share of steel, aluminium and plasticsl. And don't tell me ethanol is the answer. With more people there are more mouths to feed yet we would rather that more people bought more cars powered by more corn which needs more water to grow. More is not sustainable.

If you want to cut greenhouse gases by 20%, why not let the worldwide population fall from 6.6 billion to 5.28 billion instead of making each person find 20% of their carbon footprint to cut. In fact, you'll have to cut more than 20%. Before the Earth's population has had much of a chance to fall under a one child policy, the population will have hit 7 billion in 2011. Now you have to cut your personal carbon footprint by 25%.

Sometimes an authoritarian figure has to step in and force people to do what's best. It should be obvious that governments and a few CEOs making obscene amounts of money aren't going to curb our consumerism or do anything to jeopardize their ability to make even more money.