The Seneca Robotics Club won the Instrumentation Society of America (ISA) Robotics Challenge. Seneca’s team of Eric Chan, William Kam, Michael Guerguis, Mark Lam, Ian Fuhringer, Conghua Tan, Bhavinkumar Patel and Henry Le defeated George Brown to win the competition.
Watch this Blackjack Dealing Robot. So cool!
I take the TTC almost every day and spend a substantial amount of time on it so you would think I should know a fair amount about it, but surprise….I don’t. I have used the TTC website more than a few times and wondered why it is so poorly organized and can’t provide commuters with instructions for getting from point A to point B. Apparently, they realize that this is necessary and are working on the system but it won’t be ready until next year. Too long. Do it now!
There is an unofficial site created by some volunteers that does just that with mixed results. If you are looking for the best method to get to your destination, check out myttc and enter your start and end address and click on Plan it. It gave me the correct buses, but it didn’t give me the closest bus stops to my start and end points. It seems to not recognize that there are closer bus stops than ones at major intersections, but a little walking is good for everyone. Nice job! I think the TTC should give these fellows free metropasses for the year 
A couple of months ago I bought a new Sony Ericsson Z750a cellphone. About a month after that I received a text message from Fido that they would give me 3 months of free video on demand and free radio on demand. Sounds very cool so I try it on my phone but the message on my cellphone says it does not support this feature. I reply to the text message that I cannot use the system, even though realize that they will never get back to me with this communication system. So a few days later I call up their customer service and ask them if they can help sort up the problem. The customer support person was not aware of the promotional offer and claims that Fido is giving me free video messaging for three months. I let it go at that.
Weeks later I get a phone call from Fido saying how happy they are to have me as a customer and if I have any questions or concerns. Of course I have questions!!! I decide to limit it to two questions so as to not scare the guy off.
First question I ask I thought would be easy: How do I stop the screen saver from coming on every 5 seconds? It is difficult to read the news when the screen goes dark to save energy. My workaround is to push the down button every 5 seconds but I’m sure their must be a setting on the phone to set an acceptable timeout period. Unfortunately, his answer was that I would need to go to the Fido retailer. Not a good answer from Mr. Fido Rep. “Hello, from which company are you calling?” I want to shout.
But I’m so mild mannered that I smoothly move on to the next question…. the one we all want to know the answer to…How do I access the Video on Demand that they have so thoughtfully provided me unlimited access to in order to get me hooked. The guy had to go talk to the tech support for this and he would come back and ask me if I could continue to hold. I patiently waited. After waiting 50 wasted minutes on the phone (in total) I was informed that my cellphone does not support this feature! Nobody can explain to me why the phone is advertised as having this feature and it has the navigation buttons for this feature. But somehow this feature is not supported on my fabulous 3G phone.
I don’t get it.
Maybe wasting gas and time going round and round searching for a parking spot will be a thing of the past when Smart Parking gives drivers a heads up on free parking spots. Or at least that is the hope of the city of San Francisco when it converts 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces into “smart” spots. These special parking spots are being fitted with sensors that will allow drivers to find available spaces over a city-wide wi-fi network. The network will show available spots on drivers’ cell phones and on dynamic street sign displays. I am a bit worried about this “smart” plan. First of all, drivers shouldn’t be talking on cellphone, let alone looking at them when driving. I see lots of accident potential here. Secondly, when there is a high demand for parking spaces there’ll be many cars rushing to the one free spot, increasing the road rage potential because these drivers are expecting a free spot because their cellphone told them there was a free spot. Compare that to the current system where there are several cars scattered around the parking lot, hoping to find a free spot.
I think a “smart car” of the future is one that can be folded up and stored in my purse.
I have had my new cell phone for a month now and I still think it is such a fabulous gadget. I had two hours to kill before the July 4th dinner celebrations last night so I sat down in a cafe over looking Yonge St., which looks totally different than the Younge Street in Halifax, and caught up on the news on my cell phone. I was planning to go to the Fringe Festival on Saturday and couldn’t stop thinking about buying the tickets. You know how sometimes something you need to do just sticks in you head until you get it done? I realized I could look up the telephone number with my phone and just call them. I love the way you can just select a number from the search engine - there is no need to type in the numbers. So I called and bought my tickets. Once that was done, the thought was no longer nagging me and I could just concentrate on my book. Then, as I was deep into the book, my phone beeps. I think it is a text message but when I looked it was a reminder of my dinner date. How cool is that!
If you are foodie you might be wondering what I had for dinner. I had Alize’s Summerlicious menu — $25 for dinner:
Chilled carrot and Honey Bisque topped with mint sour cream
Alize Ravioli Famosi filled with spinach, ricotta, mascarpone in a tarragon rose sauce
Apple crumble cake
I should have taken photos to remember it by. It was very good.
Well it has been a lively and entertaining week. On Saturday I went to see Sex in the City with a group of friends. We dressed up in dresses and heels in honour of the occasion. The movie was fun - if you like the series, you’ll enjoy the movie. It is not a great movie but still enjoyable. I find certain things implausible…I just don’t buy into the idea that the four characters are such close friends that speak to each other daily and drop everything to run to their buddies when one sheds a tear. Their personalities just don’t fit into the mould that is scripted for them by the writers. There is much that doesn’t jive with me - I can detect some BS in the story. I wanted Mr. Big to just blow away. But then Carrie would never be happy since she absolutely needs a man with a big wallet to support her clothes and shoe habit. I can’t believe she kept that ballerina outfit. Yuck!
And nobody in my group had cosmopolitans that night.
On Sunday I went to see Kismet at the Fairview Library. I really enjoyed it. It was a light bit of fluff with funny characters and good singing. Here is a tune from the musical (from the movie version). I think Milene will enjoy this.
On Monday I went to see the doctor about my toe. I broke my toe six months ago and I continue to have problems with it. I don’t think my family doctor knows too much about the matter but at least she referred me to a sports medicine clinic for diagnosis and treatment. I wonder if there was something else that could have been done to speed the healing process. The toe aches a bit in my normal daily life and can hurt a bit much if I exercise by doing aerobics or yoga, or if I wear high heels.
On Wednesday I used the spa services at my work place to get a manicure and pedicure. The students in the Esthetician Program work at the spa to practice the skills they have learned in the classroom. They are considered knowledgeable of giving manicures and pedicures after they complete the first semester of the program. I found out that the program is more intensive than I assumed — the students need to know a lot about anatomy and memorize the muscle names. I don’t normally go to the spa but I thought it would be good to support the students at the college and get my feet ready for wearing sandals. I picked a great nail polish colour — it goes very well with my shoes!
On Thursday, after talking about it for about a year, I finally bought a new cell phone. My old cell phone didn’t have text messaging, camera, browser, etc. It was just a basic eight year old cell phone. I learned how to use most of its features pretty quickly and updated my Facebook status on my bus ride home. I used the + sign to mark spaces in my message because I didn’t know how to insert a space, but I figured it out before I got home. I also browsed the internet, read the news, and sent a picture message. I changed the ringtone to Diana Krall’s Peel Me a Grape song. It costs $3 to download a ringtone but I just played the song on my computer and recorded it on the phone. I’m not sure why people download ringtones.
Stay tuned for updates on Wonderful Town and making corn husk dolls 
I came across a cute story about Scrabulous and how its role in romance:
A Scrabulous fan, who played the game a lot with his girlfriend, requested the application maker’s assistance with a marriage proposal. The prospective groom requested that they secretly create a fixed session for him and his sweetheart. In the session, he was given letters that would allow him to spell the words “Will”, “You”, “Marry”, “Me” and “Jane.” Jane was given the letters to spell the words “Yes” and “No”. Thankfully, she used “Yes.”
I think their wedding cake will have to be a giant cake covered with a Scrabble board icing and tiles place on top, spelling their vows.
I think Scrabble can be the whole theme for the wedding. That would be cool.
I hear a lot of people commenting that cell phones don’t last very long…. after only a year or two something breaks and they need to get a new one. This type of a conversation is quite commonly heard in passing on the TTC. My cell phone is around eight years old and continues to work. The reception is not that great, but that may be due to a missing antenna and also the battery life is very poor on the old clunker so I have been considering getting a new phone. The trouble is that I’m not sure what features I want. A camera is a nice feature and they all seem to come with that. Music is nice but I have an iPod. I think a calendar application that syncs with Google calendar would be a helpful feature…but when I asked my friend about which phones have that feature he said the iPhone. The iPhone is very expensive (around $800) and not available in Canada yet. Is the calendar feature worth that much to me? Not at all. My dollar store calendar is cheaper and easier to use and probably the best match for my needs. When I receive an Evite there is a button that allows the invitation details to be imported into Outlook (and only Outlook). Other invitations I receive allow the event to be saved to other applications. At this point calendaring does not seem to be cross compatible so you end up having to write things in manually anyways.
The other features of the iPhone are certainly very enticing. Playing video is great…since I don’t seem to have much time to watch television I could possibly watch shows and movies when I’m on the go. But if I consider the price of it and consider the fact that I’m quite happy just reading books or listening to music and podcasts on my iPod, I realize that it may not just be worth it for me. There is also talk that you may need to sign up with a plan with the iPhone….not a cool incentive for someone like me who uses a $10 pay and talk plan.
I could continue to use my old cell phone and save a lot of money.
There are so many variables …. I’m still thinking?
A news program I watched the other day mentioned that there is a Bank of Canada site available for the general public to determine if they have any forgotten bank accounts with money in them in Canada. I checked to see if I had forgotten some dough somewhere but did not find any on this site — though I’m sure to find some in my pant pockets if I were to go through my closet thoroughly. You may want to investigate if you have some money in a bank somewhere. If you don’t have any, check if your friends or family do so that they can afford to treat you out to dinner…or at least buy you a side order of bread;-) (see previous post for reference to bread). Here’s the site:
http://ucbswww.bank-banque-canada.ca/scripts/search_english.cfm
If find that you don’t have any lost funds, you can find a bank or ATM close to you using this reference page:
http://canadaonline.about.com/od/atms/ATMs_and_Bank_Machines_in_Canada.htm
After much talking and thinking about it I finally bought a new computer yesterday. I placed the order by telephone and they said it should be delivered to me within the week. I’m so looking forward to it!!! I got a 22 inch monitor and with my existing 17 inch monitor I should have a decent amount of screen real estate — that is something that is very important to me but that is beside the point of this post. My main message is that I just hope that it actually gets delivered to me: after I placed my order by phone the sales clerk sent my a list of specifications that I requested. It was all correct but they recorded the wrong postal code for my address. I emailed right back (< 2 minutes) but I got an out of the office until Saturday reply. I called the company but they said to call the next day when the office is open -- even though they advertise that they are open 24/7! So I called the next day and they said they can't change the info in the system. The information is like a contract and that can't be changed. Holy Santa Cleopatra!!! They said that I will need to watch the delivery status online and when the status changes to shipping I need to contact them at that point because all they can do is change the sticker on the package, they can't change my address in the system. Isn't that ridiculous! It should not be too difficult to change a customer's address and it is a very important function for a business to do so because it is their business to serve customers and to ensure that the customer gets the merchandise. This company should take a good look at its business practice and make some changes right away.
Looking forward to my new computer!
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