And, here’s what the cut & paste button looks like:

Interesting Living on the way to Living Green

It was interesting to read a play for a change. I haven’t read any since I was in high school, and that’s been a while. While I really enjoyed the play, I also found the information about Marlowe’s life, (was a spy and playwright, and went to prison – twice I think – all before being killed in a barroom fight at the age of 29. It gets better though, the fight might have actually been an assassination…), to be incredibly interesting as well. Marlowe is the guy who paved the way for Shakespeare, and from reading Faustus he seems to have done a great job of it.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (USA) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

Now that I’ve read a P. D. James book, I can see why my mother enjoys them so much. This one was good! With any luck I’ll run across some more of her books at some point. As a detective novel this would have been a great book to have on a trip, (I sometimes find it tough to read stuff where I actually have to learn while travelling). Also, for those of us who don’t live or spend much time in the UK, it provides an interesting glimpse into the world of an English manor house.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (USA) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

If you’re not aware, Colin and his family tried to live for a year without making any net impact on the earth. This meant eliminating garbage, carbon-producing transportation, eating sustainably, and even, eventually, turning off the heat and power in his apartment, and eliminating toilet paper. He was all over the news for a while, and there was even a Law & Order episode with a character based on his experiment, (you know you’ve made it big when you become a Law & Order episode). In the process he discovered that eliminating most of these things lead to a fuller, happer, and healthier life, but he also discovered the things that actually reduced his quality of life when he gave them up.

One of the things that he discovered, and that I’ve been thinking about a lot, is that we live in a disposable society, and it’s extremely difficult to make no trash. On top of that, a lot, probably most, of the trash that we do make is not stuff that breaks down quickly in a landfill. It’s largely plastic and other chemical-based materials like styrofoam. If I take a quick look around me right now, sitting in my office, I see some Cold-FX pills, (I’m starting to come down with something), in a blister pack, and that blister pack came in a cardboard box. I see a catalog that a company I ordered the parts to repair my external hard drive from mailed to the other day. There are three tubes of lip balm, (I use maybe 1 tube a year so some of these three will just go into the garbage unused). There is a container of dental floss, (plastic, will be thrown out when its empty). There’s a box of kleenex, (recycled, but still, they’re here), and a bunch of bills, note-paper, and so on. Here’s a small tangent: I signed up for electronic billing for my Visa card thinking that they would stop sending me a paper bill, but instead of eliminating the paper bill and reducing my Visa card’s environmental footprint, they now send me both, thereby increasing the my environmental footprint. I think you get the picture. It’s hard to make no trash.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try. What Colin discovered, and I think that the same thing may apply to me, is that by letting go of things that aren’t really needed you discover better things, like reconnecting with your community and your friends. So, we’re going to see if we can reduce our impact, and I’ll even document it, over on Choices that Matter.

During the Beavan family’s no impact year, there was also a documentary made about them. We rented it yesterday, (which reminds me that I have to take it back today), and while it doesn’t go into as much detail as the book does, it does really add another dimension to the no impact story. In the book we see Colin’s wife, Michelle, and how she makes a lot of changes, but we don’t realize how hard they are for her, (I think that Colin must have glossed over how hard it was for her, probably subconsciously). The movie really shows us her struggles at the beginning, and her happiness with the changes once they’ve become habits. Ironically, when we rented the movie yesterday, they couldn’t get the security device out of the case and had to rip the case apart, thereby producing trash.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (US) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

In keeping with the spirit of the book, if you can borrow a copy of No Impact Man, from a friend, library, or wherever, that would be great. If you buy the book, please share it.

Food Matters has a basic message: If we eat less meat and more plants we will live healthier lives and help the planet. We eat way more meat and animal products than we really should, and the production of those products uses a vast amount of our natural resources that could otherwise be used to feed people in hungrier parts of the world or simply not used, reducing our impact on the earth.

Mark takes us through how we, as a North American society, became incredible overeaters and how we’ve been led to believe that we need to eat a lot more than we really do, and he gives us an eye-opeing look at how the food pyramid was built.

Half of the book is recipes, so Food Matters is a short and easy read. In fact, when I was finished reading it, I was surprised that it had ended and left wanting more. Maybe he’ll write a follow-up. I satisfied my hunger for more by reading through all of the recipes in the book.

If you want to lower your environmental impact, loose weight, save money, or do all of the above, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Food Matters and applying its principles to your life.

Note: Most of this entry was written at the end of January, when I finished reading Food Matters. However, I wanted to wait until I had Choices That Matter online before posting.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (USA) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

The statue of Evangeline at Grand Pré

At some point before my 2007 trip to the maritimes, my fiancée Joanie had told me the story of Evangeline and Gabriel, lovers separated on their wedding day, who spend the rest of their lives searching for each other. There is even a song that plays on the radio here in Québec, and has for years, with the story. However, at the time neither of us realized that Evangeline was an Acadian.

So, interested to know who Evangeline was, my sister and I kept our eyes open and I ended up getting a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie for my fiancée as a gift. This is the poem that started the modern fascination with Evangeline, and is largely responsible for our awareness today of what happened on September 5, 1755, when an entire culture was forced from what had become their homeland and scattered around the globe.

Evangeline tells the story of a part of Canadian history that is not well taught in schools, at least not in the west where I grew up. I remember learning about the Acadians, and learning that they were sent away at one point, but I don’t remember it being presented as any type of tragedy, I remember it being taught as something that had to be done, after all, they spoke French, and Canada was British territory. Now, years later, I finally learned that deporting the Acadians was not simply business as usual. In fact, it ranks up there among the worst things done to a group of people in Canada. This past summer Joanie and I went to the maritimes and we had the chance not only to go to Grand Pré and learn more about life as an Acadian and the deportation, but we were lucky enough to be in Caraquet, New Brunswick, (the “Capital of Acadie”), during the Acadian World Congress, so we got to experience modern Acadie, and it’s a culture that we should try to hold on to here in Canada, (and always should have tried to hold on to).

Back to the poem, it’s a long poem, long enough that it’s printed as a book, but it’s not hard to read, (I don’t exactly read poetry all of the time), and I highly recommend it. For Canadians, it is a window into a time and events that form an important part of our history, for Americans it gives you a glimpse of the birth of the Cajun culture, and for all of us it inspires us with a story of faith that most of us rarely even imagine.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (US) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

These links go to the edition that I read, (It has a good introduction). It may be easier to find other editions – just search around a bit.

It’s refreshing to change from the longer books that I’ve been reading to short stories. They’re fun to read and each one doesn’t take too long, especially when they’re as engaging as these ones.

I have another Jeffrey Archer book that I haven’t read, Shall We Tell the President but I’m told that I should read The Prodigal Daughter first, and I don’t have that one, so I am keeping my eye out for a copy.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (US) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

Look how awesome my twitter profile looks all decked out for the Vancouver games:

You can do the same. Here’s a ZIP file containing the PSD Source, and PNGs of both my Twitter background, (with the text), and the blog background, (without the text).

Go nuts, and let me know here or on Twitter about it!

Edit: Here are direct links to the backgrounds with text, and without text.

I haven’t seen the movie, (although I will probably rent it when I can), but had read some reviews that were critical of it because, at least according to the reviews, we’re supposed to feel sorry for Ryan, (the George Clooney character), and he’s a guy that goes around the country firing people, essentially making their jobs miserable. I’m not sure if it’s a difference of interpretation, or if things have been sensationalized for the movie, but in the book he’s the guy that “counsels” employees right after they are fired, mostly to stop them from suing. It’s not much better, I know, but it does seem slightly better. In the book, though, we really get inside Ryan’s head, which can be a confusing place at times, and we see what he really thinks about his job, the people around him, and the world. It’s especially interesting to see how his impressions of people change over the course of the story.

I’m really interested to see if we get the same level of intimate access to Ryan in the movie as we do in the book, and how they made the jump in general. If the movie is half as interesting as the book, it should be an interesting film to see.

Want to read it yourself? Get it from one of these places and I’ll receive a small kickback:

Amazon.com (USA) Amazon.ca (Canada) Amazon.co.uk (UK)

I hadn’t been following the development of HTML5 with more than a passing interest. I figured that when it was ready, then I would start using it. I also understood that there were different parts that may reach completion at different times, and was keeping my eye open for some sort of “completion” signal. 2009′s 24 Ways was that signal for me. There were several articles on using HTML5 features along with their CSS3 counterparts, and enough evidence that browser support is there to start my investigation.

Here’s the deal: Basic HTML5 support is pretty good in webkit-based browsers, alright, (read usable), in Gecko, and kind of lacking in Internet Explorer. However, if you can rely on Javascript being present, (which I can in my project), there’s an HTML5 Shiv Javascript by Remy Sharp that makes it so that you can style HTML5 in Internet Explorer. Add it using a conditional comment and you’re good to go.

So, we have useable cross-browser support, but where do we turn to learn about which tags are in, which are out, the correct doctype and mime-type, and all that? We could read the specification, (and we will have to read a bit, at least), but it would be nice if there was an introduction to HTML5 somewhere. It turns out that Robert Nyman has written an Introduction to HTML5. It’s detailed enough to get you started, but not so detailed that you get lost, (like the spec), and if you’re looking to be convinced of the value of HTML5, check out HTML5: Tool of Satan, or Yule of Santa?, Have a Field Day with HTML5 Forms, and Breaking out the Edges of the Browser from 24 Ways 2009.

Once you dive a little deeper you’ll find that there are elements of HTML5 that you need more in-depth information for, so it’s time to turn to the spec. However, there are 2 groups, (W3C and WHATWG), working on HTML5, and therefore 2 spec documents, (fun!). Fortunately, the two groups have the same editor, so they’re more or less working on the same thing. I find the WHATWG HTML5 document easier to read, but if you prefer the W3C version, go nuts.

Finally, the whole content-type debate that’s been going on for what seems like centuries is still a mess. In HTML5 you’re supposed to include a Document Type Definition and there should be no namespaces on the HTML element if you’re serving as text/html, and you’re supposed to serve in application/xhtml+xml if you want to use namespaces, or force XML validation, or anything like that. The problem is that Internet Explorer really doesn’t like application/xhtml+xml, (it shows the raw XML document), so if you need a namespace for some reason, (for example, you want to use Facebook Connect on the site), you can’t serve valid markup.

So, that’s it. HTML5 has arrived, or at least parts of it. If you can rely on Javascript being present, or rely on IE users not using your web app, you can go ahead and start using it. Here’s a quick recap of the resources:

• Introduction to HTML5 by Robert Nyman
• HTML5 Shiv Script by Remy Sharp
• HTML5 Spec from WHATWG and the W3C
• From 24 Ways 2009:
  • HTML5: Tool of Satan, or Yule of Santa?
  • Have a Field Day with HTML5 Forms
  • Breaking Out the Edges of the Browser, (also by Remy Sharp)