2007-09-21

On-line kayaking instruction



I found a good website for paddling instruction. They make extensive use of flash animation to demonstrate the key elements of the basic kayaking strokes, rescues and eskimo rolls. Check it out!

They just made it up

The RCMP have been claiming that software piracy costs Canada $30 Billion annually. That's a very large number!  It turns out that they just fabricated that number. In other words, they lied.   Read the full story.

2007-09-19

New kayak

Last week I picked up a new Delta Kayaks Twelve Ten kayak and immediately took it out in the Columbia River and rolled it. Ernst Schneider was on hand to film my attempts. For good measure I also rolled an Old Town Loon 120 kayak that my brother James and I share; it seems to roll pretty well also! You can see the video on YouTube, or below:



You can read my review of the Twelve Ten on paddling.net.

A few weeks ago, I demoed another kayak, an Impex Mystic, and rolled it as well. You can see that roll on YouTube, or below:

2007-08-13

Not current in current conditions

"Not current in current conditions". This was Haver's assessment of the fundamental reason for the mishap I suffered atop Mt. Swansea during the 31st Annual Lakeside event. And I know he's right.

I made the decision to fly my hang glider during the event because I'm the most current with it. I haven't flown a paraglider in a year. So I got my new (to me) Wills Wings U2 helicoptered up to the summit and then hiked up with my harness. It looked like a bit of a wait to fly since the wind was south, and no other HG pilots had arrived yet. But all the PG pilots were launching off the S slope, and I expressed to Max Fanderl at one point that I wish I'd brought my PG up so I could take a little flight before flying my HG. He immediately offered me the opportunity to fly one of his.

Now, Max's spare PG was the one he recently flew in the Trans-Alps comp, and it was nearly new. It was a DHV 1-2 rated wing, and while it was a medium, Max said he thought it was small for him (good thing since Max weighs quite a bit more than me). He helped me pull it out of the bag and showed me a few details, then he took off on a tandem flight. I got in line to launch.

By the time it got to be my turn, some time had passed, as there were 15 pilots ahead of me. I was nearly the last to launch. After I flubbed a feeble forward-launch attempt, the wind suddenly increased, so a rearward launch was in order. This was the beginning of the chain of events that led to the accident.

The technique I've used for rear-launching my UP Soul (DHV 2 wing from 1997), has been to leave the brakes in their keepers while pulling up the wing. I grab them after I spin around. This isn't felt to be a good style by many pilots, since there's an instant during the launch when I have no brake control and no hands on the risers either (I'm effectively towing the glider by the risers with my harness while running backwards). It's been suggested to me that I learn the crossed-hands technique, or some variant thereof (hands in correct brake loops while launching, so that no switch is required during the spin around). The problem is that I'm not very skilled in this technique... and I hadn't flown in a year.

This is the point where I should have backed off launch and waited for a lull. There was no reason for me to have to fly off, since I had my hang glider there waiting to be used. Instead, I allowed myself to feel pressured to get off launch, since there were a few other pilots waiting to go. Mike Waddington asked if I wanted him to ballast me, but I waved him off. Big mistake.

A couple of people helped lay the wing out in a U-shape, but I could tell that the tips were going to lift more than the root. I pulled the tips forward, and grabbed only the centre A lines, then pulled up. The wing did come up overhead, but I probably hesitated slightly because of my unfamiliarity with the crossed-hands technique. Suddenly I was lifted up and backwards, and panicked. I tried to drop the wing on the ground, but I wasn't quick enough. Part of the problem was that I wasn't directly facing the wing, but rather was facing off to the west, while the wing was pointing SE because the wind was crossing from the L on the S-facing slope (so I'm told by witnesses).

I had been popped up or slid backward 5m, and now the wing was falling over the W-side cliff-edge. I tried to stop my body, but fell over the first edge onto a 45-degree slope. I thought I would be able to stop there, but then the wing pulled me further, and suddenly the scene turned into a nightmare, as I pitched head-first over a 3-5m cliff. I can recall screaming "f%^&*! " at this point while thinking "this is now turning into a serious accident". I honestly believed that I was going to break bones or be killed.

I tumbled down the cliff but stopped on the steep slope below, thanks to the lines getting caught on the rocks (two were broken in the impact). Pain shot through my left leg. I heard yelling and people running. Then suddenly two first-aid attendants were beside me, telling me to sit down, and asking me whether I could feel my extremities. I recall wondering why they'd be asking me that, but I guess it must have been the headfirst fall that lead them to worry about a spinal injury.

When I pulled up my left pant-leg, I saw a nasty gash on my shin bleeding profusely. I was told to apply pressure on it while Mike Waddington pulled the harness off me and took care of the wing. I was able to stand on my left leg without excruciating pain, so I concluded it wasn't broken. I scrambled up the hill to the summit and sat at a picnic table while the attendants cleaned my wound and bandaged it. They offered to call a helicopter to ferry me down to the hospital, but I declined.

With the major wound stabilised, I was able to sit for a minute. Christine Nid's hang glider had been damaged in transport up the mountain, so I volunteered to let her fly mine (I had a vague feeling that I should probably not fly, so this was a way of preventing me from making another bad decision). Then I got a helper stick and limped down the mountain to the parking lot, and a ride in a truck to the beach. From there my wife Leslie drove me to the hospital, and after a short wait, a nice doctor put six stitches in my leg and bandaged me up.

What actually hurt the most was the thigh of my right leg, which suffered extensive abrasions (even though the pant leg was undamaged). But later that night, after the freezing and the ibuprofens and the alcohol wore off, my wound began to really ache. It was probably a good thing that I was already on antibiotics (for a hematoma I suffered in a bike-polo incident two weeks earlier, but that's another story).

Looking back on the incident a couple of days later, it's clear that pilot error was the cause. As the title of this post indicates, my skills were rusty in the launch conditions I faced. The advice I'd give to pilots is: if you ever start to feel pressured on a launch-site, step aside and take a breather. If you think that a brief time-out will cause you to miss out on launchable conditions, then the conditions were probably too marginal to be safe anyway.

Another observation is that launch conditions can quickly change from being within your skill level to beyond your skill level. My previously good ground-handling skills had decayed to where I was not safe in anything other than light forward-launching breezes. I knew that, but I didn't back off when winds picked up beyond that level.

The other lesson is that Mt. Swansea is a very unforgiving launch-site. The summit is flanked on all sides by steep cliffs. The launchable surface is very small. If you're flying a paraglider, you have to have excellent launching skills, because you need to pull up and get off quickly. I am damn lucky I didn't get popped up another metre or two, or I would have come down on the lee-side cliffs, and the consequences could have been much more serious, not to say possibly fatal. If you are launching at an unforgiving site, you need to be more conservative in the conditions you are launching in.

The best part of the day for me was getting back on the horse, so to speak, borrowing Brett Yeates' Sky Atis 2 in the evening for a few minutes of kiting practice at the beach (thanks Brett!)... something I should have been practising a few times before my flight attempt! My launch skills were not up to snuff, as chief landing judge Hans Verstraten (Haver) of the 31st Annual Lakeside Splashdown rightly observed.

There are probably a few other participants in the Splashdown who are equally rusty, and only fly once or twice a year. If you are one of those people, do yourself a favour and learn from my mistake. Get out and practice your launches and landings a few times before the next splashdown.

All in all, I'm just happy that I didn't end up like this poor pilot!

Comments?

2007-08-05

Gold-badge distance flight in a hang glider

Yesterday it all came together. It was my first flight on my new (used) Wills Wing U2, and my first flight of the year in a hang glider, on the first day of the Willi Muller XC Challenge at Mount 7, Golden, BC.

A little background - two weeks earlier, I got knocked off my bike while playing bike polo in Calgary, and hit the ground hard on my left hip. I couldn't get up for several minutes, and the next day I had a huge hematoma on my left side; I haven't been able to sleep on my left side since. After a week I had it drained in a clinic, but the next day it was back. A second draining removed 85cc of fluid, but the following day it was back again, so at the point I realised I might just have to live with it for a while. I already had another polo injury to content with, a tennis elbow that's been dogging me for a couple of months.

The day before the flight, I hung in my narrow Skyline harness to see if my hip could stand the pressure of the waist straps in the harness. It was uncomfortable, but not painful, so I decided I'd try to fly, figuring that if needed I could likely tolerate even moderate pain for the few minutes required to dive down to the LZ and land. As it turned out, it wasn't an issue.

On the flight day, I did the weather forecast for the pilots and noted a moderate 25 km/h NW wind above the peaks - right down the range. Lift was forecast to be strong. On days like this, it often blows out in the afternoon, so my plan was to get off early and hopefully get up and away. I was 2nd or 3rd off after two wind-dummies, at 13:15.

The U2 flew just as I remembered from a demo flight 3 years earlier thanks to Chris Muller. Just one problem... one minute after launch, my vario died! From then on the whole flight was by feel, supported by my Garmin Legend cX vario, which displays a crude average vertical speed. But without audio, I was forced to turn left all the time, which my injured elbow didn't much like.

But the thermals were strong, and by following a few other pilots I was soon over the peak, and then got to cloud around 3000m. I had an easy crossing over Horse Creek and glided to the end of Pagliaro, but found no lift. The wind was obviously strong, since even 300m above the peak I strarted to hit lee-side turbulence as I flew off the end and dove into sink as I headed for the 15km field. Half-way there, I pulled under 3 PG pilots circling over the forested benches, and found something.

For the next while I drifted down the valley and climbed slowly. By good fortune, as I climbed higher, the thermal started to drift toward the range, and by the time I was near peak-top height, it was just a quick dash over to the rocks - where I promptly got thrashed in the turbulence. I bailed for the next peak, where another PG pilot (or maybe one of the same?) was climbing out quickly. Strong, turbulent lift took me to cloud, and from then on I did my best to stay above the peaks, since due to the NW wind, each peak was in the lee of the previous one.

I took my time heading south, working each thermal I came across. Above the peaks, the wind was more westerly, so it was a case of the old "drift behind the peak while climbing, then dash for the front side in sink" scenario. Cloudbase slowly climbed to around 3500m, and once or twice I got to stuff the bar while crossing under some wispies.

At the split in the range near Spillimacheen, the peak in the back had a boomer that took me to cloud, and from there it was an easy cruise to the end of the Brisco range, where I didn't find any lift. Over "TFL Mtn" to the south (so called by Eric Oddy because it has a tree-farm licence on its summit), I got some weak lift and worked it as best I could in order to gain height for the Spur Valley crossing. Above 2800m, the lift suddenly turned on, and indeed my GPS recorded a max lift for the flight of +10 m/s (2000 ft/min) - but also a max sink of 12.5 m/s!

I didn't find the air to be too rough, actually, but one Cdn. team member went and landed because he found the air too rough. And Will Gadd apparently told someone it was the roughest day he'd flown in the Rockies. Another HG pilot hit sink over Mt. 7 and his sink alarm kept going until he crossed the Columbia River while on landing approach to Nicholson. I was well aware it was one of those days where you are doing a delicate dance down the range - one wrong move, and you'll be on the ground - or wishing you were!

My biggest issue, in fact, was not the turbulence but the cold. My hands froze inside their ski gloves and I couldn't feel them for two hours. And my wind-breaker jacket over a T-shirt didn't provide much insulation, so I went hypothermic even though I was wearing a neck tube. It didn't help that I'd just come down with a severe cold. But I was after a 100 km flight, so there was no way I was voluntarily going to land.

After reaching the Edgewater cliffs, I was confident I could reach Invermere. And indeed it was an easy stretch over Mt. Berland and then Redstreak at Radium. Canal Flats looked possible, but the cold was taking its toll. I heard later from a sailplane pilot that it was 0C at cloudbase. Yow! Not what you expect in August. I began to worry that if I continued on, I'd be too cold and too out of it to have a safe landing. So I decided to cut short my flight.

I dove it in from Redstreak to Invermere, making calls on the airport frequency of 123.2 MHz on my aircraft radio to let them know I was coming. I spiralled down beside the Super 8 motel and landed parallel to runway 33 on the east side grass. The one bit of excitement while on final into the strong 25-30 km/h wind was seeing a Piper Pawneed towplane turn base leg and fly toward me. Naturally he turned final and landed behind me on the runway, while I was east of it, and I had smooth air for landing, but for a couple of seconds I was concerned about hitting turbulence off the airplane hangers to the NW and possibly getting turned towards him; the tow pilot Darren later assured me that there was never a conflict.

Total time from launch to landing was 3:05 and my flight distance was 104.8 km, just over the 100 km needed for the FAI Gold Badge in hang gliders, so I was a very happy boy!

Later that night, my cold moved into my chest, and I spent the night hacking, shivering, and sweating. I was too ill to fly for the rest of the week, and indeed lost my voice for several days. I'm fortunate to have seized the one opportunity I had to achieve my goal, and that the conditions favoured me. Another Golden day!

Full flight details are available on paraglidingforum.com.

Here's the flight route as seen on mtbguru.com (you can click and drag the map in order to see the landing spot):

2007-07-30

Logging sailplane flights

I've been doing some sailplane flying out at Invermere, BC lately, and
recording my flights using a variety of tools. Oftentimes there'll be
a Colibri flight recorder in the glider - it's an IGC-certified GPS
and datalogger. But also I often fly with a Garmin Venture cX, which can record flights, and occasionally I've flown with a Wintec WBT-201 Bluetooth GPS/logger.

Here's a trip report of a flight on July 14th, recorded by both the
Wintec and the Garmin. If you want to compare the recording behaviour of the two loggers, download the two .gpx tracks and then open them both in a program like GoogleEarth.

Here's a screenshot of GoogleEarth showing the two tracklogs. I raised
one of them (and coloured it red) in order to separate it slightly so
as to be visible. Note that there is pretty good agreement between the
two tracks except at the end (when the Garmin inexplicably shut off).

2007-07-27

Soaring Forecasts with Dr. Jack

The best source of soaring forecasts in N. America is provided by "Dr. Jack" Glendenning, a sailplane pilot based in California.  The Canadian Rockies Soaring Club in Invermere, BC, has sponsored one of his BLIPSPOT forecasts for that location.

The BLIPSPOT forecasts contain a wealth of information allowing pilots to assess the day's flying conditions much better than is possible using the public forecast or even an aviation forecast like the GFA

Two versions of Dr. Jack's forecasts are available for the Invermere area. One is the text version containing all major parameters on one page.  The other is an index page where you can select, and view, full-colour maps showing the variability of the parameters over a wider range (the whole NW US - SW Canada area).  Further, Dr. Jack provides access to forecasts produced using both RUC and NAM models.

It costs $20/year for full access to Dr. Jack's forecasts. For $50/year, you can sponsor a BLIPSPOT forecast for your location. Well worth it!

Questions?

(submitted by e-mail)

2007-07-24

The connectivity power shift

I read an interesting post on http://slashdot.org about the problem of high prices for internet connectivity in the US.  And I had to laugh, because those rates are very low compared to the rates in Canada.  But then I thought, if US rates are consider too high compared to those in Europe and Japan, what does mean for *our* rates?  They must be unconscionably high (which is just what many people have been arguing).

The Slashdot post I read is here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=254287&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=19965855

2007-07-17

Smoky skies in the Kootenays

Today's sailplane flight was marked by the heavy smoke from nearby forest fires, making visibility poor (less than 10-15 km at times). I had to take a 2000m (7000') tow way into the back range in order to find any lift at all. Only once I had reached the inversion, at just under 3000m, was it possible to release and climb up to cloudbase at 3600m. Later I got as high as 3850m and was able to cross the valley to the edge of the Purcells, but the smoke was thicker there and I got shot down.

Here's my flight track:



There are a few pictures from the day on the same website that's hosting that flight track, mtbguru.com. Click on the little camera icons on the flight track to see the picture that was taken at that location.

The flight is also logged at paraglidingforum.com, and on the OLC.

2007-07-14

Sailplane flight from Invermere to Fairmont & back

Today I had a short flight in a PW-5 sailplane from Invermere to Fairmont and back. I hit heavy sink and turbulence and decided to land. Here's a map of the flight showing the flight track:

2007-07-08

Calgary Stampede 10k

Today was the 43rd running of the Calgary Stampede Marathon - quite a lot of history there. I made a last-minute decision to participate and registered on the last day at the regular price, July 3rd. The next day I agreed to fill in as a volunteer for a friend who had to leave town, so I was now doubly committed to the event.

I awoke at 02:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up early and was down at the grounds at 04:45 to help set up the start gate. Rob Stichbury was already working full speed when I arrived! The streets were empty when I got there, but the first marathoners started arriving a little before 06:00, when a small group of about 25 race-walkers started on the marathon course. By the time the marathon and half-marathon runners started at 07:00, the street outside the Mewata Armory was jammed.

Here's the start of the marathon and half-marathon:



My race started at 07:30, but of course since all the racers were wearing an electronic chip, our time didn't actually start until we crossed the electronic sensor at the start line. This same sensor was later used to help the announcer tell who was arriving at the finish line, and she announced the name of every single runner: quite the nice personalised touch.

Here's the view of the start area just before the 10k race started:



For the first time ever, I ran with a heart monitor, and it was invaluable for helping me to stay very close to, but just under, my anaerobic limit. I was so jazzed at the start of the race that I was surprised to see my HR at 177 soon after the start, and I had to dial back the pace to a more reasonable 155-165 beats/min.

The course was flat and fast, and it ran downwind to the west along the river, on Memorial Drive. The nice thing was that the turnaround was at the 6.5 km mark, so psychologically the 2nd half was shorter than the first. At that point I was on track for a 50-minute 10k race, but as we turned into the wind, I tucked in behind a runner who passed me going just a little faster, and got him to "tow" me all the way up to the 14 St bridge. Running in his wind-shadow certainly allowed me to run faster than I could have run alone, and also having a faster running "partner" forced me to push my envelope a bit. I was surprised to see the finish-line clock telling me I finished in 48:05. Not bad for a 52-year old with a torn knee meniscus who only runs once a week (or less!). I later saw that I finished 8/64 in my age-group, which was also surprising.

After a bike ride home for a pancake breakfast, I returned at noon to watch the final finishers in the marathon (over 6 hours!) and helped to tear down, finishing that work (and the mandatory beers) around 16:30. It was a long day!

Thanks to Blair Shunk for going away this weekend and vacating his volunteer spot, and to Rob Stichbury for putting me to work and allowing me to see the race from the other side.

2007-06-20

That sinking feeling

I was feeling anticipation and excitement when the receptionist called to say that CanadaPost had a package for me.  Sure enough, it was a large envelope from an eBay vendor in California. I'd ordered a new HP hx4700 PDA a couple of weeks earlier, and it had been shipped by US Postal Service.  All I had to do was pay the GST and the item would be mine.  I gave the postal delivery person my credit card for processing, and turned my attention to the package.  Hmm, the end of it was open - I pulled out the box from inside the envelope, and it was... empty.  WTF?



Upon examination of the envelope, I noticed that the form from the Canadian Border Services Agency contained the message "Not opened".  Does that mean that they didn't open the package, so someone must have since then?  Or does that mean "hey, don't blame us for opening the package; it was open already"?  Either way, I have a problem.  I politely declined to receive the empty package from the postal delivery person.  Then I got his name and the name of his supervisor.



I called the supervisor and after some discussion and a call back after they checked procedure, they said that it's up to the sender to file a claim against them. Upon reflection, this means I'm screwed. The vendor already has my money, so why should they care what happened to the goods?  Since they didn't offer or pay for insurance, they have little leverage against the US Postal Service.  Further, they declared the value of the parcel to be $49.99, so that's probably the maximum amount that they could extract from the postal service.



I could pursue some dispute through PayPal on the basis that I did not receive the goods that I paid for. I imagine that the vendor will claim that he delivered into the shipper's hands the exact merchandise that I ordered, and that thus I have no basis on which to say that he didn't honour our transaction.



While thinking through all of this, I experienced the usual range of emotions involving anger, frustration, blame, self-blame, loss and despair. My immediate reaction was to attempt to purchase a replacement unit from another vendor and get it shipped immediately through more secure means.  I wanted to smother all of those bad feelings as quickly as possible.



Then I recalled some of the lessons I learned from reading Pema Chödron's When Things Fall Apart: her advice is, when confronted with great uncertainty, do not attempt to suppress it or eliminate it, but rather lean into it and embrace it.  Nothing in life is certain, anyway, and ultimately we have little control over anything. Events such as this remind us of the essential dissatisfaction with all possessions, and we should seize this chance to reflect on the real nature of existence. Also, we can be as careful as possible, and take every possible precaution, in all our activities (including on-line commerce), and yet still it's possible and even likely that misfortune will enter our lives. Nothing we do can guarantee us protection from pain, loss, injury or death. We'd be better off recognizing that they're a part of life, and we're not exempt from them.



I've now been robbed of around $400, but in the grand scheme of things that's not very much. Maybe this will turn out to have been a cheap price to pay to learn some valuable lessons.  For one, I now know that I should be very careful to insure the Apple MacBook that I'm currently selling on eBay so as to avoid a similar occurrence featuring me as the vendor.



Another lesson is learned from looking back at the reason for the purchase of the PDA in the first place.  I bought the hx4700 because I wanted a PDA with a high-resolution VGA screen in order to run Pocket Strepla,a real-time flight management and mapping program to be used with a GPS in a sailplane.  I already had another similar program, Soaring Pilot, running on a Palm T|X PDA, but it doesn't show nice colour maps, and I had decided I deserved better.  Before purchasing the HP PDA, I did consider simply taking the $400 it would cost and spending it on rental of a better sailplane than the 40-year old Schweizer 1-26 I've been flying.  But the lure of new gadgetry too strong.  I allowed myself to be possessed by a possession, and now I've been dispossed of it.   Now I will get a chance to experience the pain and suffering that attachment to material objects brings us.



In addition, nothing I do can change what has happened: I paid out $400, and now have nothing. I can accept that, and move on, or spend weeks or months acrimoniously fighting for compensation and redress and likely still have nothing at the end of that time.



And a further lesson is from the shipment itself.  A week before purchasing the PDA, I had purchased a Bluetooth keyboard for my Palm T|X (it will also work with the HP hx4700).  When I paid for it on PayPal, I had a sudden bad feeling when I noticed that the vendor's Paypal username was nothing like his email account name, which in turn gave me cause for alarm because it was with a free email service (hotmail, if I recall) which makes it difficult or impossible to identify the real person behind the account.  Add to that his terse and unhelpful response when I enquired after a week as to the whereabouts of my merchandise: "should be there any day".   A repeat inquiry after two weeks didn't elicit any reply whatsoever. I had a strong suspicion I had been scammed. In contrast, the vendor of the PDA provided several emails to me on the status of the transportation of my package, and provided a link to on-line tracking of my purchase.  I had a good feeling about the shipment of the PDA, and a bad feeling about the shipment of the keyboard. And the final outcome wasn't at all what I expected. The keyboard showed up yesterday, and the PDA has been stolen from me.  I made judgements about two shippers, and I was wrong.  What other judgements in my life will turn out to have been wrong?



Again, Pema Chödron teaches us to suspend judgements, or fears, when uncertainty arises, and instead allow us to be open to the unfolding experience. Rather than worrying that our package won't arrive, and spending days or weeks trapped in misery, we can and should adopt a playful, enquiring perspective, and say "I wonder if my package will arrive or not? Let's find out." 



We don't know how things will turn out.  Apparently the Arabs have a saying that the man who foretells the future is a liar, even if he is right.  And then there's the Buddhist story of the farmer whose horse breaks a leg. When his neighbours offer their condolences for his bad luck, he replies that he doesn't know if it was bad luck; he'll have to wait and see.



This, then, will be my guidance in this situation.  I don't know yet whether this was an unfortunate event, or perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me.  I'll have to wait and see!


2007-06-19

Canada's outrageous wireless data prices

Prices for wireless data (the charge for using your phone to browse the internet or download data from your office or home computer) in Canada are higher than most third-world countries. Check the graph in this article:

And if you can handle a little obscenity from angry cellular users, read this article on Digg.com

If you used your cellular phone to transfer 500 MB of data in a month (that's about TWO graphics-rich web pages per day), your charge in the US would be between $60 and $70.  In Canada, it would be $1600 with Rogers or Fido !!!!

Don't waste your money buying one of those new data-capable smartphones if you live in Canada.  Instead, buy a wireless LAN card for your laptop and look for free WiFi locations in your city. Or even sign up with Fatport at rates as low as $35/month or $70 for 3 months, at fatport.com  

Another provider is Boingo, at boingo.com  They charge $22 per month, or $8 per day, for unlimited usage at any of their hotspots. Those prices are for laptop access. If you have a cellphone or PDA, you get charged only $8/month!

Telus has hotspots available at $40 for one month or $25/month for a national unlimited subscription.

Here is a list of locations offering free WiFi across Canada: wififreespot.com

Here's a list of 1801 free and commercial WiFi locations across Canada: jiwire.com

And here's a different list: www.wi-fihotspotlist.com

2007-06-18

Test post from Blackberry

Virgin Mobile charges less than the other Canadian cellular companies
but their rates are still high... They're only wildly usurious instead
of outrageously usurious. Still, "moblogging" is supposedly all the
rage, so, as long as I can use the "unlimited" data plan on my
company-supplied Blackberry at no extra cost to them or me, why not
get in on the fun?

Now, if only this thing had a camera in it....

--
Stewart Midwinter
stewart@midwinter.ca
stewart.midwinter@gmail.com
Skype, GoogleTalk, iChatAV, MSN, Yahoo: midtoad
AIM:midtoad1