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Earth Hour wrap up

by Ryan Chen-Wing

So we asked Record readers what they did for Earth Hour and got many responses.

Here they are:

What Waterloo Region Record readers did for Earth Hour 31 Mar 2008

Here are some other blog posts about Earth Hour:

• Housing co-op holds candle-lit community walk for Earth Hour 30 Mar 2008 (Here is a link to the video: Earth Hour Community Walk video. Also here is a link to the video on our multimedia page Earth Hour Community Walk video at Therecord.com multimedia)
• Google flicks off for Earth Hour but boosts energy use

Also here is our other coverage of Earth Hour:

• Earth's magic hour 31 Mar 2008 - Glow sticks, noise makers and candles ushered in 60 minutes of darkness in Waterloo Region on Saturday, part of Earth Hour celebrations around the globe.
  
• Lights out 31 Mar 2008 - How did you spend Earth Hour? Here are a few responses from our online poll: (print edition of the list linked above)
• The world fades to black 31 Mar 2008 - From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to the Sears Tower's famous antennas in Chicago and in communities across Canada, floodlit icons of civilization went dark for Earth Hour.
• Vancouver caps off Earth hour 30 Mar 2008 - As some of the last in the world to participate in Earth Hour, Vancouver residents did some stargazing, walked in the slush, gathered at the beach and turned off their lights.
• Harper's lights stayed on during Earth Hour - Thanks to its place of prominence in the capital, 24 Sussex Dr., the Prime Minister's residence, is always easy to spot. As Ottawa went dark last night for Earth Hour, it was even easier.
  
• Laurier students play frisbee and make music in the dark for Earth Hour 30 Mar 2008 - About 200 students who observed Earth Hour near the sports field and parking lot of the Wilfrid Laurier University campus.
  
• Politicians ignore powerful Earth Hour message 'at their peril,' organizers say - Canada's world-leading embrace of Earth Hour should alert the country's politicians to the deep and widespread level of concern people have about global warming, organizers said Sunday.
• Cities worldwide switch off lights to raise awareness of global warming 30 Mar 2008 - From Rome's Colosseum to the Sydney Opera House, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.
  
• Region parties in the dark; power use drops by 3 to 5 30 Mar 2008 - Officials from Waterloo Region¹s three hydro utilities, Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro, Waterloo North Hydro and Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro, said power consumption dropped between three and five per cent over Earth Hour. (It is a later longer version of: Party in the dark and candlelit dinners mark Earth Hour 29 Mar 2008)
• Cities worldwide switch off their lights to mark Earth Hour 29 Mar 2008 - The iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia, went dark Saturday night as Sydney became the world's first major city to turn off its lights for this year's Earth Hour. It's a global campaign to raise awareness about climate change.

Dealing with TV and movie listing buttons

by Ryan Chen-Wing

We took the TV listing and movie listings out of the featured sections buttons two weeks ago. Last week we got complaints and we put them back.

It really is our fault. While that isn't the right place for those buttons and they shouldn't be there in the long run, we have to properly correct the mistake of putting them there in the first place.

Both TV and movie information is something that have ongoing interest and deserve navigation elements. These big 200-pixel wide buttons are for highlighting new, interesting, and current hmm . . . features.

So, we need to work out how we are going to ween users off these buttons. We'll need to encourage them to learn the other ways of finding those listings or to bookmark them.

We can't blame the people who use the buttons, those big buttons are the easiest, most direct way of getting to TV and movie information; we can only blame ourselves for putting them there, in the wrong spot, in the first place.

Housing co-op holds candle-lit community walk for Earth Hour

by Ryan Chen-Wing

For Earth Hour yesterday, I filmed a video at Beaver Creek Housing  Co-op. At the co-op's community centre about 30 people were making beeswax candles before going on a candle-lit community walk around their neighbourhood.

Watch the video: Earth Hour candle walk video 29 Mar 2008

update: Some people have been having trouble viewing the video. Here's a link to the video on the multimedia page Earth Hour walk which uses a different viewer.

Tell us what YOU did for Earth Hour

Update: read the response at What Waterloo Region Record readers did for Earth Hour and
see our other Earth hour coverage at Earth Hour wrap up

By Ryan Chen-Wing

We want to know what you did for Earth Hour. I posted a story to the front page of TheRecord.com to get people to send in their stories and photos.

Let us know what you did for Earth Hour on Saturday night.

E-mail Record web reporter / online editor Ryan Chen-Wing at rchenwing@therecord.com.

Tell us:

• Your full name
• Where you live and your contact information
• What you did at 8 p.m. Saturday night to observe Earth Hour
• Also send in any interesting photos of your Earth hour activities

Submissions may be printed in the newspaper or published on TheRecord.com

Read more about Earth Hour and other environmental initiatives at the special Green Region section of TheRecord.com.

— What did YOU do for Earth Hour? 29 Mar 2008 9:02 p.m.

Also, read an earlier Earth Hour related blog post: Google flicks off for Earth Hour but boosts energy use 29 Mar 2008

Google flicks off for Earth Hour but boosts energy use

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Today is Earth Hour day or is it that in a few hours it will be Earth Hour ... hour.

Google "turned the lights out" today, by which they mean they changed the colour of their website from white to black, but "turning the whites black" doesn't make it sound as relevant to the day, or hour. This will, however, make a big difference in awareness.

The site says:

We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn - Earth Hour.

But don't they know that they are actually increasing energy consumption with this move?

There is a company called Heap Media that, among other things, has a page called Blackle, where it offers a Google search on a black page. They say it is "energy saving search."

Now I don't know whether it is a reliable source, but The Official Google Blog has something to say about the matter of turning one's website black.

We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this.
— Is black the new green? 9 Aug 2007; by Bill Weihl, "Green Energy Czar"

So why didn't Google support Earth hour and do nothing, rather than turning the lights out and boosting energy usage.

Actually I think the awareness is worth it, but the contradiction is funny. Also, Heap is located in Sydney, Australia, which is where Earth Hour started.

Oh yeah, read more about earth hour at TheRecord.com's special section Green Region.

Update

• Cities worldwide switch off their lights to mark Earth Hour

Japan making paper airplane for space shuttle style re-entry

After sending a 2-metre long paper airplane off a mountain Takuo Toda the head of Japan's Paper Aeronautics and Space Administration (actually the Japan Origami Airplane Association) is making a paper space-shuttle.

In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about seven centimetres long and five centimetres wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 230 C in a hypersonic wind tunnel -- conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.

Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.
— Japanese scientists, origami masters to launch paper craft from space 28 Mar 2008

Colin's entertainment blog — Within Earshot

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Colin started his new blog yesterday. It's called Within Earshot.

Greetings all and welcome to Within Earshot, a blog dedicated to the sights and sounds (and, if the technology eventually permits, even smells) of Waterloo Region's entertainment scene.
— Listen Up 26 Mar 2008

Colin is funny, so I want to read more. He even put fine print on his first blog post. I strained to read it at first, but then I just boosted the text size.

Facts and what people say

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Someone pointed out an apparent inconsistency between my video on the Good Friday procession and my story on the same subject.

I interviewed a woman in the procession, Sandra, for the video. She said:

I was up at the church earlier and they're practising. The choir — there's probably about 55 plus — and the violinist. They're doing a wonderful job. It'll be a wonderful service.

In the story I wrote:

She had been at the church earlier and saw the choir and violist practicing.

So she said violinist, but I wrote violist. The person was in fact playing a viola, which is a larger instrument than a violin.

So, while it was true that she said one thing and also true what I reported, it could appear to a viewer and reader as though there is an inconsistency.

I had a similar situation at the Easter egg hunt where the organizer gave an estimate of the number of people they normally expect at the event when I interviewed her on video. I also talked to her near the end of the event and she gave me a different, lower number.

Again it would have seemed like the story was wrong, but I ended up cutting that part of the video interview.

• Interviewing youngsters — Good Friday video 22 Mar 2008
• Good Friday Procession video 21 Mar 2008
• Procession carries cross up hill for Good Friday 21 Mar 2008
• Museum's egg hunt an Easter tradition 24 Mar 2008
• Easter Egg Hunt video 22 Mar 2008
• Children swarm Easter Bunny at Schneider Haus 22 Mar 2008

Business blog begins — Net Gain

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Business reporter Michael Hammond started a business blog today. He and, I understand, other business reporters are going to start "talking business" on the Net Gain blog.

From the first post:

Welcome to the end result of our desire to change. Net Gain is a product of the business section's desire to reach out to our business readers on a new level. In the coming weeks and months, you will notice a number of little tidbits and posts in this blog that will be solely focused on the Waterloo Region's economy.
— The business of change 24 Mar 2008

I'm looking forward to reading the less newspapery and more blog-worthy stories that the business section comes up with in the coming weeks.

Interviewing youngsters — Good Friday video

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Often when you interview children it is a challenge to get them to say more than just a few words. On Friday I covered a Good Friday procession in Cambridge where four United churches take turns as the destination for the cross they carry.

One member of the procession was 11-year-old Ben. Not only did he help carry the cross up to St. John's-on-the-hill, but he had helped carry it down and he also hammered the symbolic nails into it in the church.

When I interviewed him for a video I asked him how carrying the cross was.

"It was hard. . . ." he replied.

I had been expecting this, so instead of trying more questions, I smiled, nodded and widened my eyes, as if expecting more. He thought and elaborated and thought some more and added on to that. It was great.

You can see it in Good Friday Procession video.