TRUSTNO1's Journal

July 11th 2003 - Book Log

I'm thinking of keeping a log of all the books I have read. I guess today's as good a day to start as any. I'm currently reading "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. I'm about half-way through, it's pretty good. I bought it at a second hand store but you can download it from Project Gutenberg. I might write a small review or rating of it once I'm finished.

January 6th 2002 - Text-terminals

I am now using a text-terminal for most of my computing needs. Text terminals are great, but don't take my word for it get yourself one today. (I have two wyse185's and one dec vt330).

Tried to install FreeBSD but the CD died during bootup. Tried to install NetBSD but after installation kept getting "invalid partition" errors. Wanted to try OpenBSD but the iso CD image is copyrighted and must be bought (and can't legally be copied). Wasn't really impressed. I think Debian GNU/Linux is miles ahead now. Previously I had thought that the BSDs were superior but used Debian because it makes no effort to eliminate GPLd software, and will accept any software that is free. While the BSDs are free they encourage non-free spinoffs. I even heard some BSD users raving about Apple's OSX because it was based on BSD. Many BSD users use non-free software and see nothing wrong with it. I don't know maybe BSD is not so bad, but my experience with it was terrible. And I can only speak from experience.

May 1st 2002 - Plans for this Summer

Biking to Mississippi

I have some pretty ambitious plans lined up for this summer. First I am going to bike from Montreal to Mississippi. This will take me about a month, probably June and a few days in July. It's about a 2500 km ride, and figuring 100 km per day that gives 25 days. One day rest per week means an additional 3 to 4 days.

I've been biking from my house in Beaconsfield (in the suburbs) to Downtown Montreal as practice. I haven't measured the exact distance but it should be about 25 to 30 km either way. At a comfortable pace this takes me about an hour and a half either way for a total of 3 hours both ways. This means that if I were to bike 5 hours a day I could manage to cover a distance of 100 km. This is why I feel that one month should be enough to make it to Mississippi.

Veganism

You may or may not know that I'm a Vegan, but I am. I'm not sure how or if this will affect my month long bike trip. I stopped eating animal products in October 2001. I feel fine and have gone from being 84 kg to 68 kg (185 pounds to 150) thus losing 16 kg. My weight loss is not solely due to my veganism, but it has definitely helped.

You may well wonder as to why I would give up meat, eggs and dairy. You may already have some idea, but you're almost certainly wrong. I'm not vegan for health reason, although it's not bad for your health. I'm not vegan because I care about animals, although I don't hate animals. I'm not vegan for religious reasons, although that's fine too. I'm vegan because I find that raising animals for food is incredibly wasteful. It's a tremendous waste of resources. It also wreaks havoc with the environment. It's primary purpose is to make money for those involved in agricultural business. We aren't being fattened for the slaughter but we are being encouraged to eat in a way that profits these big companies.

Of course this doesn't mean that all plant based foods are desirable either. These companies don't care if they're making money off of chips or burgers. This is why I avoid fast food and junk food, whether they are vegan or not.

For example people are told that butter is bad for them, so they switch to plant based oils. However they often don't realize that the origin of the oil has nothing to do with how healthy it is (it's only the fact that most plant based oils are unsaturated, i.e liquid, that makes them healthier). So this is how margarine companies fool people into thinking that their product is healthy. Beware of this sort of thing.

Moving Out

I am also planning on moving out this summer. I'm going to move into a 1.5 apartment (one room/kitchen + a bathroom). This really doesn't bother me as I only need a place to sleep. Depending on how crappy an apartment I can live in, rent will vary between $300 and $450. This may seem very low but as a full time university student it will be difficult for me to work enough to afford even this. I hope to be able to live on $600 a month. I'll have to work about 20 hours a week to make that much. Thankfully I am probably going to be able to do better than minimum wage, which will allow me to work less than 20 hours.

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