jadz

This has been a hot topic of discussion lately, and I’ve heard a lot of people saying “I can’t believe the stupid city planners think this will help”.

I admit that I haven’t though that much about optimizing traffic flows or about getting people to want to take the bus rather than drive their car in, but I do usually give people the benefit of the doubt.

In this case I give the city the benefit of the doubt that they have done the research, and have spent years studying these problems… and that they are doing the best they can. They have those rubber traffic readers out there for a reason…

Chebucto Widening FAQ

I was reading an article on the online edition of the Chronicle Herald.

Google Map of HRM Unsolved Murders

I realize now that I haven’t really posted much about the new House which was purchased earlier this year. The property, located at 5 Lawnwood Ave., which is located in Armdale.

We had made an offer which was not accepted. The seller then made a counter-offer on January 8th 2008 (while I was in England on work) which I did accept and ended up taking possession on January 31st 2008.

It was a learning experience dealing with areas not often ventured in, such as Mortgage Negotiation, Real Estate Lawyers and Surveyors. I was most suprized by the lawyer fee’s which seemed high for standard paper processing without any real risk by the laywer (now that Nova Scotia has implemented Electronic Land Registration) . For a house that has already been registered electronically the Lawyer does the following things (and documents them):

1. Title search – (Electronic? This is done by looking up the property on Nova Scotia’s electronic Land Registry which guarantees the title of the migrated property?)
2. Creation of Certificate of Title
3. Preparation of adjustment costs – (Oil Tank / Taxes)
4. Closing day finance transfers and registration of documents.

Sub-division of House

The House as it was Purchased

Because of my interest in understanding how things work I had decided that a fix-er-uper was the way to go. In a relatively hot real-estate market in Halifax there aren’t that many houses that need work done in the city. When this property came along I was excited. It is close to many things in the city including Chocolate Lake and a city Recreation Centre. It has a lovely large back yard and faces onto a piece of land that the city purchased when they re-routed Herring Cove Rd.

I updated the photos on my last motorcycle trip posting, which can be found here.

The Media Portal project was a startup by developers that saw the limitations of the XBMC. Four years later people are trying to get the XBMC to work with MediaPortal (to watch TV through your xbox etc).

Two threads covering this info have been started here:

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/general-talk-233/xbmc-python-script-36590/index3.html
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/development-91/c-c-interface-tvserver-potential-xbmc-client-25538/

I just installed my XIR in my xbox so I can remotely turn it on and off. I like the thought of the xbox as a client for media portal because of it’s low power consumption, it’s fast boot time and it’s fabulous interface.