Peter's Useful Crap

One of the additional advantages of having a Skype subscription to call landlines is that you can use that subscription when you are away from your computer and not on Skype at all, from mobile phones and landlines. Called “Skype To Go“, it is a free add-on to an existing Skype subscription and functions just like a calling card.

In short, you call a local number from your home or cell phone, thus incurring normal local charges, if any, to that number. Then you are prompted to dial the number you want to call out, thus incurring normal Skype charges. Depending on your Skype subscription, this might be free. If you register your number, the call is placed immediately; if you are calling from an unrecognized number, you have to enter one of your registered phone numbers and a PIN.

There are many Skype To Go call-in numbers around the world:

You can also register phone numbers or even Skype username contacts, and Skype will map a call-in number to that contact. If you call the call-in number, you will ring the mapped contact:

You can also use Skype To Go if you don’t have an existing Skype subscription — it will enable you to make calls at the normal Skype rates.

If you have food allergies, you quickly realize that alternative food products are much more expensive, let alone harder to find. Here is a listing of some food products for those who are lactose intolerant, allergic to milk, and/or allergic to gluten. This list shows where to find these grocery items in Metro Vancouver and the regular prices at those stores. It is a work in progress. Know of a place to get any of these items cheaper? Let me know!

Last updated September 5, 2015

Amande Cultured Almond Milk Yogurt

170g

This is no longer a product

Silk True Almond Milk

1.89L
http://www.drinksilk.ca/products/original-almond-beverage

3.79 at Superstore
4.95 at Donald’s Market
4.59 at Choices Markets
4.99 at Whole Foods
4.99 at Save-On-Foods

Zen Chocolate Almond pudding

4 x 108g
http://zensoy.com/products/zen-almond-pudding/

5.59 at Choices Markets

Nature’s Path Sunrise Crunchy Maple Cereal

300g box
http://ca-en.naturespath.com/product/sunriser-crunchy-maple

4.99 at Whole Foods
5.29 at London Drugs

Enjoy Life Perky’s Crunchy Flax Cereal

283g box
http://www.enjoylifefoods.com/our_foods/cereals/crunchy_flax.html

3.99 at London Drugs

So Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt

454g container
http://sodeliciousdairyfree.com/products/cultured-coconut-milk

4.79 at Choices Markets
4.99 at Save-On-Foods

Gogo Quinoa Penne

227g box
http://gogoquinoa.com/product/amaranth-penne/

4.69 at Choices Markets

Cascades tissue paper

(not related to food allergies, but listed here while we’re at it…)
2 ply, 130 sheets
http://www.iamcascades.com/catalog-en/facial-tissue

1.49 at Donald’s Market
1.99 at Choices Markets

Today I didn’t have much time for lunch, so I ran to Los Tacos Cafe at Cambie and Hastings Street in Vancouver. They have affordable and tasty tacos, as well as other Mexican food such as tortas and quesadillas.

I can also recommend their colourful drinks, which come in glass bottles. As I was paying for my drink (a refreshing hibiscus tea), the server said: “We like to re-use our bottles, so please try to bring it back when you are done.” So I stopped by on my way home from work to return the drink container. This was a welcome (and admittedly shocking) change from the one-use and recycle or throwaway norm!

Of course, we can’t just wait for the restaurants to implement all of the environmentally responsible initiatives. Patrons can also bring their own re-usable containers

Wind Mobile has the cheapest European roaming plan of any Canadian carrier. You have to activate this plan and it costs $8 per month.

With the plan, you do not get any prepaid minutes, but you get a rate of 20 cents per minute for incoming calls, outgoing calls within Europe, and outgoing calls to Canada. This is compared to the regular rate between $1 and $3.50 per minute, so if you plan on making more than 10 minutes of calls while in Europe, it is worth using.

For texting, the rate is 15 cents per outgoing text instead of 50 cents. For data, this is $1/mb instead of $5/mb.

You can add this plan online to your account, but you have to call Wind customer service to cancel it. You can cancel it at any time, so if could be active for only 1 month if needed.

You keep your Canadian phone number, so if anybody in Europe needs to call you, it is long distance for them (although you can just have them ring a couple of times and then have you call them back).

If you have a SIM card older than June 2012, you have to go to the store to swap it for a new SIM card. Before you do this, make sure you move all of your contacts and other relevant data off your SIM card onto your phone so that you don’t lose them when the SIM is swapped!

One extra note: if you need to make calls to the US while in Europe, the roaming plan does not make such calls any cheaper. The rate is $3.50 per minute, so have them call you, or use a calling card or something like Skype To Go or VoIP if possible!

Screenr is a screencast creation and sharing website that I highly recommend.

At my job as web developer at Mugo Web, we use Screenr to record screencasts and share them. We use it to demo new features on client sites, record “how-to” documentation, and even facilitate communication within the team when team members are not in the same location. When Screenr is suitable for the task, it saves a lot of time versus writing up instructions and taking screenshots, and clients prefer the richer medium of video.

Screenr’s usage is not limited to the work environment; for example, it is also handy for recording instructions to family members on exactly where to click to perform tasks on their computer!

When I was first looking into creating videos of my computer screen, I assumed that you had to split the steps into: installing a program to create the recording (such as Wink or Camtasia, then uploading the video onto a streaming service such as YouTube or Vimeo (or uploading it to your own hosting account and setting up a video player).

Screenr does the recording, uploading, hosting, and streaming via a seamless process. To use Screenr, you only need to be running Java, therefore you don’t have to install a typical desktop program. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Once you’ve launched the recorder from their website, you size the recording frame as desired, hit record, do whatever you need to do (with or without audio), then click “Done”. Then it will automatically encode and upload the video for you. The process is incredibly straightforward (so much so that their “just click record” slogan is very representative), and I have never had to waste any time fiddling with the controls or trying to figuring out why some element isn’t working.

You can then share the video by sending recipient(s) a link.

Screenr has a free account that allows you to record 5-minute videos and have them all publicly available. There are business accounts starting at $19 USD / month that have a 15-minute limit per video and allow you to make videos private, among other features.

Recorded videos on Screenr are quite high quality (check out the public stream for a wide assortment of example videos uploaded in the past few hours) and playable via Flash or HTML5. You can download any of your own videos in mp4 format.

Screenr doesn’t have any fancy features such as video editing, but it does the job that it’s designed to do incredibly well.