A clean new website

We're more-or-less done updating and fixing up the M.B. Marsh Design website. The big things are done: We're now running on a modern Drupal 7 core, and we're excited about the new, fully responsive, mobile-friendly HTML5 visual theme. (For those who care, it's based on Pixture Reloaded by Jeff Burnz.)

There may be some lingering glitches, and we have a lot of small, gradual changes to roll out in the coming months. Bug reports are welcome (just leave a comment below).

The site's a mess (but not for long)

We're in the process of updating our Web presence here at M.B. Marsh Design.

The upgrades to the Drupal core (v6 -> v7) are more-or-less complete. We are, however, finding all sorts of quirks in the D7 versions of our old D6 themes.

A new, responsive HTML5 theme is on the way. In the meantime, I hope you don't mind the visual oddities of the (temporary) CSS hacks we're using to keep the site looking more-or-less normal for the next few days.

Cheers,

Matt

Staying happy in the hot weather- without air conditioning

It's a hot week here in Ontario, and quite a few folks have instinctively fired up the air conditioners to compensate.

Before you turn on that power-hungry, money-sucking piece of machinery, though, consider trying some cheaper and less energy-intensive ways to keep comfortable around  the house in the hot weather. And, if you do end up needing the AC, don't let it pick your wallet dry.

Who's watching you?

By now, you've probably heard the news that the USA's National Security Administration is, with help from various telecom and Web service companies, spying on just about everyone. It's likely that Canada and many other countries are doing the same.

The mass media coverage of this story has, sadly, been rather short on detail regarding exactly what data these agencies collect and store, how they analyze it, and what they know about you and your friends as a result. This has led to the startling result that roughly half of Americans think that this surveillance, despite being explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, is both legal and OK.

For democracy to work, the voting public needs to know what is going on and why. So, in that spirit, here's a list of articles that are very much worth your while to read, ponder and discuss.

Alphabet soup: Making sense of Ontario's power bureaucracy

Ontario's electricity grid has been in the news again lately. It seems some folks are confused about what, exactly, goes into their power bill and why they are paying 12 cents per kilowatt hour when the "market rate" is supposedly 3 cents.

I can't say I blame them- we have an alphabet soup of agencies in on this, and the electricity "market" is anything but. Let's try to clarify.

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