Yearly Archives: 2007

Upper Canada Village – Alight at Night

A few nights ago we went to Upper Canada Village near Morrisburg, Ontario for their annual Alight at Night display. Upper Canada Village is a heritage park that is basically a village set in the 1860s. There are many buildings in the village and it’s a great place to visit. In the summer, the village has actors who play out various roles.

In December and early January, the entire village is lit up with LED Christmas lights for the Alight at Night display. I tried taking a few pictures this year but only the following two really turned out. (Hehe, the new camera is fantastic at night shots but I didn’t have a tripod and with a 25lbs squirming toddler strapped to your back, getting a still photo can be tricky.)

Here is a picture of the School House:

The School House at Upper Canada Village

And here is a picture of the Physician’s House:

The Physician's House at Upper Canada Village

After seeing all of those LED Christmas lights, it’s got me thinking that I have a lot of planning to do for next year, and a lot more Noma LED Christmas lights to buy! :)

Merry Christmas!

By Jeff Ivany

Example Noma LED Christmas Lights Outside

By Jeff Ivany

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Last season I took some pictures of my Noma LED Christmas lights outside on my little blue spruce tree. Since I had to go buy three more sets of lights this year, I figured I would take another picture as an example. The main reason is to show the difference in some of the colours of the LED lights:

Multi-colour Noma LED lights outside

The tree is now about 20 feet tall and has 8 sets of 70 lights. That’s 560 LED lights on the tree. If you notice, the green LEDs at the bottom of the tree (the new lights) are much brighter than the ones at the top. In fact, the green LEDs in the old lights are really not visible at all. I happened to notice that the markings on the lights are different so I assume that the Noma LED Christmas lights are manufactured by a different company this year versus last year. This might be the reason or maybe they just decided that the green should be brighter.

Either way, I like the new green as it ads some different colour to the tree. I will have to make sure I mix up the old and new lights a bit more next year though. The orange, red and yellow all blend together so you need to have something different. This is where the blue and green come out more. There are fewer blue and green LEDs on each strand but it would be over powering to have more blue and green lights.

The Canadian DMCA: Proposed Canadian Copyright Law Updates for 2008

By Jeff Ivany

A Little Snow Can Cause A Lot of Damage

By Jeff Ivany

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A little snow can cause a lot of damage if it all collects in one place. For anyone not aware, this part of Ontario got an early taste of winter last week. Even today, 4 days later, there is still a large amount of snow on the ground. I’m not even sure if enough melted today to allow us to see the grass again. After the really late snow we had last year, a whole lot of people got caught off guard with this “early” snow storm. Like most people I know, I didn’t have the winter tires on the car and we had to search for things like boots, gloves, shovels, windshield washer fluid and more.

Unfortunately, it looks like our neighbours also got caught by the early snow:

The neighbours gazebo was crushed by falling snow

Their house has a metal roof much like ours and unfortunately,with the warmer weather today, all of the snow on the roof started to come down. In the process, it looks like it wiped out the gazebo on their deck. Super Crappy!

Now, snow on metal roofing is a rather interesting thing. When it melts enough, the entire sheet of snow will come crashing down. It can sound like a freight train if there is enough snow buildup. I’ve learned to avoid the edges of my house on warm sunny days after we have had a decent snowfall. I got hit once by a smaller load of snow coming off of my roof the first winter we lived here. It didn’t tickle at all.