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Let’s Crowdsource It!

Okay, we need some help from the interwebs.
We need to add dormers to our third floor, and we are investigating two possibilities. The first is a straight dormer, where the walls of the dormer come straight down vertically, and create another “wall” surface.
The second choice is a hip roof, where the wall of the dormer [...]

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Committee of Adjustments FTW!

I just got back from City Hall where we were in the Committee of Adjustments meeting. We were 14th on the list, so I got to hear all about the new critical care wing of St. Mike’s and a new restaurant on Dovercourt.
Our appearance took about two minutes. Thanks to the excellent presentation by Paul [...]

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My Take on 204 Beech, Part 2

The debate around 204 Beech is blowing up.
I have been trying to read all that I can about 204 Beech. That means hitting “refresh” repeatedly on the #204beech Twitter search, reading the Save 204 Beech blog, and getting into the comments at OpenFile.
In my opinion, the best place to read about 204 Beech is OpenFile. [...]

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What is “Reproducibility,” Anyway?

Crossposted from Scimatic
Titus Brown has a very funny spoof about how scientists will probably react to the NSF’s moves towards data management plans. Go read it, I’ll wait. After detailing all manner of horrible data, licensing and source code management techniques, he closes with
Meanwhile we will continue publishing exciting sounding (but irerproducible [sic]) analyses
I’m not [...]

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My Take on 204 Beech (Part 1)

Introduction
I wrote this a few days ago and didn’t publish it, because I wanted to think about it a bit. But now the story has exploded since Councillor Sandra Bussin has gotten involved against the Teehans. More details at the National Post and Open File. I hope to add more later.
Original
I’ve been following with great [...]

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Meeting the Neighbours

Because we are going in front of the Committee of Adjustments, Paul the Architect recommended that we show our preliminary plans to our neighbours so that they won’t be surprised when they get a letter from the city informing them of the hearing about our changes.
So far, it’s been a great opportunity to introduce ourselves [...]

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Called In Front of the Committee!

We’re going to the Committee of Adjustments.
The City has confirmed what Paul our architect suspected. The "pre-application law" review showed that our plan to use our third floor will put our usable floor space of our house above 60% of the area of our lot. Since our neighbourhood is zoned as "R2 Z0.6", we are [...]

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First Sketches!

Last night Cindy and I met with our architecture/design “team” of Paul and Yoko. Paul had sent Yoko and one of his other employees, Mike, to do detailed measurements of the house as it currently sits. From those measurements and the survey, they came up with some suggestions for directions to go with the design, [...]

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Starting Over With The House

We’re finally getting around to renovating our house.
We were extremely lucky to find our house when we did. We had given up on house hunting as we had lost out on three bids on previous houses (one under dubious circumstances). We happened upon this house somewhat by accident, and decided to buy it based on [...]

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Most Fun Day Skiing Evah

Found this photo after my wife was cleaning up the office.

Chris Miller throwing an awesome old-school 80s style daffy at the base of Pakalolo on Blackcomb.
Possibly the best photo I’ve ever taken.