The results of the last elections here in Quebec, late on Monday Oct 5th, has got my spouse and I thinking about moving out of the province again. We are fed up with Quebec’s language laws and even though, for the most part, I speak fluent French and I write it decently enough, and the same goes for my spouse, but we just don’t like the fact that it’s being shoved down our throats. The party that won the election, The “Parti Quebecois”, has at its very core of their platform, the separation of the province of Quebec from the rest of Canada. I for one am completely against this, I am a proud Canadian and Quebec is better off staying in, and being part of Canada, period! I love Montreal, where we live, in fact I’ve lived most of my life in this city except for four years where I lived in the Toronto area. My spouse, who was my fiancee at the time moved down to the greater Toronto area in 1998 and we tied the knot in Mississauga in March of 2000. We both missed Montreal very much and about a year later we decided we’d try to go back to Montreal. Lucky for us both are jobs were flexible enough to allow for this. I must admit that even back then, 25 years ago now, I wasn’t really excited about going back to Montreal, I had started making a life in Ontario and had started coming to grips that I would make my life elsewhere. You see, I had moved to the Greater Toronto Area, specifically, a little sleepy town of Burlington, nestled between Oakville and Hamilton a year or so before my ,then fiancee, had joined me, so I kind of got used to living away from Montreal. Now as we are both looking down the tunnel to retirement we’re both wondering if we should move to a smaller, more rural town for peace and quiet. For many years it’s been in the back of our minds but with the PQ winning the election and talks of a separation referendum looming again, we are seriously starting to think about moving.
In part 2 I’ll look at the cost comparison between Ontario and Quebec, and the feasibility of moving.
Author: slandi
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Moving to Ontario – Part 1, The Trigger
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Wait…where did Summer go?
Holy smokes, Oct 8th already, what happened to August, wait…what happened to June?! Wow, I can’t believe how fast the Summer came and went, I had so many plans, so many projects, things I wanted to do, things I wanted to see, and now we are in the colourful foliage of yet another Autumn, which mind you, is my favourite time of year, and then another long Montreal Winter.
I’m not complaining really, as it has been a productive Summer, I finally got to work on regrading the Eastern side of our land next to the house and raise it so that it formed a proper swale between our house and the neighbors which will hopefully mitigate the water flow coming from the back yard, which was turning and dumping straight into our garage drain and into our sump pit in the basement, and threatening to flood said basement as it has done on several occasions. The last time this happened was the last straw and I told my spouse, enough of this, I’m going to regrade the land and see if I can cut the water drainage by at least 50%. I’m happy to report that after all the work of building a small retaining wall and back-filling it with dirt to create a positive gradient away from the garage and the drain, the water drainage I believe has been mitigate by more than probably 75%-90%, so I’m ecstatic.
With this almost finished now, I only have a few paver stones to finish installing and levelling, I’ll be able to bring my project indoors where I have the basement walls to finish covering and some time during the Winter I’m going to start replacing the kitchen floor and the countertop.What else is on the horizon? Well, I’m currently working on launching or perhaps re-launching my slandi.net page, which used to be my main domain and is still the domain for my email. Several years ago I came up with a neat acronym for that domain, Stefano’s Laboratory of Analog and Digital Inspirations, it fit the letters perfectly and also one of the ideas of what I wanted to do with my website/blog long-term, use it to share some of my passions, be it electronics, computers, photography and music. I say both analog and digital, not only because it happens to line up with the letters in my domain/name but it also encompasses my dual-love of what is digital and also what is purely analog, be it technology from simple tools to art forms such as painting, sculpture or woodwork. In fact, I used to love to carve wood but haven’t done so in many many years, so it may be something to re-discover in the years to come. As for the Analog side of things, I’m thinking of getting back into simple discrete electronics and have started re-reading some old electronic books that I got from Radio Shack more than 45 years ago now.
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Blog Facelift
I’m sitting here in my office/studio/workshop/sanctuary, yeah this little room of mine, this little corner of the world serves many purposes, but the most important it is my safe place. I suppose I feel the same way about my little blog site, oh sure I don’t come and visit very often and when I do I usually have to clean off the dust and perk things up. Such was the case earlier today when I opened my site as I wanted to check on something and realized how pitiful the last theme was that I had chosen. So I took things in hand and decided to try and find the cleanest, fastest and best looking theme I could and settled on this one, it’s called Twenty Twenty-five and is one of the default themes that comes with Workpress. I’ve finally found a nice clean theme, easy to read and navigate. In fact, for years I’ve been trying to find a way for my readers, oh all 2 of them I think, to easily navigate my site. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is create a navigation menu to bring my reader to a page containing all of my blog posts for a certain category. Some time back in 2025 I found out that the block “Latest News” can be customized to show only posts from certain categories, bingo! It works perfect and has finally allowed me to shape my blog the way I’ve always envisioned it. Now, to update this blog more often, hmm… I wonder if there is a theme for THAT!
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#audiomo2026 Day 9 – The 24 hours of Artemis III? Wait…what?
My interests are varied and today I figured I’d talk about two of them.
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#audiomo2026 Day 8 – The Future of cars and will I be driving in 2036?
This is a rather lengthy one in which I ponder the future of the automotive industry and how it will affect me personally.
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#audiomo2026 Day 7 – Binaural project
Getting back into social audio for #audiomo has got me thinking of an old project I had on the back-burner, time to fire up the soldering iron and get crackin’.
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#audiomo2026 Day 6 – Will he actually do it?
I was hoping tonight to sit at my DAW and do… well… “somethin’ ” what will that be? Beats me! Stay tuned… uhm… or not, only time will tell.
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#audiomo2026 Day 5 – slandi gets spaced out
The mosquitoes were trying to get into this audiomo as well. I had to convert the stereo track into mono as there were artifacts in the recording, which I realized later on may have been due to having the phantom power enabled on my recorder.
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#audiomo2026 Day 4 – Biking to work
Those astute of you will have definitely noticed the lack of Day 3, which in my case was a particularly important date and I talk about it in this audio, enjoy.
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#audiomo2026 Day 2 – Driver Frustration Gadget
In this instalment of audiomo2026 I delve into driving frustrations and a possible secret weapon.
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#audiomo2026 June 1 Angine de Poitrine
Welcome to my first entry for #audiomo2026, the month-long audio recording challenge. I took on quite a difficult subject for my first audiomo, hope you enjoy it.
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Blogging cliff #274
I know, a rather strange, cryptic title, but it really is how I feel about my blog these days, it has simply done its best Lemur imitation and jumped off the proverbial cliff, probably some 274 times by now. So where do I begin, or continue, as the case may be?
Well, I still have the Toyota Yaris, it’s proven itself reliable, gets me to work in relative comfort but it yawn worthy, as I knew it would be but it’s not without it’s faults. It has a terrible exhaust leak, giving it, what might sound like an anemic growl, but worst than that, the leak is causing the Oxygen sensors ahead of and behind the catalytic converter to do their best politicians and lie to the ECU (Electronic Control Unit) into thinking there is much more Oxygen than is actually coming through the combustion chambers and so the car is running rather rich and kind of stumbles its way to work, like some kind of four-wheeled drunk sailor. In any case, I went under the car several months ago in an attempt to replace the leaking exhaust gasket, something the ECHOs and Yaris’ are known for, however, in my haste I ended up ordering the wrong part and so the gasket fit too loose and is not making the right contact with the flange against which it is supposed to rest. I’ve ordered the correct gasket and hopefully this coming Saturday I’ll put the car up on ramps, climb back underneath and attempt exhaust repair No. 2
I recently ordered to Meshtastic devices from Aliexpress, so what the heck is that?! Well, in a nutshell, it’s basically a tiny radio that connects through a network of other tiny radios and also one to send text messages wirelessly without the need for cell towers or big corporations, think of it as a federated, crowdsourced messaging system. The small device, in my case, a Heltec Version 4 connects to my phone through bluetooth and a special App. I set it up, but unfortunately, the rather small antenna, if I can even call it that, that came with the device is puny and might be fine if you’re in a densely populated area with lots of other Mesh devices. These radios operate on the 900Mhz range, so just shy of the microwave range and require, what is called Line-of-sight communications. Therefore any buildings, mountains, altitude changes, or even the curvature of the earth, take that flat earthers, will prevent the radios from reaching each other. However, because of the store and forward nature of these radios, as long as you can connect to one node, as they are called in the mesh world, then you can through a number of hops, another mesh terminology, send a message to someone many kilometers or tens of kilometers away. So far, I was able to load the software onto my device, connect to it through the App on my phone and the device has picked up all sorts of nodes on the network but I have yet been able to send out a message successfully or have it acknowledged. I blame this on the fact that almost all of the nodes around me are too far away from me to reach with my diminutive antenna, and no that’s not a euphemism! I’ve ordered better antennas from Aliexpress, which hopefully will arrive in a week or so and will continue testing. I bought two of these units, with one going to a friend but he is still in the midst of getting his going. We are 5Km from each other as the crow flies BUT the terrain between us rises some 20m above sea level and we are both around the same altitude, so our connect prospects, at least directly are slim. As I was typing this I noticed another node appear in our neighbourhood, so perhaps through a series of hops we might be able to connect. I’m still very new at this and very much a neophyte, but I’m having lots of fun.
If you’re still with me this far, thank you. I don’t have any illusions that my blog is even read, perhaps by only one person (Hi S!) but I kind of promised myself that I would ‘try’ to get back into regular blogging about my life, the happenings in and around my hobbies and interests, and generally share a little about myself to the world. Thanks for reading.
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Fiat gone, but not forgotten, new ride, laptop woes
As the snow flies this Saturday afternoon and I prepare to go out with my spouse to run some errands, I sit here quietly in my office contemplating a warm cup of coffee and looking at wires and harness connectors strewn all over my desk. The wires are for a new car radio that my spouse bought me for Christmas for my new ride, a 2012 Toyota Yaris I picked up about two weeks ago (lower left)
As you may recall from my previous post, my beloved little Fiat 500 (above right) had a problem with a drive shaft that turned into an almost two week ordeal trying to find a replacement part. Since I needed a car to get to work, time was of the essence and in the end I had to get rid of a whole car because I couldn’t find a part in time. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I ended up finding a good deal on a gently used Toyota Yaris four door Sedan. It’s certainly not sexy or cute like the little Fiat was, doesn’t turn heads or make children smile, but it will be dependable transportation, hey it’s a Toyota! I’ve had many Toyota Echos grace my driveway over the years, so I know these cars very well. As you can see above, the little Fiat, which I had named Kira, ended up on a flat bed truck as I gave her to a charity who will fix her eventually and auction her off to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the Montreal SPCA to help little kitties and doggies. Good luck little Kira, hopefully you’ll go on to some great adventures.
As for the little laptop I ordered, a Lenovo X270, it was never shipped and fearing a scam, I opened a dispute with Paypal to get a refund, that is still pending as of this writing. I think I’ll just stick to my old laptop for now and use the money perhaps for a trailer hitch on the aforementioned Yaris, more news on that later.
What’s next, financial recuperation for one, buying another car was never in the cards. I also have to seriously start looking for Christmas gifts for the gang. Like last year I’ll probably do the donations on behalf of everyone along with a fun little joke gift or stocking-stuffer. I’m hoping once things settle in the new year I can get back to some other projects, ideas and past-times that I’ve been meaning to get reacquainted with.
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November and coming projects
I’ve been neglecting my blog since the end of October and the end of the music challenge that is #Octaver25. So what’s next? I’m really not sure, this month has seen a rash of technological woes. My little beloved Fiat 500 had one of its CV Joints, those are the articulated joints at the end of the drive shafts that go from the transmission to the wheels. As of this writing I’m working on changing the driveshaft and have it on order from a retailer here in Ontario, Canada. It should arrive in the next few days and hopefully I can get her back on the road.
My little Lenovo X-240 laptop also gave up the ghost this past Sunday, simply stopped working. I thought perhaps it was the screen and when I looked up the price of a replacement, it just wasn’t worth it, as for $100 I could buy a whole used laptop X-270 that was much newer and faster, so I ordered it and should get it some time early next week. I was hoping to use that laptop and go say to a cafe to write or even sit at a park bench, enjoy the scenery and write. I’ve been meaning to get back into my writing, exactly what remains to be seen, or is that scene?
A made a few posts on Instagram about a small cartoon I sketched for my daughter years ago about the ongoing adventures of Captain Email, a humouristic cartoon about Captain Email, who basically looks like an “@” sign with arms and legs, and of course the obligatory superhero cape. The few posts were well received and so I’ll repost them here and then in the Winter I will endeavour to put pen to paper, or rather stylus to graphics tablet and create another adventure of Captain Email, stay tuned.
For now, I’ll just work on a few other projects and will update the blog when the temptation strikes me.UPDATE: Obviously, I haven’t done much on the Captain e-mail cartoon since last year, and my blog has suffered as well, not being updated since some time in June when I was participating in the #audiomo challenge, a month-long audio recording challenge in the month of June.