Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

The Japanese have a knack of coming up with the craziest products.  Here is a dry shower sheet… basically instead of taking a shower, you rub yourself with this sheet impregnated with silver to deodourize.  Check out their Youtube ads here and here!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Apparently our great cable TV package not only includes the 24-hour Fireplace Channel, it also includes a channel where people text in messages on a particular subject….  Guess I’m getting old.  Back in my day, that’s what Internet forums and chat rooms were for.  You got to use a full keyboard and you didn’t have to pay per message sent.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Nothing like taking a tub full of clean glassware out of the oven in the morning!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

The TTC has an interesting solution to people sticking chewing gum under seats on the subway: ads with a pad of paper for people to wrap their chewed gum in before they throw it away at a station.  Unfortunately, they chose to use a pad of glossy paper, instead of just having a pad of unbleached recycled paper, or better yet, some used double sided paper.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

From this zoomed in picture, can anyone guess what this chip is for?

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Quick pic: busy day. Lots of meetings. Yummy sandwiches at meetings. Leo happy.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

The summer brings many many film crews to our university to make film various TV shows or movies.  Most recent and significant one I know that was filmed in our chemistry building was The Time Traveller’s Wife.  One that was filmed just down the street a few years ago (I watched it from my window) was The Incredible Hulk (the one with Edward Norton).

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

A ceramic turtle guards the garden in front of my house.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Went to the T Cafe just a few blocks away from the university this afternoon to work on a project with a friend.  They were serving this really flavourful and vividly coloured “mango twist” iced tea.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

This is one of four Chinese food trucks on the U of T campus. It’s incredible how they can squeeze so many woks in that little truck to make 50+ items.  The food there is not great, but it is awfully cheap–a fried rice or noodle dish enough for large lunch starts at $4.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Last night I went to a showing of How Coyote Was Swallowed by the Sandia Mountains at the Toronto Fringe Festival.  A young woman leaves her hometown of Montreal to go to the deserts of New Mexico in the hopes of finding out why her mentally-ill brother decided to kill himself.  Uses fables, myths, and flashbacks to reveal that human actions cannot always be described rationally or linearly.  Excellent writing and acting for an amature play!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Package of vanilla sugar I got from a Polish friend.  I wonder what I should try it in first?

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

An update to my earlier post about my dead tree: it has now been marked by the City of Toronto Department of Urban Forestry for chopping.  Next spring, they are going to plant a London plane tree to replace this dead maple.  As a patriotic Canadian, I will have to call or write the City to ask for another maple tree instead.  If not, I’ll have to settle with a London plane… better than some damn American species, right?

Within my heart, above my home, the maple leaf forever!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Canada Day was on a Thursday this year, so our university gave everyone a free day off today (probably since a lot of people would have taken today off to make it a 4-day weekend anyway).  My parents, brother, and I decided to jaunt to Niagara Falls for a day since it had been a while and it was a fantastic day outside.

I snapped this shot of a double rainbow over the Horseshoe Falls in the midafternoon.  It is interesting to note that the secondary rainbow (the outside arc) is much fainter and its spectrum is in reverse order than the inner rainbow, with red being inside and violet on the outside.  The double rainbow is caused by light reflecting twice inside a water droplet.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Here is a picture of the Canada Day fireworks we ’sploded today.  I left the shutter on for 2 seconds and it gave this cool furry light trail effect.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Getting ready for Canada Day means going out to get some pretty explosives for tomorrow!  I pooled together with some friends to get about $120 worth of fireworks.  Should be a good show!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

I left town to go camping this past weekend, and that’s the reason for the lack of Fraptage. While I was away, Toronto was plunged into chaos when peaceful protests were turned into violent riots. I believe that 97% of the G20 protesters were peaceful; however there were quite a few people who came to the city with the explicit goal to cause destruction. Police cars were burned, and many stores on Yonge Street (like this Tim Hortons coffee shop) had their windows broken. The federal government has so far refused to compensate Toronto and business owners for the destruction caused by the riots, but may eventually cave into public pressure.

A high profile police action hit quite close to home when the integrated security unit arrested 70 people who were sleeping in the Graduate Students’ Union building in the University of Toronto. During my time in graduate school, I had worked closely with many members of the Union, and I frequent the building’s pub and cafe. The GSU decided to let a group of protestors from out of town stay in their gym. However, the police was tipped off that some of the residing protesters allegedly participated in the rioting of the day before. The police also seized weapons and black clothing that allegedly belonged to the protesters. Along with the protesters, a member of the GSU Executive that I’ve worked with was taken into custody. I can only hope that he had nothing to do with the rioters, that he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he will come out of this alright.

On the second floor of the GSU building is Sylvester’s Cafe, a family-owned and operated restaurant that I often visit for lunch. They offer good food at good prices and a nice, quiet, comfortable (and mostly undergrad-free) place to read or do work. When the owner’s son returned to work on Monday, he found broken windows in the kitchen, a broken refrigerator lock, and black fingerprints all around the cafe. The cafe was also forced to close for two weekdays when the University was under lockdown for the two days before the G20 Summit, and Monday for an extensive cleanup. It was another casualty of this summit.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

First of all, I am not threatening Joe Mauer, in fact he is one of my favourite players.

This is a small part of the security wall that has been erected around downtown Toronto to protect the G20 delegates that will be arriving into town this weekend.  This summit has been a security nightmare for our city.  During a short four block walk on Front Street last night, I saw at least 50 police officers in the streets.  Many key intersections are now gated to control access.  It was a weird feeling walking through my city crawling with armed officers, checkpoints, fences, and gates.  Most people are  avoiding downtown altogether.

Because of possible protests, the University of Toronto has closed its campus starting this evening through Monday  morning.  Buildings have been secured, locks have been changed, and barriers were placed on driveways and garages.

In total, the cost of this G20 summit (along with an associated G8 summit just north of here) is already over $1 billion.  That is not counting the costs associated with loss of business for restaurants and stores forced to close around the convention centre, the loss of tourism income because people are avoiding Toronto, and the loss of productivity from people sent home from work.

Let’s hope that the G20 never goes to your city.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Today was a busy day.   First, I went to Playdium in Mississauga (a city to the west of Toronto) to work on my swing  in the batting cages, then I stopped by the Cheltenham Badlands in Caledon (a town north of Mississauga) where I snapped this picture, and then I went for a short hike in the Forks of the Credit Provincial Park.

The Cheltenham Badlands is an area a soft clay soil, which suffers from severe erosion from rain.  The red colour of the Badlands come  from a high concentration of iron oxide, making the surface looking a little like a Martian landscape (if one ignores the greenery in the background).  Unfortunately, the area is  wearing away more quickly than usual due to an increase in tourism in the area (like us).

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

This is not the first time that Frapto has had a picture from an all-you-can-eat sushi place (Jen went to Pod earlier this year).  This is a mango avocado roll from Cafesta in northeastern Toronto.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

A professor emeritus in our department recently passed away.  The university remembered him by lowering the UofT flag to half-mast above Simcoe Hall.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Just outside my building.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

The new wing of the medical sciences building.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

The subway was down, so everyone had to go outside and wait for replacement shuttle buses.  However, it took over 20 minutes for the first one to arrive…  Almost this entire crowd was able to squeeze into that bus…

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

One day, perhaps this can be traded for a house!

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Here is what a NMR spectrometer looks like  inside.  A sample solution is placed inside a long glass tube and capped with a plastic cap (here it is green).   The tube is then lowered slowly into the magnet (not in photo) and into copper coils that emit radio frequencies.  The tube is also spun approximately 20 revolutions per second to average out the signals from different parts  of the sample.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

I’m spending this weekend in the lab to get some work done.  This is a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer.  It reveals clues towards the molecular structure of a sample that is placed inside. A very powerful magnet, with a field strength of 9.4 Tesla (a fridge magnet is approximately 0.005 Tesla), align the spin various nuclei in the sample either with the direction of the magnetic field.  A pulse of radio frequencies is blasted at the sample, causing some nuclei to “flip” and spin against the field.  Because spinning against the magnetic field represents a higher energy state for a nucleus, it will eventually flip back to spin with the field.  Nuclei in different positions within a molecule flip at a different frequency (known as its resonance frequency).  By examining what nuclei flip at what frequencies, one can deduce the shape and structure of a particular compound.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

Ammonia (NH3) is a pungent gas at room temperature, but under high pressure conditions such as in this tank, it is a colourless liquid.  It can even be dispensed into a regular beaker and it can exist as a liquid outside of a pressure vessel for a short while.

Frapto Photo for Today by Leo Mui

…humans carry large plumages on the streetcar!