So after four months in Canada I’ve finally made it home and I’m settling back in to work after having so much time off. I’ve been all over the country in the past week attending interviews for various positions.

I attended an interview in Manchester to work as a volunteer for the London 2012 Olympics, I probably talked far too much, but it was great fun to talk to a bunch of people who were really passionate about what the Olympics is going to bring to the UK. I’ve heard nothing but negative reaction in the press regarding the 2012 games, but I think it’s going to be a fantastic festival of sport for the UK. I for one cannot wait if I’m involved or not, it’s just going to be a fabulous summer!

I also attended an interview for a Ruby on Rails developer position in Covent Garden, It was such a beautiful day, and confirmed everything I have thought about working in London, the buzz of the place and the cosmopolitan lifestyle is something that really appeals to me. I really hope I get the job!

So accurate it’s untrue!

Thousands of sites have been hit over the weekend with a series of SQL injection attacks. This may well be a flaw in MSSQL but it’s still a poignant reminder to ensure that you sanitise all user input, as malicious users can still try to exploit your database

I’m writing this sat in the International Departures lounge at Vancouver International Airport (YVR). All I can hear is the sound of running water, and the occasional passenger announcement. Out of the window I can see the snow covered tops of the nearby Coastal Mountains glistening in the spring sunshine. The sky is clear and the winds calm, It really is a perfect day.

Part of me is very excited to go back to the UK, but a part of me will always long to be in this beautiful area of the world. I’ll be back Vancouver! But it’s time for my next adventure. I’m just not looking forward to the grimy 80’s era international arrivals hall at Heathrow, that’ll be a serious shock to the system!

And to anyone thinking of making the five-thousand mile trip, do it! You won’t be disappointed!

As winter slowly turns into spring it’s time to end my Canadian adventure. For those of you that don’t know, I’ve been living in Whistler, BC for the last four months. These have been some of the best four months of my life. I have met so many great people, and hung out with some of my best friends while I’ve been here.

Whistler is one of those places that everyone who lives here is on the same wavelength, it’s unbelievable how easy it is to get on with anyone when you have so much in common. I guess that’s why I enjoyed university snowsports so much, as everyone had the same approach to life, doing anything to get the next fix of snow! I really hope I will see a lot of the people I have met over here again.

In terms of resorts, Whistler is one of the most complete resorts I have ever been to, the village is great, plenty to do and see even if you don’t ski or snowboard. Well thought out, everything is within walking distance, plus great transit links provided by BC Transit to the surrounding area. Topped off by some great bars and restaurants, in no particular order here are my top five.

• The Garibaldi Lift Company (The GLC)
• Crystal Lounge
• Dustys
• Merlins
• Earls

The mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb have some of the best terrain in North America, probably the world, steep chutes, great glades, drops, expansive alpine bowls. The only problem with the area, and the Coastal Mountains in general is its proximity to the Pacific, this gives Whistler quite a mild climate, it can rain in the village, and we only had a couple of bad days where it rained all the way to the high alpine. But when it snows, does it snow! The base as of the 30th of march is 3.5 meters, 3.5 meters is an incredible amount of snow, total accumulations this season have been in excess of 1,300 cm, so as you can imagine we’ve had some epic powder days! In no order here are my top five areas of both mountains that you must visit if you come to Whistler.

• Fraggle Rock (Skiers right off under Crystal Chair)
• Harmony Horseshoes/Boomer Bowl/Gun Barrels
• Flute Bowl (Far skiers right off Symphony + 25 minute hike)
• Gemstone Bowls (Off Spankies Ladder)
• Sun Bowl (Off Harmony ridge)
• Almost anything off 7th Heaven (Reservoir Trees, Xhiggies Meadow)
• Khybers/Million Dollar Ridge (Out of bounds, skiers left off upper peak to creek)

I could go on and on, but as you can see it’s just endless, I have been here four months and haven’t even done all of the marked in bounds runs!

I’m going to miss Whistler, but I’m very excited to what the future will hold. I have an interview for a great position in London, and an interview for a position to volunteer for the London 2012 Olympics. But no doubt I’ll be back to Whistler next winter to see all of my friends out here and to tick off the rest of the areas!

A fantastic infographic posted by Randall Munro, of XKCD fame. Demonstrating the various levels of exposure to ionising radiation

The BBC have published an article that echoes what I was discussing in my previous entry, its the lack of knowledge regarding nuclear power and radiation that’s leading people to believe that it is lethal, however the BBC have tried to explain that the empirical evidence would suggest that it isn’t as dangerous as people are lead to believe.

It’s a shame that this article won’t make the mainstream broadcast news, because it isn’t sensationalist enough. Which is a shame as it could help put peoples fears to bed regarding Fukushima

I’m as shocked as anyone else regarding the devastation in Japan, the scale of the human tragedy is inconceivable, however the main story that seems to be circling the news, especially in Canada, is that of this supposed “Meltdown”

Now first of all, Meltdown conjures up images of Chernobyl and the abandoned town of Pripyat. To use the same term and toss it around so loosely regarding the incident at Fukushima is reckless. They are nowhere near the same type of incident, and to draw comparisons is tantamount to disinformation.

Chernobyl, not the same as Fukushima

The main issue in my opinion is a general ignorance as to the workings of a nuclear reactor, and nuclear physics in general. People are terrified of things they don’t fully understand, and nuclear power, unfortunately, is one of these things.

It’s not helped by the media supplying incredibly anti-nuclear commentary, referring to everything as a disaster, or “meltdown”. Nuclear power when managed correctly is incredibly safe and clean, producing no carbon emissions at all, the only waste is nuclear byproducts that can be stored underground to decay into more stable elements.

For example, the media was reporting yesterday that that Fukushima I was venting radioactive steam, however what the media failed to mention is that the steam contains radionuclides with very short half-lives, so after they were vented they rapidly decayed into stable, non-radioactive elements.

A half-life is not something the media concerns itself with it’s content to allow people to believe that this steam is lethal, even though the amount of radiation measured during the venting was equivalent to that of a chest x-ray, not to mention that those elements will rapidly decay and be sent out to sea, never to be seen again!

The real danger comes from cracked containment vessels, as was shown with the obsolete RBMK reactor types responsible for the Chernobyl disaster, however the BWR reactors at Fukushima have 3 levels of containment, the zircaloy fuel rod sheathes, the concrete core vessel, and then the outer containment vessel, even if the fuel rods melt down, they will not breach the containment, and it will not continue burning through the planet.

The future of nuclear power is a difficult one, its about overcoming peoples innate fear of something they don’t fully understand, coupled with the media fanning the flames. However if we all want to keep using the same amount of electricity, and we’re committed to doing all we can to save the planet then we need to start the process to ditch our carbon economy.

The first step comes with replacing our dirty fossil fuel burning power stations with clean nuclear power. Renewables are great, but they don’t produce the amount of power required to run nations, nuclear fission power is our best bet for staving off the effects of climate change in the immediate short term, while we develop ways to bring nuclear fusion reactors up to industrial scale. To put a halt on all nuclear power developments would be incredibly short sighted. After all, we all need electricity, where else are we gonna’ get it from?

Not gonna be enough!

If you, like me, have tried to use helpers to generate complex chunks of HTML programmaticly, then you will have noticed that content_tag doesn’t really cut it for large chunks of HTML

content_tag will render the HTML inline unless you manually insert line breaks and tabs in order to make it readable, not to mention you end up with a horribly nested set of methods wrapping around the content you want to display

Looking something a little like this

As you can see the code looks quite unreadable, and it’s almost backwards in the way that it is generated, I’m creating the inner HTML first, and then wrapping it inside a div depending on if the user is logged in or not, there must be a better way to achieve the same result, while making it look nicer

Enter Builder

The builder gem is something that I have used most often for defining XML documents, however you can also call the Builder::XmlMarkup.new method within any other methods and generate XML markup inline. Using the same example, this is the execution using Builder::XmlMarkup instead of content_tag

As you can see it’s much more readable than the previous example

However each to their own, but I think personally the Builder gem is incredibly useful for creating XML style markup instead of using Rails’ built in helpers to generate HTML. Give it a go, you might be pleasantly surprised!