From the Packsacks of a Computer Science Teacher in Northern Canada

=== by Bob Sutherland ===

Hello and welcome. This is a hobby website I am creating as a retirement project. It started out as a way of sharing some of the materials I collected in my packsacks during many years of teaching in Canada's remote northern communities. Now I am branching out and adding new content based on other sources of inspiration. There is no unifying theme. It is just a haphazard collection of web pages containing number charts, photographs, reference and educational information that I hope someone will find interesting or useful.

Main Menu

Number Lists

Number Charts: This is a collection of number lists, conversion charts and math review notes for topics I have taught in Math, Science and Computer classrooms.

Measurement Conversion: This is a collection of conversion charts for temperature, distance, weight and liquid measurements.

Vehicle Fuel Consumption: This is a collection of charts for converting between kilometres per litre, litres per 100 kilometres, miles per gallon using United States liquid gallons, and miles per gallon using imperial gallons.

Cold Temperatures

Skin freezes quickly at a temperature of minus forty. The more frequently that happens during your lifetime the less resistance your body has to cold temperatures and wind chill. Unfortunately I know this is true from my own personal experiences. Here are a few other things I have learned about cold temperatures while living in the northern regions of a cold climate country.

Canadian School Closure Policies due to Weather Conditions: An explanation of when Canadian school principals or school board officials are likely to close schools due to weather conditions.
Frozen cars and trucks: What happens to vehicles when the temperature drops to -40 degrees Celsius? The simple answer is they freeze, break and tend not to work. During my teaching career I have driven three pickup sized trucks that I have owned into subarctic communities. I have then tried to keep them operational throughout the winter as temperatures sometimes dropped below -40 degrees Celsius. Here is a description of my experiences.
Temperature and Weather: Having named my website after a very cold temperature it only seems fitting that I should devote a page of my website to information about thermometers, temperature, weather, climate, wind chill, frostnip, frostbite, meteorology, climatology, global warming and -40 degrees.

Photography

Photography Topics: A collection of web pages that I have created for my camera club and anyone interested in photography. I have created lists of photo editing software and other programs that may be of interest to photographers. I have created beginner lessons on how to use many of the programs.
Canadian War Photographs: This is primarily a collection of Canadian military photographs taken in Belgium and France during World War I and the D-Day invasion of World War II. The collection includes photographs of some memorials, parks and cemeteries in France and Belgium that honour the sacrifice of the Canadian soldiers.
Vacation Photos of places where I have travelled: A collection of photographs of some places in Canada and the United States that I have visited while travelling on vacations and weekend trips.
Teaching Photos of places where I have taught: A collection of photographs of some of the remote First Nation, Metis and Inuit communities where I have taught in northern Canada.
Panorama Photos Created By Photo Stitching: A collection of panorama photographs that I have created by merging together two or more overlapping photos using photo stitching computer software. Most of the photographs in this collection are remote northern communities but I have included a few vacation photos.

General Topics

Computer Topics: If it is something I once taught in Computer courses then I may have created a web page about it. Topics include computer keyboards, fonts, memory size units, pixels, computer cookies, and cleaning your computer.
How to translate anything to English: A short story followed by a lesson on how to use the Internet to translate a foreign language to English. I include solutions to situations that Google, Bing and Facebook cannot solve.
Web Colour Charts: My collection of colour charts with large colour patches that I created to assist me in creating web pages. The colours are labelled using RGB (red-green-blue) hexadecimal numbers.
Problem Solving Puzzles: A few simple problem solving puzzles to give your brain some exercise.
How to find Polaris the North Star: A simple field guide for finding Polaris the North Star, the Big Dipper and the Cassiopeia constellation in the night sky.
A bit of Latin: On this page you will find definitions of e.g., i.e., etc., et al, informal versus formal writing style, Latin Quarter and a few other things that I usually taught my students during the first week of school in my courses.
How accurate is a computer at guessing your age in a photo?: This web page explores how a business can use a digital photograph analyzed by a computer application as a customer age verification tool.
Privacy Policy: A privacy policy for this website.

Short Story

This is a new section of my website for any short stories I happen to create.

Eek! There is a big bug in the bathroom sink!: This is a story about the excitement I experienced late one night. On the first page is a description of what happened as told in my own words. On the second page are the photographs I took that night.