We’re pleased to share the recording of our recent webinar exploring the evolution of HydroGeoSphere (HGS) — from its origins as an ambitious integrated hydrologic modelling experiment to a widely trusted, industry-leading platform for groundwater and surface water simulation.

Presented by Dr. Hyoun-Tae Hwang, Director of HydroGeoSphere at Aquanty Inc., this session offers a comprehensive retrospective on the development of HGS since its initial launch in 2002 and its continued advancement under Aquanty since 2012. The webinar highlights key milestones, technical innovations, and the expanding capabilities that have positioned HGS at the forefront of hydrological modelling.

Key Highlights:

• Explore the evolution of fully integrated groundwater–surface water modelling approaches.

• Learn how high-performance and parallel computing have shaped HGS capabilities.

• Discover advancements in physics-based modelling and numerical methods.

• Review new features and applications, including particle tracking, dynamic meshing, and water management simulations.

This session is especially valuable for hydrologists, researchers, and water resource professionals interested in the development of integrated modelling tools and the future of hydrologic simulation.

Watch the recording now to gain insight into the past, present, and future of HydroGeoSphere, and see how it continues to drive innovation in water science and engineering.

Watch The Recording

There’s a moment almost every software engineer has experienced. A PM slides into your chat, or swings by your cube (with a snack as a peace offering) and asks for something that sounds tiny. Even worse, in a meeting with the customer, you’re ask-told:

“Can we just add an extra field before tomorrow?” (PM subconsciously nodding to get agreement while the customer watches with critical eyes)

And the developer, after what I now recognize as a brief internal spiritual battle, says:

“Yeah, shouldn’t be too bad.” (Translation: Guess I’m working late.)

As a former PM, I’d think, “Sweet. Basically done.”

As an engineer, I now understand this sentence actually translates to:

“I’m slowly identifying different ways this could accidentally affect production, but explaining all of them would derail this meeting for forty minutes.”

The issue that inspired this article sounded harmless. That should’ve been my first red flag.

New ticket. Let’s open this up and see…

click

“We need to optimize the yada yada yada…”

(eyes immediately stop reading full sentences and begin skimming for actual danger)

Mhmm. Okay. So basically…

Okay.

Mmmkay instead of logging the same status repeatedly:

WAITING 202605201250

WAITING 202605201255

WAITING 202605201300

we just want a cleaner aggregated format:

WAITING | 3 | 202605201300

Status. Retry count. Last timestamp.

Ok cool. Either this will be super quick or ruin my afternoon.

I’m sure that sentence alone just caused at least one engineer reading this to laugh tiredly into their coffee.

The “field” wasn’t really a field.

The data was stored as a Protocol Buffer message, which meant I first had to track down the correct .proto contract buried somewhere in enterprise archaeology. Then came regenerating classes, dealing with environment-specific tooling that absolutely nobody documented correctly, and trying not to accidentally break services depending on the existing schema.

At one point I opened the table expecting readable values and instead found what looked like encrypted alien soup.

\x08\x96\x01\x12\x07WAITING\x1a\x0f20260520%1250\x2a\x04\x08\x01\x10\x00
\x08\x96\x01\x12\x07WAITING\x1a\x0f20260520%1255\x32\x06\xb1\x7f\x00\x14\x08
\x08\x96\x01\x12\x07WAITING\x1a\x0f20260520%1300\x4a\x03\xf0\x9f\x92
\x08\x96\x01\x12\x07WAITING\x1a\x0f20260520%1305\x52\x05\x13\x88\xa1\xcc\x02

Nothing builds character faster than realizing your database column is technically a blob.

And this is the part PMs usually never see.

Developers often intentionally compress complexity during conversations. Not because they’re hiding things, but because translating the full chain reaction behind a change is exhausting.

“Adding a field” can quietly mean:

• verifying backward compatibility
• checking downstream consumers
• validating batch jobs
• updating mocks and tests
• ensuring older records don’t fail parsing
• confirming another service somewhere isn’t making dangerous assumptions about the schema

Half the job is coding. The other half is preventing collateral damage.

The funny part is that becoming an engineer didn’t make me think PMs are unreasonable.

It actually made me think good PMs are incredibly valuable… when they understand where complexity lives.

Not every difficult task looks difficult from the outside.

Some of the riskiest work starts with:

“Oh, that should be simple.”

That perspective completely changed how I think about estimation, delivery timelines, and team pressure.

Because now when an engineer pauses before answering a “small” request, I can practically see the dependency graph materializing behind their eyes.

And honestly?

Sometimes the most senior thing a developer says in a meeting is:

“Let me investigate first.”

-Tiffany

//still debugging

The Lies Engineers Tell PMs was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is he the last one left or are most of our judges as stupid as he is? Other than taking the word of self-serving, well paid sycophants is there some fool proof way to judge our judges? Maybe put them on trial for a change and see how they like it.

We now have two candidates running for mayor in Woolwich Township. At fist blush I believe that either one of them will be an improvement over whom we've had for the last twelve years although that bar is set quite low. It is also possible that as life is rarely all black or all white (no racial slurs/undertones intended here) that Ms. Shantz may actually have some attributes and behaviours that have actually been in the public interest. Time usually tells.

Here is another thought concerning Justice Craig Parry. Maybe he's not an out of touch, old phart, sexist, self-serving member of the court. His attitudes towards 49 women (48 complainants, 1 Neurologist) might not be one hundred years or more out of date as it certainly appears. What if he simply is stupid, thoughtless and lazy? Just as bad what if he's senile or actually suffering from past mini strokes or some other brain injury? As a senior myself I do not wish that upon anyone but unfortunately it does happen and maybe Judges' vaunted independence is what is keeping him behind the bench ruining people's lives. Equally bad is there any possibility that he has been blackmailed or extorted somehow? Seriously I think a formal investigation to ascertain whether or not he's been a victim of criminal activity or pressure is called for. Again I would hope not but his behaviour appears bizarre.

Further issues abound. Anyone remember Tumblur Ridge in British Columbia? Anyone remember the weird circumstances surrounding the shooter's home life and diagnosed mental health struggles? She/he did not have a valid firearms license yet clearly had access to firearms as the authorities had returned them to the home and presumably to the registered owner. The shooter killed themselves afterwards which is a common occurrence in mass shootings. Right now our federal government continue to sell the myth that registered and licensed firearms owners are a threat to Canadian citizens. Could it be that the bigger threat is the government's own failures and refusal to enforce their own safety and firearms laws  especially those dealing with violent criminals and or mentally unstable individuals both of which must not have access to firearms ? 

A pytest-native safety and security testing framework for agentic AI applications

Python 83 Updated May 21

Approximate Nearest Neighbors in C++/Python optimized for memory usage and loading/saving to disk

C++ 14.2k Updated Oct 29, 2025

NeMo Guardrails is an open-source toolkit for easily adding programmable guardrails to LLM-based conversational systems.

Python 6.2k Updated May 21

The 2026 Annual General Meeting of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) was conducted in Ottawa from April 23-25.  Chambers of Commerce, Boards of Trade, government officials and business leaders from across the province assembled to discuss current and emerging issues impacting small and large enterprises.

The Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, championed two policy resolutions addressing priority workforce challenges affecting both local employers and the broader provincial economy.

The resolution focused on attracting and retaining more women in Ontario’s skilled trades sector to help address ongoing labour shortages across construction, infrastructure, and other in-demand industries.

With hundreds of thousands of skilled trades workers expected to retire in the coming years, the resolution highlights the need to expand pathways for women entering the trades while addressing barriers related to workplace culture, childcare accessibility, retention, and job site supports.

The resolution calls on the province to continue strengthening programs that encourage young women to pursue skilled trades careers, improve workplace supports and training, and work with industry partners to create more inclusive and accessible opportunities across the sector. Supporting greater participation of women in skilled trades will help strengthen Ontario’s workforce pipeline and support long-term economic growth across the province.

The resolution focused on helping address Ontario’s ongoing labour shortages by improving pathways to employment for individuals accessing Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), while also reducing training-related costs for employers.

As workforce shortages continue across sectors including skilled trades, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology, the resolution highlights the opportunity to better connect skilled and educated OW and ODSP recipients with employment opportunities through clearer guidance, improved access to support programs, and reduced barriers tied to benefit clawbacks.

The resolution also calls on the province to explore cost recovery supports for employers required to provide provincially mandated workplace training, including WHMIS and Occupational Health and Safety Act training, along with associated onboarding costs such as equipment and uniforms.

Strengthening workforce participation and supporting employers with training costs will help expand Ontario’s labour pool while creating greater opportunities for businesses and workers across the province.

What it Means / What Comes Next?

Both resolutions were adopted by the OCC and will now become part of their policy compendium, helping shape advocacy efforts with the Ontario government in the year ahead. Together, these resolutions focus on strengthening Ontario’s workforce by addressing labour shortages, expanding opportunities within the skilled trades, and reducing barriers that prevent individuals and employers from fully participating in the economy.

The Greater KW Chamber will continue advocating for policies that support workforce development, economic growth, and long-term business competitiveness across Waterloo Region and Ontario. As updates on these resolutions and related advocacy efforts become available, we will continue sharing them with our members.

The post Greater KW Chamber Supports Members at 2026 Ontario Chamber AGM appeared first on Greater KW Chamber of Commerce.

Niagara Health – Board of Directors

Niagara Health (NH) believes that every person in its region deserves to live every day of their life in the best health possible. As a community-based academic centre, its focus on teaching and learning, research, innovation and partnership propel it to continually improve care and make a difference in people’s lives.

NH is part of Ontario Health West, a region with broad boundaries, encompassing the former Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network. Additionally, NH is one of more than 45 health care partners who comprise the Niagara Ontario Health Team – Équipe Santé Ontario Niagara (NOHT-ÉSON), which is committed to building a more integrated, inclusive and seamless health care system with a goal of improving the overall experience and health outcomes. Together, partners are working to create an inclusive, efficient health care system that integrates and streamlines the delivery of health care services, for the residents of Niagara.

NH’s Strategic Plan for 2023-2028 entitled “Transforming Care” is aimed at designing modern and coordinated care around the needs of patients and their caregivers, making it easier to access quality healthcare services that meet patient needs and improve their experiences and outcomes.

It is within this context that Niagara Health welcomes applications for appointment to its Board of Directors, commencing Fall 2026, or soon after.

The Board of Directors
Oversight of Niagara Health is provided by a community-based, volunteer Board of Directors, which focuses on the effective and efficient delivery of healthcare services for the communities NH serves.

The Board of Directors has 15 elected Directors, plus 4 ex-officio members. The by-laws can be found here: Niagara Health Corporate By-Law

The Board has the following roles:

• Governance oversight by monitoring and assessing NH’s key processes and outcomes, with a view to continuous quality improvement to ensure the best quality of care for our patients and clients.
• Formulating NH’s strategic direction, including vision, purpose, and key goals.
• Ensuring NH’s financial viability and meeting its obligations in key Accountability Agreements.
• Policy formulation to provide guidance to those empowered with the responsibility to manage NH’s operations.

The Board has the following responsibilities:

• As required, recruiting the President and CEO and the Chief of Staff/ Executive Vice-President (EVP), Medical Affairs.
• Ensuring executive performance management and succession planning.
• Ensuring the quality of clinical and operational performance.
• Ensuring NH’s financial viability and meeting its obligations in Accountability Agreements with Ontario Health West and the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care.
• Ensuring the Board’s own effectiveness and efficiency.
• Building relationships and collaborative partnerships, internally and externally.

Duties and Term:

• Board members are expected to be active and full participants at meetings, with regular attendance, a commitment to good governance, and a belief in the purpose and vision of Niagara Health.
• Board members serve a 1-3 years initial appointment, renewable to a maximum of 9 years.
• Board members must also serve on at least one committee of the Board.

Time Commitment:

• To fully contribute to the Board, a minimum time commitment of approximately 15-20 hours per month is anticipated. This encompasses one Board meeting and at least one Committee meeting per month. Attendance at special meetings may be required.
• The Board and its Committees meet six (6) times per year unless a special meeting is required.

Geographical Representation:

• As in-person board meetings are preferred, candidates must be within a
  reasonable commuting distance to Niagara, and those who live or have lived within the Niagara region are encouraged to apply.
• The primary meeting location is the St. Catharines Site but may be held at other sites as determined by the Chair.

Term:

• Directors are elected by the members for terms of one to three years and may serve a maximum of nine years.

Candidate Profile

To complement the skills and experience of its current Board, NH is seeking an Independent Director to join the Board of Directors. NH is particularly interested in hearing from leaders currently working with marginalized and vulnerable populations in the social services sector.

Compensation

Directors serve in a voluntary capacity, without financial remuneration. Approved travel expenses which are inline with the Board policies, will be reimbursed.

Niagara Health is participating in the federal government’s 50 – 30 Challenge to increase diversity in positions of influence and leadership across the organization. The goal of the Challenge is to give all Canadians a seat at the table by improving access for members of equity-deserving groups including: women, Indigenous peoples, racialized persons including Black Canadians, people who identify as gender and/or sexually diverse, and or persons living with disabilities. For more information on the 50 – 30 Challenge, please visit: The 50 – 30 Challenge: Your Diversity Advantage (canada.ca).

NH also continues to make best efforts to increase Indigenous representation on the Niagara Health Board by demonstrating significant efforts towards the recruitment of more than one Indigenous member on the board and through ensuring a plan for successful future recruitments.

Application Process

To be considered for a Board position, please submit a comprehensive board resume along with a cover letter in confidence to Jane Griffith (jane@griffithgroup.ca) and/or Caroline McLean (caroline@griffithgroup.ca).

Niagara Health and Griffith Group are committed to an inclusive, accessible and welcoming hiring process that provides reasonable accommodation to all applicants. Please advise Jane Griffith (jane@griffithgroup.ca) should you require any accommodation to participate in the recruitment and/or assessment processes.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, however, preference will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

The post Niagara Health – Board of Directors appeared first on Capacity Canada.

This by definition could be merely  "riddled with errors "which in and of itself frankly is disgusting.  A little passing shot to our previous long term Regional Chair, Ken Seiling. This has occurred on your watch, you pissant. Got that out of my system albeit while I know that the Region of Waterloo for example have major responsibilities with local policing (WRPS) and all their failures towards their female officers a lot of that blame should lie with female regional councillors who've kept their heads down and let their gender counterparts in uniform get treated shabbily. Another passing shot is to our (thank God) departing and currently lame duck Woolwich mayor Sandy Shantz who's been a regional councillor for the last twelve years and probably felt that her political career would not be advanced by supporting and assisting female police officers. Oh and by the way while I've never made a big deal out of it but that same *#%*$ was my Trustee back in 1996 and she didn't lift a finger to help this parent constituent or others when the WRDSB  was protecting bad teachers such as Ron Archer (convicted pedophile).

I do not know all the connections between our Justice System and regional government. I do know that the Region have responsibilities in regards to providing facilities and infrastructure for our various courts. Furthermore I believe that certain prosecuters may be federal  prosecuters and others provincial prosecuters. Whether they are actually paid by the feds or the province versus the Region I am not certain. I do know for a fact that judges are appointed by goddamn politicians and that alone should scare most honest citizens. Nothing like stacking the deck in favour of the already entitled .

Today's K-W Record advises us that the Crown are filing an appeal in the Dr. Sloka case.  Corrupt or not the Crown and the entire system know when a stupid Judge has gone way too far. It's called putting the administration of justice in disrepute which is exactly what Justice Craig Parry has done when he called out 48 female, adult witnesses plus one expert witness for the prosecution, a practicing and respected Neurologist. By the way that Neurologist just happened to be female. The Judge described her and all 48 witnesses as unreliable, some dishonest and all mistaken in their testimony. But that's O.K. because he found the accused, Dr. Jeffrey Sloka credible. 

I too have experience with a biased, idiot Judge (Robert Reilly) unilaterally throwing out multiple witnesses' testimony in order to find me liable in a civil case. Based upon his behaviour the same Judge may have conspired with the Plaintiff's lawyer to try and manipulate my wife onto the stand in order to give testimony that he could twist against her and I. He and the Plaintiff's lawyer also used subterfuge to deny me a trial by my peers i.e a jury trial that I wanted and deserved.  

Who should have reined in both these Judges decades ago? Are these cases a one off whereby a normally rational, sane and honest Judge has simply been broken for one case each, alone? It seems very unlikely. Why does the Justice system not correct gross injustices by their own judges? What the hell has happened to common sense? News flash Justice system.  There are lots of honest, educated people out there who know when liars and filth are hiding behind walls that they've helped put up. How dare you judge citizens when you yourselves won't even clean house of dishonest people within your ranks.     

Ontario Water Consortium. (2026). Forecasting the Thaw: Building Hydrological Resilience Before the Crisis. ontariowater.ca/forecasting-the-thaw-building-hydrological-resilience-before-the-crisis/

The Ontario Water Consortium article on Aquanty.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.

We’re pleased to share that Aquanty has been featured in a new Ontario Water Consortium (OWC) article examining how advanced hydrological monitoring and forecasting technologies are helping Ontario strengthen resilience to floods, spring thaw events, and climate-driven watershed risks.

The feature, “Forecasting the Thaw: Building Hydrological Resilience Before the Crisis,” explores the growing challenges facing conservation authorities and municipalities as climate change introduces greater uncertainty into watershed management. The article highlights how traditional approaches based solely on historical climate conditions are becoming less reliable, increasing the need for real-time hydrological intelligence and predictive forecasting systems.

The story discusses how Aquanty’s HydroSphereAI platform combines machine learning with physically based hydrologic modelling to improve real-time streamflow forecasting and operational decision-making. It also highlights the importance of long-term collaboration between conservation authorities, researchers, and technology providers in building forecasting systems that can support practical, day-to-day water management operations.

More broadly, the feature examines how hydrological intelligence is becoming core infrastructure for modern watershed management — helping agencies move from reactive emergency response toward more proactive climate resilience planning.

Read the full story on the Ontario Water Consortium website to learn more about how advanced forecasting technologies are supporting the future of water management in Ontario.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.

So where did that headline above come from? Generally speaking it's based upon close observation of the buggars over the last fourty plus years. Specifically speaking it's based upon the recent behaviour of the Region of Waterloo regarding how they've managed our water and secondly how they've behaved towards Wilmot Township residents. Regarding corporations that is also based upon past personal experiences as well as recent revelations as to how Uniroyal Chemical treated CEAC (Citizens Environmental Advisory Committee) back in the 1980s. There is a newspaper article (K-W Record) dated February 8, 1991 titled "Key data withheld, group learns". It turns out that while Uniroyal were telling CEAC how transparent they were, they were lobbying the Ministry of Environment behind the scenes to reduce discussions with any and all citizens They also pilloried CEAC in the early 1990s for advising against pumping on-site Municipal Aquifer wells they had installed.  Of course at least part of the reason for CEAC's advice was based upon inaccurate or missing data that Uniroyal failed to provide them. Last point is this. Without being intentionally a smart as* I can confidently suggest that the bald and bold statement in the headline above does not refer to 100% of either politicians or corporations albeit in my opinion it is a very high percentage and for now we'll leave it at that.

Today's Record article written by Luisa D'Amato is titled "Wells in rural Wilmot are running dry. The Region should fix that. It's the least they can do."  I agree whole heartedly with that. I'm also going to add to Luisa's point that to date the Region have both lied and reneged on their promises to Wilmot Township regarding taking their water for the big cities. They also need to apologize and ask forgiveness for that as well as paying 100% of the costs for rural well owners to obtain access to the now much further from the surface aquifers in parts of Wilmot Township. 

Finally maybe a backup plan is needed. Give the Region a hard date by which the money for deeper wells will be provided. After that quoting Uniroyal Chemical years ago in Elmira, the gloves may need to come off.   

.  

The gender Pay Gap is a real scene even in the richest of the rich countries, as the article emphasizes throughout. It could not necessarily mean that it is discrimination; however, companies have their policies and agendas for profits and lifting the economies.

Nevertheless, there could be many factors that push women out of the race, like maternity leave, Periods, and physical Dexterity.

Employee choices can impact companies hugely; it depends totally on the situation. For instance, A startup cannot rely on its whole duties and trust a new mother or a pregnant lady who might already have proven her worth and her potential.

It is challenging yet necessary for startups — to work for their goals in the first few years to break even on the capital investment; as statistics say, most startups fail in the first 5 years (Howarth, 2023).

So, unless, irrespective of gender, the workforce has together formed a social capital and sacrificed their personal space, the probability is likely that the startup will fail.

Even though there are laws favoring women, the impact for MNCs or Big Bs can be less, but in such cases, it could be more. However, the stereotypes are now being broken, and Statistics can play a huge role in recommending better solutions.

The article by (Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2019) visualizes a data map worldwide that clearly shows that according to the 2015 timed data from the data source ILOSTAT, women are overrepresented in lower-paying jobs.

To be precise, even in rich countries like Canada, France, Switzerland, and Spain, as per the labor force heat map, women have the highest occupancy than men, which leaves us to think,

Thus, we can analyze the following using hypothesis testing by formulating assumptions that can be experimented with using sample evidence. On the preconditions that Data can be obtained, let us consider the one specific way-

According to the visualization, the heatmap claims that New Zealand 2015 shows that about 56.3 % of the low-pay earners represent women. Let us say our parameter of interest is “p,” which denotes the proportion of women in low pay earners in 2015 in New Zealand.

Since I want to determine if p = 56.3 %, it is a two-tailed test.

H0: p >= 0.56

HA: p < 0.56

If, after sample evidence and experimentation, we reject the null hypothesis and the Null Hypothesis is actually false, then it implies that the significant strength of low-pay earners in New Zealand in 2015 is not women.

In the case that we make a Type-1 error, let us denote the probability with alpha 𝜶 at some chosen significance level. We can conduct a chi-square test, Log-linear models, etc., to test it. We can do the same with all other countries too, to prove that significant differences exist.

As I scrolled up the ILOSTAT site for the data, I could not find the exact data that was used for the visualization. I recommend carrying this out with more data, authentic resources that have the same metadata, like income and gender for further analysis.

But since, in real world scenario, the data available for analysis is limited, the research ends here, but leaves us with obvious implications, factors and a problem statement we gotta deal with.

Moreover, to get a take on the null hypothesis, we can use regression analysis and correlation as the two parameters to compare are income and gender (Schaeffer, 2022). Further, more statistical methods can be applied when we know the distribution of the data, which narrows down the methods for us further.

Schaeffer, J. (2022, March 15). Statistics 101 for pay equity. Equity Methods. www.equitymethods.com/articles/statistics-101-for-pay-equity/

Ortiz-Ospina, E., Hasell, J., & Roser, M. (2024, March 18). Economic inequality by gender. Our World in Data. ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality-by-gender#representation-of-women-in-low-paying-jobs

The leading source of labour statistics. ILOSTAT. (n.d.). ilostat.ilo.org/ Howarth, J. (2023, November 3). Startup failure rate statistics (2024). Exploding Topics. explodingtopics.com/blog/startup-failure-stats

Are Women Only Present in Low-Paying Jobs? was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

 Well I knew that the Region of Waterloo had been eyeing previously shut down water wells due to industrial contamination which was absolutely not confidence inspiring but here they go now looking at wells in Baden long closed due to Nitrate contamination. Nitrates result from over fertilizing farm fields with manure, sewage, hog, cattlle and sometimes even Sewage Treatment Plant solids.  Sounds yummy doesn't it? Yours truly has actually seen fields after dumping...oops I mean after fertilizing farm fields with biosolids including needles and other stuff that shouldn't have gone down the toilet in the first place but does anyways. Nitrates are basically nitrogen combined with some oxygen.

Today's K-W Record carries the following story titled "The search for clean water". Who exactly are they kidding? Possibly the clean water is long gone and the best we can do now is simply to a) find water that can be treated somehow and b) treated fully at a price that won't bankrupt us. We are advised that the Region are hoping to drill deeper through the contaminated aquifers to find a less contaminated aquifer. This action will of course increase our water costs as deeper wells mean bigger pumps and greater electrical costs to bring the water to the surface. Other issues pointed out in the article have to do with well interference in the Baden and New Hamburg areas as both farms and residents homes there are already dealing with lower water levels. 

Essentially what has happened is that citizens and residents have been subsidizing polluting industries throughout Waterloo Region for decades as they have contaminated our waters with solvents, pesticides and other industrial chemicals. We have also known that manure, nitrates and nitrites have been getting into our surface waters for decades from farm and feedlot runoff. This of course affects our drinking water as we attempt to treat Grand River water for human consumption. For decades even wells near our three biggest cities have been showing Nitrates and Nitrites at alarming levels. Further to the mix is Sodium from salt (NaCl-sodium chloride) put on our roads and sidewalks.

All in all the Region of Waterloo politicians have been playing fast and loose with our water and not keeping citizens informed as to the severity of the problems. We are now beginning to see the big picture and it's not a pretty picture.

♦

Even when it’s cold out, ice cream is fit for any weather. The treat is especially devourable as the temperatures rise.

It also would be hard to find an upscale casual restaurant that doesn’t use what is the classic ice cream base on its menu in some form.

Essentially a simple custard made of sugar, milk, egg yolks and a touch of vanilla, crème a l’Anglaise – English cream; or, what Escoffier called custard cream — is a basic culinary technique. You’ve likely enjoyed its supple richness hundreds of times: as I just mentioned, it is the creamy base for ice cream. 

A highly versatile foundational sauce for the kitchen, crème Anglaise can be served with innumerable desserts. When you add chocolate and whipped cream, it becomes chocolate mousse; with butter added, it is crème au beurre.

Devour any Bavarois (Bavarian cream) or Charlotte “icebox cake” at a traditional bake shop here in the city and you’re enjoying crème Anglaise. 

Making it at home isn’t too hard.

There are basically two steps: heat up some whole milk gently on the stove top; in a separate bowl, whisk together a few egg yolks and sugar. Carefully combine the two without scrambling the eggs and stir until it coats the back of a spoon and you can draw a line through it with your finger that holds.

There are a gazillion recipes online to follow. Practice your Anglaise in preparation for fresh fruit season in spring and early summer.

Warm or chilled, the custardy sauce is refreshing for all of its rich creaminess, and it can be flavoured with virtually anything that interests you, whether that is orange, Bourbon, cardamom for a slight savoury inflection, or keep it entirely simple with the classic vanilla from the pod. 

Crème Anglaise as a base for, or garnishing, a dessert is treat at any time of the year.

Check out my latest post Crème Anglaise makes the ice cream from AndrewCoppolino.com.

It’s been several months with the new garbage containers and every other week pick ups. How is it going?

I have heard concerns from seniors about difficulty pulling the containers to the curb and the large size of the green bins. A smaller black garbage bin was available up to September 5, 2025 so that is long gone.

In my household, we find the garbage bins and the green bins just fine. Our problem is the blue recycle bins. By the end of two weeks, our indoor recycle bins are overflowing with takeout containers, jars and cans. Cardboard from deliveries and groceries also overflows. Fortunately our news is now online. I don’t know where we would put newspapers.

We don’t have a garage. Even though I wash all the bottles and cans, the smell will still linger, attracting squirrels and rats. We don’t put the recycles outside until the every other week pick up. It would be nice to have a blue box like the garbage and green bins but those are not allowed. It is a situation that could be made better.

Overall, we are fortunate that the Region of Waterloo has given out the garbage and green bins with their animal proof lids for free (not counting our taxes, of course) and Circular Materials has given out the blue bins. My daughter who lives in Kincardine has every other week recycling pick up. However, she must pay around three dollars per black bag for her garbage. She can put out as many bags as she wants but each one must have one of the bag tags they buy. No bag tag, no garbage pick up. Garbage is weekly. They do not have green bins so that increases the amount of their garbage.

There were some pick up hiccups when the new system went into place, but overall it now seems to be working well. No animal ripped garbage bags. Some cardboard can fly down the street but overall, everything is much tidier with the new system.

♦The image to the right is by Denis Vermeirre, and is used in accordance with their Creative Commons License (Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)

There's been an interesting development in the games we play with Ontario license plates.

As well as the old game of Bumper Stumpers (remember that?), one game I play (and I know my friend Andrew plays), is trying to log the "highest" Ontario license plate possible. Standard Ontario license plates follow the pattern of four letters, followed by three numbers, with license letters and numbers raised incrementally. I remember when (roughly 1997) there was a mild kerfuffle over the fact that our old license plate system, which used three letters followed by three letters, was running out of 'numbers", as we were nearing ZZZ 999, so what were we going to do then?

The answer, of course, was to flip over to AAAA 000. And, since then, the highest license plate I've seen is in the DA region. According to Wikipedia, as of December 8, 2025, the highest license plate number is DJVP-046. Given that this pattern allows for 456,976,000 variants, it should be about a century or so before we have to update this system with five letters.

(Actually the total number of variations is significantly smaller than nearly 457 million. The letters G, I, O, Q, and U aren't used because they're too similar to each other and to other numbers, and this brings the number of variants down to 21 to the power of four, multiplied by a thousand, or 194,481,000. Legislation also prevents the use of certain letter combinations because they spell bad words or are reserved for government officials. Or both.)

A wrinkle in this game comes in the form of green license plates for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. When these license plates were introduced, back in 2010, they had green lettering instead of blue, and gave you additional perks, such as the ability to use high occupancy vehicle lanes without the requisite number of passengers. All of the green license plates followed the four letter and three number pattern of regular Ontario license plates, with the exception that they all started with GV ("Green Vehicle" -- although FrancoOntarian drivers had the option of picking up VE license plates for "Véhecule Écologique").

Because the total number of possible GV licenses is significantly smaller than the total number of regular license numbers (441,000), I couldn't help but notice that we were running up the alphabet quite quickly, and I wondered what would happen when we tipped over the edge. A few days ago, I got my answer. I found myself driving behind another electric vehicle with a green license plate, but there was something strange about it. Then I realized: the license plate was in the GWAB 000 format.

I pointed this out to younger child, who shrugged, but laughed when I said, "I guess the guy is driving a Green Whe-hecle." She came up with one better, saying, "It stands for Green Wheels".

But now, in my head, I hear Chekov's voice, referring to the car with the license plate as a "Green Wessel".

To give you a sense of how my schedule is structured, I schedule edits for a year in September of the prior year. So at that point, I usually know what I am writing and have time slots set up for each book.

The goal is to publish a novel every second month and to write a book in seven to eight weeks. There is an intentional disconnect between those two cycles, intended to let me get ahead and allow for projects that won’t get published straightaway.

Right now, I am burning up all of the headway I’ve built over the last couple of years to write Fated Skies, the last of the Aether Spheres trilogy. It’s a fun book but it is very long.

And you may note that nothing in that planned cycle above is adjusted for the expected length of the book. April was a busy month and May isn’t slowing down yet. I have no major concern about finishing Fated Skies on schedule, but it’s definitely eating, well, all of my time.

I’m also being very, very mean to my Shaman, Captain, and Archmage. I feel a bit bad it, but hopefully it will make for a good book!

The schedule for 2026 remains unchanged:

May 21 – Spirit Blade (Spirit Knight 1)

June 18 – l’Honneur du Noble (Sang du Changelin 3)

July 23 – Alien Olympus (Starship’s Mage 19 / Mars Unconquered 1)

September – Keepers of the Flesh (Saints of the Void 2)

November – Wildcard (House Adamant 6)

As I said last month, I’m hoping to get the Fated Skies Kickstarter live this fall, but we’ll see if I manage to come up for air that long!

Happy reading everyone,

-Glynn

The post State of the Author May 2026 appeared first on Glynn Stewart.

♦

KITCHENER - Petey Kiefer could not be stopped.

The second-year infielder hit two home runs and drove in five runs, leading the Kitchener Panthers to a 9-5 win over the Chatham-Kent Barnstormers Sunday at Jack Couch Park.

Kiefer hit a three-run jack as part of a six-run fourth inning, and a no doubter two-run shot in the eighth to give the home side some late insurance as the Barnstormers inched closer.

Owen MacNeil went four innings in his second start of the season. He gave up two runs on four hits and collected five strikeouts.

Ben Hewitt and Jake Liberta also saw their first action of 2026 on the bump. 

Bawin Colon had some command issues in the ninth and had the tying run at the plate with two away, but was able to get a ground ball and closed it out.

Another highlight of the game came in the ninth, when Mateo Zeppieri took away a home run, robbing Austin Gurney at the left field fence.

Greyson Barrett and Yushin Ohta both hit dingers for the Barnstormers.

Kitchener improves to 2-1, while Chatham-Kent moves to 1-1.

Kitchener is home to London on Thursday night at 7:05 p.m.

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW and #PackThePack for some Kitchener Panthers baseball!

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When I was working with Java, I learned about two powerful keywords- break and continue that help change how loops behave. I mean, they help either stop loops completely or skipp certain parts.

Let’s clearly explore both in a simple and practical way.

Both continue and break are jump statements used to alter the normal flow of loops. They help to control the loop execution by terminating the loop early or skipping specific iterations.

• continue — Skips the current iteration and moves to the next one
• break — Terminates the loop completely

The continue keyword is used to skip the current iteration of a loop and move to next loop.

Example 01: Use continue keyword in a for loop

class ContinueExample{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    for(int i=0;i<5;i++){
      if(i==2){
        continue;
      }
      System.out.println(i);
    }
  }
}

Explanation:

When i == 2, the continue statement is executed. So, the loop skips printing 2 and moves to the next iteration.

Output:

0
1
3
4

When you use the break keyword in a Java program, it immediately exits a loop or switch statement — no matter how many iterations are left.

Example 01: Use break keyword in a loop

class BreakExample{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    for(int i=0; i<10; i++){
        if(i==5){
            break;  // stops the loop when i=5
        }
        System.out.println(i);
     }
  }
}

Explanation:

When i == 5, the loop stops immediately.

Output:

0
1
2
3
4

Example 02 : break in a while loop

class BreakExampleWhileLoop{
    public static void main(String[] args){
        int i=1;

        while(i<=10){
            if(i==7){
              break;
            }
            System.out.println(i);
            i++;
        }
    }
}

Explanation:

The loop runs until i == 7. When i == 7, the loop immediately stops and ignores all remaining code.

Output :

1
2
3
4
5
6

Difference between break and continue:

• Use continue when you want to skip specific values or conditions.
• Use break when you want to stop the loop entirely.

Both keywords are simple but powerful tools that make your code cleaner and more efficient.

Understanding continue and break in Java (With Clear Examples) was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

♦

HAMILTON - Zane Skansi drove in three runs, and Yosuke Fujie brought home two more as the Kitchener Panthers took down Hamilton 7-4 Friday night.

It's Kitchener's first win of the year, and brings their record to 1-1.

Hamilton looked like they were in cruise control to start. They took the 2-0 lead, and Owen Boon had yet to surrender a hit through three innings.

But the Panthers got to last year's MVP in the fourth, courtesy a two-out two-run double from Skansi to tie the game.

Kitchener continued to get it done offensively. 

Mateo Zeppieri walked three times, and stole three bases on the night. Josh Williams went two-for-four and drove in a run.

Evan Elliott went four innings in his first start of the year, giving up two runs on four hits.

Hamilton got as close as getting the go-ahead run to the plate in the eighth, as Elian Serrata struggled with command and walked three batters and clunked one with the bases juiced.

But they got out of it, and Bawin Colon earned his first CBL save, striking out two batters in the ninth to seal it.

Kitchener pitching surrendered just five hits on the night.

The Panthers host Chatham-Kent for the home opener Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.

The first 500 fans in the park get a free Panthers toque! GET YOUR TICKETS NOW and #PackTheJack!