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scottmaclaren · 2 years ago

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Learning Things as We Go: NEXUS

While I've flown on my Nexus card before, I've never been through a land border before, and we learned somethings this weekend. It was rather funny as right after I qualified for my Nexus, I had a trip to the USA, and then a few months later, Covid hit and I wasn't able to use it since.

You don't have to hold up the nexus cards one by one to the RFID reader. You can hold them all up at the same time. There is a display next to the RFID reader that displays a count - this the count for the number of cards that it has successfully read. If the count matches the number of cards you were trying to scan, you are good to go.

Declaring purchases coming back into Canada by land is still all oral declaration just like if you were driving up on your passport. We weren't sure if anything would be different travelling under a Nexus lane but it isn't.

It was great because the nexus lane took us less than 10 minutes while the regular lane had an estimated wait time of 45 minutes.

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scottmaclaren · 3 years ago

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L'Oreal and Mexoryl

As one of countless people interested in skincare (expect more posts about skincare in Canada), sunscreen is a topic that comes up a lot not only to prevent skin cancers, but to slow down the aging process.

Canada continues to have more sunscreen filters approved than the USA, and we do have access to such great filters such as Tinosorb S and M, and Mexoryl, a frustratingly few companies actually use those ingredients in mass market sunscreens and continue to rely on old and not as photostable ingredients such as avobenzone, octocrylene, homosalate and so forth. Avobenzone being of particular note of not being photostable on its own and requiring other ingredients to stabilize it in sunlight.

L'Oreal, the parent company of many cosmetic brands including but not limited to Ombrelle on the mass market side and La Roche Posay, Vichy labs and Bioderma on their luxury skincare side.

To the best of my knowledge, in Canada, L'oreal is the only brand using Tinosorb in sunscreen and it exclusively available in their luxury skincare lines. Mexoryl is currently under patent by L'Oreal and can only be found in their products while Tinsorb is available to be incorporated into any companies products if they choose to purchase it from BASF (a German multinational chemical company).

For example of a sunscreen with Tinosorb, I am very partial to the La Roche Posay Ultra Body Fluid - It retails for around $30 CAD for 150ml.

My tip - skip the face version and buy the body version instead. The ingredients are the same and you get more sunscreen for your dollar.

This bottle contains the below as it's active sunscreen UV filters:

Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 7%, Bemotrizinol (Tinosorb S) 5%, Octisalate 5%, Octocrylene 5%, Avobenzone 3%, Homosalate 2%, Ensulizole 0.5%

Of particular note is that Mexoryl, and Tinosorb are in the top position for active ingredients which is excellent news as you are getting the top quality photostable filters as your primary protection method.

L'Oreal generally advertises any mass market product that uses Mexoryl quite visibly on the front of the bottle. Another skincare Canada favorite is Ombrelle's sport endurance sunscreen for its non oily light texture as a cheaper body sunscreen. It retails for around $16 dollars for 231ml.

What I disagree with is how L'Oreal positions advertising Mexoryl in their mainstream brands. In the bottle below it says "MEXORYL TECHNOLOGY "and then in smaller print "and other sunscreen filters". In my initial reading of this, as Mexoryl was positioned as a the largest, most prominent text, I imagined, and I'm sure many others did as well that Mexoryl would be the primary broad spectrum UV filter.

It is not. The ingredients for the sports endurance SPF 60 is as follows:

Homosalate (10.72%), Octocrylene (6%), Oxybenzone (3.86%), Octisalate (3.21%), Avobenzone (3%), Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl Xl) (0.5%)

From the ingredients list we can see that the bulk of the UV filters are the older less/not photostable ingredients instead of the photostable Mexoyrl giving you the primary UV protection.

I would very much like L'Oreal to be more transparent in that while their product does indeed contain Mexoryl, you are not getting it in a high quantity in the product and since you are only getting such a small amount, it should not be so prominently advertised. I can see this very easily confusing mass market consumers looking for a quality sunscreen.

My biggest wish is that more sunscreen brands in Canada would use other UV filters like Tinosorb but my guess is that the French language laws and Canada's small population is a massive hurdle for any pharmaceutical company to make a new formulation that they would not be able to even sell in the USA as Tinsorb is not approved by the American FDA.

#canada #skincare #sunscreen

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scottmaclaren · 3 years ago

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Everclear Elite Contact Lens Review

I want to write a quick review about these rather cheap contact lenses that I picked up on my last Clearly order.

Clearly is selling a 5 pack of daily wear lenses for $5 which would be perfect for me for how infrequently I want to wear contact lenses. Most of the time anything this cheap would turn me immediately away but I decided that I would try it and worst case, would be out $5 and no harm done.

Everclear lenses are a silicone hydrogel contact lens which Clearly says is manufactured by Visco Vision (A company based in Taiwan). Clearly doesn't list it on the website but the lenses were marked on the box as being made of Olifilcon B. This material seems to be something that only Visco is using as they were the ones who filed to use it at the FDA in 2018. This material has little information that I could find on the internet and it doesn't appear that other brands are using it. At the price point, I was concerned initially that they would be using a similar tactic like Hubble who was using an very old non silicone hydrogel style contact lens material with low oxygen permeability. This is not to say that there are not different kinds of silicone hydrogel, and some being much better than others, but it's a good starting point that it was a hydrogel material.

It also appears that Everclear is a Clearly / Luxottica brand that Visco is private manufacturing for them as on the Everclear website, the privacy policy link takes you to the Clearly website. It was concerning how basic and how little information the website had, and that the 'English' datasheets were actually in German.

For me, this seems like a classic, you get what you pay for, situation. The lenses in my opinion are not good. I could only wear them for at most 5 hours before I wanted to go home and remove them as they felt so dry. I'm not sure if this is a byproduct of just the lenses being cheap and other not including other technology that other companies use to keep their lenses moist throughout the day, or if it just my body not liking this material at all.

In credit to Everclear, I would be appreciative if other brands followed Everclear's suit and made 5 or 10 lens packages available to buy for infrequent wear. It would also make it easier to try different lenses out and see if other companies had better technology.

I recently also tried the Acuvue 1 Day lenses as a comparison, and the lenses easily comfortable all day. They just unfortunately are almost double the price and are only sold in a 30 day or a 90 day pack.

I imagine that the markup on contact lenses must be astronomical so I shall keep hoping that a new company will come in and make a product that is cheaper, but doesn't skimp on comfort.

Clearly is selling a 5-pack of daily wear lenses for $5 which would be perfect for me for how infrequently I want to wear contact lenses. Most of the time anything this cheap would turn me immediately away but I decided that I would try it and worst case, would be out $5 and no harm done.

Everclear lenses are silicone hydrogel contact lenses which Clearly says are manufactured by Visco Vision (A company based in Taiwan). Clearly doesn't list it on the website but the lenses were marked on the box as being made of Olifilcon B. This material seems to be something that only Visco is using as they were the ones who filed to use it at the FDA in 2018. This material has little information that I could find on the internet and it doesn't appear that other brands are using it. At the price point, I was concerned initially that they would be using a similar tactic like Hubble who was using a very old non-silicone hydrogel style contact lens material with low oxygen permeability. This is not to say that there are not different kinds of silicone hydrogel, and some are much better than others, but it's a good starting point that it was a hydrogel material.

It also appears that Everclear is a Clearly / Luxottica brand that Visco is private manufacturing for them as the Everclear website, the privacy policy link takes you to the Clearly website. It was concerning how little information the website had, and that the 'English' datasheets were actually in German.

For me this seems like a classic "you get what you pay for" situation. The lenses in my opinion are not good. I could only wear them for at most 5 hours before I wanted to go home and remove them as they felt so dry and uncomfortable. I'm not sure if this is a byproduct of just the lenses being cheap and not including other technology that other companies use to keep their lenses moist throughout the day, or if it is just my body not liking this material at all.

In credit to Everclear, I would appreciate if other brands followed Everclear's suit and made 5 or 10 lens packages available to buy for infrequent wear. It would also make it easier to try different lenses out and see if other companies had better technology.

I recently also tried the Acuvue 1 Day lenses as a comparison, and the lenses were comfortable for about 8/9 hours. Unfortunately they are almost double the price and are only sold in a 30-day or a 90-day pack.

I imagine that the markup on contact lenses must be astronomical so I shall keep hoping that a new company will come in and make a product that is cheaper but doesn't skimp on comfort.

#eyewear #contact lenses #review

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scottmaclaren · 7 years ago

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Surviving Via Rail: How to Make It Across Canada

In celebration of Canada 150, Via Rail did a really special promotion last year. If you were under the age of 26, and actually managed to buy the Canada 150 youth ticket, you could get unlimited travel for the entire month of July 2017 for $150. Demand for these tickets were so high that Via’s servers crashed and their phone lines were under such high call volume, the phone wouldn’t even ring. But if you were like me and couldn’t let such a deal go by without a fight, and had to stay up late to finish project work for your undergrad anyway, you had a chance of scoring a pass.

Why you should consider my advice?

With my rail pass, I travelled from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Montreal, Québec, to Toronto, Ontario, to Edmonton, Alberta, and then to Vancouver, British Columbia. It was a long journey, but I think I’ve experienced everything you could with an economy class ticket.

As someone who has only travelled by car and plane, long distance rail travel had some changes that I wasn’t prepared for, so hopefully when you travel Canada by rail, you won’t be caught off guard like I was.

Luggage:

You can bring so much luggage with you if you want. I, as a youth passenger, could bring 2 50lbs checked bags with me, and a carry on. Now if you check your bag, you don’t get access to it during the entire train ride, no matter how long your ride is, so pack accordingly. The one part of checking my suitcase that made me nervous is unlike on a plane where your luggage is barcoded and tracked(hopefully) through its journey, the only thing that goes on your bag from Via is a tag that says your bags final destination, like MONTREAL, or TORONTO. This is all they put on your bag so I advice putting your own name tag on your luggage with contact information in case something goes missing.

What I learned was that in every passenger car though, they have extra large bins at near the front of the train car where you can put oversized bags into. Some people put their suitcases there so they were always on hand, but space there is limited at first come, first serve. It did happen where someone was forced to check a bag because they didn’t have enough room in the compartment.

If you’ve just travelled by air, you know it can be a fight sometimes for overhead bin space. Say goodbye to that worry on the train. You get so much over headroom space and leg room, you won’t struggle to fit anything short of a 30 inch suitcase.

Security

The usual airport slog. Sir, please remove your belt. Madam, you need to take off your shoes. This is possibly my least favourite part of airline travel.

Good news. Trains have no security checkpoints. In fact, they have zero security outside of someone checking your ticket once you’re already boarded the train. No bags are X-rayed, no sniffer dogs, no officers at the station, unless perhaps they’re going on vacation on the same train as you. I kept waiting for some kind of an ID check, but it never came. It was honestly refreshing living in world with so much security theatre.

Food

This will not apply if you’re in sleeper class / business class and have access to the full dinning car, but if you’re in any class that doesn’t have meal service included, this will be of use to you. if you want to order from their á la carte food menu, they have dinner services at 2 different times and you can choose which seating you want to eat at. They had a reasonable selection of burgers, chicken dishes, and vegetarian chill. You pre-purchase your meal a few hours ahead and the food was actually way better than I expected. The menu didn’t change while I was on the train so don’t expect a new menu every day. They take cash, or they take credit cards (they take a carbon copy rubbing, and I got a great kick out of that). Via serves snacks, beverages and light sandwiches all day for a really reasonable price. They have a cold and hot water dispenser and that was free to use for all passengers. It frequently was out of water but you can just pour more in through the top hatch. Thanks Via attendants that told me how that worked. They also have little packets of jam, peanut butter, and plastic forks, spoons and knifes.

So a small menu that doesn’t change, but remember how I said no security? You can bring literally anything you want on the train short of alcohol and weapons. The most convenient part of leaving Halifax was it got me thinking about food, and the train station is right next store to Superstore. Once I had my bag checked in and realized the ‘security’ of the station was a small door leading to the train yard, I walked over the store and stocked up on everything I could think of that didn’t need to be refrigerated. At the time, I didn’t know about the hot water dispenser and that opens up a new class of food. I recommend things like:

trail mix

granola bars

things like Cliff bars

bagels

bananas ( I brought some blueberries but made sure to eat them in a few days)

jerky meats

pop tarts

instant ramen, instant oatmeal (get the one in bowls)

tea bags / instant coffee ( you can buy tea / coffee for a few dollars if you want)

water, juices, drink powder, UHT milk

Train Stops

Because freight always gets priority on the rail lines, you’ll probably experience stopping for no reason, and then waiting for an undetermined length of time until the cargo train goes past. This means the ‘schedule’ you have, is a suggestion at best. For example, my scheduled departure vs the actual departure was a few hours apart. You must keep checking their website or calling Via before you leave to board your train or you could be stuck waiting at the station for hours.

The longer the train is delayed, the less time you’ll get at each city stop. Sometimes stops might happen in the middle of the night even though the stop was scheduled for 2pm because the train can get really, really delayed. if your stop isn’t one of the major city stops, you need to make sure you’re on top of where you are along the line. If they’re running behind, the train might only stop for 15 minutes and you will need to make sure to be off that train or else you’re stuck on the train while your luggage will no longer be on the train.

I highly recommend getting off the train every time you can. It was great to get a quick taste of all the cities you get to roll past, and it is an excellent opportunity to go get some fresh food or to stock up on some more snacks.

What else to bring

I wish that someone had told me how cold it gets on the train. They air condition the cars quite heavily and was freezing at night. If I took another trip, I would have packed a small blanket but luckily for my trip, my jacket was cozy enough.

I think my most important advice is to chat with people in the train. They’re going to be there with you for a while so it’s a great way to make friends. On one leg of my trip, we had a crash course of how to play Dungeons and Dragons. It was such a blast.

Happy travels!

#train #trains #via rail #travel

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scottmaclaren · 7 years ago

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It was great to come back to UBC to see the show my friend was a part of designing. It’s called “She Kills Monsters” and is a Dungeons and Dragons themed production.

#UBC #theatre #arts

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scottmaclaren · 8 years ago

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