Here and there

Here's a way you might save money this year: change the font in the documents you print.

Because different fonts require different amounts of ink to print, you could be buying new printer cartridges less often if you wrote in, say, Century Gothic rather than Arial. Schools and businesses could save thousands of dollars with font changes.

When Printer.com tested popular fonts for their ink-friendly ways, Century Gothic and Times New Roman topped the list.

The amount of ink a font drains is mainly driven by the thickness of its lines. A font with "narrow" or "light" in its name is usually better than its "bold" or "black" counterpart, ink research at Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top maker of printers.

Also, serif fonts — those with short horizontal lines at the top and bottom of characters — tend to use thinner lines and thus less ink than a "sans serif" counterpart.

But while using less ink at home can help you buy roughly one fewer printer cartridge each year, it's not necessarily better for the environment.

That's because some fonts that use less ink, including Century Gothic, are also wider. A document that's one page in Arial could extend to a second page if printed in Century Gothic.

The standard advice for trimming printing expenses still applies: Print in "draft mode," if you can. Use both sides of a page and do a print preview to make sure you're not printing pages with useless text such as a copyright line. Using an ink-saving font is just one more technique to consider.

And the greenest way to save on ink is not to print at all.

That's the philosophy Microsoft Corp. said it uses in deciding which fonts to include in its Outlook and Word applications. The more pleasing a font looks on the screen, the less tempted someone will be to print, said Simon Daniels, a program manager for Microsoft's typography group.

That's why the company changed its defaults in Office 2007 from Arial and Times New Roman to Calibri and Cambria.

They’re trying to move the threshold of when people hit the print button.

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It was 1893 and Kelowna wasn’t even a spot on the maps yet but Luigi Rampone was sold on the idea to come here by the Casorso family because they believed it was the place for him to begin farming.

His first farm was twenty-seven acres on what is now Gordon Drive and his crop was onions. In 1904, Domenic Rampone’s grandfather, also Domenic, and his brother Camillo came over and he also began farming in the area on the land where Don-O-Ray fruit and vegetables located a few years later. Luigi’s largest cheque from growing onions came in 1919 and it was $19,000 and the onions were shipped East by rail. Luigi added fruit trees, dairy, vegetables and a tobacco ranch to the operation in 1930.

Grandmother brought the seeds for the first Rampone garlic with her from southern Italy in 1938. They still grow this tasty garlic today.

Domenic’s father Val began the Rampone Farms on Gordon Road on land that was originally the Oblete Fathers land. Domenic and his family took over the farming in 1978 and this year will see the end of the Rampone Farms and their fresh fruit and vegetable store which has been a fixture on the roadside for thirty-four years. We have feasted on their marvelous corn crop for years. The family has sold the farm on Gordon Road.

It is a mystery who has purchased it, and what their plans are, although we do see two new greenhouses been constructed on the land in front of the large home.

Domenic and his family have purchased a new farm in South Kelowna with apples, garlic, corn and tomatoes, which they will sell at their booth in the Farmer’s Market.
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There are two new hotels in the sports tournament city of Kamloops with the opening of the Best Western Kamloops Hotel and the Holiday Inn & Suites Kamloops.

The Holiday Inn is the first hotel built on the city’s north shore. At a cost of more than $9 million, it has 74 rooms equipped with LCD TVs, granite countertops and high-speed Internet access. It offers a full service White Spot restaurant and lounge, an indoor pool, a 12-person hot tub and a 150 person meeting room.

The Best Western Kamloops Hotel replaced the long-standing Sagebrush Motel, on Columbia Street, south of the river. It is the first hotel to be built in the area in about 20 years. The Best Western has 81 rooms furnished with granite-countered furniture, flat-screen TVs and high-speed technology. The swimming pool opened April 30. With its use of geothermal technology, the hotel is one of the greenest in the city.

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We have a lot of people here in the valley that travel to Cuba for holidays all the time and they should know that travel health insurance policies have changed there.

Travelers will have a choice of the insurance we have here or a policy you buy from the communist agency there.

Proof of medical coverage will become mandatory for all visitors to Cuba starting May 1.

The Cuba Tourist Bureau in Canada notified tour operators recently and has promised a general announcement with more details shortly.

About 914,000 Canadians visited the land of Fidel Castro last year, according to the bureau.

In future, if Canadians arrive without coverage, a Cuban company will sell them medical coverage at an airport, port or marina.

Government announcements said about 20 per cent of visitors now arrive without coverage.

Cuba will not force its insurance policies on anyone with individual or group travel health insurance coverage from Canada. Tourism is a major source of Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings.

So proceed with caution. Don’t leave home without adequate coverage.


The story was a national release last week that about luxury home sales in Canada. Kelowna got the headlines sales soaring in the first quarter, up 700 per cent.

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These were staggering statistics about Luxury homes in Kelowna. These are the actual numbers.

Sales from 01/01/2008 – 03/31/2008 16

Sales from 01/01/2009 – 03/31/2009 3

Sales from 01/01/2010 – 03/31/2010 17

You can see that 2009 was an anomaly in the marketplace. Rather than 2010 indicate a 700% increase, it would appear 2009 experienced a severe drop from 2008.

There are currently 448 Active listings in Central Okanagan over $1,000,000. Compare that to 6 sales in March.

Absorption Rate – 74.5 months of inventory (over 6 years)