The bike lane issue

So far in Toronto's race for mayor, all of the contending candidates who have said anything about bike lanes on city streets have proposed either an outright freeze on new bike lanes, or that lanes should be painted on side streets and removed from busier routes. I have a certain respect for those candidates who have come out against cycling (although I strongly disagree, and this is a vote-deciding issue for me). But proposing to install bike lanes on quiet side streets? That's just stupid.

Here's the problem: cyclists (myself included) already ride on busy major roads, especially in the core. Nobody who rides a bike in this city is going to prefer to zig-zag up and down through neighbourhoods - which are designed to prevent through traffic - when there's a perfectly good, straight, level street running exactly where we want to go. Putting a network of bike lanes through the neighbourhood is going to do nothing at all to attract cyclists, and will just inconvenience residents who lose street parking space.

The whole point of installing bike lanes on major streets is to separate vulnerable bicycle traffic from fast-moving vehicle traffic, and prevent the often violent (and sometimes deadly) conflicts between the two mixing in the same lane. There is already a good volume of cyclists on Toronto's busy thoroughfares, like Bloor, Jarvis, Queen and Spadina for example. That's because those streets are the most direct routes to where cyclists want to go - exactly the same reason those routes are busy vehicle routes. There are going to be large volumes of cyclists on those streets, no matter where you install a bike lane. If bike lanes are going to be useful at all, they must go where the cyclists already are.

If the problem with installing bike lanes is limited road space, as I'm sure it is in many areas, then on-street parking should be removed first. Thoroughfares like Bloor and Queen should be for moving traffic. More parking could be made available on side streets instead. Bike lanes on side streets are a waste of time and money, and convenient for nobody. As long as there are no bike lanes on the routes that cyclists use, we're going to continue to have problems. I hope one of our candidates has the courage to say so.

We need more options for TTC funding

Last week, the Ontario government delivered its budget, which everyone in Toronto now knows slashed funding for municipal transit, diverting funds to develop rural highways instead. It's a blatant political move intended to build Liberal support in rural Ontario. Clearly the Liberal party is confident in their urban vote base (they most certainly shouldn't be). What it means for Toronto is that mayor David Miller's hard work and advocacy for almost his entire term as mayor to secure upper-level government funding for the expanded light rail system in the city is wiped away in one bonehead political move. Although much money has already been spent and construction has already started, most of the system will now never be built.

This is the kind of political dumbassery that left Toronto with the Allen expressway to nowhere, the Black Creek stub, two land-wasting fragments at either end of the long-scrapped Richview and Crosstown expressways, and two severely over-capacity transportation modes to the core - the crumbling Gardiner/DVP and the equally congested Yonge subway - leaving the city with near-permanent gridlock, and no vision whatsoever how to get the city moving again.

Toronto's transit system has a lot of now well-publicized problems, but what it needs more than anything is a steady source of non-political revenue. This can't be achieved through one-time
politically sensitive government handouts. In short, since the Ontario government is not willing to provide the region with guaranteed, sustainable transit funding, Toronto should seek that funding elsewhere.

Part of the problem with the TTC's funding model (and Toronto's budget in general) is that many people commute into the city from neighbouring communities, and those people don't directly contribute to the city's tax revenue. The only money that Toronto collects from
those people who use its services daily is limited to what the province decides to provide. So the amount contributed by someone who lives just west of Etobicoke Creek and visits Toronto every day is the same as that contributed by someone who lives in Thunder Bay and has never been to Toronto. That's really not fair to taxpayers in Toronto. Or in Thunder Bay, for that matter.

So how to solve the regional funding disparity? Road tolls are a must, in my opinion. That is, electronically-collected per-use tolls on Toronto's municipal expressways - the Gardiner and DVP, exactly like the 407 except that low-income commuters could apply for an exemption, and tolls collected would go directly back to road projects. Tearing down the Gardiner shouldn't even be considered (not yet) - traffic on that highly congested route has no other route to use.

And what about transit funding? Last year, New York instituted the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax, a small (less than 1%) flat tax on payroll, collected from employers in a designated area surrounding New York City. Companies in the city and several surrounding counties are required to collect & remit the transit tax to the state government, which directs the money back to the Metro Transit Authority. By imposing this tax, the people and businesses that benefit from the region's transit system contribute more to it, as it should be, and the MTA has at least some consistent funding. Ontario should consider instituting a tax like the MCTMT in the GTA, and if the province won't, we should call on the Toronto Board of Trade and other chambers of commerce in the region to levy a similar fee among their own membership, and even consider handing over transit to the private sector, if that's what it takes to get the region moving.

Local and regional transit is vital to Toronto and the GTA, and this region is the economic hub of the province. We deserve better than our 30-year-old system of decaying, overcrowded and underfunded transit.

Read: [NY] Senate Passes Metropolitan Transportation Authority Finance and Accountability Package

--
Sent from my mobile device, on a bus, stuck in traffic

Blogging from Gmail

I just this morning learned that Google actually took the time to develop a Gmail app for my cheap Nokia cell phone. In a sudden brainstorm, I realised I could use Gmail with the app to post content on my blog! Which is good, because I've been away from it for two months, and have two to three hours on the bus every day alone with my thoughts (or much more often, Twitter). I just need to bookmark the Blogspot posting e-mail address, and I'll be good to go.

I hope Fido doesn't charge me a fortune for the bandwidth the Gmail app uses. Won't know until I get my next bill, I guess.

I'm riding the \/\/ave, but I don't know what that means yet

Happy new year everyone! Yeah, a few days late I know. And "everyone" is about 3 people. But that doesn't stop me!

I got a Google Wave invitation this week, and I've been playing around with it a bit. So far nobody I've sent an invite to has responded, so it's a bit lame at the moment. Did spend some time tonight following a conversation on Google's open letter to China that came out today. You know, where they're dropping their overt censorship and threatening to pull out of China completely if the government continues to hack their database to steal information on so-called dissidents?

If you actually haven't read about this, go read the letter NOW. This could be all smoke, or this could be the single most important tech development ever. Interesting read, nonetheless.

Ever since starting on at my last job, I've been maintaining two Google accounts, one primarily for gmail, and another for applications. My employer wasn't keen on my username ivanvector showing up in online corporate documents, so I made another "professional" account. I used the new account to do things like start this blog, and now I'm having issues having to switch back and forth between the two accounts, especially since getting on board with Wave. I've learned over the last couple years that developing an online identity is just as important for us tech types as developing a professional identity is for one's career, and creating a second account to hide my username was a big mistake on my part.

So, given that I no longer have that job, I'm attempting to reverse that decision. Google doesn't make it easy - at present there is no way to merge two Google accounts, and I cannot link my gmail to another existing account. So I'm stuck with two accounts, and deciphering which login to use on a multitude of sites I've signed up for over the last 2 years, with the explosion of social networking.

I took my first step tonight, and it was an easy one. I installed Google Chrome on my laptop running Ubuntu Karmic Koala (featured as my Twitter background!) and then enabled posting to the blog from my gmail account. At present the two accounts look identical but I'll eventually be filing the old one away as a sort of archive of old posts, or deleting it entirely if that ends up being feasible. But for now there are a bunch of blogs that I am following twice.

I will reconcile that. But not tonight, it's 1:30am and I'm fresh out of awake. I am looking forward to seeing someone online to Wave with though.

g

Letter From a Jilted Customer

Going through an old e-mail account this morning, I came across this gem I wrote to Belair Direct last fall after my repeated calls failed to resolve my issue, which was that my address needed to be updated, and they didn't seem to be able to handle that.  Since the internet is for the free exchange of information, and maybe I can save someone the unpleasant experience of dealing with this company, I'm unleashing it on the blog.  Some personal details cleansed, of course.

===

Hello,

Over the last year, I have had a number of problems with your company, and I do not feel as though I am being taken seriously as a customer at all. If you look into my account history you will see a series of complaints filed around January this year regarding a collision dispute, where you tried to tell me that being rear-ended while making a left turn is somehow my fault, but this is not what I'm writing about.

Problem #1: I called on Aug. 28 this year to create a new auto policy, since I had separated from my wife and moved to a new address.  I have the e-mail and the temporary slip indicating my new policy number and new address.  I was given a new quote and agreed to purchase the new policy.  I received the e-mail notification that the old policy (<policy#1>) had been cancelled, but I never received a notification about my new policy (<policy#2>).  I didn't think anything of it at the time since I had my temporary slip.  I called today to update my address again since I have moved again, and found that my first address was still listed on my policy, and the CSR I talked to today couldn't find a record of the address change in your system.  Why then do I have a temporary slip with the proper address?

Problem #2:  I received a quote on my new policy that was based on the address that I had provided, or so I thought.  When I updated my address today, my annual premium nearly doubled. If I do an online quote through any number of websites online (can't do one through yours because I'm already a client) the quotes I receive are over $500 less than the rate I was given today.  Care to explain?

Problem #3: I tried to log in to your website to review my portfolio.  When I click to register, the website indicates that my online portfolio is already activated.  I have no idea what the password is.  I try to fill out the password recovery form with my current policy number and my driver's license number.  The website indicates that my license number is invalid. I have entered <my valid Ontario driver's license number>, which IS my license number.  I have it right in front of me.  So if this number is wrong, exactly what license number is on my portfolio?

Problem #4:  Belair will not update my tenant coverage because my new apartment building is a "high commercial risk" because it's "too close to a commercial area".  What the hell does that mean?  If I live in the city I can't get insurance?

Do I even have coverage right now?  Am I paying you for absolutely nothing?

Greg Burrell
gburrell@<my old isp>.com

===

Belair responded within a day that they would call me on Monday to discuss. When they hadn't called by Tuesday, I cancelled my policy. They also fought me on their 30-day new policy guarantee, saying they were going to charge me almost half the value of the policy for early termination, which took another few hours of angry calls to sort out. Now I have a much less expensive policy which includes tenant coverage, and actual customer service.

Caveat emptor.

Censorship and Facebook

"It's like twitter. Except we charge people to use it."

It's come to my attention that a link I posted to Facebook somewhat recently has been flagged as inappropriate "by Facebook users" and blocked.  I fully realize that Facebook needs to rely on its users to identify inappropriate content and select it for review, but I also expect that someone actually reviews content once in a while, or at the very least that some kind of mechanism exists for a ban to be contested (I can find none).

The content in the link I posted is a humourous article detailing an e-mail exchange between a frustrated designer and a client who did not want to pay.  There is maybe one graphic in the article that might be considered offensive to the sort of people who think that devils are playing tricks in their eyes and making the lights in the magic box dance in contemptuous shapes, but for anyone who's been on the internet at all in the last 20 years, this article is timid at best.

Here is the link again, and yes I am going to attempt to link here from Facebook.  http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

In my mind, Facebook has been on a tremendous downhill slide over at least the past year, as the site has tried to become more and more like Twitter, and in the process has destroyed much of the functionality that made Facebook unique and attractive as a social networking platform.  Now, it very much is not, and I have to say that if I didn't already have an account with established connections, my incentive to create an account today would be nil.  I don't want to play games and be inundated with my contacts' progress in those games to no end, and the other features that once made Facebook exciting are now recreated and improved by other websites like Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which I use regularly.

If Facebook wants to be the moral conscience of the internet, well good luck.  The internet is a community particularly well-known for rejection of censorship, and if that's the route they want to take, Facebook can easily censor itself out of existence.  And Facebook should have realized by now that trying to be Twitter is futile.  We already have a Twitter.  It's called Twitter.  And it has been so ridiculously successful in large part because there is no other Twitter, no competing standard, and everyone who uses a Twitter-like application [also] uses Twitter.  It's also successful because there is no option to block content (only users), meaning that if I post content I feel is harmless, and someone has a lame issue with it, it's their problem, not mine.

One of Facebook's potential niches is content-sharing, which is another thing it has in common with Twitter that Twitter does better.  By throwing up barriers to effective content sharing (like making it easy for potentially hostile users to make any content universally un-share-able) Facebook is shooting itself in the foot.

At this point I should note that the text I've associated with the link is from the article, and the fact that I'm ranting about how Facebook needs to be Facebook and leave the being Twitter to Twitter is actually coincidence.

Fuel economy experiment

As almost guaranteed by the fact that I said I would, I ended up not blogging at all on the trip to PEI.  It was great, of course, but we were so busy I hardly had time to check my e-mail, or the few Twitter messages that get delivered to my nonsmartphone.  I have a huge folder of pics to go through and post up on my Flickr account, which I have yet to do.  One thing I did do is keep track of our gas mileage on the trip.

I've been keeping track of my mileage since I've owned a car, back in 2003 when I bought my first car.  You see, doing things like saving small bits of paper and entering numbers into spreadsheets is pretty much as exciting as life gets for an accountant, until you get around to actually making a graph - that's like Christmas.  It's been interesting to me to see how my driving style affects my mileage, and to rate myself against government fuel economy ratings.  On this trip, with Tay having barely learned to drive the car before we left, I had the opportunity to compare myself with another person driving the same car.

First off, the car.  We drive a 2002 Ford Focus sedan, with the high-performance Zetec 2-litre 16-valve 4-cylinder motor mated to a 5-speed manual transaxle.  The EPA website gives this car a rating of 10.7 L/100km city, 7.6L/100km highway (22/31 mpg).  Supposedly the automatic model gets better mileage; I call bullshit.  Keep in mind my air conditioner is broken, so we don't waste gas using it.

Here's where we get to our "experiment".  After the fact, and without having thought of it beforehand, I decided to compare my driving to Tay's over the course of the trip, in terms of fuel economy and what I'll call "time economy".  More on that later.

I was a truck driver in a past career, and am comfortable with driving for long stretches without stopping, so I drove for about 4-6 hours at a time.  I've developed a style of driving a constant speed and using cruise control, and drove with it set at a reasonable speed, except when passing, and in hilly areas where I let the car slow down on the uphill and use gravity to accelerate on the downhill.  Twice on the trip I drove from one gas station to the next.  On those tanks we scored an impressive 6.8L/100km (41 mpg), but we'll say my average was 7L/100km.

Tay, on the other hand, doesn't really enjoy driving for long periods, and was hell-bent on getting to the next stop.  She drove for 2-3 hours or so at a time, didn't use cruise control, and drove ... let's just say she drove faster than I did.  Although she didn't last for an entire fuel-stop-to-fuel-stop leg of the trip, our combined mileage rose to about 8.5L/100km, a 25% increase.  Since that's about a 50/50 split between the two of us, we can assume that her mileage was even worse, let's say 40% worse - a conservative estimate apparently.  We'll say her mileage was closer to 9.5L/100km (30 mpg).  How she drove turned out to be closer to the EPA's estimate, but I have yet to explain why I think that's bullshit.

Here's the fun part!  Since crunching all that info into my spreadsheet, and seeing the difference in our mileage, I thought it would be interesting to figure out which is the more time-economic style of driving.  It's obvious that my driving is less expensive than Tay's, but which one actually gets us there in less time?  Here comes the math, and I won't be giving imperial conversions in the next section.

Our drive from Charlottetown to Toronto gives better numbers, because we filled the car just outside of both cities.  The drive was 1,617km, and we used 122.3L of gasoline which cost $119.21 to replace.  We'll assume that we can use 40L of gas between fillups, and that a fillup includes a pit stop and takes 30 minutes (more realistic than you think).  If I drive, we can go 571km between fillups in 4h45m.  We need to fill up 3 times, and the trip takes just shy of 15 hours.  If Tay drives, we can go 421km to a tank in 3 hours.  We need to gas up one extra time, and the trip takes 13.5 hours, a full 90 minutes faster.  At our average cost of 97.5 cents per litre, I've spent $107.25 ($7.15/h) and Tay has spent $149.76 ($11.09/h).

It turns out that driving faster does make the trip shorter, but you definitely pay for it.  Honestly I was expecting there to be more of a difference in cost and in time, and I'm not going to be changing my habits any time soon.  Drive safe!

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not suggesting that you should drive above the speed limit on any public or private road, anywhere, at any time, ever.  Speeding is both dangerous and illegal - you could lose your car, your license, your life.  Please be careful and always drive safe.

PEI Trip, Day minus one

For the past few weeks Tay & I have been making excited references to each other along the lines of "know where we'll be 2 weeks from now?  PEI!"  and so on.  Well today, two weeks has become two days.  That's right, we're leaving for the island in the morning!  (Actually, this morning it was "guess where we'll be tomorrow?" "uhh, somewhere in Québec?")

We're leaving in the morning for Prince Edward Island, Tay's home province, land of potatoes and lobster and red sand and Anne of Green Gables.  I consider tomorrow to be Day Zero, since we will spend the entire day completing the 18-hour drive from Toronto through Montréal, Québec City, New Brunswick, the Confederation Bridge and halfway across the island.  Tay's been learning to drive the Focus (it's a 5-speed) and has driven around town some but so far hasn't been out on the highway.  We'll cover that tomorrow, in a sort of trial by fire.  I'll likely drive through the big cities, although she's vowed to take the first shift, including leaving our apartment in a very hilly area and setting out on one of the busiest stretches of freeway on the continent.  It will be very early though, and I'm sure she'll be fine.  This will also be the first time I've ever been a passenger in my own car on any sort of trip, which I'm finding slightly nerve-wracking.  Not that I'm nervous about her driving at all, just that I'm not used to sitting so close to the sidewalk.

I'm planning to blog each day during the trip, although that could quickly change depending on what we're up to and how much I've had to drink.  I have my mom's Fuji Finepix F480 borrowed for the trip for taking good pictures.  However, in my very basic preliminary examination of the camera, it seems locked in a fully-automatic mode that isn't going to let me play around with photo settings very much, which makes me sad.  So I'll bring along my old Pentax camera too, for familiarity and for assurance that I can take a really decent photo if need be.  The major benefit of the Fuji is the rechargeable battery, of course.

I probably won't have time to post any pics until we're back next week, but I'm sure we'll have plenty.

Picasa 3.5

I spent most of tonight playing around with Picasa 3.5, which may not be particularly new but is "new to me" tonight. I mentioned in a previous post that I was considering opening up a Flickr account, hoping that I'd be able to put up higher quality pictures than, say, on Blogger, or more specifically Facebook. So now I'm playing with the BlogThis! function in Picasa.

BlogThis! is not a new feature, I remember it being included even in very early versions of Google's photo library software. I've just never used it.

The picture in the start of this article was on my hard drive. It's a photo I took of the Toronto skyline from the Leslie Spit. Tay & I rode out one afternoon early in the summer, not long after I brought my bike here from my parents' basement in London. Picasa tells me the details of the camera that was used to take the picture, either my Pentax Optio 330GS or my mom's Fuji Finepix that I happened to have at the time. The problem is I can't tell right now since Picasa's blog editing window is open on top of everything. Of course I can easily go back and edit the post afterwards, but that wouldn't really be a fair review. I will add some comments after posting and finding out how it looks.

For me, this editor is pretty bare. It does have all of the features of the web-based Blogger editing tools, but it's a lot less pretty. Basically just a box with rich text tools. I'd like to be able to add a caption to the thumbnail, or do anything other than just drag it around, really. Or add another photo. Well, let's see how it looks.

**

Well, I wasn't too keen on having yet another login to another site, especially when I found out that Flickr is run by Yahoo, the same people that are shutting down my website next month.  I don't like all these different logins, and having another e-mail account I'll never check.  But then again I was going to have to use a different account for Picasa Web Albums anyway (long story, work related).  What sold me on Flickr is its camera directory, which showcases photos done by other photographers with a particular camera.  So I can click on the Pentax Optio 330GS, and instantly see what's possible with my little wonder.

Now I just need sunsets, mountains, and funky-looking trees!

See my first Flickr uploads at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanvector.

Twice Baked Potatoes

Tay & I have been trying to eat what's in our fridge and cupboards over the last few weeks.  It's sort of like rotation in the produce department, except most of what we have doesn't go bad.  On the last trip to Price Chopper I picked up a value pack of steaks at 50% off, and thought for a change that baked potato would be a good accompaniment.  I brought home some good-sized baking potatoes with the steaks, and figured we could put something together out of what we had in the fridge.  Of course, I often start cooking without having any real plan, so just after the potatoes went in the oven Tay suggested we make twice baked potatoes.  For which we had almost none of the ingredients and Tay ended up running down the street to the Valu Mart as I prepped the steaks, defeating the purpose of not buying an entire meal and eating what we have.

Anyway, this is basically what happened:

Tay's Twice Baked Potatoes (makes 4 medium potatoes)

Ingredients (approximate as always):

• 4 russet baking potatoes - size 90 or whatever is commonly available on the market
• cooking oil - enough to dip potatoes in (1 tbsp ish)
• salt - I used coarse ground sea salt, dunno how much
• 2-3 green onions or 4-6 stalks chives, diced (dried chives would do)
• 1/2 cup (or so) butter or margarine - we used a salt-free margarine
• sour cream - 250g tub
• bacon bits (Tay bought strips of bacon to cook because it was cheaper)
• cheddar (or your favourite kind of) cheese, enough for 2-3 strips per potato, or shredded

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Wash potatoes and scrub with a potato brush, or gently with a scrub pad being careful not to remove too much of the skin - you'll want thick skins.  Pierce each potato deeply with a fork a half dozen times to let steam out during cooking.  Pour the cooking oil into a shallow bowl, and roll the washed potatoes in the oil.  You can use your fingers to spread oil all over the skin of the potatoes, then put the oiled potatoes on a plate.  Sprinkle and try to cover evenly with the salt.  Place the potatoes in the oven directly on the rack, and put a baking dish or drip tray on the rack underneath to catch drippings from the potatoes, or your smallish Beach apartment is going to fill with smoke awful quick.  Trust me.  Bake the potatoes for an hour to an hour and a half, until the skin appears wrinkled and golden.

The long baking time gives you ample time to dice your onions/chives, prep your steak or other meat, or if you prefer, get drunk.  It also gives you ample time to send your girlfriend to the grocery store because you don't have any of the ingredients you need, and then to cook the bacon if you choose to go that route.

When the potatoes are baked, remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack until they are cool enough to handle.  Be careful, potatoes hold heat really well!  When they are cool enough, or if you're brave enough to do this with oven mitts, use a sharp knife to cut a slit along the length of each potato from end to end, and squeeze at the ends to open them.  Use a spoon to scoop out the inside of the potatoes into a mixing bowl, and save the empty shells for the next step.

To the mixing bowl with the potatoes, add the margarine and let it melt from the heat of the potato, then fold in the sour cream and onions/chives.  Mix well!  Tay used my grandma's electric stand mixer, because she loves to use it for everything but it really gets the job done.  Use a spoon to stuff the empty potato shells with the mixture in the bowl.  You should have enough to fill each potato shell enough for them to be just overflowing.

I cut the potatoes just a bit too far and the shells didn't hold up when I re-stuffed the potatoes, so we needed a tray with high sides (like this 8x8 cake pan) to finish baking.  Add the bacon bits to the potatoes, and cover with the sliced or shredded cheese.  If you are going to use a pan like this, I recommend greasing the sides.  I didn't, and the potatoes took some effort to get out of the pan after re-baking.

Return the potatoes to the oven for another 10-15 minutes to cook the potato stuffing and melt the cheese.  As an added touch, I broiled for about 5 minutes to brown the cheese, as seen in the picture.  Ignore the dirty pans and messy stove, that is not part of the recipe.

These can be served with more sour cream on the side if you prefer, although we just ate them as-is.  I was really impressed with Tay's suggestion, and the way they turned out.  As an accompaniment to a decent-size steak, one potato would serve one person.  However, it was a good thing we made four, because the discount steaks turned out really REALLY tough, enough that we ended up throwing them out when even the cats weren't interested.

Happy baking!  And remember, put the batteries back in the smoke detector when you're done.

Labour Day Cruising Around Toronto

This weekend, the last long weekend of a somewhat lousy summer (weather-wise), I wanted to make sure I got out on my bike at least once.  With Tay working Saturday and Monday, I thought that Sunday would be a good day for us to get out together and cruise along the waterfront, and maybe go out to the Toronto Islands while the Air Show was going on.  We ended up running some errands in the car on Sunday though, and we were both tired when we came home, so Monday ended up being my bike day.

I set out in the late morning, as I usually do with no particular destination in mind.  I biked along the Martin Goodman Trail from the east end near me, along the Lakeshore direct route between Leslie and Cherry streets, and back to the path along Queen's Quay downtown.  At Lower Yonge Street I contemplated heading out to the islands on my own, but thought I'd save that for the next time I head out with Tay (she's never been!)

Traffic west of Yonge was getting intense, due to the CNE going on and the Air Show about to start.  Lots of cars and bikes on the road, but everyone was behaving well.  I left Queen's Quay at the west end and rode along the path towards the CNE grounds and past Ontario Place, dodging wayward pedestrians all the way.  I suppose people can be forgiven for wandering randomly around the path, but when someone comes up behind you ringing a bell, yes, I expect you at least take notice, and move over if possible.  This problem doesn't affect only cyclists on the path.  I came across a diminutive woman jogging along, literally yelling and screaming profanities at people who were ignoring her and stepping in front of her as she tried to pass.  Pedestrian vs. pedestrian violence?  Further along, where the MGT was detoured to make way for more car parking, there were actually street meat vendors set up ON THE PATH.  I really gave up at that point and decided to bike on the grass wherever there was open space.

After getting by the detour and coming back to Lakeshore, I was surprised by one of the US Navy F/A-18 Blue Angels doing a fly-by, and just about fell off my bike.  A few minutes later I left the path again to ride to the shore, and stopped for a bit to take in the show.  I stopped and took some pics (not of the air show) and then continued on to the Humber River bridge, where I stopped for more photos.  I continued on into Etobicoke and realized I didn't really know where I was when I ended up in someone's gated parking lot somehow and had to turn back.  A little ways further on Lakeshore and I recognized the Mimico neighbourhood, and decided that I was far enough west for today.

I rode up Royal York Road to the Queensway to start my return trip via downtown.  Since it was a holiday there was practially no traffic, and the lack of bike lanes on the Queensway wasn't a problem for the most part.  I had a hiccup at the Kingsway interchange and Humber River bridge - there is a path off to the south of the roadway that it turns out does not cross the river, and after about 30 minutes of exploring I determined that the only way to get where I wanted to go was to continue along the edge of the Queensway roadway under the Kingsway overpass, and due to lack of visibility and high speed limits I elected to ride (illegally) on the sidewalk for about 100m.  Bike lanes start on the Queensway one block east of here, and I really don't see what the problem is with continuing them west - there is plenty of road.

At the Queen/King/Roncesvalles intersection I had to weave through some slow-moving traffic to get into the lane I needed to be in to continue on Queen Street.  This would have been plenty dangerous if the cars weren't completely stopped because of CNE traffic.  The Blue Angels were doing more flyovers as I continued through Parkdale.  Under the Queen/Dufferin rail crossing, which is under construction, I was treated to a horn from a driver who had plenty of room to pass, and I was already riding as far over as I could get without kneeing concrete.  Said driver sped off without further incident, and I'm happy to report this was the only vehicle confrontation I had on the entire trip.

I stopped for lunch at Queen & Spadina, for a bit of a recharge, and to think about my route home.  I noted the narrow shoulder painted onto Spadina, and surmised that it couldn't possibly be a bike path - the width is less than my handlebars!  I rode west to Bay and north to Gerrard.  I stopped for the red light at Gerrard & Jarvis, where a crossing pedestrian turned and said "good job, buddy" and I have no idea what that meant.I expected that I would turn south to the bike lanes on Dundas at some point east of the Don Valley, but I continued on all the way to Greenwood which is my usual turn south to Queen anyway.  Traffic in the Beach was crazy as usual, and I stopped at Endz to pick up a new pair of shorts before riding the rest of the way home.

After trying to plot the route on Google Maps (which won't let you make a route on bike paths in Toronto), I figure I rode about 42km in about three and a half hours, which is a pretty good pace for me.

I found that cars passing me tend to move into the next lane to do so when possible, or else pass me slowly, which is nice.  If I'm in a situation where a car wouldn't have room to pass I either wait or take the middle of the lane, depending on traffic.  The few times I had a car turning right in front of me caused problems, because it's my habit to slow down and wait and this seems to confuse the drivers making the turns, as they start turning but then stop (blocking my path) as they wait for me to pass, and then I have to ride into the crosswalk.

In general, Toronto has a long way to go to make its thoroughfares more bicycle-friendly.  Bike routes that don't connect to other bike routes are useless, and a path that leads into someone's gated private parking is just ridiculous.  That being said, I will continue to ride for leisure and exercise, but it'll be a long time before I consider riding to work in rush hour traffic, given the complete lack of infrastructure north of the Beach.

We are not at war

I've been working on a blog post for a few days relating my experiences cycling in Toronto.  Back in the spring, I brought my bike to the city from my parents' basement (where it had been since I was about 16) and I've been out & about with it quite a bit, mostly around my area, but also along the Waterfront and even downtown on a few occasions.  Likely owing to my lack of exposure and the time of the week that I ride, I have not experienced what many drivers and cyclists have referred to as a war on cars/drivers/bicycles/cyclists.  The target of the supposed "war" changes depending on who is talking, but the reference is to the perceived general hostility between drivers and bicyclists in the city.  In my opinion, the characterization of an ongoing "war" is likely the result of a few bad examples leading to broad stereotypes of drivers' and cyclists' behaviour, and is largely political.

The truth is that my experience both riding and driving in the city has been overwhelmingly pleasant.  I have not witnessed this hostility, neither in my car nor on my bike.  I was about to present my own opinion to the blogosphere, that the characterization of an ongoing "war" on our streets was going to lead to unnecessary emotion and violence on our roads.

On Monday night, this happened.  Witnesses suggest an apparently minor altercation at a downtown stoplight between a cyclist and a driver escalated to violence, leading to the driver speeding away with the cyclist hanging on and being dragged for several blocks, and ending in a young man's tragic and senseless death.  Not even 24 hours later, the internets are full of rhetoric and conjecture, people supposing what happened and who should be blamed, and groups on both "sides" of the "conflict" politicizing the tragedy to support their causes, which aren't limited to greater regulation of bicycle couriers, installation of bike lanes on Bloor Street, and more strict laws and stiff penalties for drivers and cyclists, for example.

Let's be very clear here.  This was no accident.  This is not a situation that a bike lane would have prevented.  Although it may have been sparked by a collision, this was a brutal fight between two grown men.  Regardless of the fact that they were on a bicycle and in a car, both men could have reacted differently, and both men didn't.  My fear is that characterizing this incident as driver vs. cyclist violence will result in more of that sort of violence, and we certainly don't need any more of it.  I believe that this incident, while certainly tragic, is random and isolated, and not part of a greater systemic failure.


My sincere condolences go out to the family of the young man killed in Monday's bizarre incident.

Avoiding Disaster

Some people close to me know that I was somewhat annoyed with Blogger while creating my recent post on HDR photography at Algonquin.  It seemed unnecessarily difficult to position the pics within the tiny blog frame, which I mostly circumvented by editing the HTML directly, which worked out but not as well as I would have liked.  After very briefly looking through the various post settings on the site, I decided that the non-flexible frame width was to blame, because the pics were taking up almost the entire column.

My initial solution was to move the whole thing to Wordpress, and try the post over again more or less from scratch.  I did try that, but ran into the same problem of the pics being too big, the text not going where I want and the frame being too narrow.

This left me with two options: either to continue blogging sporadically on Blogger, or to leave the site behind and continue into the Wordpress world.  Given that I was going to encounter the same difficulties with image posting on either site, it was a matter of figuring out which site's other features I like better.  Although I certainly can't cover a comprehensive review of both sides in the small time that I have (limited by my attention span, honestly), I did come up with three things that made my decision a rather easy one.

The first is familiarity.  Of course, I'm far more familiar with Blogger than with Wordpress, having just opened my Wordpress account.  On Blogger, I know where things are and how to get done what I want to get done, or at least as much as possible.

Second, although I didn't explore very much what features and add-ons are available over at Wordpress, I did spend a fair bit of time way back when (three months ago?) figuring out what was available here at Blogger, and I like the arrangement that I have.  I also have more or less of an action plan for customizing the site with my own colours and graphics at some point, whenever I finally get around to it.

Third, and most important for me, is followers.  Yes, I currently have three followers, all good friends of mine in the offline world, so this is sort of a moot point.  Except that I also follow their blogs, and they all blog with Blogger.  All of this would have been no problem, except that after some invested searching, I could not find the section of the Wordpress dashboard that would let me follow blogs from any site that wasn't a Wordpress site!  To me, that's just stupid.  With Blogger I can follow any website with a feed.

The decision was mostly made up at this point, but two more things happened that definitely cemented my decision.  One, my long-time good friend who has been embarking on the early stages of a literary career finally got around to starting his own blog, which even he admits everyone was advising him to do.  Since I'm obviously going to support his endeavour into the blogosphere (is that still a thing?) I am going to both follow and promote his blog, Speculation and Skepticism, as much as possible.  Since it appears Wordpress won't allow me to follow his blog, I'm sticking with Blogger.

The other random thing that happened just a few minutes ago is I realized that I can edit the HTML of the blog template and just make the post display column wider.  Which solved the initial problem which was causing me to consider Wordpress in the first place.  I'm sort of embarassed that I didn't think of that a week ago.

w00t

High Definition Algonquin

Tay & I are back from our first (together) camping adventure! For most of last week we were on a whirlwind, poorly planned and much needed vacation from the city in Algonquin Provincial Park, about 3 hours north of Toronto. This was a great opportunity for me to try out the HDR capabilities of my 7-year-old Pentax Optio 330GS digital camera (3.2 megapixels!) with the new tripod I picked up at Factory Direct for about five bucks.

For those not familiar with high-dynamic-range (HDR) photography, have a look at this Wikipedia article. Basically, HDR overcomes the optical limitations of conventional imaging by taking several (three or more) images of a scene at different exposure levels, combining the images with software, and ending up with a compiled image more closely resembling what is seen by the human eye. The article has an interesting discussion on the methods that can be used to achieve this and the science behind how the eye sees an image, so I won't try to explain it here.

For me, and for most, this means I can record both the bright and dark areas of a scene reliably. My end result conveys the details of the scene, within the limited dynamic range of the media (your monitor) with a tradeoff in contrast. Following are some examples from our Algonquin trip.

This is a picture of an abandoned bridge constructed by the 19th-century logging town of Mowat, at the north end of Canoe Lake. The camera is incapable of recording different exposures for different parts of this image, so it automatically calculates the proper exposure to record the center of the frame (the bridge and trees) and takes an image, which results in the sky and most of the reflection in the water being overexposed. By taking two more images, one with a darker exposure to record the sky, and one with a brighter exposure to reveal the details in the dark reflections, the entire scene can be recreated.

In the resulting image, the details of the sky, the trees and the bridge are all clearly visible. This image represents the scene in a way that is much closer to what I actually saw from the canoe at that time, by combining the darker sky with the lighter forest.

One issue that can happen, which I just noticed is apparent in the bridge in this HDR photo, is that small variations between the frames result in ghosting in the final image. In this photo, since the canoe was moving slowly through the water and my 7-year-old camera can only take 1 picture about every 2 seconds, each of the three frames is taken from a slightly different angle, and the bridge is not in exactly the same spot in each one. Take a look at the photo full-size and you'll see what I mean.

From the bridge we canoed north along Potter's Creek, a peaceful trip but mostly not good for photography. We stopped here at a portage for lunch and to get out of the canoe for a bit. For the same reason as the bridge picture above, this scene would be difficult to render with a single photo because of the different exposures between the sky, the forest and the creek. This HDR rendering captures all three. Plus I think it looks pretty. Since the wind was mostly calm and the camera was on a tripod, I've avoided the ghosting effect apparent in the bridge picture. The clouds were moving pretty fast but only one of the images really catches the detail in that part of the frame. I plan to blow this up to 5x7 or so and get it printed, although I don't know exactly where it will fit in our apartment yet.

Although I have many more photos from the trip, I'm having issues trying to arrange them on the blog. At some point I guess I should open a Flickr account (so I'm told) and maybe this will be the motivation to do it. Anyway that's it for now. Get out there and take more photos!

Another PVR update!

Well it's been a little over two months since I posted anything, so why not another update on the status of all my computers? That seems like a good way to step back into blogging.

About three months ago, I blogged as I was working on setting up all my various computers in my new apartment. In particular I was working on reconfiguring my MythPVR box, which has become our main source of digital entertainment. Everything was more or less working with OpenSUSE 11.1 with KDE, except for a few console workarounds (like having to watch DVD's with vlc, and buying a new sound card for 5.1 sound support). We could watch and record many digital signals in the Toronto and Buffalo regions. We were free from our slavery to our programming schedule masters!

But I got tired of having to adapt solutions to fit the OpenSUSE OS any time there was a problem. The internet has a wealth of information for Ubuntu mythtv installations, and although OpenSUSE support is out there, Ubuntu seems to be the distro of choice for this particular application. So this past weekend, I started into a fresh install.

Right off the bat, I can say Ubuntu 9.04 boots faster than my old install. I had the same issues with my wireless card not having native firmware, my Nvidia graphics card not having a native driver, and my Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q analog/digital tuner not having native support from the OS. A driver is provided for the tuner (au0828), but in my case it wouldn't tune any channels, and has no support for the analog tuner.

After a few internet searches, I settled on the video4linux v4l-dvb drivers, which provide support for both the digital and analog tuners. An initial scan of the analog band yielded a few weak results (as expected), and the digital scan picked up all the channels I had on the OpenSUSE install, plus a few I'd never seen before! I was excited to try it out, and ignored my houseguests to try out watching tv.

No go. The tuner wouldn't start.

The console revealed that the driver was trying to load a different version of the firmware for the tuner. I downloaded it and tried again.

No go. Mythtv wouldn't write to the recordings directory. Easy fix - I changed the permissions on the recordings directory to allow the mythtv group write access. (Mythtv runs as user mythtv, which is a member of the mythtv group.)

Again, no go. Although I wasn't able to determine what the problem really was, there were a few error messages related to the video codec of the analog stream on the console. I left it and went out with my friends, and came back to the problem last night. As a workaround, I disabled the analog tuner - I'm only really interested in watching digital TV anyway. And then ...

Success! The tuner started and the on-screen display indicated it was trying to tune channel 9-1, which is the local CTV affiliate. It wouldn't lock (not unusual on this channel) but a quick skip down to channel 5-1 brought up CBC's beautiful 1080i feed of the Rick Mercer Report! It was skipping, which can be due to a weak or intermittent signal (common in our treed area) but it looked to me more like the skipping associated with a misconfigured video driver unable to keep up with the feed. And with a 1080i feed, which requires somewhat more processing power than the usual 720p feeds in this area, that seemed more likely to me.

As a test, I worked on installing XvMC drivers for my video card, which supposedly allows the video card to offload some processing onto the main processor (as I understand it). I haven't had a chance to test out this configuration, since Tay woke up from her nap and I didn't want to subject her to me fiddling with minor settings in the OS. So we watched some converted-to-divx recordings of The Big Bang Theory for a while until we both fell asleep. Sheldon's Doppler effect costume is still one of our favourites :)

We'll see how some late-night recordings look this evening, if the weather prevents us from going outside!

Here are the local broadcasted digital channels we're able to watch with a very poorly designed antenna, near the lake, near ground level and surrounded by low buildings and high trees:

• 2-1 WGRZ (NBC Buffalo), 2-2 NBC Sports, 2-3 Retro TV Network
• 4-1 WIVB (CBS Buffalo)
• 5-1 CBLT (CBC Toronto)
• 7-1 WKBW (ABC Buffalo)
• 9-1 CFTO (CTV Toronto)
• 17-1 WNED (PBS Buffalo), 17-2 (WNED-SD), 17-3 PBS ThinkBright
  
• 23-1 WNLO (The CW Buffalo)
• 24-1 CBLFT (Radio-Canada)
• 26-1 WNYB (TCT Jamestown)
  
• 29-1 WUTV (FOX Buffalo), 29-2 (WUTV-SD)
• 41-1 CIII (Global Toronto)
• 44-1 CJMT (OMNI2)
• 49-1 WNYO (My TV Buffalo), 49-2 (WNYO-SD)
• 57-1 CITY (City TV Toronto)
• 64-1 CFMT (OMNI1)
• 66-1 CKXT (Sun TV)

Strangely, I seem to pick up the US stations much more reliably than the Toronto ones. I credit Lake Ontario, but I'm sure it would help if I could rotate my antenna. Eventually I will get around to building a better one.

Zipcar Review: Prius Patrice

Earlier this week, I had a lunchtime appointment downtown, which was going to be a pain to get to by subway both ways. Rather than reschedule or take the day off work, I picked up Zipcar's Toyota Prius "Patrice" from First Canadian Place in the morning. It was near my appointment, and I thought I would save a bunch of time by driving one way in the Zipcar, dropping it off and taking transit back to work.

Prius Patrice
What: Toyota Prius hybrid sedan
Again, didn't check the year. I will have to make a note of this for future excursions, as I'm pretty bad at it.

Generally speaking, getting into and driving the Prius is (I imagine) like getting into and piloting a space shuttle. It is spacious and comfortable, like all Zipcars, but the touch-screen multi-function control and display panel is awkward to use while driving (which you shouldn't anyway) and the LCD gauge cluster has an 80's excess, "look-what-we-can-do" feel. A regular dial gauge would have been just fine. It's also sunk into the dash (likely because of glare) and quite far behind the steering wheel. Rather than a key, the car is powered on by a large fob that sticks into the dash, and starting the car is done by simultaneously pressing down on the brake and pushing the large POWER button on the dash.

The engine starts up after a few seconds, either to charge the battery or just to warm up for smoother starts, but shuts off after a few minutes of idling. This is one of the biggest things to get used to in this car: the engine turns off when you stop. The car is capable of mild acceleration and low speed driving entirely on electric power.

City: This car is fun to drive, no question. The car has an old-style push-click type parking brake, and the shifter is nothing more than a knob where you can select "drive" or "reverse". No bells and whistles here; more on the transmission later. It feels odd to step down on the "gas" and have the car start out without the engine running, but you get used to it pretty quick. Having the engine turn on when you're moving 20km/h through the city is surprising at first, too. Although the rear window is small and has some unfortunately placed supports running across, seeing around the car is no problem at all. It handles the streetcar tracks with no problem, and moves and handles like the best economy cars in the Zipcar fleet.

I found backing up in the parking lot a bit unnerving at first, for two reasons. First, the obvious: the large hatch and small window make it odd to look around the car at the back. Second, because of the low speed involved in backing up, the car does it entirely on battery power. That wasn't difficult, just, weird. More things to get used to with this high-tech vehicle.

Freeway: Ok, it may be a car firmly within the economy car segment, but this car hauls ass. Another thing to get used to that I didn't notice at all in the city was the continuously-variable transmission (CVT), another high-tech high-efficiency addition to this vehicle. Winding into the straight merging lane on the DVP and stomping on the throttle, the engine immediately kicks up to high revs, and stays there until you let off the gas. By keeping the engine in its optimum high-power range, acceleration is both smooth and fast. None of the rev-shift-rev-shift transition of conventional geared transmissions. One more thing that might turn off some drivers, but very cool if you ask me.

Generally speaking, I like this car, and I am excited any time I get to drive it. As added incentive, since it is a hybrid and uses far less gas than conventional cars in the city, Zipcar charges a significantly reduced hourly rate to use it, although as a consequence of its popularity there is no daily rate available. Although I haven't had back-seat passengers while driving it, it seems as though four adults would fit comfortably, and there is plenty of cargo room for a car this size. And the electronic touch-screen display and high-tech gadgetry under the hood make this car score very high in geek factor.

Click these links for more information on ZipCars and the Toyota Prius.

Note: this review is a matter of my own opinion, and is not endorsed by Zipcar or Toyota. Use at your own risk.

I am in computer hell

While waiting for more operating system reinstalls, I decided to chronicle what's going on in the blog, on the one computer (out of 4-ish) that is still working acceptably well. Acceptable, in this case, means able to connect to the internet. Although at various times this morning it's also meant "recognizes the DVD-ROM", "can set host name", and "can access the hard disk without requiring a hard reset". It's been a long morning so far.

Here's where I'm at. Last night, my mythbuntu box deteriorated to the point where I couldn't play a sound file without getting occasional memory errors. So right after watching Family Guy, I started installing openSUSE back on it, using the network install. I had used openSUSE originally for the PVR setup and it was reasonably stable. I decided to try with GNOME this time.

Big mistake.

On the very first boot, as I tried to figure out the interface and find the network settings, right after entering the root password for the setup applet, first system freeze. Not even seemingly precipitated by anything. So reboot, set up the network, fantastic. Try downloading some upgrades. Fail, DNS error, can't find host. Fantastic!

Now, I've found that every time I've done a linux install on any of my computers, it seems to come alive and have a personality and attitude all its own. This case is no different. For some reason, it will save my hostname and IP address with the wired connection but not the wireless. I don't particularly want to have my laptop sitting on top of the tower all the time to get a network connection, so this is no good. So, at the moment, I am reinstalling with KDE4, since that worked for me before and I should be able to get it to work again. Right?

We'll see.

As for the laptop, Windows decided somewhat randomly that it doesn't have a DVD drive. I know it's there, I took it apart myself, and I can see the little yellow light on it every time I turn the computer on, and I was watching movies LAST NIGHT. WTF?! So this might come down to a reinstall as well. It's about due, I've had WinXP on it for almost five weeks without major system problems.

What about the others? The one that works is slow as molasses most of the time, owing to Windows and background processes and all that. Maybe also due for a reinstall. And the fourth needs a new power supply, which I have, but I'm not getting into that right now.

Really I just want to watch TV and play movies and listen to music. I know there's gotta be some kind of magic combo so that I can turn the computer on and have it work without having to open a terminal, restart processes, load drivers, or do ritual sacrifice.

Ahh, looks like I'm being prompted for something. Back to work....

Zipcar Review: Jetta Joyner

Hey, two in a row! I was somewhat pleased with the idea of doing car reviews after my last review of Matrix Manford, so I had this in the back of my mind when Tay asked if we could get a car to take her costumes and equipment up to York University for a film shoot she is working on this weekend. So yesterday morning, in the midst of the first hailstorm of the season, I set out to pick up Zipcar's Volkswagen Jetta "Joyner" from a Leslieville parking lot.

Jetta Joyner
What: Volkswagen City Jetta sedan
I still didn't think to look at the year, but it only had about 20,000 km on it so it's pretty new.

I've driven one of the Zipcar Jettas before, so I had an idea of what to expect. In particular, I was looking forward to the auto tranny with the sport setting :) Fun in downtown traffic, but what about the freeway?

City: I set out on Lakeshore just as the downpour started, and hit the streetcar tracks on Queen just before it became impossible to see. Unlike the Matrix from the last review, driving along the tracks posed no challenge whatsoever. I didn't even know the car was on the tracks, really. A few quick curb-lane passes in sport mode got me back to the apartment just in time to watch the hailstorm from inside the building.

After a brief break, Tay & I loaded up the back seat with all of her gear, then set out for York. Our street has traffic control speed humps which were no challenge for the Jetta (at a reasonable speed of course) and the drive up the rough main roads to the Don Valley Parkway was smooth and comfortable. Like some other cars in the Zipcar arsenal, the Jetta has a transmission with a selectable shifter which allows you to "shift" between gears manually, although it's not a true manual. Unlike many, it also comes with a full-automatic "sport" mode, which keeps the tranny in a lower gear and the engine running at a higher RPM. This gives better acceleration and throttle response, at the expense of fuel economy, engine noise, and a jerky feel when coasting (from engine braking). On the other hand, normal mode seemed to hunt between gears more than it should. The compromise for me was to accelerate in sport mode, then shift back to normal mode for regular driving. I was impressed by the car's drive and handling in the city.

Freeway: Our route to York took us onto the Don Valley Parkway and later the 401. I put the car into sport mode on the onramp to the DVP, and realized halfway up the ramp I was doing 80 and hadn't noticed. Freeway merging and acceleration was no problem at all, and I made a few passes before hitting the Lawrence bottleneck, yeah, even at 9am on a Saturday. I had a hard time getting the side mirrors into the right spot, and with the side windows fogged, lane changes were a bit scary. Due to a large standing puddle on the freeway from the rainstorm and a tractor-trailer collision, the drive to York was quite slow.

After dropping Tay off at York, I learned that someone had booked the car right at the end of my time, so I wasn't able to extend my reservation. I wasn't sure that I would have enough time to get back to Leslieville (I had about 25 minutes left) so the ride back was pretty much all in sport mode. That fits my style of driving pretty well, as hitting 120 on the freeway was no problem at all, fast lane changes were a breeze, and I didn't really feel nervous weaving around the Saturday morning traffic. The car cruises like a breeze and takes turns with no difficulty. I had to brake on ramps for slower traffic quite a few times. Of course, I don't recommend or endorse this kind of driving in any situation, but the Jetta drives on the freeway like it's meant to be there.

Of course I really didn't have enough time since I also had to put gas in, and even with the time constraint I don't drive like an idiot (too much), and ended up returning the car 10 minutes late anyway and getting dinged with the $35 late return fee.

Interior: I lost a bit of time at the gas station because I couldn't find the fuel cap release, and had to read the manual to find it. It's not where you would expect it to be: on the center console beside the parking brake. Those crazy Germans ....

I liked the interior, it seemed well planned. I couldn't figure out how to change the display on the fuel computer from average speed though (it increased a lot over the time I was using the car). The gauges are easy to read but not imposing on the driver's view. Although I had problems aiming the mirrors, once I had them set they were good to go. I didn't play with the radio a lot, it was already set to 107.1, although Tay checked traffic on AM680 when we hit the wall of cars on the 401.

In general, this had been a car I was waiting to try out since my last short drive in a Jetta over the winter. Joyner didn't disappoint, and this will be a car I'll be looking to reserve again.

For more information, check out Zipcar and the Volkswagen Jetta City.

Note: this review is a matter of my own opinion, and is not endorsed by Zipcar or Volkswagen. Use at your own risk.

Zipcar Review: Matrix Manford

I've been a Zipcar member for a few months, after deciding it was about time to sell my Ford Focus rather than parking it in my building uptown and insuring it for $300 a month, which didn't include any actual cost of driving. Today, while running some errands in one of the Zipcars, I thought it might be a good idea to write down what I think of the cars that I've been driving. There are a wide variety of cars available to Zipcar members, and I like to try new things, so this has been working out well.

So, here is the first of what should be a series of auto reviews, based on my experience taking out Zipcars that are available around Toronto and driving them around the city. My review is intended to be a review of the model in general but is likely to be skewed by the realities of car sharing, good or bad. Plus I have plenty of biases when it comes to driving. But anyway, here's what I think.

Matrix Manford
What: Toyota Matrix wagon (exact year and trim unknown)

Tay's out of town working a gig in Ancaster this weekend, and I had a few things to do that I probably could have easily taken transit to get to, but I felt like taking out a car. Not too many are available on short notice on Saturday afternoon, and I wanted to avoid the Civic after last time, so I set out in the Matrix wagon.

City: It had just started raining when I got in the car, so I got to experience driving in the rain right away. I was headed out Gerrard east toward Victoria Park - a route with streetcar tracks - and right away noticed that I needed to hang on with both hands, or the steering wheel turned sharply as the front wheels fell into the streetcar rails. This is the first car I've driven where I've noticed that was a problem. Otherwise, the car drove very well in the neighbourhood.

Acceleration was very strong at city speed, as I expect from a Japanese car. Suspension felt very firm with little lean in turns, but was very forgiving over rough Toronto roads. I noticed the transmission seemed to be unsure which gear to choose in the turns, but was otherwise smooth without noticeable shifting delay. Overall, I was impressed with the drive on the city streets.

Freeway: On the way back from my shopping adventure I set out on the freeway, to see if the smooth ride kept up into freeway speeds. Acceleration from the ramp to merging speed was not impressive, in fact I was concerned the car would not get up to speed if not for the downhill ramp. I later realized that the car will not downshift unless the gas pedal is pushed all the way to the floor, most likely a fuel economy feature. I actually like this - one of my criticisms of automatic transmissions is that they downshift too easily. This car can't be expected to be speedy at freeway speeds, but it does well for a 4 cylinder. I found it hard to see around the wagon's body, and more than once was surprised by a car in my blind spot on either side. As in the city, cornering was fantastic and the ride was firm but smooth.

Interior: When I had more time to check it out, I found that the interior was well designed. The gauges were nice to look at but not oppressive to the eyes or distracting. The wiper selector was opposite to what I'm used to, but not illogical, and the rear wiper made a lot of noise so I switched it off fairly quickly. There are a few compartments in the dash which don't have any particular purpose, but at least the space doesn't go to waste. Cup holders fit a large coffee nicely, an extra large would be snug and a Big Gulp is just not an option in this car. One nice touch was a tray for about 6 quarters between the steering wheel and the driver's door, right where you'd need them for tolls (if that was an issue in Toronto).

Otherwise, the car lacks the bells and whistles of some of the other Zipcar models and seems more like an economy car, and for an economy car it seems like it would be good value. Of course, being a shared car I don't know what it's worth, but I don't need to, and I suppose that's one good feature about Zipcars.

See these links for more info on Zipcars and the Toyota Matrix.

Note: this review is a matter of my own opinion, and is not endorsed by Zipcar or Toyota. Use at your own risk.

What to do when work is not possible?

Somebody forgot to put their wireless mouse in the charging cradle last night. So it's time for part 2 of the Nermal story!

In the fall of 2007 (wait, I'll say autumn, fall is too foreshadowy) we moved to Mississauga. Nermal spent a few weeks with my mother-in-law again while we carted things back and forth to our new home, and eventually Nermal came on one of the last trips. She delighted in having parquet and ceramic floors to tear around on, two flights of stairs for getting into trouble, a leather couch she wouldn't touch and a treadmill that was the best scratching post ever. She even had a basement rife with nooks for hiding out in. She never took much interest in clawing our leather sectional sofa, which I attribute to dumb luck more than anything. Instead she picked on my grandmother's antique china cabinet, my ex's treadmill, and the walls themselves.

For much the same reasons as why she lost her job in London, my ex and I began to have relationship problems, escalating to the point that we split in June. Nermal's fate was in limbo, and since it was a familiar place she went to live with my (now ex-)mother-in-law for the summer. My ex inexplicably (to me) decided she wanted nothing to do with Nermal, and from very early on it was decided that Nermal would live with me permanently, as soon as I had a place to live. I lived with a relative of a cousin, in a basement room in uptown Toronto, for most of the summer. She had three cats already, some with health problems, and it was best for Nermal not to come live there.

By August, that living arrangement started to get, well, old. There was nothing wrong with it, and I appreciated the generosity very much, but I was feeling like I should have my own space, and of course wanted to have Nermal back. In early August I learned that Alex, a student co-worker of mine, was also looking for a place, as his summer living arrangement was coming to the end of its availability at the end of the summer. I suggested that we should pool our resources and look for a place together, which I think ended up being beneficial to both of us. Although I will admit that Alex did most of the work finding a place, and it was no small task considering we started on the second week of August to find a place for September 1st. We lucked out big-time and found a big two-bedroom sub-let, connected to a subway junction, that came in just inside our budget.

Nermal joined us in mid-September, after a transfer in London made unnecessarily awkward by my ex's unplanned attendance, and a typically uneventful drive back to Toronto, which to date has been Nermal's last inter-city road trip. She took to the new surroundings cautiously at first, pacing the perimeter of the apartment (no doubt looking for an escape) and then settling on the huge 11th story window as the best place ever. She took a while to be ok with Alex (and likewise) but they eventually became buds. Alex would walk through the front door and yell "WHAT'S UP CAT?" and Nermal would run out from whatever mischief she was getting into and tangle herself up in the mat in the front hall. She even decided after a few months that it was ok to attack Al's feet instead of mine when it was 5am food time, and may have slept on his face once, if the early morning fit of swearing and fur flying was any indication.

We did have one incident where a friend of ours was over, and we were all a little sloshed and laughing and carrying on and being loud. Alex has a particularly boisterous laugh, and Nermal responded to one particular fit by launching out from under a table and giving Alex the five-claw handshake, so to speak, then ran off under another table. He survived, but that was the end of that laughing fit.

In the next part: I meet Tay, Alex gets deported, and Nermal's single-cat existence comes to an end ....