Sometimes the light’s all shining on me

Posted on January 26, 2012
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I’ve been trying hard to take more photos – if not daily, as close to as possible. Sometimes nothing catches my eye. Then there are days like today where I come across an embarrassment of riches:

Crossed wired

I caught this on the way into the office from coffee this morning. In real life, the sunlight was glinting off the wires, making them appear to glow. That wasn’t captured in the shot, so I processed this to give them the glow. I dig how the point of the building behind fits snugly into the intersection of the bus wires.

I had wires on the brain then. On our way to lunch, we crossed this alley:
Old wires, new towers
Vancouver’s apparently going to be pulling down this old infrastructure and will bury the wires. But I love the character these old poles give our alleys, and now, with all the new buildings, the play between the clean, modern, angular towers and the somewhat rickety, right-angle-free power lines is enchanting. I edited to get this scratchy/old look to emphasize those differences.

Continuing our theme of electricity, we had lunch at Sunset Burger a newish place on Nelson, with a definite California 80′s theme:

80s!

I didn’t do anything but apply an instagram frame/filter to this, but I don’t think it needed much.

After lunch I had to run an errand and just happened to walk under this:
Conical #lookup

I’ve worked in this neighbourhood for 15 years, and I’ve never been under this, nor into the Centre. I’m not thrilled with this photo, but it was a neat view to discover today.

My errand took me to the Central Post office:
Design of future past
I love the interplay of the at-angle, interlocking tile decoration above the flat utilitarian spread of post boxes. Gorgeous texture, and, in the glinting sunlight pouring in from outside, brilliant in the otherwise shadowed entry hall.  I wanted to soften this one, and I selectively darkened the right-side (the hall) in snap-seed to further enhance the shiny of the boxes & tiles.

Finally, on the way back to the office I caught this:
I love kaitlin #signage ad? Art?
And how could I not snap it? It’s intriguing? I’ve no idea if its a real message, or part of an ongoing ad campaign, or an art project? Again, just a quick snap. The poster itself is much more red than this filter would indicate.
In toronto, growing up, the bus-shelter ad-firm ran a series of ads that were a long these lines – a divorce + reconciliation or something that had the whole city talking because it was weeks before it was revealed what was behind the campaign – the point of which was exactly what it achieved – transit advertising gets both eyeballs and discussion (if anyone can find a link to some photos of those, it would be awesome. My Google-fu has failed me on finding it).

Thoughts on today’s iBooks announcement

Posted on January 19, 2012
Filed Under Events & Culture, Random Thoughts, Web Culture & Links | Leave a Comment

Today’s announcement by Apple of the new iBooks 2 & the iBooks Author app were interesting in that it seemed a very high-level, long-term look by Apple at how they can disrupt the educational & textbook industries. I don’t believe that the textbook industry, as large as it may be, was truly the target here. Getting iPads into schools, replacing the 1000s of cheap, aging Compaqs and Dells that still litter public schools, getting kids to be using iPads for all sorts of educational-related activities is the goal. That they may well completely overhaul textbooks as we know it is just an added bonus.

But! and of course there’s a but or why else would I be writing this? Apple’s major competitor in this endeavour as I see it is not the traditional text book industry (and the crazy regulatory machine that exists around it), but Amazon. Amazon is likewise targeting publishing in all forms. And I’m not convinced that Apple can, as it currently works, “beat” Amazon.

When Apple first introduced the iPod, it was Mac-only. Sales of that device really didn’t take off until it a)introduced a Windows version of iTunes to sync with and b) added USB support. Like many people, I came back to being an Apple user after years of being a Windows user in part because I got an iPod, which led me to using iTunes, which made me pay attention to Apple, until I finally switched back.

The iPad is expensive. the iPod/iPhone is not terribly expensive (but they’re not really the targets for iBooks, despite support, I believe). While other tablets may not be as good, the Kindle Fire costs less than half as much. More importantly, the Kindle app is device-agnostic. I currently have it installed on my Mac, my iPhone, my iPad, my Nexus S AND my Kindle. I can buy a book in 1 place and use it in many different places, easily. when I buy an iBook, I have to use one of my iPhone or my  iPad. And as I learned in the Caribbean this spring, while I can use my Kindle just fine on the beach, I can’t use either of my iPad or iPhone. I’m not saying that education takes place on beaches, but I sure spent a tonne of time as a teenager and in university doing my reading outside, in the sun.

So here’s why it feels like a mistake to not release an iBooks for Android, Windows Phone, Mac, Windows, whatever: Sure, there’s 10s of millions of iDevice users out there. But theres 100s of millions more who aren’t. Many of those will simply use what’s given to them, not choose (because they receive gifts, or school policy, or whatever). Why the iPod was so successful, was that it was a glimpse into the world of Apple without being a major investment in infrastructure. Want to help schools shift to be using iPads instead of books? Let them all load iBooks onto their computers, whatever they may be so that kids start to use the books on whatever they already have. Apple should be confident enough that the experience will be good enough to drive many of those kids to get an iPad for an even better experience. And if not? Hey, at least they’re hooked on iBooks. If they want to create their own, then they need a mac to do so with the iBooks Author app. Which is fine.

When iBooks was first announced, it felt a lot like a “pet project” for Apple, not a major push. But this announcement changes that. In the same way that I think the decision to make the iPod windows compatible is a major reason Apple is the $400B company it is today, I think iBooks could, and should be the same sort of push for ebooks & digital education materials.

I’m in the forest, searching for the shore

Posted on January 12, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Running a Business, Web Development | Leave a Comment

Corkscrew tree

Searching for the way through

I’m percolating. Gestating. Mulling. Procrastinating. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve been in this mode for the better part of a week now. This happens regularly to me – something triggers my subconscious and it starts to take up and more and more mental resources. When I get phases like this, I’m sort of hopeless: I can’t remember anything, I’m  as distractable as – SQUIRREL! – my production nosedives. I almost never seem to get a warning that this is about to happen, just suddenly there I am – feeling like I’ve only got half brain-power. Typos go up. I’ll find myself staring off into space for who knows how long.

There’s a plus side to this. When I get like this it’s because I’m figuring something out. It sounds strange to say I don’t know what it is I’m figuring out, but historically, whatever pops into my head on the flip-side is fully formed, ready for me to copy down. I used to write papers this way – wander the streets aimlessly for a day or two, come home, sit down & type for a couple of hours before school, come home with an A paper shortly. Prior to agreeing to have kids I did this. When I wrote the first scheme for the original Pencilcase CMS, back in 1999, I couldn’t work for a week. Then in 1 sitting, I wrote the first version of the CMS over about 14 hours, with little to no edits.

So what have I been thinking about lately?  What’s going on back there? Well, there’s a bunch of stuff going on that are viable candidates for taking over my brain:

 

So I’m in the forest, I’m looking for the path. I keep catching glimpses of the shore out there, where the horizon is clear and present, but I’m not there yet & it’s frustrating.

The Paradigm shift needs to start here

Posted on January 7, 2012
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Tonight I took Liam to see the Vancouver Giants play the Portland Winterhawks at the Pacific coliseum. It was a fundraiser night for the Vancouver Thunderbirds, Liam’s hockey league, so the place was full of kids. Guy LaFleur was also on hand. For the most part, it was a great game: the home side won 8-4; Ryan Gallagher had a hat-trick (7 points overall), and they celebrated the return of a bunch of plays from the World U-17 & Junior championship.

But, there’s a few things that really disgusted me:

  1. One of the “highlight-of-the-night” film reels they showed on the big screen was of a recent fight. They provided play-play celebratory commentary and the crowd cheered wildly
  2. The biggest cheers of the night were all for fights – bigger than LaFleur’s ovation – bigger than the cheers for Gallagher’s hat-trick goal.
  3. While getting drinks, listening to 2 mums talking about how stupid it was to delay the introduction of hitting, one complaining that her kid was big, so she didn’t have to worry about anything happening to him.

The media talks a lot about how the hockey world needs to catch up to the public on their take on concussions and fighting. The recent NY Times piece on Derek Boogaard certainly has people I know talking about fights differently:

I'm definitely watching these hockey fights in a different way after reading this http://t.co/PU5rbXmm
January 7, 2012 10:56 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@YoungestSenior
Marina

And yet everyone at the rink was nuts for the fight – even so far as to have the overhead scoreboard show a graphic “It’s Clobbering time!” during a fight. And remember, these are all kids out there: 18-22 year-olds. During the intro video for Guy LaFleur, they showed him whizzing around the rink, his hair flying, helmetless. A few shots showed some players wearing helmets. They grandfathered that in. And you know where they started the change? with the kids. These days, U-17s have to wear full face protection. Juniors have to wear at least half-visors. That’s still not a requirement at the NHL level, but it shows how this could work:

Hockey will never be a “safe” sport. But I don’t believe for a second that fighting is an integral part of the sport. I also believe that players can learn to stop, to avoid the dangerous head hits. Most people respond well to financial (dis-)incentives.

Disrupt TV

Posted on January 4, 2012
Filed Under Movies and TV, Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment

We recently at home installed “Shaw Gateway“, to replace the previous PVR we had – mostly because we have 2 TVs, and remembering where I’d recorded what was a hassle. And it’s better in many ways than the previous system. I generally like the UI better, although it is still terrible. Everything about this says “I was designed by an engineer”. For something that exists almost entirely as end-user interface, it’s shockingly bad. But it’s no worse than the systems I’ve seen for Telus or Comcast, so I’m assuming they’re all more or less the same. Like DVD/Blu-ray/TV menus. The Apple TV menu, which still is pretty shitty IMO (see how many clicks it takes to find, then play, a video stored in your itunes library), is so much better than all of these, it’s no wonder that people are clamoring for a “real” Apple TV.

When will there be a Nest for TV interface? I’m currently assuming the reason for all of this is that all the software is locked down by the broadcasters so that they maintain a monopoly on the devices used to watch their programming. Sort of like Carriers/hardware pre-iPhone.

Most of all, given the existence of such services as “on-demand”, and the relative costs and support-headaches of providing physical hardware with fallible hard-drives is why this is stored at my house at all. Over christmas, I downloaded a saved game from Skyrim onto a brand-new xbox in a totally different city and continued playing it. I feel like I should be able to do the same with anything I’ve PVR’d. There’s got to be a business model in there that makes sense:

What cable-providers “own” is the content they provide. Sure, they’re just conduits for networks, but there’s a HUGE convenience to the end-user. Imagine if you had to order/pay each network separately to get access to their content? Sure, some people would, but it would be a hassle (aside: this channel-as-app trend is worrisome. Less choice is often better than more choice, if more convenient. But why not open up the ability to access that content? Write an API, let anyone create ways to access it. Charge for that access. Think of the business savings of having only a few B2B accounts to manage, rather than 10s of thousands of end-user customer accounts. Let new, innovative startups find new, interesting ways to provide your content to people, while you sit back and focus on large-scale infrastructure & volume deals.  Cablecos and telcos are sort of the same: their business should be providing large scale infrastructure and charging for the use of that infrastructure (data,voice,video,audio). The iPhone and the subsequent smart-phone revolution have started the process of revolutionizing how we interact with our carriers (particularly as more and more phones are sold “unlocked”). I don’t personally think that TVs themselves are a great hardware/software business for apple to get into. A TV is just a monitor. Sure, Apple and others make some gorgeous monitors, but not because the software in them is great – just solid industrial design. Where TV can, and, should be disrupted are these little, (somewhat) cheap, (somewhat) disposable boxes through which we interact with the content on our TV. This is where the disruption should happen. Something that people can afford to upgrade hardware every few years, with software updates in between. Much like I currently pay Rogers for access to their infrastructure (and they subsidize the cost of my phone over a 2-year contract), while I pay Apple and other 3rd parties for hardware and software, why am I not paying Shaw for access to their infrastructure, but someone else for the hardware and various software options to use on my device?

Thoughts on #occupy

Posted on December 20, 2011
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(Wherein i list out a bunch of thoughts on something I don’t fully understand, in the hopes that the act of writing will help me come to some sort of internal resolution or understanding. Or trigger commentary that might just do that too.)

For the most part, I stayed well away from the #occupy movement (aside: in my head, it always is preceded by a hashtag – likely because I mostly interacted with it via twitter. But I suppose it’s not required. I’ll keep it though). In part, I was deeply cynical of its origins – it struck me as disingenuously spontaneous, in the same way that a good flash mob is actually a carefully choreographed and well-rehearsed performance – but it also made me vaguely uncomfortable. I don’t feel part of “the 1%”, but nor do I particularly feel part of #occupy’s “99%” – that likely has more to do with my reluctance to be placed in any big-tent definitions.

I wandered through Vancouver’s occupation on the 4th or 5th day. The optimism, the stringent beliefs, the signs, the dress code reminded me strongly of hanging with the socialists in my first year at UBC talking society, future, politics in a blissfully abstracted manner. I spent an hour or so of my lunchtime there – so definitely not a long time – and came way inspired and invigorated by the half-dozen people I met and talked to, but even more suspicious of the movement itself. The Vancouver edition might well be different from Wall Streets, but it was uncomfortably similar to finding myself unexpectedly in a Tea Party demonstration in San Diego a couple of years ago: the wisdom of crowds was sorely lacking.

And then I watched from afar. In Vancouver, the media-focus (hopefully the movement’s focus as well – my understanding was filtered mostly through twitter, and in particular @raincoaster) dwelt on housing-related issues. While this was definitely a part of the myriad messaging elsewhere, Vancouver’s felt, from my position, somewhat unified around this. The videos of the human-megaphone were darkly humorous but seemed non-scalable as a viable societal solution. Vastly more exciting was the  huge volumes of Ustream citizen-reporting – most of it execrable, but thrilling in its very existence and portent for the future.

And then it got really dark, really fast and I was suddenly dragged back into paying attention: As the days dragged on in to weeks, the fair-weather idealists went back to work, to school, to the suburbs, to their parents, to their apartments – to wherever, and we were left, all over North America, with the dedicated few idealists – and the homeless, the addicts, the sick. And it was fascinating. Watching these groups try to interact; the idealists try manage (not really the right word – support? include?) a group of people who seemed to not care one iota about “the cause” but where there because there was a gathering, it was safe, there was food, there was shelter, there were other people. Watching the media stories increasingly report on addictions, on overdoses, on the homeless with shock and disgust like all these various sad, sad stories didn’t exist prior to #occupy.

Shortly before the Vancouver election I wandered past, but not through the #occupy encampment again. I didn’t go in because it no longer felt welcoming. I’m very uncomfortable with the desperation that was so palpable there. I’m well off and often feel guilty about it but helpless to do anything. And how terrible is it for #occupy that not even this movement, all-inclusive, didn’t really seem to know how to handle this desperation any more than any existing service providers do. And how disgusting that this misery crystallized the general public’s (at least, as I read it through the Vancouver Sun’s coverage) opinion against #occupy (there’s been an overdose? go in now! evict them!). In the last dying days across North America, the movement seemed to magnify the particular problems of the most desperate in each city: Homelessness, mental illness & addiction everywhere, youth violence, racism, alcoholism, sexual predation & abuse. I imagine It must have been heartbreaking for everyone who was involved at the beginning – seeing this beautiful idea fall prey to such a vicious reality. Vancouver’s measured reaction was in stark contrast to the police assaults across America, where gross support for such police-state tactics seems to be more widespread, but the end result was the same: In the end, the dispersal and subsequent journey to find a new place to occupy just seemed sad.

In Vancouver, #occupy initially tried to relocate to Grandview park on the Drive – which has just been renovated & re-opened. I don’t know all the details, and I don’t actually think I agree with the response, but I was heartened to hear about the resistance from the Grandview-area residents to having their new park occupied. #Occupy may speak for the 99%, but their methods aren’t for everyone. And seeing on grassroots group resist the efforts of the other was, to me, a hopeful outcome: #occupy may or may not continue, evolve into something else, but it certainly showed the power of getting together with a group of like-minded people to defend an ideal in a space. And this battle over the new park showed the inherent conflict in the movement of occupying a space at the expense of the very people they’re in theory occupying it for.

WherePost: now even more useful!

Posted on December 19, 2011
Filed Under Projects, Running a Business, Web Development | Leave a Comment

Since I launched Where Post? on Friday morning, the response has been pretty gratifying. My thanks to David Eaves for his nice post about Where Post? this morning. I launched the app with a total of 28 mailboxes and 1 post office. Since then, 29 contributors have added in another 400-odd mailboxes and about 20 post offices. (NB: ‘contributors’ are identified currently via a combination of a cookie & IP Address – so it’s not exact, but close enough).

I’m please to announce a very useful addition: Every post office in the Google Maps database, everywhere, pulled in from the Google Places API. I had noticed while adding post offices that there was often an envelope icon already in the map where I wanted to add a post office. After some digging this afternoon, I was able to pull in the places API to just get all the places that identify as a post office.

There’s a few oddities to figure out:

  1. Often each post office is listed 2 or 3 times at least in Canada: The french name & english name appear to be 2 places, and sometimes the post office in english, the post office in french and the store containing the post office are all listed. Odd, and I haven’t yet figured a way to filter this, but still pretty nice.
  2. I have a rate limit of 100,000 queries a day. Given that each time you see the “loading mailboxes” message there’s a query to Google, there’s a distinct possibility I’ll reach that. For now not a worry, but definitely a scaling/caching issue to think about in the future.
  3. Integrating with the “nearest” function. Currently, the “nearest” mailbox is simply pulled from an SQL query – which means that post offices, coming in from Google, are ignored. There’s likely a way to merge the two, but nothing’s coming to mind at the moment.

As always, if you have any suggestions, comments or anything else, please let me know!

Cute thing of the week: Kellan laughing at Liam’s Balloon

Posted on December 19, 2011
Filed Under Wicked Little Critta! | Leave a Comment

Introducing: Where Post?

Posted on December 15, 2011
Filed Under Projects, Web Development | 2 Comments

Where Post? is a small web-app I wrote over a couple of evenings this week to serve a very particular purpose: To help me, and anyone else, find their nearest mailbox.

The site should work on iPhones, Windows Phones & Androids. It’s meant to run as an app, so you can install it to your home screen for the greatest effect.

There are currently 2 ways of adding new mailboxes – as time permits, I’ll add more:

  1. In the app: to add a new mailbox, click on the “+” at bottom right, then click on the map where you know there’s a box. If you like, add some notes like “next to the garbage can” or “across the street from the pink house” to help people find it.
  2. Instagram: You can also take a picture of a mailbox on instagram, tag it #wherepost and include a location. A mailbox, with the photo you took, will be added at that location. Your photo’s caption will become the notes for the mailbox. I think it’s a fun use of the instagram API.

Of course, you can also simply find directions to the nearest mailbox to you. Just click on the magnifying glass, and Where Post? will provide you with walking directions to the nearest box (within 2km).

The app is very much a work-in-progress – to come is the ability to add in Post Offices, as well as pick-up/drop-off locations for the various courier companies, so that eventually, it’s a one-stop place to go to find where to send something from. Any and all feedback is much appreciated. In particular, if you know how to change the cursor icon in Google Maps v3, I’d love to know how.

So please have a look, play with it and send me any feedback you might have!

Parenting: Rewarding Recycling

Posted on December 12, 2011
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Wicked Little Critta! | Leave a Comment

Liam is a big fan of recycling. He also has a pretty good idea of what kinds of items are returnable vs recyclable in the blue bin. At home, we have 2 bins: 1 where we collect everything that has a deposit attached to it, and is thus returnable, and the standard blue bin for everything else.

About once every 6-8 weeks, when we’ve got enough returnables, Liam and I load up the car with shopping bags full of tetra-paks, booze-bottles, pop bottles & cans, and head down to our nearest return-it depot to return all our stuff. On the way there, we get to hang out, talk about whatever (this is always a dad-and-Liam trip). Once there, Liam helps me separate all the returnables as directed by the staff there. Now that he can do math, we’ve added an extra step: We add up how much money we’re going to get before the staff does the math for us. It’s amazing how good Liam is at adding things by $0.05 & $0.10 these days, and keeping the numbers in his head these days – and useful shorthand knowledge that there are 4 quarters in a dollar, 20 nickels, etc – so he’ll now do things like count 1-20 in nickels, and know that equals a dollar.

The best part then comes when the staff gives us the money: We go shopping. Generally we’ve earned $5-10. Which is the perfect amount of money to then go to the toy store and buy a small toy. Liam puts the money in his pocket and as we drive over to the toy store we talk about what sort of a toy he wants to buy, why, and best of all, what we’re going to do with it when we get home.

At the store, Liam carefully goes around  choosing a toy that costs less (pre-tax) than what he got from the recycling. At the cash, Liam pays – he figures out which bills & coins to give the cashier (if tax brings the total over, I always cover that). His clear pride at being able to spend his own money, that he earned and counted is awesome. The surprise and genuinely happy response from the cashiers watching my kid do all this himself is pretty great too. Only once have I ever had a curmudgeonly cashier ask if I could “hurry this up”.

So are our trip net-green? Probably not. All the gas used, and packaging on the toy aren’t so great. But I now have a 6-year-old who can already separate returnables from recyclables, is jazzed about recycling, can do all sorts of useful coin-and-bill math and at the least the beginnings of an understanding of the relative worth of things, not to mention a great couple of hours where we get to hang out, just him and I. It’s all win.

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