Think City Electoral Reform Survey

Posted on February 5, 2010
Filed Under Politics, Web Culture & Links | Comments

I’m reprinting this from Think City’s last email message out. Please read and participate!

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Vancouver and many other BC municipalities suffer from declining voter turnout, the taint of big money influence on elections, a lack of neighbourhood accountability, and a host of other democratic challenges.

But the laws governing local elections are going to change.

Last fall, Premier Gordon Campbell announced a new local government election task force to consider sweeping legislative changes to how municipal elections are conducted in this province.

Fair Voting BC and Think City are gathering citizen views on reforms to submit to the provincial government, Vancouver city council, and the Vancouver parks board. Make sure you have your say!

The province’s task force will submit its recommendations on modernizing local government election rules to the legislature on May 30 for implementation prior to the fall 2011 civic elections.

Please go here right now to complete the 2010 Civic Electoral Reform survey by March 1, 2010.

Liam Reads me Bedtime Stories

Posted on February 1, 2010
Filed Under Books, Comics, Magazines | Comments

On a lighter note, last night Liam decided that he wanted to read me bedtime stories, rather than the other way around. I, of course, took an iPhone video of him “reading” to me:

Story 1: 10 Halloween Trick or Treaters

Story 2: Curious George at the Chocolate Factory

I had asked for “Curious George and the puppies”, but this is what I got:

He’s going to be so mad at me when he’s a teenager, isn’t he…

Fear of Random Public Death at the Olympics

Posted on February 1, 2010
Filed Under Events & Culture, Random Thoughts | Comments

I have many Gen X friends, those friends who are just a little older than me who became teenagers during the 1980’s. One of the defining characteristics of this set of friends is a lingering existential angst about the impending nuclear doom. For me, given that I was all of 11 in 1988, the threat of nuclear war has always been remote – a relic of a previous age. For me, despite absolutely zero personal experience, my existential angst has long revolved around being blown up, shot or poisoned in a public place – a victim of terrorism of some sort. When I was a teenager, I witnessed a drive-by shooting in Chinatown in Toronto. I was also much more conscious of the world at large (due, in no small part to my dad’s subscription to the Guardian Weekly), right around when there seemed to be an uptick in IRA-related bombings in the UK – the London Stock Exchange (1990), Manchester (1992, 1996) and so on, the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo Subway (1996). In the middle east, the early 90s were the core years of the First Intifada (1987-1993), which involved wave after wave of attacks on (what to me at the time seemed to be) primarily civilian targets.

This likely is a direct contributor to my intense dislike of crowds & fireworks in particular (huge crowds + explosions? No thank you!), and it has, from time to time, given me pause as I use transit. Particularly in Vancouver. I have taken transit in cities all over the world, many vastly larger and, at least in theory, more dangerous than in Vancouver. However, overall, I feel the least safe riding Translink than virtually anywhere else. Our system is so open, so understaffed, so automated, so spread out and so easy to infiltrate. I’ve watched several people jump down into the tunnels downtown, seen a woman wandering aimlessly along the tracks towards Joyce station. This should not happen.

And now we have the Olympics. For very good reason, the organizers are encouraging everyone to take transit. But that also means that everyone will take transit, and if you wanted to disrupt these games, there’d be no better way than to cause an incident on Translink. And here’s the thing: if there’s one thing that Israel has proved to the world, is that police & military are of no protection against a determined attack, so it wouldn’t matter if there were soldiers and police on every bus and train (for the record, that would also prevent me from wanting to use transit – violence’ only product is more violence, and soldiers and police embody violence).  And so, I’ve had, in the back of my mind, this growing unease about taking transit as the Olympics draw nearer. I know, statistically, that its incredibly unlikely that anything would happen. But this is not a rational fear. It’s just a fear. And sadly, it’s growing stronger right now. I’m sure that our contemporary media-culture of fear-based reporting doesn’t help either. While I normally think of myself as fairly healthy, psychologically speaking, I’m realizing that this phobia is not, and is starting to affect how I live my life, so I should probably do something about it.

I don’t know yet whether I’ll take transit during the games. I would like to enjoy many of the LiveSite events going on, but I’m breaking out in a nervous sweat just thinking about all those people that’ll be there during the Olympics. So maybe not. We’ll see.

Don’t turf my grass! Please sign these petitions against Park Board staff recommendations

Posted on January 28, 2010
Filed Under Games, Politics | Comments

As some of you know, I sit on the board of the VUL. We are currently looking at an issue that certainly affects the ultimate players in the city, but also, virtually all players of field sports. The issue at hand is a proposal to put turf fields in at both Memorial & Jericho Parks at the upcoming meeting this Monday, February 1st. This development proposal goes against the recommendations of the Vancouver Field Sports Federation (VFSF), an association of various sports leagues that utilize fields in the city. The VFSF has been working for the past 6 months with the city to develop alternate locations, but, as a result of Federal Stimulus money, the Park Board staff has seen fit to throw out all that community involvement and press ahead with these poor options.

NB: I’m writing this as a matter of personal opinion, not the official stance of the board of the VUL.

I ask you all to please view & sign the following petitions AGAINST putting turf on these fields:

The reasons for not wanting turf on these fields a numerous. Here are my major reasons for not wanting this to go ahead:

  1. This proposal flies in the face of 6 months of community consultation and goes directly against the recommendation of the primary users of these fields, the VFSF. It makes a mockery of the very idea of community consultation by the Park Board.
  2. These 2 fields constitute some of the nicest, smoothest sports-grass in the entire city. There are literally dozens of other parks we play in which would be more suitable to replace poorly-draining grass with turf, not to mention potentially upgrading school grounds with turf.
  3. The decision process on this development is being artificially rushed by the presence of federal stimulus money that requires that these “shovel-ready” projects be completed this calendar year. It is not a good idea to rush a decision that will have this large an impact just because of funding. In many ways, I’d rather see no new turf fields than see these 2 fields developed.

Thoughts on the iPad

Posted on January 28, 2010
Filed Under Events & Culture, Random Thoughts, Web Culture & Links | Comments

Like a huge number of people, I was highly anticipating the release of the Apple iPad. After watching the announcement, my initial response was ambivalent. It didn’t hit all the notes I was expecting it to. But a few hours later (and, it should be noted, I still have not seen it in person, only watched videos) I have some additional thoughts on it:

Your thoughts?

FCKeditor & Firefox 3.6

Posted on January 22, 2010
Filed Under Web Development | Comments

With the release of Firefox 3.6, those of you who interact with FCKeditor will note that it ceases to work, giving you instead a textarea. This is because in the browser sniffer, FCK ignores all browsers made in 2010 or later – such as Firefox 3.6. I can’t speak for any other versions, but in the Cold Fusion version, there’s a really simple fix:

  1. Locate fckutils.cfm, located in the root folder in the install.
  2. On line 47, edit the line that reads
    stResult = reFind( “gecko/(200[3-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9])”, sAgent, 1, true );
  3. Edit the reFind to read:
    stResult = reFind( “gecko/(20[0-9][0-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9])”, sAgent, 1, true );

This will give you another 90 years. Which should be plenty of time to find a replacement, particularly as the new CKeditor is now out, and doesn’t have this issue.

Translink (Canada Line) & the Olympics

Posted on January 13, 2010
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Travel | Comments

Quite rightly, VANOC is suggesting that people use transit during the Olympics to get around. This is a good & Noble goal. However, I have some concerns, particularly around use of the Canada Line. At the best of times, my experience is that tourists find our lack of transit gates to be confusing. It’s not terribly clear how to buy tickets, how to “activate” (or whatever the proper term is) them, and how long they’re useful for. This all seems clear enough to residents (although due to the supposed level of fare evasion, maybe it isn’t), however I’ve on at least a dozen of occasions helped tourists figure out how to use the Skytrain (buses are not an issue, due to there being a driver to  manage this).

Opening Day Line Up for the Canada Line. Photo Credit: The Buzzer

Opening Day Line Up for the Canada Line. Photo Credit: The Buzzer

About once a week, at Oakridge Skytrain station, there is a Canada Line attendant who stops and asks to see people’s tickets. This inevitably causes a slow down in getting on the train, and clearly, by the look on people’s faces, is annoying. Given how incredibly packed the Canada Line is already, I can just imagine the confusion & anger if Translink tries to do this during the Olympics. And, as I imagine Translink is looking at the Olympics as a golden opportunity to make some much-needed revenue, I’m expecting to see a veritable army of green-jacketed people checking for tickets. As a result, I’m imagining an even larger army of angry, confused & frustrated people trying to get on over-crowded trains to get downtown to venues, hotels, events and the whole thing just ending up with Translink having a black eye.

I hope that this doesn’t turn out to be the case, but given how poorly thought out the Canada Line constructions appears to have been, I am quite worried that it will end up being a fiasco. Does anyone remember the insanity of the opening day of Canada Line? Imagine that for 2 weeks now. Only it’s tourists stuck in the huge lines, who are perfectly willing to complain to all the media who I’m sure will rush to cover it, rather than us locals, who are more likely to put up with it.

It may be easier for all involved to either a) simply allow free travel on the Canada Line (or all skytrain lines) during the Olympics (highly unlikely at this point) b) provide each and every visitor who has an even ticket a commemorative transit pass (also unlikely) or c) have the Canada Line staff at the stations to help buy tickets, etc, but don’t sweat any accidental (or on-purpose) fare evasion during the Olympics to make using the service as nice as possible for all involved (also unlikely, but seems to be the lease unlikely).

Snowy england by train

Posted on January 8, 2010
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Travel | Comments

I wrote this yesterday while on the train from Paddington to Cardiff Central. Written on my iPhone, and now, posted from my iPhone. I feel like I’m entering a bold, dangerous new world of mobile-blogging. None the less, here’s my thoughts as I travelled yesterday:

England is impossibly lovley in the snow – the hedge-lined country lanes, the church spires spinkled with white, the near-invisible sheep & cows dotting the hillside as I rush past on the train. Even the nuclear power plant, curiously sandwiched between a cow pasture and what appeared to be and abandoned quarry appeared almost mythical. I could easily imagine Jack Frost and little sprites, or perhaps even Puck dancing along the rim of the towers kicking off little swirls of snow, laughing in the sunshine.

I wish the train were slower and the windows cleaner so I could take photos, but the experimental shots I took resulted in a blurred white smudge covered in brown dust.

Also, so much for the much-ballyhooed weather delays in England due to snow. The train from Cambridge to London arrived early, the circle line ran on schedule and here I am on a train to Cardiff, admittedly not my originally scheduled train as it was cancelled, but we are ahead on schedule, shortly approaching the Severn tunnel.

Newsletter Stats from the Pencilneck CMS

Posted on December 23, 2009
Filed Under Web Development | Comments

So our CMS, the Pencilneck CMS includes a email newsletter management system. With a little time between finishing one project & starting the next, I took some time to analyze the data we generate – in part out of self-interest, but also as part of a new project to provide additional analytics tools for our clients. Having spent the better part of a morning generating data, I thought I’d share this information with the general public. I’d love to know how this corresponds to the data from other newsletter delivery systems.

All times report are Pacific Time. All hours cited include the entirety of the hour. For instnace, 8AM means all time between 8:00:00 and 8:59:59, inclusive. For time-of-day reporting, I divided up the hours into 4 blocks – unequal in length but useful for business hours:

Number of Newsletter Recipients: 7,956,301

These first few numbers are based on the number of sends, so when our clients decided to send a newsletter.

Most Popular Day to Send a Newsletter: Tuesday (34%), Monday (28%).
Least Popular Day to Send a Newsletter: Saturday(1%), Friday (5%).

Most Popular Time of Day to Send a Newsletter: 8AM-11AM (40%), Midnight-7AM (25%)
Least Popular Time of Day to Send a Newsletter: 5PM-11PM (2%),Noon-4PM(10%)

Most Popular Day & Time to Send: Tuesday Midnight-7AM (34%), Monday 8AM-11AM (30%)
Least Popular Day & Time to Send: Friday 5PM-11PM(1%), Saturday 5PM-11PM (3%)

These next set of numbers are the “best” results based on open rate. The Open rate was calculated by dividing the number of newsletters that were opened vs the number of newsletters received. A newsletter is considered received if our system did not receive any bounce notifications regarding the delivery.

Best Day to Send a newsletter: Sunday (35%), Monday (33%)
Worst Day to Send a newsletter: Saturday (2%), Friday (8%)

Best Time of Day to send a newsletter: Midnight-7AM (40%), 5PM-11PM(35%)
Worst Time of Day to send a newsletter: 8AM-11AM (5%), Noon-4PM (8%)

Best Day & Time to send a newsletter: Monday Midnight-7AM (65%), Sunday 5PM-11PM(45%)
Worst Day & Time to send a newsletter: Saturday Midnight-7AM(1%),Friday Noon-4PM(3%). And worth mention is Wednesday Noon-4PM (4%).

We also, by way of Geolocation via IP address, can track where a recipient opens a Newsletter. For our clients, we group this by Province & State for Canada, US, Mexico & Australia, and the rest of the world simply by Country. I discounted all geo-data with less than 100 total recipients, to single out places like Ghana & its 100% open rate based on 4 recipients. Actually, the same recipient, 4 times.

Best open rate, by Recipient location: Ontario (65%), British Columbia (45%)
Worst open rate, by recipient location: Alberta (4%), Minnesota (5%)

Finally, I looked at links, and where they appear within the source code. To do this, I stripped all the header & styling information from the HTML source, leaving just the body, and divided that into quarters to see which links were the most clicked on. These results are probably not that surprising, but nevertheless. I determined the click rate by calculating the total number of recipients who clicked on a link vs the total number of opened newsletters. I then split that up based on which portion of the newsletter the click was in.

Overall clickthrough rate: 11%.
Average number of links per newsletter: 6
Most links in a newsletter: 104

Clickthrough rate for links in the third quarter of content: 9%
Clickthrough rate for links in the first quarter of content: 19%.
Clickthrough rate for links in the second quarter of content: 8%
Clickthrough rate for links in the third quarter of content: 4%
Clickthrough rate for links in the last quarter of content: 15%

Given these numbers, I then calculated the overall percentage of links per quarter of content:

Links found in the first quarter of content: 14%
Links found in the second quarter of content: 46%
Links found in the third quarter of content: 28%
Links found in the last quarter of content: 12%

I’m not entirely sure what to make of all this. Some other random notes:

I’ve stored all this data, along with the queries used to generate it all so I can now do this semi-regularly. Ideally, I’ll find some time to craft a simple API on this so that anyone could pull this anonymous, aggregate data to use, but I suspect that will be a long-term back-burner sort of project.

Vancouver Foodbank Tweetup Fundraiser – Dec 2 @ Library Square Public House

Posted on November 20, 2009
Filed Under Events & Culture, Web Culture & Links | Comments

Let’s raise some money for the Vancouver Food Bank! This year, more than ever, the Food Bank needs our help – more people need their services, and donations are down.

So, Wednesday, December 2nd, I’m organizing a Tweetup at Library Square Public House. Please bring donations, either cash or food to donate to the foodbank. We’ll then give the donations on behalf of Vancouver Twitterers during the CBC’s foodbank drive on December 4th. Thank you to Donelly Hospitality for providing a location!

Details:
Vancouver Foodbank Fundraiser Tweetup
Dcember 2nd, 2009  5:00pm
Location: Library Square Public House, 300 W. Georgia Street

Bring: Cash to donate to the Foodbank!

When donating to the foodback, cash is best – your every $1 will buy $3 worth of food. However, we’re going to stretch that! I’m please to announce that my company, Pencilneck Software, will match the first $500 in donations, so your $1 will buy $6 worth of food. If you or your company would like to match also, please let me know and I’ll add you to the list below:

Companies/Groups matching donations (in alphabetical order):

TOTAL MATCHING DONATIONS: $900

So, are you in?

UPDATE: Can’t make the event? Donate online! My sincerest thank you to PincGiving who are awesome and have donated a “donate now” button to this event, so that we can maximize our contributions to the Foodbank. All donations made between now & December 4th through this button will be counted towards matching donations, so please give! This button will live hear and to the right of my site:

Donate Now

If you’d like to add this button to your site, simply copy & paste the following code below:

<a href=”https://VancouverFoodbankTweetUpFundraiser.pincgiving.com”><img style=”border:none;” src=”https://www.pincgiving.com/images/gateway/buttons-3.png” alt=”Donate Now” /></a>

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