Ontario and Québec are set to go smoke free.

I have had the pleasure of being able to breathe easily in pubs and restaurants for several years. The legislation of smoking behaviour seems to be spreading at a phenominal rate. In fact, it is a bit of a shock when I find myself in a venue where smoking is allowed. Whether or not I believe in the right of government to legislate behaviour, I definitely appreciate the end result.

After reading a brief bit about one fo the films on Wellingtonista, I decided to try to catch the first round of screenings for the 48 Hour film festival.

I was fully aware of the potential for bad ideas and bad realisations, but I didn’t hesitate a moment. The good films were quite good, and the bad films were quite badr. I had no problem seperating the top of the list from the bottom while filling in my ballot. However, I took quite a while deciding between the top two.

The Wellington finals are on June 8th; I should probably try to get a ticket for that. National finals will be televised on C4 on June 23rd, with public voting by text message. It should be a lot of fun.

Thou shalt not assume that bananas cannot explode.

There was a hiccup with the shipping company used, but I finally have the CD in hand. I’ve had a couple of listens already, and I’m still very happy with it. I tend to prefer the tracks that are more musical over the tracks that are a bit noisier, but that’s natural. The brain likes pleasant sounds.

I’m not normally one to just point links, but this was cute and prickly: Humans

I remember hearing a story about excess charges made on exchange rates recently, but I didn’t think it applied to me. I guess I was wrong.

I received a letter from my bank indicating that I will be repayed $2.70. I guess every penny counts.

Having now done many hours of testing with flanger effects, I think my sensitivity to the sound has increased. I just noticed it jump out of me at the end of Counting Crows [1] – Angels of the Silences, as bold as daylight. Never noticed it before.

¹ For some reason, typing countingcrows into Firefox’s location bar took me to http://www.garbage.com/home.php.

(According to Shaju) English is my bitch.

I can only begin to echo Tom’s comments on the 2006 budget.

According to the press release regarding transportation funding, an extra $1.3 billion is to be allocated to transportation funding. However, every one of the projects listed as a target is a roading project.

“This will assure New Zealanders that the Labour-led government regards a world-class transport network, which moves people and goods safely and efficiently, as a centrepiece of our drive to transform the New Zealand economy,” Transport Minister Annette King said.

Moving people doesn’t seem to be a priority in this plan, and there isn’t a hint of efficiency involved in building bigger roads, wider roads and new roads. If the best interest of New Zealanders were to move individual cars, I would suggest putting the cars on a train and moving them. Instead, since our daily functioning requires moving people, putting the cars on a train seems silly. Unfortunately, the interest in using trains to move people has been removed from the equation, as indicated by the budget announcement, and the options for many people are limited.

If this is what the government calls ‘looking to the future’, it seems as if our leaders are wearing silly old X-Ray glasses. When the future looks back on us, what will it see?

The internet connection between work and Wellington was interrupted yesterday for a few hours, which was more than enough time for withdrawl symptoms to come on. It turns out that the fault was not the construction which was going on, but the fault of several hungry rats.

Yummy fibre.

A few debates regarding traffic and transportation in Wellington have come up recently, and flipping through the most recent 2 issues of The Wellingtonian has brought the lot of them to the top of mind.

The old trolley buses

Although I don’t know the history, it seems as if the public transportation infrastructure in Wellington spent too long being underfunded and the consequences are now being realised. Many of the trolley buses are in need of replacement and the cable structures are in need of maintenance, and, of course, there is a dispute over who gets the bill.

The May 18th issue of The Wellingtonian spares a few lines to the discussion. On Page 2, there is a short article about a petition, launched by the Green Party, to save the trolley service, and is followed up by a short poll on the issue. Finally, acting editor, Nicholas Boyack, picks up the topic one last time in his editorial.

There are two important reasons why the city should fight for the trolley system:

• Environment. The diesel buses that would replace the electric trolley cars would continue to pour exhaust into the atmosphere, would continue the oil addiction of transportation, and would continue to drown out all other noises at the bus stands. While it’s true that several types of power generation have adverse pollutive effects, this is not true for all. Wellington is a windy city, n’est-ce pas?

• Cost. The current price difference between the trolley fleet and a replacement diesel fleet is about $2.5 million. If we assume that recent trends in oil prices are not just a blip on the screen, diesel prices will continue to rise, dragging up the operating costs of the replacement fleet. It is impossible to predict what costs are going to be in 10, 15 and 20 years, but I believe that we’ll have passed the point where diesel buses are the cheap option.

Speed limit changes to Lambton Quay

For several months, city councellors have been considering lowering the speed limit of Lambton Quay. This is apparently a response to a fatal accident involving a pedestrian and driven by a recommendation by a local coroner, Garry Evans.

An article in the May 11th issue of The Wellingtonian provided a counterpoint to the general support that the recommendation has received. John Morrison, one of two councellors who voted agains the proposal, feels that motorists are being attacked.

Ultimately the drive is to get motor vehicles out of Lambton Quay and that will turn Lambton Quay into a ghost town

I’m particularly unconvinced by such a comment. Lambton is a strong shopping district with a large amount of pedestrian traffic. By encouraging pedestrian flow further, I would expect to see further growth for the businesses in the area. This seems to be in line with the findings of The Gehl Report on use of public spaces, which suggests developing street-level interest and easier pedestrian mobility.

I would encourage the possibility of removing private traffic from Lambton Quay entirely. The layout of the roads currently present a bottleneck to general traffic flow. During peak times, the problem expands as many cars stop to quickly drop off and pick up passengers, causing untold amounts of minute interruptions. By limiting the length of Lambton Quay to buses, cycles and taxis, both traffic flow and traffic safety can be addressed in a positive fashion. The amount of parking displaced is small, and with the changes to the speed limit, much of through traffic should already be diverted to other routes.

Final thought

As a special aside, many thanks to the author of the May 18th response to this issue. It is hard to say if Mr. Bowering’s letter was meant to be sincere or farcical, but I took it as the latter. It is very hard to take someone seriously with comments like this:

It [public transit] should be abolished and the marketplace should be allowed to find an effective solution. If people want to ride buses they should pay the full cost of doing so, just as I do through petrol, parking, insurance and vehicle maintenance because I want to drive. That is my choice. Others should make their choice with full knowledge of the costs of that decision.

Thank you, sir. I haven’t seen a troll like this in a newspaper in a long time.

While doing some casual reading on Peak Oil, I ran across a speech by Swedish Minister for Sustainable Development, Mona Sahlin. I didn’t realise how aggressively they are seeking to break ties to an oil-based energy economy.

We only have one planet Earth; if everyone on the planet used resources the way we do in the western world, we would need 3 more Earths.

We’re currently demanding more than we ever have, and those demands are still growing. This poster paints the picture.

Along with high oil prices and climate change, an increasing number of countries are recognising the problem with fossil fuels. But this requires conscious investments – not a reactionary policy that obstructs the transition to alternative energy sources and investments in the environment of the future.

Just for the sake of completeness, the dollar value attributed to the cost of taking the bus is broken down as follows:

• Evans Bay to Oriental Parade. 2 stages, for which a 10 trip pass costs $15. I chose this because I get off the bus at my gym. It would be a third stage to take the bus to Courtenay Place, which is $20 for a 10 trip pass. 2 trips are required each day.

• Courtenay Place to Gracefield. 7 stages, which costs $3.60 with the GoRider card. 2 trips are required each day.

This is a total of $10.20/day.

Based on this, it will be cheaper to use a PlatinumPass, which is $149 and can be used for 1 calendar month. 20 days of work per month leads to over $200 given to the bus companies if I stick with the stage-based fares. I will buy into the bus pass beginning next month. Even then, the per-day-cost is about $7.50/day, which is still only comparable to the cost of driving. If I were to share costs by carpooling, transit is again in a different ballpark.

It’s a good thing I’m rather determined to make this work.

Over the past few weeks, the Greater Wellington Regional Council has been requesting comments on a proposed change to the fare structure over the public transportation network in Wellington. Tomorrow is the last day for submissions, so my comments are well under the wire.

1. Do you support the new simple fare structure?

yes

It is critically important to promote transparency of the transportation network to the end user. As a new resident of Wellington (March 2006), I fought with the information available in finding a sensible public transport route between home and work. The current walls that continue to exist between the major bus companies keep people from using the transportation network to its full potential. I believe the shift in fare structure is a small step in the right direction.

Having said that, I believe the steps being taken are far too small. The short term result of the changes of the fare structure is that fares will increase, but network effectiveness and efficiency presented to the user will remain unchanged.

2. In 2003 when we consulted on simplifying the fare structure there was strong support for concession fares for young people and senior citizens. If these were introduced, eligible people would need a Metlink concession card with photo ID.
Do you support the introduction of a Metlink concession card with photo ID?

no

I’m not convinced that application of a photo to a card will be sufficient to prove ownership. Cards are easily worn or damaged to the point where it becomes difficult to assess identity quickly. In a crowded bus-stop, verifying the photos of 5 students may take a couple minutes. After a while, in order to keep the bus schedule, the driver may take less time, resulting in a less-well-informed judgement.

I understand the point of the photo, but the system will either be easily circumvented or the bus schedule will just become even less reliable than they already is.

3. Have you any other comments you’d like to make?

When considering cost effectiveness of the transportation network, it is not sufficient to examine the fare structure. The time taken is also important. From the point of view of the end user, a one-hour bus trip has an implicit cost over a 30 minute car ride.

My efforts to use public transportation are altruistic. It is currently more expensive to take the bus system ($10.20/day) from Evans Bay to Gracefield than it is to drive (approximately $7.50/day at $1.70/L petrol). I believe that the public transportation system is critical to the future and must be developed aggressively. I don’t mind paying the extra money for use of the service over the use of my car. I have read that $500 million is being sought for upgrades to the existing network, and I assume that the fare structure changes, and the associated increases, will assist with the raising of the sum. I want to know that the money is going to go into positive projects that encourage long term sustainability.

I wore my glasses for the first time in a few months yesterday and kept up the illusion today. By the time I got to volleyball, my brain had realised how poor my vision actually is, and taking my glasses off made it very difficult to focus, so I left them on. However, when I wear my glasses, my peripheral vision is horrible, and I couldn’t get a sense of who and what was around me.

I’m not to wear my glasses at the computer, due to my short-sightedness, and I’m not to wear them in the few hours before a game. It’s just better this way.

I must be crazy to have this much bad luck with the bus system and still use it by choice. I was waiting for the bus¹ for quite some time, trying to come home from downtown. I had already walked along the waterfront until the bus was due, rather than just standing and waiting at the first stop. About 10 minutes after the bus was due, another bus on a different route stopped to let someone off. I asked the driver if he knew what was happening with the bus that I was waiting for. He proceeded to go into a rather long tirade about how I need to call up MetLink and Stagecoach and complain about my driver, because he’s consistently late. He’s right, too. I should do as he said.

A few minutes after he drove off, my bus came along. I’d raised my hand to indicate my intention, but he didn’t slow down. I waved a large motion to catch his attention, and still he didn’t slow down. I was about to yell foul obscenities at him, when the bus finally stopped, about 20m beyond the bus stop. I’m guessing that someone on the bus told him that I was there, because he really didn’t seem to pay attention. The driver apologised as I boarded the bus, but if this problem is as consistent at the other driver said, a formal complaint is well earned.

¹ Stagecoach Wellington, Route 24. It was due at 6:22pm across from Carlton Gore Road.

I see that with Trends, Google has done what I’ve been hoping to see for a while: provide a snapshot of activity over a topic. One can see, for instance, rates of meme-propogation or intrusion of a new brand into the world’s focus of attention. As an additional benefit, ranking of search requests by city, region and language¹ are available.

As a quick test, I punched in a query on peak oil. As of 11:15am my time, 11th of March, 2006, New Zealand was the highest overall giver of attention. Yay us! Of course, there’s a disclaimer:

Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. It is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it.

¹ I’m not so sure that rankings by language really provide useful information, but I’m not going to complain.

I think I just have to come to terms with the truth: I’m not good at catching buses. My sense of time is approximate, so I have a hard time being on the right side of the clock when the bus approaches. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a regular clock that the buses synchronise to, so that if a bus arrives early, it leaves early. As such, I have to be earlier than the bus can be, which is exactly what I’m bad at.

As the result of missing buses in the last three days alone, I’ve been 45 minutes late for work, ended up walking 4km to get home, and waited a total of well over an hour for the next bus. I hope I learn a lesson soon.

Can you imagine what the state scientific progress would be if Bush funnelled as much effort into researching new, long-term energy sources instead of battling a land war to control the world’s oil production?

Oil is a candle. No one can predict how long it will take to burn down; we only know that it will end. With an ever-increasing demand for it, the world is rushing to get the the end of the candle. What will take the place of oil when we’ve reached the end point? Is there a plan? Are there viable options? Shouldn’t some of our time and effort be directed towards the future of the world we live on?

The bus that I catch from downtown Wellington to work runs at 20 minute intervals, between 6:40am and 7:40am. There are 4 buses in total. Of the 4, there are two that I can catch after coming from either a bus into town or from the gym. This morning, I managed to miss the last one. By the clock over the Embassy Theatre, I arrived at the bus stop at 7:42 and change, but my bus had already passed by. The next bus that would come close to fulfilling my needs of getting to work involved a 15 minute wait, a 10 minute longer ride, and a 10 minute walk.

The irony is that it would have been both faster and cheaper for me to catch a bus back to my house and take my car to work.

I know better than to keep my head down when playing sport, but I was fishing the puck of the boards last night at hockey and caught a shoulder in my left ear. My head went right, probably a little too far. I subbed off quickly and gave it a gentle rub to see if it was starting to tense up at all, deciding that it could have been worse. I knew I’d have a headache today, and possible other strains, so I’ve got a 4pm appointment with the onsite doctor at work and a chiro appointment on tuesday. There seems to be some reactive tension, but not as bad as I was expecting. I’m still trying to figure out where the bruise on my forearm came from, though.

I forgot my mobile phone at home when I left for the gym this morning, but occassionally, I feel my pocket vibrate.

After seeing a picture on Flickr entitled Smogville, I was reminded of my walk home after volleyball on Sunday, which took me through the Mt. Victoria Tunnel, the same tunnel the photo was taken in.

There are two experiences that cannot be avoided while walking through the tunnel:

• The air in there is abysmal. It might be technically ventillated, but one wouldn’t know without looking at the vents.
• The noise is painful. Vehicles are loud to start with, and the tunnel is an echo chamber. On top of that, people think that it’s fun to honk their horns. I would like to see some acoustic measurements be taken by the council to determine the ear-safety of the pedestrian walkway.My guess is that it’s not.

The next task is to find a track that goes over the hill instead of under the hill. It keeps me out of my car and keeps me out of the pollution of the other cars.

It’s been one month since I last tried to catch a bus to work. Today was a lot better than the first attempt. No longer hindered by mis-information, the process runs as one would expect.

There are still details to work out. I have two distances to cover: home to my gym and gym to work. The second distance is easy. From the gym, walk 2 or 3 minutes to the bus stop at Courtney Place and catch the bus when it comes. The first distance isn’t quite so straight forward. The first bus past my house arrives at 6:30, but the gym opens at 6. If I can arrive at the gym early, I can catch an earlier bus to work. The options for getting to the gym are limited: walking, running, skating. Each of them involves me taking a pack with spare clothes on my back. I found out this morning that running with a full pack isn’t completely awkward, and it was a great warm-up for the workout. I’ll just have to see how feasible that is when it’s incredibly windy or rainy. I might find myself waiting for that 6:30 bus.

The trip home should prove telling, too. I have my first class at L’Alliance Française de Wellington tonight at 6pm, which means that I’ll miss the last bus that runs past my house. If it’s raining, I’ll be in for a long walk home.

After running across further problems with MetLink’s website, I finally called the information line posted in the top corner and asked the questions that needed to be asked. Armed with some fresh answers, I should be out of my car before the end of the week.

There are a couple important things that came from our conversation:

• The lady I spoke to was very quick to offer a direct line to the man responsible for the website. They’ve complained internally, citing useability issues, to no avail. I’ve already sent an email to the posted address, but if there is no response within a few days, I’ll be happy to replay my complaints over the phone.

• The monthly bus passes page indicates that GoRider is a bus pass, available for $80, plus a one-time fee, and is valid for 1 month. It is, in fact, a smart card that stores a balance and deducts fares as they are used. This is a huge difference.

• The same page implies that the GoRider card is not valid for the Eastbourne Connector route (which would take me to work). Since this is operated by CityLine, it can be used.

I’m hoping this gets fixed shortly. With fuel prices on line to hit $2/L shortly, transit information needs to be clear, accurate and accesible.

This is the downside. If you overflow an audio buffer that’s being streamed through to your ears, you can hear almost anything. What I heard was a loud pop. It might have been my brain, but I’m not sure. I was testing with the guitar again, so the signal was boosted a bit compared to testing with the white noise sample. Pop looked a bit more like POP.

For future safety, always drag down the slider before testing new code.

The Brain Rain entry from James Ledoux caught my attention recently. The idea of taking 10 minutes per day to capture ideas seems too simple to work, but it’s the ongoing structure of the event that will generate the ideas. By letting the mind wander through what’s possible and what’s impossible on a regular basis, the creative engine will wake up. And if nothing seems to come out, have fun with it. Doodles are just as valid as words.

This reminds me of some things that I’ve tried in the past with friends and coworkers. Brain teasers and puzzles are also excellent for getting the mind to skip past the obvious and look for underlying patterns and connections. The hardest part is keeping up the habit long enough for it to become a regular part of the day.