Tag: toronto

100 clicks on a bixi

Whee! I’ve done more than 100km on Bixi bikes! Dunno if the small addition of gentle exercise into my daily routine has made any real difference, but I feel the better for it.

Fausto Coppi I’m not. I poddle along at an average speed of just under 12 km/h; that’s slightly faster than a gentle ooze. Bixi only measures station to station distances, so I’ve probably gone a little faster and a little further

One thing, the Bixi mobile map at toronto.bixi.com/stations is utter pants on a Blackberry. I mean, this is the best I could get it to work:

who loves the sun?

After my solar course, I’ve been messing about with the UO SRML: Sun chart program. It shows sun angles and day lengths throughout the year.

Toronto: where I live
Glasgow: where I'm from. Not much sun there, but looong summer days
Phoenix, AZ is pretty sunny
I think I'd freak out if I lived at the equator: every day is nearly the same length!
Mombasa, Kenya: point your modules north!
Not much sun in far north Alert; sometimes, the sun doesn't set — sometimes it doesn't rise
I don't think I'd mind living in Glasgow — Glasgow, Guyana, that is.

bixing

I’ve been using BIXI every day, despite the rain. They’re slightly different from the test-ride bikes; the ex-Montreal ones had 8 gears, while Toronto flatlanders only get three. The brakes work better too; I’m expecting to get rear-ended any day at a stop sign, since I seem to be the only one who even tries to stop at these things.

I’ve worked out a nifty route down St George and Beverley across the lanes to Simcoe and Queen. Takes me 10 minutes down, 12 back up. Fun!

ExPlace Turbine Shutdown for Service

I noticed this in my twitter feed the other day:

windshare: ExPlace Turbine Shutdown for Service http://wp.me/p11wfW-8T

From what the linked news release said, it looks like the turbine has had a major mechanical component failure. The replacement part will take several months to arrive, then needs a crane to replace it. The turbine is structurally sound, and is even yawing to follow the wind, but can’t generate.

This is a shame, as the volunteers at WindShare had just got the turbine operating at very close to commercial availability. There are also a couple of usefully windy months before the summer for which co-op members will lose revenue.

Update: a very watered-down news release went up on April 3rd: Turbine Technology Update.

bike locker

I’ve got a bike locker. You can have a bike locker too. It’s $10+tax a month.

The bike just fits in. It isn’t tall enough for my ill-fated bike mirror (which doesn’t fit in my own shed, so is likely soon to be removed).  The locker tapers towards the back, so I’m not sure I can reach the nurse’s lock on the frame.

My locker hadn’t been used for a while, so I had to attack the mechanism with spray lube before it would reliably lock and unlock.

Why I didn’t vote for George Smitherman

I didn’t vote for George Smitherman because I fundamentally disagree with the secret deal he initiated with the Korean consortium (including Samsung and Kepco). A feed-in tariff is all about equal access to the right to connect. The consortium, with its guaranteed grid capacity, sidesteps this equal access.

To make things worse, the consortium may have access to a price adder on top of the FiT prices. This is supposed to recognize the consortium’s expertise in the supply chain, and its consequential creation of jobs through local manufacturing.  There are many other companies — some of which actually have supply chain experience in the renewable energy sector — who would bring the same number of jobs for the same number of megawatts.

So, ixnay on the Ithermansmay for that. There’s no way I’d vote for the glistening oaf (a phrase coined by Catherine after seeing this picture), so Joe Pantalone it was.  Joey Pants’ campaign was, well, a bit pants, but he was the most appropriate of the candidates.

Test-riding the Bixi

BIXI Toronto had a demo station outside MEC today. They had a few slightly beat-up (I suspect, ex Montreal) bikes on display at a station and for test riding.

I checked out one the bikes for a ten minute test ride. For such a solid bike, I was impressed with its swiftness. You won’t find yourself hopping curbs, but the big smooth tyres roll fast.

The bike’s pretty sensible, with a fully guarded chain, guards, dynamo lights and a front carrier.

A clever bash guard protects the hub gear settings

The pointy nose at the front locks into the Bixi station:

All the controls are where you’d expect them:

And a graduated seatpost for us tall forgetful types:

The one thing I was disappointed with was the brakes. My bike has similar Shimano units. They’re a bit gentle, but they do stop you. The ones on the loaner bike brought back memories of trying to stop in the rain on my steel-rimmed paperboy bike.

Still, I’m really looking forward to Bixi arriving in the city next year.

late bloomer

I guess I must’ve dropped a sunflower seed earlier in the summer. So now we have a sunflower blooming in the back garden in October. Not many bees around.