After several months closed, the Jamaican restaurant at 224 Adelaide St W has reopened as Caribbean Taste. It’s the same folks (Robert & Wendy, from Tropical Desires on Old Weston Rd) cooking as before, and it’s still able to provide a life-changing roti experience.
So I got my vehicle tax refund cheque yesterday. In a city that’s gridlocked, if anything is a blatant attempt to buy votes, this $60 “refund” is the worst possible way to reward voters. I think that the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation could use the money better than me.
A house down the road does these very intricate snow sculptures:
Seems that Shangri-La Toronto wants to surround their building with a bright magenta billboard. This is the view from my office:
It’s so bright everything vaguely reflective on my desk appears to be pink. I’ve made a couple of calls to the City of Toronto – Sign By-law Unit and Toronto 311 and await developments.
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.
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.
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.
Toronto Hydro’s PowerLens for BlackBerry is quite neat:
That’s real data from my home meter, folks.
Had a bit of a clear-out yesterday. I dropped off
at Free Geek Toronto. I’d heard about them from Colin at Mappy Hour, the monthly(ish) OpenStreetMap event. They have a very neat warehouse, and are definitely doing the right thing in getting surplus electronics either to people who need them, or properly recycled. On the (lengthy – 2 hours from the Junction to home, grr) drive back, I even heard a tiny CBC radio spot about them. Shame that the announcer almost said “old electronics crap” instead of “old electronics gear”, though …
I just built a new linux box to replace a bunch of the stuff I just threw out. It’s a small and quiet MSI 6676-003BUS with a fanless Atom 510 processor. It plugs straight into the HDMI of the TV, and remote work is done with VLC or SSH. To cut down clutter, I’m using a cheapo Logitech® Cordless MediaBoard Pro for PLAYSTATION®3, which works just fine as a keyboard and mouse with a generic $10 bluetooth USB adaptor.
I like this album a lot. Colleen and Paul have been working together for years (I saw ‘em as Jack and Ginger in 2006), and this music needs to be heard!
I thought the highlighter was a nice touch:
Seen on University Ave on a moped parked blocking a bike ring.
On Canada Day, I rigged up my bicycle with a camera set to take a picture every 20 seconds, and a GPS to track my location. I had no control over when the camera would fire as I rode round the neighbourhood. Out of the 150+ photos it took, this one from Jack Goodlad park came out quite well:
The rest of the pictures are here: My Neighbourhood, Canada Day 2010 « Numpty’s Progress
Wonder why the G20 fence takes a bend around the RBC at Bay & Wellington?
Robyn Hitchcock plays The Drake this weekend. Last night he covered Syd Barrett’s Terrapin. His Fylde has never sounded better.
Robyn Hitchcock - Terrapin
