Today’s World Carfree Day, but in Toronto and Burlington, you’d never know it.
Category: cars suck
Not all cars suck
The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum is a joy of a website. It’s the first site for a very long time that I’ve spent more than an hour at, browsing through the meticulously compiled catalogue. It shows that not all cars have to be huge SUVs; most of the engines here are under 500cc, yet they still provide mobility.
Yay, sneakers!
I’ve ordered mine: http://www.blackspotsneaker.org/preview
biggest vee-hickle ever
Seems it’s a big weekend down at the rental lot. This Buick LeSabre — approximately the size of Clackmannanshire, for Scottish readers — is all they had left.
Oh well, at least I’ll be stylin’ on the way to the Rennfest, and at the airport to meet Catherine. Or, since it’s about the size of a Zil, I guess I could be Stalin.
Saving me the bother
I was going to start documenting my experiences with the Nikon D70 and Linux on a wiki of my own, but it looks like there’s a better place to do it: the Digital Photography and Linux wiki.
It’s slightly out of date, but we can fix that.
One ridiculous vehicle
One of these vehicles is a ridiculously unsafe vehicle that should never be allowed on the road. The other is a Speed Machine recumbent bicycle
UofT Solar Car
I was very sad to hear that the UofT solar car crashed, killing the driver. I didn’t know Andrew Frow, but I knew some of the Blue Sky Solar Racing team from the sustainability/renewable energy project around UofT.
tee hee, they have no idea
“A new deep-fried Scottish delicacy has created a miniature moral panic among the UK’s diet-cops.”
What gets me is that no-one commenting on this knows (or has worked out) what the name of this snack means to the average Glaswegian. Let’s just say it’s rude. Very rude. You’ve probably received at least five items of spam about this subject today.
gone digital
I got rid of nearly all my film camera equipment yesterday. Digital was calling, and I was barely using what I had. To Burlington Camera, I traded in:
- Cosina-Voigtländer Bessa R 35mm rangefinder outfit, comprising:
- Bessa R 35mm rangefinder body
- Ultron Aspherical 35mm-f/1.7 lens
- Nokton Aspherical 50mm-f/1.5 lens
- Apo Lanthar 90mm-f/3.5 lens
- Pentacon Six TL outfit, comprising:
- Pentacon Six TL MF SLR body
- Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar MC 80mm-f/2.8 Lens
- Pentacon Six TL WLF
- Pentacon Six TL metered prism
- Pentacon Auto extension tubes
- Voigtländer Vitoret 110EL 110 camera outfit with matching V200 flash
- Yashica Yashicamat MF TLR
- Yashica Electro 35 GTN 35mm rangefinder camera
- Olympus Stylus Epic Infiniti 35mm AF compact
- Metz 20BC6 Flash
… all towards a Nikon D70. I like it a lot.
There is some film equipment I kept, like the amazing 15mm f/4.5 SW Heliar lens. I even bought a Bessa L body from Cameraquest so I could keep using it with my Kaidan KiWi panoramic head. I also kept the Zero Image pinhole camera, as it’s too nice to sell.
Coming back from the camera store, the taxi driver was an artist fae Balornock. I guess there’s a lot more people fae Balornock than in Balornock.
Announcing SINC
Canada has this very nifty program called LINC — Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada. But language is just a tiny part of the Canadian experience, so I propose SINC — Skating Instruction for Newcomers to Canada.
It seems that being at home on ice is an essential part of the Canadian winter experience. And since a Canadian winter seems to take most of the year, it’s important to be acclimatized.
(The French-language equivalent of LINC is CLIC — Cours de langue pour les immigrants au Canada)
Stumpy!!!
I just got a classic bike from a small ad in a bike shop: a mid-80s Specialized Stumpjumper — with ultra-relaxed 69° angles and retro tiny main tube diameters — converted into a singlespeed.
The frame’s a little rusty, but it’s still lovely. The seller had done the conversion with pretty decent parts, so I’m happy as a clam. And the price was great. And it rides like a dream.
So, only 20 years after drooling over a Stumpy as a paperboy, I’ve finally got one. Wheee!!
A century later, worse economy
100 years in, and Ford’s current average car is less fuel efficient than the Tin Lizzy, says The Sierra Club. Way to go, Henry.