We Saw a Chicken …

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  • Toronto Subway Station GPS Locations

    After seeing the various nifty web-enabled transit maps, I realised I had the data handy to get things started. A while back, I georeferenced the TTC Ride Guide, and digitized all the station locations. I cleaned them up today, and in the hope of being useful, here are the files:

    These are simple three-column CSV files, stating latitude, longitude, and station name. They should be in order of stations. Locations are probably within about 50m of real life, but don’t bank on it.

    I’ll get these into more useful formats soon, like GPX and KML. For now though, if you can use ’em, go ahead and do something.

  • london’s mean trick

    I was stranded in London (Ontario, that is) last week due to a fuel pump failure in an elderly Subaru. Looking for some breakfast, I followed my nose to the most amazing smell of fruit pastries.

    … and wound up next to the Kellogg’s factory. I suspect Pop Tarts. A low trick.

  • Pencils of 2005

    My best music of 2005 list isn’t ready yet, so here are my Great Pencils of 2005:

    1. Faber-Castell 9000 — 125 years old, and still the smoothest writer out there. Still alarmingly expensive; I can buy 8 tri-writes for the price of two 9000s
    2. Ticonderoga tri-write — a great low-fatigue triangular pencil. Writes smoothly, sharpens cleanly, and keeps its point well
    3. Lee Valley HB — there are just nice British-made pencils
    4. Staedtler Mars Lumograph — the efficient German drawing-office pencil
    5. Dixon Primary Printer — meant for little kids, this chunky pencil works for big hands too. Unfortunately, it’s round, so it rolls off the desk.

    The Papermate Mirado Classic just missed the cut. It’s a whole load of pencil for very little money, a sixth of the price of the Faber-Castell. Yes, it’s a yellow American office pencil with an eraser, but so’s the tri-write. Maybe I’m getting more used to this continent.

  • corvettesnowmobile

    A yellow Chevrolet Corvette soft-top was having a really hard time going up Kennedy Road this morning. It was moving no faster than walking pace, and the back end was fishtailing out at every possible opportunity.

  • Stewart’s long walk

    After picking up my UK passport form at Bay & College, I walked to Spadina Subway. Not far, you’d say. It is if you go via College all the way to Dufferin, and back. 7.3 km, I make it, from the amazing Gmaps Pedometer. I went via Canada Computers (where I got a fantastically quiet Vantec case fan) and Soundscapes (where, of course, I bought too many CDs).

    And you know why it was such a long walk? I was looking for a Timmy’s. Sad, isn’t it? It would seem that Little Italy is almost totally free of Tim’s. Yes, I know I could have had fantastic espresso and some kind of pastry there, but I wanted Tim’s, and I was prepared to walk for over an hour in sub-zero temperatures to get it, dammit.

  • cheap powermeter

    I snagged a UPM EM 100 Energy Meter at crappytire yesterday. It was a good bit cheaper than the old standard P3 Kill A WATT. We’ll see if it’s useful.

    (So I guess I’ve answered my own Talk Energy post.)

  • I (heart) languagehat

    languagehat, on begging the question:

    This is one of those issues that is catnip to the adolescent language-lover but which a sensible person grows out of. I too used to enjoy tormenting people with the “truth” about the phrase, but I eventually realized that, whatever its origins … I had never seen or heard the phrase used “correctly” except by people making a point of doing so (cf. “hoi polloi”); in current English usage, “beg the question” means ‘raise the question,’ and that’s that. I got over it …
    [T]his … is a sign that the language has sailed on, leaving wistful archaists treading water and clutching at the stern.

  • Dun Law Attitude Change

    You can’t know how happy it makes me to read about the survey that shows that over 90% of people living closest to the Dun Law site supported their local wind farm. The early planning stages of this project were particularly fraught with opposition.

  • well, that was easy, maybe

    Just did my citizenship test. 20 questions, two of which you must get right, three of which you must get at least one right, and fifteen non-mandatory questions. Pass mark is 12/20.

    Seemed not very difficult, either:— who was the first prime minister, who can vote, when was the Charter introduced, when did Newfoundland & Labrador join the Confederacy, when did Nunavut become a territory; that sort of thing. To think I spent all that time worrying about natural resources, the third line of O Canada! and Lieutenant Governors (sings: Bartleman, Bartleman, Does everything a … hey, wait a minute, just what can a bartle do, anyway?).

    It did dismay and astonish me how badly prepared some people were. About 5 out of the 40 people didn’t turn up, and maybe 10 people didn’t have the requisite papers. C’mon people, don’t you want to be Canadian?

  • saturday night with the resisters

    Just back from Innes Town Hall, to see a screening of Let Them Stay, a documentary about US war resisters in Canada, hosted by War Resisters Canada. It was a fun evening.

    support a resister, wear a resistor
    I wonder if I should start wearing a resistor in my lapel: Support a Resister, Wear a Resistor? Sure beats wearing a triode for the War Amps …

  • go 1and1!

    I just noticed that 1and1 upgraded my hosting package to 30GB and 100 MySQL databases. Meep!

  • the disgruntled cyclops in your computer

    this perl operator is really a disgruntled cyclops

    You might see this in Perl if, for instance, $data were a reference to an array of arrays, and so @{ $data[$#data] } would represent the last row of data in the array. You don’t see it that often; probably more frequently than a real disgruntled cyclops, though …

  • m@b reads my blog!

    How do I know that m@b reads my blog? Easy, ‘cos he hotlinked the image from the Ecobunk invitation to the Spacing Wire.

  • this isn’t the same Edinburgh as I know

    Shawn Micallef on Edinburgh: “… it’s easy to be knocked over by street after street of fairy-tail [sic] landscape”. What?! Edinburgh’s a grubby, cold, stinky place, and best avoided.

  • the monopoly on free money

    from a familiar note
    It’s a licence to print money! Well, Monopoly® money, that is. But you can’t have everything; it doesn’t stop people from trying, though.

    The above image is copyrighted, trademarked, service-marked and intellectually-propertized 15-ways-to-Sunday by Hasbro. I hereby acknowledge that I’m a very naughty person to have nicked it for my website, and have felt good and contrite for at least the last 5 (five) seconds. But then, since Hasbro own the rights to my earliest published writings (long story: they bought Database Publications, for whom I used to write) and are sitting on the goldmine that is the film rights to Stardodger (my first, and only, game), I think they’ve done okay from me.

  • EcoBunk Unplugged: the 15th Annual EcoBunk Awards

    ecobunk unplugged 2005
    TEA sez:

    EcoBunk Unplugged
    the 15th Annual EcoBunk Awards
    For advertising excellence in confusing the public & compromising the environment.

    Our annual fundraiser and comedy show pokes fun at the most outrageous corporate green advertising of 2005. Sometimes we even point the finger at ourselves. We present nominated ads under nine different categories and reveal the winner. The laughter lasts for two full hours.

    Of course, we don’t actually send awards to the winning companies.

    Come celebrate with us! Ecobunk is a popular and favourite event among the environmentally-minded in Toronto, Waterloo and points beyond.

    Thursday, December 8th, 2005
    Plaza Flamingo
    423 College Street
    Show starts at 8:00pm
    Doors & Cash Bar opens at 6:30pm
    Tickets: $20
    To reserve your seat(s) call TEA 416-596-0660

    *** Note we are asking for prepayment this year and can accept credit cards or cheques. ***

    Don’t miss the event this year!

    I’ll be there. Will you?

  • TTC Subway: Pape to Chester, 4pm

    TTC Subway: Pape to Chester, 4pm (MP3).

    A man was reading the Autos section of the Toronto Star in a testy manner.

    Recorded on iRiver H120 + cheapo iRiver mic, and Rockbox firmware.

  • it’s snowing

    it\'s snowing

  • Rockbox rocks my iriver

    Red letter day today: the Rockbox team have added peak level meters and on-the-fly gain control to recording on the iRiver H120. They fixed the infamous glitch months ago.

    I now have a really good little digital audio recorder thanks to the Rockbox developer community.

  • Schultze Gets The Blues

    from Schultze gets the Blues
    It’s German, it’s funny (no, really), and it has wind turbines in it. Horst Krause is wonderful as the retired and bewildered Schultze, as he makes his quest for musical identity in the Deep South.