The other day I was scheduling a meeting at the sushi restaurant on Granville Street that’s really near Cherry Bomb and Fluevog. I couldn’t remember the name–maybe I never knew it–so I brought up Google Street View to have a look.
When I went to drag the little Street View orange man over Granville Street, it didn’t turn blue like the rest of the map:
That’s because, earlier this year, when the Google Street View car drove by, Granville Street was under construction or otherwise restricted to pedestrian traffic.
This isn’t that big a deal here, but what about the great pedestrianized streets of Europe and Asia? I’m thinking here of Dublin’s Grafton and Henry Streets, which are long and restricted to walkers and cyclists.
Maybe Google needs to expand into other vehicles. A Google Street View tricycle, perhaps? Or maybe something mounted on a human, like a four-way SteadiCam?
Today I attended BookCamp Vancouver at SFU. It’s was a well-run, well-organized event that frequently featured an engaging exchange of ideas. It probably could have used a few more of the unconference features that make BarCamp so special. I expect some industries are more comfortable than others with this kind of open, egalitarian model, so better baby steps than none at all.
Throughout the day, I recommended a number of articles to various writers, editors and publishers. I figured I might as well gather them here in case they’re of interest. Long time readers have probably seen me recommend one or more of these articles before:
The Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow – From 1994, but still pretty relevant today. Extremely prescient for the time. “Even the physical/digital bottles to which we’ve become accustomed – floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other discrete, shrink-wrappable bit-packages – will disappear as all computers jack-in to the global Net. While the Internet may never include every CPU on the planet, it is more than doubling every year and can be expected to become the principal medium of information conveyance, and perhaps eventually, the only one. “
The Next Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow – Six years later, and even more insightful. I’ve been saying this next sentence ever since I read this piece: “Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship, and a relationship with the Holy at that. Reducing such work to “content” is like praying in swear words.”
1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly – I recommend this to every artist I meet, regardless of medium. It’s an extremely elegant way of thinking about fostering community and building an audience. For some reason it reminds me of the central metaphor in Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”. “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”
I wanted to offset those first three from the next two because the former are truly remarkable, visionary pieces. The next two are smart thinking and worth reading, but might pale a bit by comparison.
The 10 Principles of Lean Publishing by Peter Armstrong – Some very useful thinking about what publishing can learn from software development. Includes concepts like “fail fast” and “a book is a lean startup”. Now, Peter, go write a great, simple manifesto, instead of a waffly top-ten list.
As I recently mentioned, today is Blog Action Day. Ironically, because it’s Blog Action Day and I’m involved in the TckTckTck campaign, I don’t have a lot of free time to write a long, heart-rending blog post about the dangers of climate change.
Instead, I want to share this great video that the local video-meisters at Giant Ant Media created for TckTckTck. It speaks for itself:
I usually wouldn’t be a big fan of a video full of cute kids, but this one jibes with our philosophy and theory of change for TckTckTck. It’s reportedly brought the occasional person to tears, which is a pretty good result for 80 seconds.
In the next couple of weeks, there are two big climate change-related events that I wanted to mention.
First up, this Thursday is Blog Action Day, a day on which a bunch of bloggers agree to all write about the same topic. This year, that topic is climate change (over at TckTckTck, we pushed hard to make that happen).
If you’re a blogger, please consider joining Blog Action Day and, this Thursday, writing about climate change. If you do, you can find plenty of helpful assets associated with the TckTckTck campaign. We’ve got a bunch of evocative photos on our Flickr stream, and a mega YouTube playlist of great videos.
Bridge to a Cool Planet
October 24 is the Global Day of Climate Action, where people all over the planet engage in thousands of actions–flash mobs, parades, protests and other events–to call for a fair, binding and ambitious climate treaty. This two-minute video (featuring an awesome Sigur Ros song) explains:
The biggest event that I’m aware of locally is Bridge to a Cool Planet. The northbound lanes of the Cambie Street Bridge will be closed to traffic, and people will walk north across the bridge and then east over to Science World, where there will apparently be festivities throughout the afternoon.
The excellent people at the Surrey International Writers Conference have kindly shuffled the schedule around so that I can come down and take part for a couple of hours in the afternoon. If you’re in the vicinity during the actual walk, drop me a tweet or text.
Many years ago, my friend convinced me that the Cambie Street Bridge, though least attractive, has the best views of any bridge on the south side of downtown. That’s a bonus to the whole fighting climate change business, but the views alone are worth the walk.
I don’t like reading braggy, boastful blog posts. I know I’m as guilty of them as anybody else. But when I read somebody writing about their recent award, weight loss or awesome new job, and I’m sitting at home all awardless and fat, I feel the little green Kobolds of Envy and Jealousy whispering in my ear canal. It’s petty, I know, but what’re you going to do?
This is one of those blog posts.
Today I ran five kilometres for the first time in my life. I know that five kilometres isn’t very far–for most runners it’s trivial. My siblings are all long distance runners of one kind or another–just this morning my elder sister, bless her, ran her first half-marathon.
But you need to understand what an unlikely achievement this is. I was an indoor kid, and I always hated Phys Ed class. As I said recently:
Whenever we did any kind of long distance running, I would usually come third to last in the class. I’d beat the corpulent Chinese kid and an asthmatic Brit with skin the colour of fluorescent light.
My chief torturer in Phys Ed was one Wayne Desjardins, who owned every cliche a gym teacher could. Once, after executing a particularly awful flexed-arm hang, I cursed under my breath. He made me do push-ups on my birdlike arms while the rest of the class took their turns. We did these things in alphabetical order.
I’ve always hated all kinds of exercise, except for some competitive sports and the occasional hike. I especially despised running. I mentioned running to my step-mother recently and she just sighed and said, “ah, Darren, it’s a hateful thing”. Indeed.
A little over two months ago, I wrote aboutan iPhone app that helps you get off the couch and running five kilometres in nine weeks. I predicted it would take me 12 weeks, and I was right. I blame lethargy and busyness.
It’s All For Vanity
Do I still hate running? Pretty much, yeah. Though it has granted me 30 or 40 minutes of much-needed free thinking time during a particularly busy couple of months. So that’s a plus.
Will I keep running? I think so. Frankly, I’m motivated by vanity–I don’t want to get corpulent–so that’s unlikely to change any time soon.
How is it that Ms. Hayes isn’t world famous yet? She’s a great singer-songwriter and, as you’ve probably observed, rather easy on the eyes. See also the single from her new EP.
For you kids out there, ‘EP’ stands for ‘Extended Play’. Ironically, it’s shorter than a full-length album.
Oh those clever, clever Swedes. Some smart folks from a Swedish think tank (I think–my Swedish is not strong) devised a way to motivate people to take the stairs:
I really like approaches like this, where we use natural human behaviour to motivate better outcomes. I wonder, though, whether the piano stairs have long term stickiness. Won’t the gimmick wear off and people will return to taking the escalator?
About six months ago, I wrote about seeing the Google Street View camera car drive past. When Google’s street-level photo feature was implemented in Vancouver, I figured I might show up. Unfortunately, the patio tables out front at Subeez are empty (it’s clearly much earlier in the day), so I didn’t make the cut.
Of course, I immediately became interested in other familiar Vancouver spots:
Though it seems a little gimmicky, Street View is actually a very useful tool. I often remember where a business or office is, but can’t remember the name. Or, alternatively, I think I might remember the name of the restaurant, but I want to see its exterior to confirm that’s it the right one. So, despite not featuring me anywhere in the Lower Mainland, it’s super handy.
What’s your favourite Vancouver spot on Street View?
I don’t like reading braggy, boastful blog posts. I know I’m as guilty of them as anybody else. But when I read somebody writing about their recent award, weight loss or awesome new job, and I’m sitting at home all awardless and fat, I feel the little green Kobolds of Envy and Jealousy whispering in my ear canal. It’s petty, I know, but what’re you going to do?