Do you remember the first time? You took my face in your hands. No one saw us but the gulls.

Sometimes we trap ourselves amongst a throng of strangers. It has a certain comfort, like crabs in a tank.

After once again being nearly struck by a driver making an illegal right-hand turn at the intersection of McBride and Columbia in New Westminster, I finally sat down and vented my spleen. Below is the letter sent to the City of New Westminster, the New Westminster Police Service and the editors of the New Westminster News Leader and the Royal City Record.

To:

• Jim Lowrie , Director of Engineering, City of New Westminster
• Councillor Jonathan X. Coté, Chair, Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee, City of New Westminster
• Lorne Zapotichny, Chief Constable, New Westminster Police Service

I am a long-time New Westminster resident and commute by bike daily to work at SFU and back. My route home takes me partially along the Central Valley Greenway, including the stretch through Woodlands and along Columbia towards downtown.

After the CVG was opened last year several improvements were made to the intersection at McBride and Columbia, including a dedicated red-turn light from westbound Columbia onto McBride, no-right-on-red signage and crosswalk markings allowing cyclists to ride through the crosswalk.

Unfortunately, the first two measures have proven to do little to improve cyclist safety. Drivers routinely ignore the right-turn red light and no-right-on-red signage and continue to make illegal right turns against the light. Rarely do I have a commute where I am not narrowly struck by a driver making an illegal right turn (usually without stopping at all before whipping around the corner). I stopped one evening and counted over fifteen vehicles in a twenty minute span making illegal right turns.

The city has been aware of this matter for many months; it was discussed at the September 3, 2009 meeting of the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (item 4.1.c, page 3), at which city staff advised that a “User Compliance” study was underway. This matter again raised at the January committee meeting and I was dismayed to learn (third-hand as the minutes do not seem to be available online) that the staff recommendation to solve this issue was to remove the ability for cyclists to ride across the intersection. Indeed, the dashed crosswalk markings have been removed from the pavement and “cyclists must dismount” signs have been installed.

My question to the City of New Westminster is this: in what way does requiring cyclists to dismount make this intersection safer? Drivers continue to make illegal right turns at speed, regardless of whether a cyclist is walking or riding through the intersection. I have spoken to several pedestrians who have also narrowly avoided being struck by vehicles making illegal turns. I myself walked my bicycle through the intersection today and was nearly struck by a vehicle making an illegal right turn against the red light.

I propose that the City and the New Westminster Police Service take the following actions to make McBride and Columbia safer for westbound cyclists and pedestrians:

• Increase the amount of no-right-on-red signage and make it more visible. It was quite difficult to see the signs during the dark winter evenings.
• Consider a lighted no-right-turn sign, active when the right-turn light is red— similar to a no-left-turn sign that used to be installed for the rail crossing at Braid and Brunette.
• Change the solid red light to a red arrow.
• Reinstate the cyclist crosswalk privileges. This is, to my knowledge, the only intersection along the New Westminster portion of the CVG that requires cyclists to dismount.
• Police enforcement of the no-right-on-red signage and law.

It is only a matter of time before a cyclist or pedestrian is injured or killed by a driver making an illegal turn at this intersection.

Apple introduced Aperture 3, a long-overdue update to their professional photo management and editing tool, today. I’ve been using A3 tonight to process some shots and am rapidly becoming extremely frustrated with it. There’s some big steps backwards work-flow wise, at least for how I’m used to using Aperture:

• Previous to A3, selecting a photo in grid view and hitting F would take you to full-screen mode for that photo. Now it takes you to a full-screen grid.
• You can no longer use the scroll wheel in full-screen mode to navigate between images.
• In A2 there was a Keywords pane at the bottom of the metadata panel (this and this). This panel was awesome; you could apply keywords to multiple images at once, it auto-completed and gave you an easy to read list of the keywords currently assigned to an image. It’s inexpicably gone in A3, along with its EXIF & IPTC cousins, leaving the laugable keywords HUD and whatever it is that pops up when you hit shift-D (Window > Show Keyword Controls).
• The Facebook export sucks donkey balls. I attempted to upload 27 images to Facebook. A3 randomly picked 20 of those images to upload, and there’s no way to add the rest from within Aperture. Dragging the images to the Facebook gallery in the Library panel does nothing. I’m so thankful that Fraser Speirs’ awesome FlickrExport still works (in 32-bit mode); I can’t imagine how bad the built-in Flickr export is.
• The Batch Change dialog no longer lets you choose from Views in the Add Metadata From dropdown; it only lets you pick metadata sets. Additionally, the append mode is retarded; I’m having a hard time articulating it, but essentially because it only lets you see fields from metadata presets instead of views, it pre-populates the fields with information from those presets meaning that you either have to clear out the fields you don’t want to change or uncheck them, lest you end up with mangled metadata. Compare A2 and A3’s batch change dialogs.

A couple of stupid things: I much preferred the smaller fonts, and hate that they used Marker Felt in the Faces interface. The faint flag image that appears when you hover over a thumbnail in grid view is annoying.

It’s not all bad; the speed improvements are noticable on my 24” iMac, and the map view is nice (and thankfully the geolocation info is readable by FlickrExport). The auto-backup on import is great (if not long-overdue) and I’m intrigued by the ability to fire off an AppleScript on import.

I may try blowing away all my prefs and settings and starting with a clean slate when I’ve got some time, but right now I’m torn between the speed improvements and the massive blow to how I’m used to using Aperture.

Take a look at three people around you. Odds are, one of you will die from cancer. It’s a scary thought, right? Not as scary as the thought of what those odds might have been as close as ten years ago, but thanks to the efforts of folks like those at the BC Cancer Agency, the odds are getting better all the time.

The is an epic two day, 300km bike journey from Vancouver to Seattle from June 20-21. Riders collect donations with all funds going to the BC Cancer Foundation. This is where you come in.

I’ve committed to raising at least $2500. It sounds like a big number, and it is. I need your help in two ways.

1. If you can, please sponsor me. Whether you can give $10 or $1000, every dollar counts. You can donate in one shot, or spread your contribution over 2-10 monthly payments. Donations over $10 are tax-deductible. You don’t have to be a Canadian, either; donations from the US are also welcome (and a good deal right now — $100 CAD is only $77 USD).
2. Spread the word. Tell your friends and family. Link to this post, to my fundraising page or to my Flickr entry. Tweet about it. Post about it on Facebook, MySpace or whatever the social network du jour is. Heck, get on your bike and ride along. There’s rides in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec as well; visit conquercancer.ca for more info.

Cancer affects us all. I’m doing my part to kill it; won’t you join me?

Thank you.

merlin:

glass:

(via tofuttibreak)

Merlin’s First Desktop Tour on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

yourmonkeycalled:

Craigslist Penis Photographer w/ Bob Odenkirk

“I might take photographs for the ‘Casual Encounters’ section of Craigslist, but there’s nothing casual about what I do.” Awesome.

(via Eric)

thanks, flickr on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Canon EOS 5D MKII Sample Video on Vimeo (via Vimeo)