Back in February I started a semi-regular feature called Commuting by Numbers. From time to time, on those rides to work where I can’t read (busy streetcar, or on my bike) I’ll count things of interest to see what patterns emerge. My tallies, and those of some other bloggers I strongarmed into playing along, can be found in my Commuting category.
The other day, my otherwise brilliant friend Chris admitted to counting groundhogs on his way to work, and I pointed him to my blog. He had an interesting comment:
It occurred to me that you are engaged in Mass Observation, which was a movement that existed in the 30s and 40s that encouraged as many people as possible to observe and record the minutiae of a particular place and time. The organizers were actually hired by the U.S. and British governments to record war-time activity.
Myself, I just figured I was borderline autistic or something. Anyhow, there’s a fabulous New Yorker article on the Mass Observation here. Chris went on to say how this sort of analysis is the opposite of most blogging:
Reading the article, I was thinking that what blogs represent today is a “Mass Introspection” movement - but yours actually runs counter to that and closer to Mass Observation. Now that you also have me counting animals during a commute, that is.
The phenomenon was more about human behaviour than groundhogs, but you can certainly deduce certain behaviours from physical objects. Which brings me to the dataset below. I’m tempted to draw certain conclusions from the results that surprised me: the ratio of newspapers to iPods, the prevalence of smoking, the fact that I should probably stop carrying a backpack, etc. But I’ll let you decide for yourself.
Later this week I’ll have two more editions: Transportation, and Animals. Observe well!
Commuting by Numbers: People Edition
Commuter: Paul Gorbould
Location: Downtown Toronto
Commuting time: 45 minutes
Route: Queen/King Streets, via streetcar
People carrying a coffee cup: 52
People carrying a reusable mug: 6
People smoking: 37
People smoking AND carrying a coffee: 4
Men using dainty cigarette holders: 1
People carrying shoulder bags (not incl. purses): 202
People wearing backpacks: 143
Goth kids: 7
People with dreadlocks: 6
Homeless men dressed like Santa: 2 (!)
People wearing baseball hats: 30
People wearing Castro hats (tee hee): 8
People wearing peaked caps: 3
People wearing fedoras: 1
Men on cell phones: 23
Women on cell phones: 26
People wearing iPods: 41
People wearing all other music players: 23
People using a Blackberry: 5
People carrying a newspaper: 4
People using cameras: 3
People wearing ties: 16
People wearing “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirts: 1
As I’ve said before, I’d really be delighted if anyone out there wants to count something and let me know about it - I’ll link to it or publish it here. And if you have suggestions for me to count, I’m all ears. Well, 2 ears.
Yep, another potty post - note my use of the appropriate icon.
The men’s washroom nearest my desk at the CBC HQ in Toronto is usually free of graffiti.
When there is some, it’s usually marginally witty or timely.
Which is why I was so surprised to see this bit of poorly written, unintelligent scrawl in the stall:
“Do you like having ONE NIGHT STAND…?”
What the hell is that supposed to mean, and if it’s not rhetorical, how am I supposed to respond?
Well, I’ll tell you how I’d respond, if I were the graffiti writing type. In fact, I gave a lot of consideration to actually writing underneath it, but decided to do it here, virtually, instead (god, I’m such a goody goody.)
“YES. WITH TWO NIGHTSTANDS, I KEEP FORGETTING WHERE I PUT MY BOOK.”
OK, not that funny. But at least you don’t have to scrub it off - you can just click that little “close window” X… which I see you are doing now….
You will no doubt have noticed by now that CBC.ca has a new homepage. Well, not really. As the explanatory note, er, explains, it’s no longer a homepage. It’s a “new portal that showcases the entire CBC experience across all its platforms and programs.” It has been referred to as the “network portal” internally for a while now - hot on the heels of the News Portal and the Sports Portal.
Portals are big these days, just like they were when I started working for CBC online in 1995. Except that back then, it was called Radio New Media, because radio started it. Then TV got in on the act, and it was just New Media. Then it didn’t seem so new any more, so all the disparate URLs lined up behind the moniker CBC.ca, and so did we employees.
But we too have been rebranded.
I just noticed that according to Groupwise (our corporate mail system), I no longer work for CBC.ca - I work for DIGITAL PROGRAM & BUS DEVLPMT.
That change didn’t come with an explanatory note (unless you count this) but the gist is that the department has, without much fanfare, been renamed Digital Programming and Business Development. The idea is that we aren’t just a website any more - we’re content sent to mobile phones and elevators and, well, everything that isn’t your radio or television.
The new department name was used a few times before I realized it meant “us” - an experience amplified when managers started addressing it (us) as DP&BD.
In fact, one of my colleagues had to look that acronym up, and its component parts. A search for DP leads to all sorts of things, as does BD, but we were reasonably certain our department hadn’t been recast as Dinner Party Brain Damage, or Death Penalty Big Deal. And you really don’t want to know what DP and BD stand for in the world of porn.
Anyhow, it’s just an internal name change, a soft rebranding that doesn’t cause much inconvenience. Except for one crucial, immediate problem… What about our softball team name?!?
CBC Toronto has a corporate softball league with eight teams, one of which is fielded by us web types. We used to be called “New Media”, but we couldn’t afford uniforms. Once we won the championship, we rated a set of “CBC.ca” T-shirts, so that became our name (the shirts are now pretty ratty.)
But now… Team Digital Programming and Business Development? Not catchy! Not able to fit across the back of a jersey!
My colleague Erich was inspired by Groupwise’s “DIGITAL PROGRAM & BUS DEVLPMT” and suggests the name “Bus Devils”, which isn’t bad. And it opens the door to a possible team vehicle! I think it should look something like this:
Got any team name suggestions? Let me know!
The CBC Design Department is done. Sold out. Sold off. Sold to Tony, whoever that is.
They didn’t advertise it, but now that the employees have been shown the door, there’s a sale going on down there. All the leftover props that nobody claimed are being sold off, flea-market style.
Not that there’s a lot left. First dibs went to in-house productions (Air Farce, Mercer, Kids), and rumour had it that a movie company called Shaftesbury Productions (Robber Bride, ReGenesis) picked it over too. Then the jetsam went to auction - the good stuff has yellow tags of “Hold” or “Sold” (many say “Gross”, which I assume is a buyer or TV production - Paul, maybe? - rather than a sign of someone’s disgust.) Some of it is tagged for individual purchasers, like Tony’s angel, above. As Ouimet said, it’s going to be one hell of a garage sale.
The sale started Monday, so don’t count on finding any great treasures by now. But there’s lots of interesting junk left over, from 70s chairs and old typewriters to portraits and vases and lamps.
For a while, I foolishly held out hope that the government, a museum, benefactor or big movie company would buy the whole collection and keep it together. Wishful thinking. And that’s just the stuff… if only the talented people could have been kept together somehow.
Alas. As the dust settles, here’s what’s left of the country’s greatest collection of TV production and design materials:
So, my boss was in New York City last week to give a talk at a conference. His daughter is a Donald Trump fan, so he went into Trump Tower looking for souvenirs. Once she was taken care of, he skipped past the expensive clothes (and $100 steaks?) and found the least costly item available - this funny little souvenir fridge magnet, which he presented to me with the requisite implication that I should pack up my desk drawer:
“You’re Fired!” You know, Trump’s catchphrase from The Apprentice.
But look again. It doesn’t say “You’re Fired.” It says, “Your Fired.” Y-O-U-R… the possessive form of “you”, not the contraction of “you are.”
Am I missing something?
Is there an Apprentice inside joke about misspelling The Donald’s famous catchphrase?
Perhaps it’s deliberately misspelled, to protect his effort to trademark the properly-spelled slogan?
Perhaps it’s the start of a different sentence, such as: “Your fired clay pot is ready, Mr. Trump”?
At first I wondered if it was some cheap NYC street vendor knockoff… but nope, check out the bag, left. The real deal.
I wonder if The Donald owns a 1970 Chevelle?
Ever wondered how your computer cursor works? Here’s a website that shows you what really happens as you move your mouse.
http://www.1-click.jp/
“With the aid of a screen magnifying lens, the mechanism becomes apparent,” the instructions say.
It’s quite slow to load, but when the image appears, slowly move your mouse over the light gray circle and you will see how the magic works. Don’t forget to click, too. You can also double-click - and make sure your sound is on. Enjoy!
A couple of years ago, I prepared a topic for the CBC Digital Archives website about video surveillance. From photo radar to COPS to September 11, police and government agencies have been using video cameras to catch bad guys. Every now and then Canadians complain about privacy issues, and are usually told that if they aren’t doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about.
As it turns out, it’s the private sector they should be worried about.
A week ago, a CBC-TV newsroom colleague pulled me aside to show me something absolutely amazing: Google Maps is adding a “Street View” feature that gives you a pedestrian’s-eye-view of an entire city from street level. Check out this view of Howard Street in San Francisco to see it in action.
In essence, Google sends a van with roof-mounted cameras to snap a 360-degree view of all major streets, then stiches them together in a seamless addition to their already powerful Google Maps system. Once you plunk your virtual self on a street corner, you can pan around in a circle, “drive” forward or backward using navigation arrows, or zoom in close enough to see what brand of sneakers people are wearing.
It’s a breathtaking piece of technology, and I can see plenty of uses - in addition to giving directions to your next party, you can show people what the house looks like; real estate agents can virtually show not just a property but a whole neighbourhood. Tourist bureaus will have a field day with it.
Now, Google has only done select locations, and only the major streets - and they’ve only snapped each view once. But I think it’s only a matter of time before the street views are captured more often (imagine Google teaming up with Canada Post, or something) or they are captured 24/7 with video camera installations. Live web cams are nothing new, and the Ministry of Transportation already does this for traffic. Why not Google, in high res?
There are many parts of the world where video surveillance is a given. London has around half a million cameras, recording people up to 300 times a day; according to Wikipedia, the U.K. has 4 million closed-circuit cameras - one for every 14 people.
So, be prepared. You can probably start assuming that if you are out in public, you are on camera, and being broadcast around the world. Pick your nose accordingly.
Of course, it’s more than nose picking that people might be concerned about. I spent an hour “driving” around San Francisco, and captured these vacation snaps:
Assume people can read your license plates, and know where you are parked:
Assume they are watching your kids:
Assume they know if you are attending Big Gay Movie Night:
Assume they know where your money is being delivered, and by whom:
:
And assume they know if you are considering taking the plunge:
This is all a little alarmist, of course - mostly what I saw was people going about their everyday lives, and a lovely city that I’d like to spend more time in. People are already assembling their favourite “finds” from these images, including the Top 15 Google Street View sightings - they’ve found girls sunbathing, men visiting strip clubs, and a homeless man who was later killed defending his dog Boo Boo.
The geeks in the crowd (raises hand) are a little obsessed with finding out what sort of vehicles Google is using. Everyone assumes it’s a van, and Boing Boing posted an image of a vehicle with four Nikon DSLRs mounted on the roof. (Sounds plausible; earlier I wrote about Nikons being used for a very similar project.)
But I don’t think this is the right vehicle. San Francisco is a sunny, hilly place, and in many street view images I notice the vehicle’s shadow cast on the road ahead:
Looks like a van, all right, but the cameras obviously have some sort of enclosure. So I then cruised the maps, looking for a reflection of the van. Since you can pan around the full 360 degrees, surely you should be able to spot it reflected in something.
And eventually I found it. Here’s a shiny Mercedes dealership on Bryant St.:
And when you zoom in on the roof, you see the camera housing, just like in the shadow:
This seems to bear out another van spotting posted on Streetviewr.com, a site dedicated to interesting sightings from these maps.
Perhaps I should have pointed out earlier that there are several other street view sites in development. Windows Live Street View has an interesting “cockpit” approach, putting you behind the wheel of a car to “Walk, Drive, or Race” through the streets using your keyboard.
Historically, maps give you a perspective of geographical information about a place. In Windows Live™ Local, powered by Virtual Earth™, you’ve seen road, aerial, and hybrid maps. Then, we introduced bird’s eye views to give you a perspective from above. Now, we want you to be there, right in front of the pizza shop you are searching for, in the street-side views offered by Windows Live Local. Even though you haven’t left the comfort of your computer chair, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.
Their sample map is in Seattle (San Fran also available), and - no surprise - it seems to work properly only in Internet Explorer.
Less sexy, but closer to home is Virtual City, which has mapped out street level images of Toronto using high-def video cameras and a GPS device. It doesn’t stitch the images together in 3D, but it does have stills of both sides of all the main streets (click on the highlight feature to see if your street has been done). Here’s the Wellington Street entrance to the CBC building:
My sister was more than a little creeped out to find photos of the entrance to her house online here.
Finally, I wanted to mention another imaging site that isn’t strictly about street views, but all views.
Photosynth, another Microsoft product, “takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.”
In the sample demonstration, it uses publicly-available Flickr images of Venice’s Piazza San Marco and analyses them for shapes and perspectives. It then lets you navigate a 3D reconstruction of the location to see each picture, from the spot and angle it was taken.
Unlike the street view features, Photosynth is pretty heavy on the tech specs. It requires the installation of a browser ActiveX control, which takes a couple of minutes, and it doesn’t work on all graphics cards (including that of my reasonably new home computer, grrr.) If you can’t view it, at least check out the video of how it was made.
So, you can now visit CBC Toronto, stroll the streets of San Francisco or chase pigeons in St. Mark’s Square from the comfort of your office chair. But if you plan to do any of these things in person, look over your shoulder. Someone may be watching you from their office chair.
I had a rare opportunity to work from home today - meetings cancelled, lots of text editing to do, food in the fridge - so I grabbed a laptop and looked forward to a day without the TTC (which has been almost unusable in the past two weeks, but at least they don’t spit on their customers.)
Anyhow, I spent the morning hiding from the children, and in the afternoon when things warmed up I took the laptop into the backyard. I hadn’t been there 10 minutes before I hear a crash and a howl from next door - squirrels were digging up Stephen’s planters, and apparently he was dissuading them by throwing lawn chairs, or something.
Thing is, they weren’t dissuaded. Instead, three of them climbed up a tree limb above us and started hurling debris down on our heads. I retreated to my laptop, and they came screaming along the top of the fence between our houses. One of them actually fell off the fence, and landed in one of my planters (to Stephen’s delight.) Not wanting to fall behind the other two squirrels, this thing then ran right under my chair as a shortcut and rejoined the chase.
I guess he wasn’t fast enough, though - he lost sight of them and wandered off in disgust (yes, I’m learning to read squirrel body language.) Moments later, the other two emerged from hiding, ran to the aforementioned planter… and started humping.
This was not five feet from my chair, and they took no notice of my shouts of “I’m trying to work here!” and “Get a room. Or a tree.”
Somewhat of a distraction, but I’ve witnessed similar behaviour at CBC, so who’s to judge. At least I didn’t have to explain it to my kids.
Unlike last week.
My sister and I took the kidlets to the Toronto Zoo so my wife could bear down on her report cards, and the four of us ended up in the African pavilion, watching the lowland gorillas.
A crowd of children had gathered by one of the windows - one of the young gorillas had just sat down right by the window, in prime viewing location.
“Awwwww, cute!” said the kids.
And he was putting on a show, too - rolling around, and then actually standing on his head with his legs dangling in the air.
“Woweee!” said the kids.
And then, once everyone was watching his inverted form… he stuck his finger right up his ass.
“Ewwwwwww!” screamed the kids, as they ran away.
Be thankful there are no photos to accompany this post.
There’s a cute little meme floating around the internet right now, which I picked up via MC at Culture Kills. The gist of it: wax nostaligic about the songs you heard at your coming of age.
Here are the rules:
1. Go to http://www.popculturemadness.com/
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Write something about how the song affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends
MC quite wisely decided to skip #5, the chain letter part of the meme. I will too. I’ve also followed his lead by linking to the YouTube videos - you can watch them right in the SnapShots preview that pops up, or click on them for full size. Prepare for a time warp! The game doesn’t specifically say to pick five tunes, but that trend seems to have emerged, and it works for me. Here we go…
1987
Livin’ On a Prayer - Bon Jovi
OK, I never liked Bon Jovi, but there was something interesting going on around this time in the merger of metal and pop bands. Before the mid-80s, metal was the realm of those hair guys that wore all denim, smoked and took shop. But it started seeping into radio play, and turned into something different. For me, this started with Def Leppard, went through Bon Jovi and ended with Guns ‘n Roses (in 1988 my friend George predicted that Sweet Child of Mine would be the Nelson Mandela of music, forging a new peace between the bangers and the preppies. Nice try.) My only memory of Livin’ on a Prayer revolves around a French exchange with students from the Lac-Saint-Jean area of Quebec; the only English they really wanted to learn from us was Bon Jovi lyric translations.
With Or Without You - U2
Now here’s a song I can still defend. Sure, it’s overly emotional and overplayed, but there’s something about the way it builds from almost nothing to a cathartic crescendo that really works. I was a pretty big U2 fan in high school, and my graduating class arranged a road trip to see their Joshua Tree tour date at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. Afterward, the band I played in spontaneously attempted a cover of this song, which began with me playing that simple bass line on the guitar and went from there. Nobody was around to witness it - probably just as well - but it was a little moment of high school magic. But man, did I want an EBow.
Mony Mony “Live” - Billy Idol
This song defines the high school dance for me, which isn’t such a terrible thing now that the scars have had 20 years to heal. When you look at the other stars of 1987 - The Bangles, Huey Lewis, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Tiffany - Billy Idol was by far the coolest of the lot. Mony Mony isn’t his best (remember Rebel Yell, or that post-apocalyptic Dancing With Myself video?) and of course it’s a cover of the 1968 tune by Tommy James & The Shondells; heck, even Billy had a studio version pre-1987 (the video linked in the title is a crappy 1981 TV lip synch). But MTV picked this version up and ran with it. And so did our high school. When the song came on at dances, everyone would chant something very obscene in between lines - did anyone else do this? My friend Chris pointed out, with some merit, that this simply covered up the lamest keyboard bit in history. Mr. Carruthers, our principal, pointed out that he didn’t have to put up with obscenities and would shut us down if we played the tune. As our school’s social convenor, I was supposed to enforce this ban. Instead, I had the piece of note paper with his edict printed in the yearbook: “The song Mona Mona is not to be played.” And we never played Mona Mona.
Heaven Is a Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle
I have a terrible secret to admit. I have always been in love with Belinda Carlisle. Yes, she of the Go-Gos, and the happy lame-o song listed above. This is something of which I have never spoken before, especially back in 1987, when I was listening to The Police and The Clash and Dead Kennedys. But there was something about the Go-Gos; We Got The Beat had a sort of punky girl power to it that was way ahead of its time. And before them, Carlise was in fact the drummer for a punk band. (My crush began with Our Lips are Sealed, a tune recently remade by the Duff sisters.) Still, I doubt Belinda’s punk credentials would have convinced my high school friends. What put it over the top is that she was - and still is - fantastically, classically gorgeous. At least I think so. In fact, more than one person has commented that I married a woman who looks just a little like Ms. Carlisle. Coincidence?
Bad - Michael Jackson
Wow, there really was a time when MJ was the King of Pop, not the Wacko Jacko of the tabloids. Though I was blown away by the video for Thriller, I was always loudly snooty about disliking Michael Jackson. My sister had the LP, and I teased her about it - that white suit and fuzzy glow on the album cover was just too… well, as I would have said in high school, gay. I think it’s probably OK to drop that stance now, and put the best selling album of all time back in the “very influential” pile without worrying whether people will think I’m gay (I did marry Belinda Carlisle, after all…) I’m sure I scoffed at the Jackson Five too, but you can’t keep them out of the canon either. As for Bad, well, who doesn’t like a good gang dance fight? Then again, knowing what we now know, you have to raise an eyebrow at the first line, “Your butt is mine….”
Other top hits of 1987:
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
Died In Your Arms - Cutting Crew
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) - Whitney Houston
La Bamba - Los Lobos
I Think We’re Alone Now - Tiffany
The Time Of My Life - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
Faith - George Michael
So, what songs defined high school for you?
Paris Hilton’s friends predict prison will do wonders for the airhead heiress. I agree. Some of my Facebook friends are wondering what she’ll wear… here’s my best guess. Good luck, girl.
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