Our Neighborhood Walk Score

A cou­ple of months ago, I came across a web site that works with Google Maps to eval­u­ate how pedestrian-friendly our address is. The more ameni­ties (shops, restau­rants, gro­cers, parks, libraries, fit­ness cen­ters. etc.) that you can reach within a rea­son­able radius, the higher your ‘walk score’. Up until recently, there was a glitch in the sys­tem that kept it from doing an accu­rate plot of where addresses were in Canada, but after I alerted them, they’ve fixed the prob­lem (it involved some incor­rect con­ver­sion of kilo­me­ters to miles, an issue that has been known to crash Mars probes, among other things). Now, it’s spot on, and I was pleased to see that our address has a walk score of 88 out of a pos­si­ble 100.

When I checked our old address, Lilac Court in Cam­bridge, MA, at Walk Score, we actu­ally had a slightly higher score of 95 (again, out of 100), but that decrease by 7 points hardly feels very sig­nif­i­cant. When I lived at 2 Chester Street, also in Cam­bridge, the score was 91, and in under­grad­u­ate school, when I lived at 616 Straight Street in Cincin­nati, my score was 72. I think my all-time low score (a 0, of course) must have been when I lived on For­est Lawn Road, just out­side of Rochester, New York. The clos­est place to there, on foot, was a bar, well over a mile away along a road with no sidewalk.

As Walk Score points out, “Buy­ing a house in a walk­a­ble neigh­bor­hood is good for your health and good for the envi­ron­ment.” It’s prob­a­bly worth adding that these days, with the price of gas being what it is, that it’s clearly good for your wal­let as well.

When we first moved here and didn’t have a car, I lost a lot of weight, mainly from the amount of walk­ing we did. We walked every­where, both for shop­ping and to get to know the area. Despite not get­ting to see as much of Van­cou­ver as we might have, I cer­tainly was health­ier. After nearly a year of com­mut­ing (mostly by car) to IBM, I really put on the pounds, and it’s tough to get them back off again.

Try out their site, and see how your neigh­bor­hood fares. In most cases, you’ll prob­a­bly be able to pre­dict the score, but once or twice I was sur­prised by either how much lower or higher the score was from what I’d thought it would be.

Happy Birthday, WordPress

I learned from the news feeds on the Dash­board for this soft­ware, that today is WordPress’s ‘offi­cial’ fifth Birth­day (it was actu­ally 5 years ago back in the begin­ning of the year). While that’s pretty young, in soft­ware years it’s prob­a­bly all the way into some­where in the early teens. The five year mark places the software’s birth in 2003 at some of the dark­est times of the post-Internet bub­ble burst­ing. That such impres­sive and pow­er­ful soft­ware could come out of those times is com­fort­ing, in a way. No mat­ter how poor the eco­nomic cli­mate, new soft­ware can sur­vive, and actu­ally begin to grow in com­plex­ity (and user base).

At the most recent North­ern Voice, the Annual blog­ging con­fer­ence held here in Van­cou­ver, the keynote speaker was Matt Mul­len­weg, the founder of Word­Press. I located his keynote (Thanks to At Large Media, who recorded it and posted it), and thought that on this occa­sion, it might be nice to include it here, so here it is:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

So, I imag­ine that at the moment, the cham­pagne corks are pop­ping in New York City (there is a party planned for 9PM in San Fran­cisco, so we can raise a glass here to them then, as well). Happy Birth­day, Word­Press, and con­grat­u­la­tions to Matt Mul­len­weg all of the other folks who worked on it.

A Busy Saturday

9:45 AM — Apple Store Opening

We got to Pacific Cen­tre Mall at about 9:30. There were about 50 peo­ple ahead of us in line. I found out later from John Biehler that the first guy in line had got­ten there at 5:45 AM. After about 20 min­utes, the line grew behind us to the end of the cor­ner of Granville and West Geor­gia. After another few min­utes, we moved in to the vestibule (before you get into the Mall, and waited another half our or so. Peri­od­i­cally, the Apple Store Staff, most of the young and about 75% of them guys, would come out and take pic­tures of the crowd, video them, (inter­view them in a few cases), and high-five them as they ran out. Finally, at right about 10:05, we were let in:

The staff were now in the store, and a line of them screamed and high-fived us as walked in the store, which was already packed. We each were given T-Shirts (very attrac­tive black ones with Pacific Cen­tre and the Apple Logo in small let­ters on the front). By com­par­i­son, the at the Apple Store open­ing in Boston years ago, the far more restrained East Coast New Eng­land staff merely applauded as we entered; there was no scream­ing or high-fiving.

We looked around and saw a lot of nice mer­chan­dise (noth­ing par­tic­u­larly extra­or­di­nary, though), talked to a few peo­ple in the crowds, and then headed out. It was fun to be part of the open­ing, but really, it was another Apple Store, and would cer­tainly be a place that I visit many times in the future, so there was no need to pur­chase some­thing in the throngs of peo­ple there. Some­times the best part of an event is being able to say you were there. Besides, we had our next event to go to!

11:00 AM — Eat! Van­cou­ver at BC Place

These pho­tos are of the Bar­be­cue Teams out­side BC Place. Inside, we walked the aisles of the biggest food show in Canada. Your entrance fee is more than made up for in free sam­ples to eat and take home, coupons, recipe books, bags and other good­ies. Suf­fice it to say that we didn’t need to get lunch, and prob­a­bly will have a light din­ner as well. We also got lots of other free stuff, includ­ing razors, tooth­paste, and tote bags. I always have fun at this show, and this year was no excep­tion. Last year, the big product-type that every­one was push­ing were all sorts of bev­er­ages. While there was still a lot of that this year, I’d have to say the big new addi­tion was a lot more cur­ries. Coconut curry was all the rage, and we must have tasted it at 3 or 4 dif­fer­ent booths. Given the ris­ing pop­u­la­tion of Asian immi­grants in this town, it’s not all that sur­pris­ing, but it’s mak­ing a good show even bet­ter, with more travel booths, more small fam­ily booths sell­ing sauces and spice col­lec­tions, and quite a few new ven­dors from Alberta and Man­i­toba. Canada’s ‘Queen of Maple’, Tracy Moore from Ontario was there, pro­vid­ing sam­ples of some of the 77 prod­ucts that she had cre­ated. (check out everythingmaple.com to see some of them).

We’re home now (and pooped!) Rather than hear Dame Eve­lyn Glen­nie (the famous deaf per­cus­sion­ist — yes, you read that right) play with the VSO tonight, I think we’ll try and go on Mon­day night.

I Agree: Some Words are Off Limits During a Campaign

Even from our van­tage point here, out­side the US, it’s still hard to ignore how ugly and sor­did the cam­paign for the Demo­c­ra­tic Nom­i­na­tion has become. How­ever, I don’t think we ever heard any­thing as ghoul­ish as what was reported this morn­ing. Appar­ently, Hillary Clin­ton said this dur­ing a recent interview:

My hus­band did not wrap up the nom­i­na­tion in 1992 until he won the Cal­i­for­nia pri­mary some­where in the mid­dle of June, right? We all remem­ber Bobby Kennedy was assas­si­nated in June in Cal­i­for­nia. I don’t under­stand it…

I was only eight years old when Bobby Kennedy, the younger brother of JFK, was assas­si­nated. I later learned in school that his cam­paign was notable partly because of the num­ber of young peo­ple who were work­ing for him, and that he was try­ing very hard to heal and unify a stricken US, dis­il­lu­sioned and fear­ful (by the trauma of his brother’s recent mur­der) and involved in a war they did not sup­port. Sound familiar?

The idea that a young leader — a leader who has even been com­pared to Bobby Kennedy—will soon find a bul­let head­ing for him in late sum­mer, isn’t some­thing we should be forced to con­tem­plate, or dis­cuss, or even hear mum­blings about. It’s cer­tainly not what I expected the ‘Talk­ing Heads’ to be chat­ter­ing about this week. Leav­ing the thought hang­ing out there, that ‘Assas­si­na­tions tend to hap­pen in June, so I bet­ter stick around’ (as if the month were like some kind of hur­ri­cane sea­son), is bad enough. But to invoke that par­tic­u­lar kind of hor­ri­ble event dur­ing an inter­view while run­ning for Pres­i­dent is just sick.

When­ever I talk to Cana­di­ans about the US, the sub­ject of vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar gun vio­lence comes up. The US is seen as a vio­lent place, where vio­lent peo­ple have easy access to guns, and Amer­i­cans are per­fectly OK with that. Often, this obser­va­tion is deliv­ered with ner­vous laugh­ter, as if the coun­try to our South were just some crazy Aunt we hope stays in the cel­lar, and that some day she won’t come bar­rel­ing up the stairs with a rifle, doing that slaugh­ter­ing thing she does from time to time.

What I’ve often felt was the worst thing about Amer­ica, was the fact that so many Pres­i­dents (and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates) have been either tar­geted for death or killed. Hillary’s offhanded ref­er­ence reminds me that I’ve fre­quently had to mull over the thought that Obama’s run­ning mate had bet­ter be some­one I trust in the White House, because by golly, he’s going to get shot, sooner or later. I agree with Keith Olber­mann of MSNBC. We all must acknowl­edge that assas­si­na­tion is (for lack of a bet­ter word) a loaded word.

Here’s his response (in 2 parts). For those who don’t want to watch the video, I’ll try and find a tran­script. Nev­er­the­less, I don’t think it will com­mu­ni­cate just how out­raged he is, and I am.

Update: It looks like Dick Mor­ris. a for­mer adviser to the Clin­tons has a sim­i­lar, if not iden­ti­cal opinion:

Every­body who has thought seri­ously about the Obama can­di­dacy, includ­ing me and prob­a­bly includ­ing the Sen­a­tor him­self, have reflected on the hor­ri­ble pos­si­bil­ity that he would be assas­si­nated. One can­not think about Obama, the Kennedy-esque can­di­date with­out wor­ry­ing about his safety. But we all observe the dis­ci­pline of not rais­ing the issue in pub­lic. We all worry that to do so would be to encour­age some maniac to take a shot. Now Hillary has vio­lated this unstated but hereto­fore uni­ver­sal taboo and brought up the pos­si­bil­ity. That is not to say that she is hop­ing for a mur­der. But it is to say that the pos­si­bil­ity is upper­most in her mind and a sig­nif­i­cant part of her ratio­nale for stay­ing in the race. And, by rais­ing it, she has made it more possible.

(From dickmorris.com )

I Get To Attend an Opening...Again

Ah yes, I remem­ber it well: The long lines in the Cam­brid­ge­side Gal­le­ria Mall, the T-Shirts for those nearer to the front of the line, the excite­ment as the doors finally opened… The Apple Store open­ing in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts was one of the first ones that Apple had. We were used to the fact that although we weren’t Cuper­tino (or even San Fran­cisco), Cam­bridge was one of the East Coast cen­tres for Apple’s pres­ence. After all, in the early days of Mac­world Expo (and I doubt if many peo­ple who own an Apple prod­uct know this at this point), there was a West Coast Mac­world Expo in San Fran­cisco in Jan­u­ary and an East Coast Mac­world Expo in Boston, usu­ally dur­ing the hottest week in August. It wasn’t until that fate­ful day when Bill Gates’s 20-foot face appeared on the screen behind Steve Jobs dur­ing his keynote (and it was hissed by the crowd) that Steve made sure that there would be no more Mac­Worlds in Boston.

I know, I know, there were prob­a­bly other rea­sons, but Jobs’s annoy­ance at the dis­agree­ment of the Boston crowd with his strat­egy of hav­ing Microsoft invest in Apple dur­ing their dark­est hour prob­a­bly didn’t help the show. In the fol­low­ing year, Jobs refused to give the keynote, and the show moved to New York City. It con­tin­ued on a few years there at the Javitts Cen­ter, but atten­dance at that venue quickly petered out. As many have pointed out, the Inter­net can now dis­perse infor­ma­tion about prod­ucts far faster and far­ther than any show floor could. There is now only one Mac­World Expo, each Jan­u­ary, and it remains a San Fran­cisco tradition.

When we moved to Van­cou­ver, I missed that sense of being on Apple’s radar. Despite the fact that many here use the Mac (in fact, in recent years it’s increased), I found the local Cer­ti­fied Apple Deal­ers a bit ram­shackle, with rel­a­tively small vari­ety of periph­er­als and messy, poorly main­tained dis­play areas. My first job was work­ing for some­one who hated the Mac, and he was relieved when I didn’t insist that I use one in his small office (I would have been the only Mac user in the shop). At IBM, we all were assigned Thinkpads, of course. The con­sul­tants from Vic­to­ria often had Macs. At Blog­ger and smaller busi­ness events, the Mac was pre­dom­i­nant. Nev­er­the­less, the absence of the iPhone in Canada, the higher prices for prod­ucts, and con­stantly hear­ing the rumors that Apple Hated Canada didn’t help matters.

Our days of liv­ing in a rel­a­tively less impor­tant spot in the Apple uni­verse are about to end. On this com­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I hope to be in line for the open­ing of the first Apple store in Van­cou­ver. We’ve been wait­ing for this for some time. Its going to be in the heart of down­town, at the Pacific Cen­tre Mall (actu­ally the pre­vi­ous loca­tion of Holt Ren­frew, a high end Depart­ment Store, who have moved into new digs nearby). I believe that it’s only the fifth store in Canada, with the other three in Toronto and one in Laval.

To put things in a bit of per­spec­tive, another Apple store opened in Boston (across the river from Cam­bridge, but cer­tainly near our old home) last week. It’s the largest Apple Store in the world, tak­ing up three floors and sport­ing an all glass facade, on Boyl­ston Street. Oh well, I guess Boston still looms larger in Apple’s realm, but at least we’re no longer off the map.