Tag: summer

• Red tide, scooters, and civic security

  

  I am reading up on a few different things this morning.

  Southwest Florida, which is where I am right now, is in the midst of a “red tide” that began last November. These happen fairly regularly along the Gulf Coast, but this one is high up on the severity scale. There doesn’t appear to be a clear explanation for what causes them, but sustained warmer temperatures and fertilizer and other pollutant runoff are thought to stoke it. Whatever the cause, they are devastating to the environment. We are switching coasts tomorrow morning.

  Portland now has electric scooters. (Why don’t we have these in Toronto?) But to combat possible concerns around urban clutter, the company, Bird, has committed to collecting all of its scooters each night and has agreed to remit $1 per scooter per day to the city. These scooters are pissing off some cities (or maybe it’s just San Francisco), but I still believe the problem will eventually get resolved. City Observatory also has this interesting piece where it compares the above scooter pricing to car pricing. Are we underpricing cars?

  Finally, here is a short film on civic security in Paris. In an effort to mitigate terrorism, the city has, of course, been implementing and erecting fencing, barricades and other reactive security measures. But sadly, now that this has become a new reality, the capital is spending more time considering how these measures could be more thoughtfully designed. The video showcases some of them. Certainly a more deliberate approach, but are they just as reactive?

  Maybe one of these topics will be of interest to you too.

  Photo by Andreas Selter on Unsplash

  2018.08.04

• First day of summer

  Today was the first day of the year that truly felt like summer here in Toronto. It also happens to be my birthday. 

  So I did the only sensible thing one should do on a day like this. I went to a rooftop patio after work, with my family, for two of my favorites: a bowl of spaghetti al limone and a negroni. Simple.

  

  In other news, Fred Wilson wrote a great post on his blog today about why he loves Canada and why it is an increasingly important place for the tech sector. 

  For those of us who already know that Canada is the greatest country on earth, it’s a noteworthy post not because it is likely to tell you a lot of new things, but because it was written by Fred fucking Wilson.

  2018.05.03

• Switching to summer time

  Summer time starts this weekend, at least in this part of the world. Africa and Asia generally don’t observe daylight savings time (DST), so if you just switched your clocks forward an hour, know that you are in the global minority.

  The whole point of DST is that it gives us an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings during the summer months. The trade-off is a later sunrise, but since the days are longer to begin with, it’s something we have clearly come to accept.

  Here is a graph showing the impact of daylight savings time on sunrise and sunset times in Greenwich. It’s from Wikipedia and it’s the clearest diagram I could find that quickly explains the change.

  

  There’s a lot of debate around whether or not DST should be abolished or if we should simply adopt summer time, permanently. A bill is currently being reviewed that would allow Florida to observe DST year-round.

  Some groups, like retailers, seem to benefit from daylight savings time. More evening sunshine hours means we’re more likely to shop. But it has a negative impact on other things such as drive-ins. (Do people still go to drive-ins?)

  There are also arguments that it causes a decrease in economic output and an increase in traffic accidents – apparently we’re all groggy and accident-prone after having our sleep routines disrupted.

  So what would be your recommendation?

  1) Do nothing – status quo

  2) Abolish daylight savings time

  3) Observe daylight savings time year-round

  2018.03.11

• Last lake swim of the year

  I’m in Muskoka right now, with very little time to write. 

  I had about an hour before dinner, but I decided that a far more responsible thing to do would be to jump in the lake for what will likely be the last lake swim of the year. It might be the end of September, but it still feels like summer.

  Here’s what that looked like:

  

  If you’re searching for something more city related, check out these high resolution maps of Canada according to our trails, roads, streets, and highways. My good friend Peter just sent them over to me. Thanks Peter.

  Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

  2016.09.22

• Returning to photography

  I used to be more into photography. In architecture school, I had an old Canon Rebel and a photoblog where I posted one photo every day. Clearly I have a thing for daily routines.

  But that was the pre-social media era and before mobile phones had cameras. With the rise of those two things I eventually moved over to just taking photos on my phone and posting them to my Instagram. Today we are all photographers.

  However this week I decided that I want to start taking that creative outlet a bit more seriously again. So I asked my talented photography buddy (founder of DSCBRD) if he could recommend a reasonably priced camera for my purposes. 

  I then sifted through all of the reviews – because that’s what I do – and decided on the mirrorless Fuji X-T10. I love the retro design. It’s also compact enough that it’s easy to carry around. The best camera is the one you have on you.

  

  So I’m spending this afternoon at a cottage playing around with it. It’s a fun place to experiment. I hope you’re all having a great weekend. Talk to you tomorrow.

  2016.08.27

• Going swimming (and being transparent)

  I woke up this morning to this view:

  

  I then went for a swim. The water tends to be on the cooler side in the Georgian Bay, but with the weather we’ve been having it’s pretty perfect right now.

  At this point I’m thinking about a beer and some reading. I have Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty sitting in my car. It’s next in the queue.

  I am telling you all of this simply to be transparent. 

  Recently I had someone caution me that I should be careful about being too public and too open. I won’t get into specifics, but I was told that sometimes it’s better to just fly under the radar.

  I recognize that there have to be limits to transparency, but as a rule of thumb I subscribe to the opposite approach. When possible and when appropriate, I would rather be more, rather than less, transparent. 

  This blog is who I am. It’s indicative of how I think. And it discloses what I’m doing. So I don’t see a lot of downside. What you read is what you get. You’ll know if we should be friends and/or do business together.

  After I wrote about what I’m doing next I had a bunch of emails come in from various people telling me what they’re doing and, in some cases, suggesting that we work together. Some people had development sites that they thought I should take a look at. And some people immediately asked if I was hiring.

  I am grateful for each of those emails. But I also know that they’re an outcome of openness and transparency.

  2016.07.23

• In support of a super-metro

  

  I just got home from a couple of coffee meetings, an afternoon bike ride and an impromptu basketball shootaround. Toronto is a different place in the summer. And it feels great to be biking everywhere.

  But Toronto is more than just Toronto. Toronto is at the center of a much larger urban agglomeration. And our continued success is going to partially hinge on our ability to work together in a coordinated way.

  Greg Spencer of the Martin Prosperity Institute recently published an interesting article called: Is it time to create a super-Metro? Here’s what it’s about:

  Our research at the Martin Prosperity Institute shows that economic competition is now primarily between cities rather than countries. To be successful in this environment, Toronto and its neighbours need to find a way to erase local divisions and solve their problems together. 
  

  Toronto is a wildly successful city, world-class in many respects. When our current institutional arrangements were forged, no one predicted the level of growth the region is experiencing. Status quo local government arrangements cannot adequately deliver the level of co-operation and collaboration needed to cope and plan for the future.

  Greg believes that the answer is a new regional authority that could give “democratic legitimacy to the very important decisions being made for the benefit of the wider region.” 

  I’m not going to comment on how all of this should be executed, but I fully agree that we need to think and act as one consolidated urban entity.

  Cities are the economic driver of the new global economy, but many (most?) of our governance structures do not properly reflect that reality. And the risk is that we are allowing arbitrary municipal boundaries and lack of coordination to hinder our ability to compete globally.

  This goes for Toronto and it goes for every other city region around the world.

  2016.05.22

• Cottage weekend

  I just got home from a weekend up at a friend’s cottage. It’s an annual birthday tradition and it’s always a great time. A good cottage weekend can do wonders to reinvigorate yourself. I am ready for the week.

  But since the Pan Am Games closing ceremony fireworks are about to kick-off and I want to go watch them from my sun deck, I don’t have a lot of time to write a post. So instead, I thought I would share a few of my photos from the weekend.

  The first photo is near Shelburne, Ontario. The wind turbines are from the Amaranth Wind Farm, which is the largest wind energy installation in Canada.

  

  This is the Georgian Bay. I love swimming in this water.

  

  Cottage reading: Monocle.

  

  The wood shop. There’s a lot of creative talent at this particular cottage.

  

  Creemore = cottage.

  

  All of these photos were also posted to my Instagram if you’d like to follow me there. The last photo was from Snapchat (donnelly_b).

  Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. I have a great guest post queued up on road pricing. I can’t wait to share it.

  2015.07.27

• Saturday morning bike ride to the Bluffs

  This morning I got up at 7:30am and met a good friend of mine at the St. Lawrence Market for breakfast.

  Market Street is closed to cars today so it’s pedestrian-only. It should be this way all the time. They had a pig roasting on a spit when I walked by and a big stage set up. 

  Below is a photo of what it looks like. Keep in mind that this photo was taken just after 8:00am, which is why it’s not all that busy, yet.

  

  When Market Street was redone a few years ago, the original vision for the street was for it to be pedestrian-only. But somebody told me that the city didn’t want that. Too bad. It strikes me as a perfect candidate for that.

  After breakfast, we then biked out to the Scarborough Bluffs in the east end of the city. If you click here, you can see the path we took via Strava. It’s only about 15km from downtown. The ride through the Beaches was by far the best stretch. The water was on my right hand side. The pavement was smooth and continuous. And I had George FitzGerald on my headphones for pacing.

  When we got there, this was the view we were presented with:

  

  It honestly doesn’t feel like Toronto. The water is turquoise and there’s a beautiful beach at the bottom of the cliffs. It felt like paradise.

  If you’ve never been to the Scarborough Bluffs, do yourself a favor and get out there on a beautiful summer day. It’s the dog days of summer and Toronto is a magical place right now.

  2015.07.11

• “Am I supposed to like this?”

  

  Today I had lunch at Webers Hamburgers so that I could see what all the fuss is about. Here’s my check-in.

  For those of you who don’t know Webers, it’s a burger place on the side of the highway in Orillia, Ontario. It opened in 1963 with the goal of targeting cottage goers and has since become an “institution” in the region.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been, so I figured I had to give it a try.

  Before going, I decided to ask around to see what people thought of the burgers. And in almost all of the cases, I got the same response: “You can get better burgers in the city. But you have to go. It’s an institution. It’s tradition.”

  And that ended up being a very accurate description.

  Were the burger goods? Yes. Were they mind blowing? No. In fact, they’re pretty basic burgers. You have a choice of 3 different toppings and 2 different condiments. That’s it. Want mayo? Sorry, they don’t do that.

  But in the end, it’s not really about the burgers.

  While there, I was reminded of a blog post by Seth Godin called, “Am I supposed to like this?” His opening line is the following: “If we think we are, we probably will.” And it’s all about how we make judgments well before we think we do (and how marketers invest in that).

  What matters a great deal is how we’re “supposed to” feel about something. If a wine is expensive, we’re “supposed to” to think it tastes better and our mind usually makes that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  And in this case, Webers has become symbolic of summer and good times at the cottage. You’re “supposed to” stop there whenever you go to the cottage. It’s tradition.

  2015.06.24