Rolandt

It has been another busy week for TidyBlocks: we have a beautiful new layout courtesy of Maya Gans, we can download SVG versions of all our blocks at once thanks to Justin Singh, and we have a new Twitter account @tidyblocks. We have also started to add more statistical blocks so that people can use...

This week’s headlines about migrants seeking to cross the channel served as a reminder – not that it should ever be forgotten, still less forgiven – of the way that the more general migrant ‘crisis’ (in scare quotes for a reason) of 2015 was weaponised in the 2016 Referendum campaign. Of course, as with their economic claims, Brexiters have now deemed it politically incorrect to even suggest that migration and immigration were central to their case (which, we are now expected to believe, was all about Edmund Burke’s theories of sovereignty).

The official Vote Leave campaign confined itself, relatively speaking, to dog whistles, most notoriously in the implications of the, in any case untrue, claim that ‘Turkey is joining the EU’, and the linkage of this to Syria and Iraq. Nigel Farage and UKIP, by contrast, were happy to blow the hunting horn, as with their hideous ‘Breaking Point’ poster. Indeed, cynics might say that the two campaigns were not so unconnected, and that Farage acted as an enabler for the official campaign to keep itself relatively clean whilst reaping the rewards of that which they ostensibly disavowed.

At all events, between them the two campaigns exploited the refugees both directly and also by the wholly dishonest conflation of freedom of movement, immigration in general, refugees and asylum seekers (for more detail on this aspect of the Referendum, see this article by Dr Amanda Garrett of Georgetown University).

The current bogus panic about cross-channel refugees also has Farage lurking sweatily in the background as for some months now, like a censorious suburban curtain-twitcher newly equipped with a bus pass, he has been hanging around beaches and hotels (£) in his grubby mac trying to whip up talk of an “invasion” – talk which then all too predictably crossed over into the mainstream. Farage - who let’s not forget no longer holds elected office and heads a basically defunct ‘party’ - may have done more to pollute British politics than any other politician of his generation but, as ever, the government are more than happy to splash around in his fetid cesspit.

Less control, not more

In this way, there are direct parallels between Brexit and this current “artificial emergency”, and polling evidence shows a clear relationship between views about the two, but with a new twist. For what this latest episode brings into focus is that Brexit, far from allowing Britain to take back control, is likely to make the situation much more complicated. This is because, as Professor Steve Peers explained in an excellent blog this week, within the tangled maze of international law and conventions about refugees and asylum seekers, the EU’s Dublin rules provide part of the framework to address this issue.

To very briefly summarise (as so often, it’s a complex issue, so do please use the links to get a fuller picture), Peers explains that the oft-quoted idea that those seeking asylum are obliged to do so in the first safe country they reach is bogus (and there are often good reasons why they do not). However, amongst its participants, the Dublin rules do often assign responsibility to that country, even if asylum has been sought elsewhere in the EU. In practice, this often provides the basis on which some of those relatively few asylum seekers who reach the UK are returned to France and elsewhere which, apparently, is what Brexiters want (the idea of any obligation either to the people themselves or to other countries not being a prominent feature of their moral universe, and indeed, reading posts on social media, the idea of refugees being people at all seems to be beyond some of them).

Yet that and other EU provisions will be lost to the UK at the end of the transition period. It may be that the UK and the EU agree something similar (or, even, better) but it is by no means clear that this is in prospect – or even that it has been the subject of substantive discussion - and Peers concludes trenchantly that as regards asylum seekers “the effect of Brexit may be ultimately to reduce UK control of migration, not increase it”. Equally, the idea that Brexit will miraculously free the UK from the Dublin rules to do more advantageous bi-lateral deals on refugee return with individual EU member states “seems extremely implausible” according to Professor Jonathan Portes. But in the tautological theology of Brexit, any EU rules are seen as suspect so it becomes an article of faith that leaving them will be ‘liberating’.

How (not) to make friends and influence people

It does not follow, as is being widely said on social media, that Home Secretary Priti Patel talking about the need for co-operation with France is in and of itself a further indication of the folly of Brexit. After all, there have been bi-lateral agreements with France about refugees even whilst the UK was an EU member. But it does serve as a reminder that international problems entail international co-operation in general and, in this case, constructive relations with France in particular, which have hardly been aided by Brexiter rhetoric, such as Boris Johnson’s ill-judged and offensive remarks about ‘World War Two punishment beatings'.

Nor is the cause of co-operation well-served by the current headlines about Patel issuing ‘ultimatums’ to France, or about the ‘outrage’ of France seeking financial contributions to its control of the border. As with the Brexit negotiations, antagonistic messages that may be designed by the British media and politicians solely for domestic consumption are seen and heard abroad, and inevitably sour international relations. Not just France but Germany, Ireland and Spain have all been subjected to repeated insults during the Brexit process. It would be foolish to think that this has no effect, or that it can make co-operation with such countries (over refugees or anything else) anything other than more difficult.

Post-Brexit, Britain risks becoming friendless as a stark new YouGov survey shows and, even on the Brexiters’ own ‘Global Britain’ reckoning, will need to become adept at neat diplomatic footwork in order to avoid isolation. But such footwork is alien and, even, anathema to this Brexit government, which would prefer to blunder bullishly around the diplomatic china shop so as to pander to its core vote – and its own antediluvian party and parliamentary membership - than do anything that might actually be construed as being in the national interest. It’s yet another example of this Vote Leave administration permanently re-fighting the leave campaign rather than governing. The effects on Britain’s well-being, let alone its international reputation (£), are of course irrelevant to these Brexit ‘patriots’.

An article this week by a senior former diplomat, David Hannay, underscored just how damaging this approach is proving to be for the trade negotiations with the EU. The British government, he argues, is acting in a way which is “unprincipled” and is destroying trust. This is principally because of the way that the Political Declaration (PD) has effectively been treated by the UK as totally irrelevant whereas it had been signed with the EU on the understanding that it constituted a shared framework (I would add that this has come on top of repeated ways during the Article 50 negotiations that the UK behaved in an untrustworthy manner, principally when the phase 1 agreement was disowned). This, Hannay, argues, is damaging not just to the prospects of a trade deal but to Britain’s more general need to build friendships abroad including with European countries.

No one likes us, we don’t care

If the government is already reckless of such considerations, the Brexit Ultras are as always urging an even more irresponsible and dangerous course with their now growing clamour against not only the PD but the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) itself. This of course would be even more serious: in rejecting the PD, Britain is breaking its word but if it rejects the WA it breaks an international treaty.

I wrote about this last week, with links back to how it has been in prospect ever since the 2019 Election, despite the ERG voting for the agreement. This week has seen yet another salvo in the Express from Iain Duncan Smith against the WA (which was nicely taken down by, again, Steve Peers), as well as a report in the Sunday Telegraph (£) which headlined the bizarre suggestion from an unnamed source that the WA was ‘not worth the paper it was written on’. That accusation is usually made of an agreement the other party can readily ignore, and so is a strange thing to say of one which you propose illegally to disown.

But that is hardly the strangest feature. Whereas last week Duncan Smith was talking about things “buried in the fine print” of the WA now – perhaps stung by the many criticisms of him for having apparently voted for something he didn’t understand – he loftily declares (in the Telegraph piece) that “everyone knew this stuff before” but voted for it so as to be out of the EU and able negotiate as a “sovereign nation” (inevitably, it has not sunk in that had Britain not been a sovereign nation it couldn’t have signed the WA anyway). Similarly, in his own Express piece he writes of his “surprise” that his comments of the previous week were a “revelation” (even though he had presented them as just that) and claims that the WA “was always a work in progress” rather than, in fact, an international treaty. He clearly doesn’t realise, or perhaps just does not care, that this is an even more indefensible position since it implies that he and his ERG cronies acted with deliberate bad faith rather than simply incompetence.

I won’t add to what I have written before about this latest piece of Brexiter duplicity and irresponsibility, with its potential to take Britain to international pariahdom. As noted last week, it will be repeated endlessly in the coming months so there will be plenty of opportunities to analyse it then. In any case, repeatedly pointing to its flaws is largely irrelevant: its purpose, probably already achieved, is to persuade the Brexiters’ base that the WA can and should be repudiated.

Even on the most charitable interpretation that it is designed as a signal to Boris Johnson not to make ‘concessions’ in the EU trade negotiations it will already have done further damage to Britain’s reputation – again, the British press is read in other countries. But, increasingly, the Brexit Ultras resemble those Millwall fans who used to chant “no one likes us, we don’t care”, although possibly even this credits them with a greater degree of self-awareness than is warranted by the evidence.

The art of the deal?

Meanwhile, trade negotiations with non-EU countries continue – sort of. A shouty headline in the Express (interestingly now changed to something much more anodyne, but see the original here) reported the “Brexit DISASTER” that talks with the US had been delayed, with the growing possibility that they would end up being held under a Biden presidency if Trump loses the November elections. This wasn’t actually news to anyone following the news (£). But its prominent discussion in such a rabidly pro-Brexit ‘newspaper’ has its own significance in the gradual falsification of all the promises made by Brexiters to its readers.

The idea of a UK-US Free Trade Agreement has always been held up as the iconic economic prize of Brexit (even though its actual economic effect would be very small). Moreover, it has been an article of faith to Brexiters that Trump would facilitate a good, quick deal in contrast to Obama’s much-resented ‘back of the queue’ warning during the Referendum campaign. That, too, was highly unrealistic given Trump’s capricious nature, not to mention his avowed ‘America First’ position (though, by the same token, the substance of talks with a Biden administration wouldn’t necessarily be any different).

So as early as July 2017 The Lord Jones of Birmingham, better known as Digby Jones, the fanatically pro-Brexit former head of the CBI, with all the august dignity we expect from a Peer of the Realm bated “remoaners” that a trade deal with the US was “in the bag”. More seriously, in September 2019 Johnson and Trump were reported to have agreed that a deal would be done “in lightning quick time by July [2020]”, explicitly to precede the Presidential elections (albeit that at that time Trump looked likely to win).

It is in that context of over-blown promises that imparting the news to Express readers that they won’t be kept is important (I assume the subsequent significant change to the headline was because they were infuriated by the original - or someone was). And it can hardly be blamed on coronavirus given that this is not seen as an adequate reason to extend talks with the EU. Nor, given the previous emphasis put on completing a deal this summer, can it be seen as anything other than sophistry to now claim, as Liz Truss did at a House of Lords Committee last month, that setting a target date is being avoided to deny US negotiators the benefit of time pressure.

But the UK-US negotiations have another role within Brexiter mythology. According to former Brexit Secretary David Davis – the man of whom it can fairly be said that he gets everything about Brexit wrong – they would provide leverage in the talks with the EU. Shanker Singham, the Brexiters’ favourite trade guru, agreed that the London-Brussels -Washington “game theory” triangle would put pressure on the EU. It was a highly dubious proposition, which has shown no signs whatsoever of coming true but, in any case, it is now dead in the water since negotiations with the EU – which resume next week - must finish by (in fact before) the end of the year.

Crackers

On the subject of doing deals, the other Brexit story of (passing) interest this week is the supposedly soon to be completed trade re-negotiation with Japan. This is reported to be snagged on last-minute differences over market access for Britain’s Stilton cheesemakers. Trade negotiation experts have explained that such hold ups over apparent trivialities are more the norm than the exception and no doubt they are right.

At the same time, it is hard to resist the thought that this particular row has a special piquancy as it will be Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal and the government desires to demonstrate that it can achieve more favourable terms for British interests than those of the EU-Japan deal. And, moreover, to do so in relation to an iconic British product.

If successful, it will be more headline fodder for the core voters but – as with the entire ‘sovereignty’ schtick - will in any substantive sense be meaningless. For, economically, it is only of symbolic value (British sales of blue cheese to Japan last year totalled just £102,000) but, then, as with the US talks, the whole point about an independent trade policy is not the ‘trade’ part but the word ‘independent’. Still, like the issue of fisheries, which it closely resembles in that respect, it is at least a rich source of cheesy puns.

My modest contribution is to point out that the whole thing is crackers, and half-baked crackers at that.

I don’t just mean the Stilton story.

This week I looked at the breakdown of visitors to FeverBee and was stunned to discover just how much it has changed over the years.

 

FeverBee Audience Breakdown, 2010

This is a breakdown of the audience from FeverBee back in 2010.

(click here for full image)

Notice how over half were based in the USA. There aren’t too many surprises in this bunch. Let’s see how this compares to today.

 

FeverBee Audience Breakdown, 2020

This is the audience breakdown so far for 2020.

(click here if image doesn’t show)

The USA now represents just 30% of the audience and the UK just 7%. This isn’t because fewer people are visiting from the UK/USA. Quite the opposite. Traffic from the USA and UK has risen at a steady rate every year.

This is a huge change. Not only are both India and Philippines now a bigger audience than the UK, other countries like Nigeria and South Africa are growing rapidly.

No-one notices a difference of a few % per year until five to ten years have passed.

This represents missed opportunities. I could have spotted the growth in India and Philippines a lot sooner. I could have helped sponsor or create early events, fly out there, and build a presence there, help start early communities. I can consider the same in Nigeria or South Africa today.

I’d bet your community is probably missing similar opportunities too. So, a quick task for you. If your community has been running for a few years, look at the composition of your audience by location several years ago compared to today.

What countries/regions are rapidly representing a growing share of your audience? How might you engage them?

RSS Reader sind etwas in Vergessenheit geraten, aber für mich machen sie das Netz erst lesbar. Ich habe zwei Favoriten: Reeder für Apple und Nextgen Reader für Windows. Reeder habe ich seit Jahren für iPhone, iPad und Mac lizenziert. Und heute gibt es den für umme. Dicke Empfehlung.

Meine RSS-Feeds kennt Ihr, oder?

More >

I thought March was only 31 days, but the system seems stuck. Did anyone try turning it off and on again. Read More

Peter Bihr writes about The Ryanair Test, suggesting that new technology be looked at through an as-if-operated-by-Ryanair lens:

What would this look like in real life if it was operated by Ryanair? Would it still be cool, or totally suck? Where would all the up-sell happen? How would it be to be blasted with ads while using it?

A similarly helpful test, when we’re formulating public policy, might be to stop to consider how whatever program or service we’re calling for will look like when operated by government.

Not by an idealized utopian government, but by the actual always-partly-broken, powered-by-fallible humans government.

Too often we make the mistake of coming up with plans that assume they’ll be implemented by caring, future-thinking people, skilled in systems thinking, and with the agency to evolve plans as they go. This is almost never the case.

We’ve probably all heard about the idea of an “elevator pitch” to summarize an idea or a project. One of the challenges I face on a regular basis, with my own thesis students and with those I teach (particularly because I teach research methods, research design, and the mechanics of conducting research) is helping them describe their studies clearly for an audience that will probably have a very short attention span or limited time. The other day, I woke up with an idea for a didactic exercise we all can use to help students think about their research questions and projects and what these contribue to the literature, particularly broader debates and empirical state of the art. It’s based off of the 5 sentences model of an abstract which Dr. Jessica Calarco has talked about before.

Photo credit: Ross Howard-Jones on Flickr. CC-Licensed BY-NC-ND

The model I’ve been thinking about could be defined as a “two-sentences elevator pitch”. It’s based on the same model of the first two sentences in Jess’s model:

1) say what we know (the state of the art), 2) state what we don’t (what your research contributes to the literature).

I am planning to do a quick exercise with my students, in class, in order to help them contextualize their research.

A few quick examples of this approach from my own work:

• “Institutions are built through repeated interactions between actors. What happens when those repeated interactions are interrupted?”
• “Waste is often best governed in collaboration between the informal sector and local governments. What happens when this collaboration breaks down?”
• “Water is established as a constitutional human right in many countries. Which factors hinder its implementation at the local level?”
• “Good resource governance is often the result of collaboration across networks of actors. How can these collaborations be fostered?”
• “NGOs often influence domestic politics in contexts where national governments are receptive to engagements with civil society. What happens in less participatory countries?”
• “Customers will drink tap water if they perceive it is safe. What happens when there’s no guarantee by the local government that this will be the case?”

I am curious to hear from you (you all y’all) if this “2 sentences elevator pitch” model of presenting a research question that animates your own work is helpful to quickly summarize what you study. Can you comment on this blog post some of your work in this 2 sentences’ model?

I searched around for a while on how to create a Date column in Notion that defaulted to the current date and time but could also be editable. I didn’t find anything useful and eventually came up with my own solution.

This requires three columns:

1. The first column is the Created column which exists by default on tables.
2. The second column is a Date column named Override Date. This will normally be empty unless you enter a value in the column.
3. The last column, Date, is a computed column that uses the first two columns as its inputs.

The Date column uses the following formula:

    if(empty(prop("Override Date")), prop("Created"), prop("Override Date"))

That is, if the Override Date is empty then the value of the column is the Created date, otherwise its value comes from the Override Date.

Gosh, this is the longest blogging break I've had since I started blogging some 17 years ago. It's not that I've been a digital hermit. I have been engaging a bit on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But my life has changed somewhat - in the words of John Lennon, 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans'.

The short story is that my elderly Mum became ill about two years ago. Last year she got a bit worse, sufficient for the doctor to run tests. And our worst fears were confirmed when we were told that Mum had advanced cancer in her breast and lungs. This is not unusual in the very elderly. I think I read somewhere that half of very elderly women will get cancer with breast and lung cancer being the most common. That said, your metabolism is a lot slower as you age and that also means that tumours tend to grow much more slowly too. That means Mum is thankfully still with us, and is still trouncing me when it comes to solving cryptic crosswords. However, she is getting more poorly. I feel we're now on borrowed time with her now so trying to make the most of what we (as in the family) have and keep Mum as comfortable and supported as possible and enjoy what time we have.

I'd been spending a lot more time with Mum anyway since my father died 7 years ago but since the diagnosis, that's more or less become a full-time thing. So no gallivanting on speaking gigs about mobile technology, no leading of workshops, no mentoring of students or clients, no writing, and a day to day life that is about as far from my London life as it could be. So dear reader, that is the reason for the hiatus on this blogging lark.

Having spent the last year or two as an accidental carer (most carers seem to be accidental carers), I've learned a lot about dealing with lung cancer and learned a lot about what it is like to be very elderly, how challenging it can be to be a carer and also the joy that can be found in the small things. I've also realised how fortunate I am to be spending these precious last years and months with Mum. Not everyone gets the chance to do this so I know I really am one of the lucky ones.

So, I'm not sure I'll be writing very much about the mobile industry in the short term, but there might be some posts about being a carer, living with lung cancer, being an accidental carer, and maybe some things about how Mum and I are using technology (or not) and whatever else comes to mind as and when I get the time. 

P.S. Hat tip to Martin Bihl and Lloyd Davis and the Tuttle crew for helping me out of my shell recently and to Mum's medical team (NHS and St Richard's Hospice) and my family for giving me a week's respite to regroup and re-energise.

I recently came across an unused Dove Computer MacSnap RAM upgrade on eBay, so I bought it and installed it in my Mac 512Ke to bring its RAM up to 1Mb.

Dove MacSnap

MacSnap was a series of memory upgrades from Dove Computer for various compact Macs. Unlike newer computers where one can just pop in another SIMM to upgrade its memory, upgrading these Macs required a lot more components.

For the 512Ke, the MacSnap uses the factory 128k ROM and just piggy backs onto six of the ICs on the original motherboard.

Installation

Installing the MacSnap requires removing the rear case, unplugging the analog board and floppy drive, and sliding out the motherboard.

Next, the MacSnap board literally just snaps onto the motherboard (with a lot of force required) with its piggyback adapters clipping onto the motherboard ICs.

It’s important to apply enough force to get the sockets to fully clip together. The first time I tried, I didn’t have them sandwiched close enough together and the Mac was still showing only 512K of RAM.

MacSnap installed incorrectly

MacSnap installed correctly

Once the upgrade is installed, just slide the motherboard back into the case, reattach the analog board harness and floppy drive cable, and put the rear case back on.

No extensions or other software are required and the Mac sees all 1024Kb of RAM at startup. The MacSnap package came with a diskette for RamSnap which is a ram disk application, but it’s not required.

With everything installed and hooked up, I am now finally able to use the Flying Toasters screensaver of After Dark, which I couldn’t before due to RAM constraints. StuffIt Expander is also able to extract some archives that it wasn’t able to due to limited memory.

I’m also able to run MacTCP, MacPPP, and a client application simultaneously, making my Mac finally able to communicate with the internet natively with its own IP stack instead of having to rely on a WiFi232 to make all of its TCP connections. These screenshots show Fetch making an FTP connection and Eudora able to receive POP3 e-mail:

I can remember as a child my mother picking blackberries while waiting to pick me up from school. They’d appear just before ‘blackberry week’ which was literally the name people gave to October half-term.

Now, 30 years later, blackberries appear around 10 weeks earlier here, ready to be picked in mid-August. That makes for tasty summer holiday desserts, but leaves me slightly concerned about the pace of climate change.

In the last week, we’ve had scorching hot weather in the UK, followed by intense thunderstorms which led to flooding that derailed a train.

Of course, things are worse on many fronts elsewhere; there are plenty of people, especially refugees, who are desperate to seek asylum in our country. Yet, instead of thinking in a joined-up way about the global climate emergency and the effect it will have on migration over the next 30 years, the inept UK government sends in the Royal Navy.

Within my lifetime, those in charge have missed so many opportunities to steer us of disaster, meaning that now we haven’t got long to avert climate catastrophe. I just hope that elections over the next few years replace the emotional toddlers we’ve got running the show with some grown-ups committed to action.

---

This post is Day 31 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

Like so many other events recently, the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin (VCFB) will hold its annual event in the virtual domain this year. Other retro computing events have already taken place online in 2020 and I very much enjoyed to join events I could not have gone in person. However, all of them have focused on talks while the exhibition of retro computing equipment was unfortunately ditched. At the online VCFB this year, we attempt to do things a bit differently.

Like other events we will of course also have a roster with talks which will be streamed in real time to a global audience. In addition, however, we would also like to have virtual exhibition tables where participants can present their equipment in a similar fashion as they would do at a real table during the festival. Instead of ‘real exhibition tables’ we will use BigBlueButton video conference rooms and exhibitors will have individual rooms where they can demonstrate their kit and chat with visitors. Unlike the talks, these rooms will not be recorded by the organizers because they are intended as an informal platform for talking to visitors and showing the equipment. In other words, no need to create a script, just like at a real exhibition table.

The central point that brings everything together will be a Wiki, where exhibitors can introduce their kit in a similar way as with posters that are usually placed at the pin board behind the exhibition tables. From here, the virtual table, i.e. the BBB room, is just a click away. No software installation is required, everything runs in the web browser. Exhibitors decide on their own at which times they want to be present at their ‘virtual tables’ and their Wiki pages will advertise those times accordingly. In addition there will also be an Info Desk / Lounge Room for people to ask general questions about the event, to hang out and to create breakout rooms for discussions between visitors.

You might have noticed that I used the word ‘we’ in the text a couple of times because I’m part of the ‘orga team’ to make the event happen this year. Registration is open now and I would be very happy to see you and your retro kit at the event! For further details we’ve started putting together a number of Wiki pages that explain the concept in somewhat more detail.

For the first time in many months, I can honestly say that was an enjoyable working week. I split my time between work for We Are Open Co-op and Outlandish.

For We Are Open I was working on an introductory email-based course around ‘open’, and then a survey, framework, and toolkit for social mobility organisations moving their programmes online.

With Outlandish, I’m continuing to help with a new push to productise their offerings. This has two strands: a community portal product, and products and services related to Sociocracy. I was pleased that my proposal to create a new top-level ‘Products’ circle with two sub-circles was passed this week!

---

A quotation shared in an article by Ryan Holiday this week really resonated with me. It’s from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, he of “you cannot step into the same river twice” fame.

Dogs bark at what they cannot understand.

Heraclitus

The reason I paid particular attention to this, I think, is that it’s only recently that I’ve come to realise that I don’t have to live what I’d call a ‘reproducible’ life. That is to say, people don’t have to be easily be able to follow in my footsteps.

I think it’s the educator in me who feels the need to constantly justify and explain myself. However, that’s becoming less of an issue due to a combination of moving away from the world of formal education, therapy sessions, and being very aware of turning 40 at the end of the year.

There are many people who don’t get what I do, or why I do it. Sometimes I don’t really understand either. What I don’t need to spend time doing is wasting my life interacting with random bad faith actors — i.e. the ‘dogs’ barking at things they don’t understand.

---

This week I continued to be on hiatus from Thought Shrapnel but wrote a few posts here:

• Climate ch-ch-ch-changes
• Moving Mastodon instance
• Giving consent
• Experimenting with the MAF method
• Keeping it simple

Next week, I’ve got more of the same, which is good. I’m on the lookout for a couple of days of extra work at the moment from September onwards, so if you see anything Doug-shaped, please get in touch!

---

Image: photo of an oak tree that I encountered on a morning run this week, processed using the Roy Lichtenstein filter in Retroboy.

The post Weeknote 33/2020 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

If you’re looking for a lot of data for a reasonable price, Telus has you covered.

The west-coast-based telecom company rolled out a $75/20GB promotional plan, which will be around until August 24th. It joins the previously available $85/20GB promo plan.

This plan is also one of the carrier’s unlimited plans, meaning subscribers can use as much data as they want each month, but after 20GB, the speed is throttled to a maximum of 512Kbps.

It also includes unlimited nationwide calls, texts, picture and video messages, voicemail, call display, call waiting and conference calling.

If you’re wondering why Telus would offer both a $75 and $85 20GB plan that are nearly identical, there is one small difference. The $85 version is a ‘Peace of Mind Connect’ plan, which means that customers can add a tablet or smartwatch onto the data included in the plan. The $75 option, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same feature, making it a little cheaper.

Right now, Telus seems to be the only member of the Big Three offering this plan, but that might change over the next few days.

At the time of writing, Bell and Rogers‘ $75 plans only come with 10GB of data. Rogers also has a bunch of device sales happening right now. 

Source: Telus 

The post Telus brings back $75/20GB plan once again, available until August 24 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Hey friends, One of the main reasons I work for myself is so I can put my money and attention where my heart is. So I should have said and done something sooner. Change needs to happen because raci...

A lot of people are going ballistic over this right now. Me, I’m on the fence.

I’m skeptical for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the form factor itself–I see foldables as much more of a tablet thing than a phone thing (I think whomever came up with the concepts for Westworld is a genius), and have concerns about durability and real-life usability (especially because… Android, but never mind that right now).

On the other hand I do miss the Psion Series 3, the Nokia Communicator, and a bunch of subsequent devices that, albeit not foldable, were great clamshells and well worth the added weight and bulk for going above and beyond being “just a phone”, so I think they might be onto something here.

Update: This FastCompany piece is the closest thing to an actual review right now, and touches on many of my views.

Want to show your appreciation?

Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, Aug 13, 2020

None of the articles is particularly deep, but when you take one hundred of them, you end up with a fairly substantial work. At the very least, as Donald Clark says, it's "written as quick, readable introductions to the many theorists who have shaped the world of learning."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Delz Erinle, Gist, Aug 13, 2020

I've been waiting for this. Essentially it's a really simply way to upload short podcasts ( it needs to be less than 5 minutes long, in MP3 format and less than 8mb), combined with a way to listen to them one after another in a stream. There's a search available, so it will be possible to listen to a series of audio clips on a specific topic (search doesn't seem to be working yet). Delz Erinle writes, "We believe there's a large and untapped market for audio as a social media, mainly because people have tried to use Twitter as a north star for a voice-based platform when the true north star for a platform that really works is YouTube."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

By Milena Correa, Stephanie Lu, Jenna Kim, Natalie Erjavec, Rohan Shaiva and Shandler Mason

How do you design a digital game with people you have never met in person? This was a question we faced this summer as interns with The New York Times Games team, which is working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The team typically develops new game prototypes every month to test with Times subscribers. They assigned us — a team of six interns with skills in design, tech and data — an ambitious task for our summer internship project: to design and prototype a digital game in three weeks. To do this remotely, we had to get creative with our design and playtest approaches.

Initial Ideation and Game Design

The first step was to decide what kind of game we wanted to make. We were encouraged to explore fresh ideas, so we held an ideation session over video chat to brainstorm game concepts.

To guide our thinking, we filled out ideation worksheets and framed our ideas in the form of questions, such as “How might we make a game about space?” We then voted on our favorite concepts. Our initial ideas were wide-ranging, but we chose to make a “clock game”: where players must swap the mixed-up numbers on a clock to find the correct order.

After we settled on a concept, we began building sample prototypes on paper and in Google Jamboard, where we could test our ideas with our families and members of the Games team.

To make our game appeal to a wider range of players (and to make it more interesting), we replaced the numbers with visual icons. We wanted these icons to indicate linear progression since our game was centered around the themes of time and evolution. Our first design showed an embryo developing into a chick. (To answer the age-old question, we decided that the egg comes before the chicken!)

Milena Correa, game design intern, recognized that the sequential visuals evoked animation. We realized we could refer to the icons as “frames” that could reveal a simple animation when arranged in the right order. Our source of inspiration changed from a clock to a zoopraxiscope, an early motion picture device that cycled through images rapidly to animate them. This informed the name of our game: Animatic.

Once we had the visual metaphor sorted out, we had to decide on key interactions. A major component of gameplay was how players would move the frames around. We explored many possibilities. Through trial and error, we decided that each frame could be swapped with the frames two spaces to the left or right. This gave the gameplay two layers of complexity: players had to recognize the sequence of the frames, and they had to strategize about how to move the frames into the correct positions.

Product Design

We paid close attention to how Animatic would fit with the rest of the Games portfolio, especially through its visual design. Jenna Kim, product design intern, began conceptualizing the game’s visual design early in the development process.

With a zoopraxiscope as our inspiration, Correa and Kim decided to transform the original clock layout into a film reel. This made the theme and objective clearer, while elevating the game’s visual aesthetic.

Kim designed the icons and color palette with simplicity in mind. To make our game accessible to diverse audiences, we chose easily recognizable symbols for each set of icons that visually indicated some sort of change over time. We settled on four sequences: a chick hatching, an apple being eaten, a burning match and a pizza being eaten.

A big part of the design process was figuring out how to get players to start their sequence at the top of the film reel and continue clockwise. Kim tried to highlight the top of the reel in various ways, such as with arrows, symbols and even words. After some testing, we decided that the arrow was the most intuitive option.

iOS and Web Builds

Animatic is the first Games prototype that was simultaneously built for iOS and the web. This allowed us explore how the game might feel both in-browser and in-app. It also enabled us to take advantage of Rohan Shaiva, Shandler Mason and Stephanie Lu’s diverse tech skill sets. To keep both versions of the prototype in sync, we communicated frequently and checked in daily over video calls.

Shaiva and Mason built the iOS prototype in Swift, while Lu created the web version using React. The highly interactive nature of the game presented a number of technical challenges. For example, animating the frames and showing their swapping movements required a carefully timed sequence of transitions and events. To allow for this chaining, Shaiva and Lu implemented code asynchronously — the animations run in parallel with the code that handles the logic. That way, if you’ve made the winning move, you won’t see the “Congratulations!” message until you’ve seen the frames swap.

Because users interact with mobile and web interfaces differently — through tapping and clicking — we wanted to create a single interface that was consistent between our iOS and web prototypes. The original designs for both platforms contained a swap button that users would click or tap after choosing two frames to swap. However, we found that this approach required too much clicking and tapping, so Kim worked with the developers to explore different interactions. We decided that drag-and-drop for iOS and click-to-swap for the web made the gameplay most engaging.

Test and Iterate

Usually, the Games team playtests their prototypes with users in person so they can closely follow how the users interact with the game. Our challenge was to recreate this experience in a virtual setting with members of the Games team and the wider Times intern cohort — these sessions were coordinated by Natalie Erjavec, data analyst intern.

Although we hadn’t yet deployed our web prototype, we found ways to test it out. We sent playtesters a temporary link generated by ngrok, an application that creates access to a local development server. Playtesters then shared their screens with us so we could observe their facial reactions and their interactions with the game.

The process was trickier to figure out on iOS. Playtesters couldn’t download the app on their phones or run the latest development build, which would take too much time to set up.

Shaiva developed a way to test the game over Zoom. During calls, he shared his computer screen and showed everyone the latest prototype on an emulated iPhone. Then, he gave playtesters remote control of his screen, which allowed them to play the game. This approach required several layers of abstraction and suffered from an occasional lag, but it ended up being an effective way to playtest.

Our remote playtesting hacks enabled us to obtain crucial feedback to improve our game. We made several improvements based on playtester feedback, including adding easier levels. Some players found it difficult to see where the sequence started, so we added a fade-in transition to indicate the order of the frames.

While Animatic is a prototype and not a fully polished game, we are proud of what we were able to accomplish in three weeks. We were able to leverage our different skill sets and collaborate cross-functionally, which allowed us to work efficiently and with fewer hiccups.

Making Animatic was a core part of our summer internships. While the Games team is not currently testing new prototypes, you can play Animatic here. Enjoy!

Milena Correa is a Game Maker Intern and a rising Junior at Parsons School of Design (Class of 2022), majoring in Design and Technology with a focus in Game Design.

Jenna Kim is a Product Design Intern and a rising Senior at Carnegie Mellon University (Class of 2021) studying Communication Design with a minor in HCI.

Natalie Erjavec is a Data Analyst Intern and a rising Senior at the University of Washington pursuing a B.S. in Informatics and a certificate in Sales.

Stephanie Lu is a Front-End Engineering Intern and a rising Junior at Santa Clara University (Class of 2022), majoring in Computer Science and Engineering.

Shandler Mason is an iOS Mobile Engineering Intern and a rising Junior at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University studying Computer Science with a minor in Applied Mathematics.

Rohan Shaiva is an iOS Mobile Engineering Intern and a rising Senior at Tufts University majoring in Computer Science and Film.

---

Design, Prototype, Zoom: How New York Times Interns Built a Game Remotely was originally published in NYT Open on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Started syncing my notes/notions markdown files to my phone through Nextcloud. On my phone currently using iAWriter as a markdown editor, but not sure if I’ll stick with it (partially as it seems to carry a 30 Euro price tag, which seems high and makes me wonder if there’s something I’m missing). What are your experiences with markdown editors on Android?

Apple Maps has come a long way since its debut in iOS 6. Much of the app’s history, which got off to a rocky start, has been focused on gathering and improving map data worldwide, but that’s beginning to change. The task is enormous and will never really be finished, but a shift has already started.

Once, the improvements in Maps were focused mainly on its basic underlying data like getting roads and geographic features correct. However, today the emphasis is increasingly on providing a deeper set of data and new features like cycling routes and city guides. Google Maps has had some of this functionality for years, and many of the refinements to Apple Maps are in just a handful of cities and countries. However, with the completion of Maps’ rebuilt map data in the US, Apple has begun to layer in new data and functionality that is poised to spread out much more widely.

Supported By

Concepts

Concepts: Sketch, Note, Draw

Laying the Foundation for New Features with Data

The foundation of the new features being added to Maps is the underlying data that Apple is continuously collecting and updating. The ambitious map reconstruction was announced in June 2018. A year into the project, Apple announced iOS and iPadOS 13, which introduced the first new Maps feature tied to the new maps: Look Around, the company’s take on Google Maps’ Street View functionality. Apple has also continued to add and update data to its maps like real-time transit data, flight status information, EV charging stations, parking details, COVID-19 test centers, and indoor maps.

In January of this year, Apple completed its map update for the continental US. In the months since, the company has continued to expand Look Around, adding US cities like Chicago and Seattle.

Now, Apple is expanding its rebuilt maps to other countries. Just this past week, the company added a detailed map of Japan, which includes the Look Around feature for Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. In Osaka, Look Around – which had previously only followed streets – added footpaths in the park surrounding Osaka Castle, something I hope to see come to other cities too. Also coming later this year are rebuilt maps for the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada. It will be interesting to see if maps for those entire countries are turned on all at once, as was done with Japan. That may be difficult with a country the size of Canada, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how Apple rolls out its new maps in the UK and Ireland.

New data layers are being added to Maps this year, including ones identifying speed and red-light cameras on your route, congestion zones, and environmental zones. Speed and red-light cameras have not appeared in the iOS 14 beta where I live yet, so I haven’t been able to try them. Presumably, however, they will work similarly to Google’s Waze app by displaying iconography in Maps where cameras are located. Congestion and environmental zones data will help drivers take them into account when picking a route. Also, Maps users in China will be able to securely store their license plate numbers to check which days they are permitted to drive in congestion zones.

Better Location Tracking and New Routing Options

The update to Maps adds an ingenious new way to determine your location too. Refine location is a clever way to pinpoint your location in a crowded city with tall buildings, which can reduce the accuracy of GPS. If iOS is unable to determine your location precisely, Maps will prompt you to hold up your phone and scan your surroundings with the iPhone’s camera. By comparing the images recorded against Look Around data and combining it with other available location data, Maps can more accurately place you on the map. Refine location is only available in cities with Look Around, which is currently limited to the biggest US cities, plus Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya in Japan.

Maps will also add cycling and electric vehicle routing features this fall. When it launches, cycling routes will be available in San Francisco, New York, Shanghai, and Beijing, although currently the feature is only live in San Francisco.

Cycling routes include several options that let cyclists customize their trips. An excellent example of the feature is illustrated by a route I picked from Mint Plaza to In-N-Out Burger in San Francisco. After entering the start and end points of the trip, Maps displays a new bicycle icon that you can tap to see your route options.

In this example, Maps provides two options. The first one is the fastest at 23 minutes, but hillier than the second, which takes an extra minute of riding. Along with the distance and overall elevation change, Maps displays a graph that depicts the inclines along the way and notes other features of the route, like bike lanes, shared roads, and busy roads. Maps also alerts you if any walking or stair climbs may be necessary. The same details are displayed on the Apple Watch.

Beneath the default routes picked by Maps are options to avoid hills and busy roads. My imaginary ride to In-N-Out Burger is a good example of how these two toggles can affect a route. The most direct route down Stockton Street is hilly. Instructing Maps to avoid hills takes me on a longer, flatter route down Mission Street to the waterfront. Choosing to avoid busy roads suggests a different route to the Embarcadero via Market Street. The Maps section of the Settings app has also been updated to allow you to pick cycling as the default mode of transportation and to avoid busy roads and hills by default.

Maps is also adding electric vehicle routing. The feature hasn’t appeared in the iOS 14 beta yet, but Apple says it will allow users to specify their type of EV and supported charger. That will allow Apple to highlight charging stations at regular intervals along a route as needed and add the time needed to charge your vehicle when calculating your ETA to your destination.

Built-In Third-Party City Guides

Another big addition coming to Maps is curated guides from third-party publishers, which can be located by searching for a city that supports them or for a topic covered by a guide. So far, I’ve seen guides from Lonely Planet, The Infatuation, and AllTrail, although between WWDC keynote slides and other reports, guides should also be coming from Louis Vuitton, The Washington Post, Time Out Group, Complex, and Zagat. Guides include collections of destinations like ‘Best Trails for Running Near SF’ from AllTrails and ‘Best Ice Cream Shops in NYC’ from Lonely Planet. Tapping on a guide drops pins for each location in the guide on the map and shows a short description of each location with accompanying photos. You can save an entire guide, share it via the share sheet, or save individual locations to custom collections you create.

The guides that I’ve browsed in San Francisco and New York are well done and concise, making them easy to digest. Currently, however, the catalog of guides is severely limited. At WWDC Apple said the feature will start with San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London. As of the publication of this story, there are only three guides in New York, a couple dozen in the San Francisco area, and none in Los Angeles or London. So far, there are twelve guides from Lonely Planet, nine from The Infatuation, and five from AllTrails. There are still several weeks to go before iOS 14 launches, so I expect more guides to be added soon. However, as with other Maps features, it’s going to be a while before the feature is widespread enough to be useful to many users, but worth trying if you’re in San Francisco or New York.

Catching Up the Mac with Catalyst

Also notable this fall is that Maps will join the ranks of Mac Catalyst with the release of macOS Big Sur. Unlike some of Apple’s early Mac Catalyst offerings, Maps follows standard Mac conventions users expect, like using checkboxes in its Preferences instead of iOS-style toggles, and it fits in nicely with macOS’s new design language.

Beyond its looks, though, Maps being rebuilt as a Mac Catalyst app means it now enjoys feature parity with the iOS and iPadOS versions of the app. For the first time, Maps on the Mac supports Favorites, Look Around, and indoor maps. You can also send routes to an iPhone or iPad and track arrival times for anyone who has shared their ETA with you. Maps on the Mac will support the new iOS and iPadOS 14 features that I covered above too. With a full sidebar on the left and toolbar across the top of the app’s window, Maps on macOS 11.0 remains unmistakably a Mac app, but with all the features users will expect.

Approximate Location Provides More Privacy Options

Privacy has also been enhanced in Maps to account for the fact that Apple’s CoreLocation APIs now allow users to share their approximate location with apps instead of their precise location. The change posed difficult design challenges for Maps, which was built around the assumption that it would always know a user’s precise location. The solution, which is detailed in a WWDC presentation, implements a combination of user control, clear in-app communication, and an explanation of the value of providing precise data to allow users to make an informed choice while remaining useful to users who only provide approximate data.

The most apparent result of the change is that if you only grant Maps access to your approximate location, your position on the map is represented by a shaded circle encompassing your approximate location instead of a precise blue dot. The addition of approximate location sharing is a welcome one. Although I plan to continue sharing my exact location with Maps to take full advantage of things like turn-by-turn directions, there are plenty of other apps, like ones that list upcoming local events, that only need my general location.

---

When we checked in with Maps after WWDC 2019, a large part of the US still did not have Apple’s enhanced maps, and Look Around was just rolling out in the San Francisco area. Now, the entire US and Japan have Apple’s new maps, and Canada, the UK, and Ireland are on the way. Plus, eleven US cities and three Japanese cities now feature Look Around. The progress is substantial, but there is still a long way to go before the new maps and Look Around are available worldwide.

Apple isn’t sitting still, though. While other countries are being mapped and brought online, new features are being built on top of the new maps where they are already available, which I expect will continue. It’s a frustratingly slow process at times, but given the size of the undertaking, it’s not surprising. In fact, what has been accomplished so far is actually quite remarkable. Apple hasn’t shared its plans for mapping beyond the countries that will be added later this year, but if the progress made in the US is any indication, we’ll see many more countries get Apple’s new maps and features between now and WWDC 2021.

---

You can also follow our 2020 Summer OS Preview Series through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.

---

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

Join Now

This week I've been working on making Datasette easier to install, plus wide-ranging improvements to the Datasette GraphQL plugin.

Datasette and Homebrew

Datasette is now part of the GitHub Discussions beta - which means the GitHub repository for the project now has a Datasette discussions area. I've been wanting to set up somewhere to talk about the project free of pressure to file issues or bug reports for a while, so I'm really excited to have this as a new community space.

One of the first threads there was about Making Datasette easier to install. This inspired me to finally take a look at issue #335 from July 2018 - "Package datasette for installation using homebrew".

I used the VisiData Homebrew Tap as a starting point, along with Homebrew's Python for Formula Authors documentation. To cut a long story short, brew install datasette now works!

I wrote up some detailed notes on Packaging a Python CLI tool for Homebrew. I've also had my sqlite-utils CLI tool accepted into Homebrew, so you can now install that using brew install sqlite-utils as well.

datasette install, datasette uninstall

The updated Datasette installation instructions now feature a range of different options: Homebrew, pip, pipx and Docker.

Datasette Plugins need to be installed into the same Python environment as Datasette itself. If you installed Datasette using pipx or Homebrew figuring out which environment that is isn't particularly straight-forward.

So I added two new commands to Datasette (released in Datasette 0.47): datasette install name-of-plugin and datasette uninstall name-of-plugin. These are very thin wrappers around the underlying pip, but with the crucial improvement that they guarantee they'll run it in the correct environment. I derived another TIL from these on How to call pip programatically from Python.

datasette --get "/-/versions.json"

Part of writing a Homebrew package is defining a test block that confirms that the packaged tool is working correctly.

I didn't want that test to have to start a Datasette web server just so it could execute an HTTP request and shut the server down again, so I added a new feature: datasette --get.

This is a mechanism that lets you execute a fake HTTP GET request against Datasette without starting the server, and outputs the result to the terminal.

This means that anything you can do with the Datasette JSON API is now available on the command-line as well!

I like piping the output to jq to get pretty-printed JSON:

% datasette github.db --get \
    '/github/recent_releases.json?_shape=array&_size=1' | jq
[
  {
    "rowid": 140912432,
    "repo": "https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils",
    "release": "https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/releases/tag/2.15",
    "date": "2020-08-10"
  }
]

datasette-graphql improvements

I introduced datasette-graphql last week. I shipped five new releases since then, incorporating feedback from GraphQL advocates on Twitter.

The most significant improvement: I've redesigned the filtering mechanism to be much more in line with GraphQL conventions. The old syntax looked like this:

{
  repos(filters: ["license=apache-2.0", "stargazers_count__gt=10"]) {
    edges {
      node {
        full_name
      }
    }
  }
}

This mirrored how Datasette's table page works (e.g. repos?license=apache-2.0&stargazers_count__gt=10), but it's a pretty ugly hack.

The new syntax is much, much nicer:

{
  repos(filter: {license: {eq: "apache-2.0"}, stargazers_count: {gt: 10}}) {
    edges {
      node {
        full_name
      }
    }
  }
}

Execute this query.

The best part of this syntax is that the columns and operations are part of the GraphQL schema, which means tools like GraphiQL can provide auto-completion for them interactively as you type a query.

Another new feature: tablename_row can be used to return an individual row (actually the first matching item for its arguments). This is a convenient way to access rows by their primary key, since the primary key columns automatically become GraphQL arguments:

{
  users_row(id: 9599) {
    id
    name
    contributors_list(first: 5) {
      totalCount
      nodes {
        repo_id {
          full_name
        }
        contributions
      }
    }
  } 
}

Try that query here.

There are plenty more improvements to the plugin detailed in the datasette-graphql changelog.

Write-ahead logging in SQLite

SQLite's Write-Ahead Logging feature improves concurrency by preventing writes from blocking reads. I was seeing the occasional "database is locked" error with my personal Dogsheep so I decided to finally figure out how turn this on for a database.

The breakthrough realization for me (thanks to a question I asked on the SQLite forum) was that WAL mode is a characteristic of the database file itself. Once you've turned it on for the file, all future connections to that file will take advantage of it.

I wrote about this in a TIL: Enabling WAL mode for SQLite database files. I also embedded what I learned in sqlite-utils 2.15, which now includes sqlite-utils enable-wal file.db and sqlite-utils disable-wal file.db commands (and accompanying Python API methods).

Datasette 0.46, with a security fix

Earlier this week I also released Datasette 0.46, with the key feature being a security fix relating to canned queries and CSRF protection.

I used GitHub's security advisory mechanism for this one: CSRF tokens leaked in URL by canned query form. I've also included detailed information on the exploit (and the fix) in issue #918.

Also new in 0.46: the /-/allow-debug tool, which can be used to experiment with Datasette's allow blocks permissions mechanism.

Releases this week

• datasette-graphql 0.12 - 2020-08-13
• datasette 0.47.2 - 2020-08-12
• sqlite-utils 2.15.1 - 2020-08-12
• datasette 0.47.1 - 2020-08-12
• datasette 0.47 - 2020-08-12
• sqlite-utils 2.15 - 2020-08-10
• datasette-json-html 0.6.1 - 2020-08-09
• datasette-json-html 0.6 - 2020-08-09
• csvs-to-sqlite 1.1 - 2020-08-09
• datasette 0.46 - 2020-08-09
• asgi-csrf 0.6.1 - 2020-08-09
• datasette-graphql 0.11 - 2020-08-09
• datasette-graphql 0.10 - 2020-08-08
• datasette-graphql 0.9 - 2020-08-08
• datasette-graphql 0.8 - 2020-08-07

TIL this week

• Enabling WAL mode for SQLite database files
• Attaching a bash shell to a running Docker container
• Packaging a Python CLI tool for Homebrew
• How to call pip programatically from Python
• Customizing my zsh prompt

Last night we watched the second episode of Monty Don’s Japanese Gardens on Knowledge TV. These programs can be streamed free for the next month if you live in BC.

I learned a new expression “borrowed landscape“. The gardens tend to be fairly small – but by artful trimming of the trees around the garden the natural landscape beyond it becomes incorporated into the view of the garden. This makes the garden seem larger and more impressive. Many formal Japanese gardens are designed carefully to be most impressive from particular viewpoints which can be found by stone markers placed along the foot path – in fact these are known as “stroll gardens“. This concept is actually quite well understood here by landscape gardeners and is something that I sometimes feel is a bit overdone. If you want to get somewhere you will try to walk in a straight line to your desired destination, and the cunningly curved paths are actually frustrating. Indeed desire lines off the paved paths are a real issue to the maintenance of perfect lawns.

I am much more likely, however, to be strolling with no particular purpose these days. I like to indulge myself by being a flaneur. So stroll gardens would actually be an improvement in some locations such as Trafalgar park which has no paths at all and just relies on the street sidewalks. It is also very much a playing field rather than a garden.

But living in Arbutus Village Park, my greatest desire is that we ought to be making more of the location, and borrowing the view of the North Shore mountains should be part of the park’s design. Of course, this would be of no value at all to people walking through the park. The beneficiaries would be the residents of the buildings – at least the taller ones, on the north side of the building. Like us.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/49871066781/

Apparently in BC topping trees is regarded as a bad practice by arborists. Elsewhere in the world they have a different perspective. And our love for trees doesn’t seem to extend to the real giants in the old growth which are coming down at an increasing rate.

In the Guardian yesterday was an article about a writer who has brought out a new book only to be confused with another with the same name.

There are lots of people who share the same name as me. One of them tried to hijack my gmail address a while back, but the spam filters now seem to have worked well enough that it is no longer in my inbox all the time.

What was in my inbox was a reminder from WordPress that I was about to lose stephenrees.blog – which a while back did not seem to be so important to me, but then so did the whole idea of blogging. But in the absence of FaceBook and Instagram I seem to be blogging more often. And this year we have not spent anything like what we usually do on travel. We haven’t been anywhere since January – and there has not been any concerts, plays or even eating out. So the amount to renew did not seem significant.

So https://stephenrees.blog will still be the best way to keep up – unless you might prefer to use the RSS feed. I have also added in the right hand column a link to an explanation of how RSS works. I got NetNewsWire as my RSS reader (because it works on a Mac) – which comes already populated with feeds – and that has also been interesting. I was going to delete them and add my own, but it turned out to be a nice change from my routine.

A cyclist was killed in Mississauga on August 6, 2020. He was hit at a particularly dangerous intersection: Dixie Rd and North Service Rd. Car traffic comes off the QEW at a very high rate of speed. Today we had a socially distanced memorial ride in his memory.

Update: he has been identified as Ahmed Kamal, a cybersecurity specialist who moved here from Egypt about a year ago. Here is a facebook page set up in his memory.

https://www.facebook.com/ahmedkamaal2

Here are riders gathering at Bloor and Spadina.

Socially distanced group photo before we depart.

Off we go.

Down Harbord.

We miss you Derek.

Turning south on Shaw.

We try to cut through the CNE grounds.

However, we were blocked by the bubble around Hotel X installed for the NHL East players, and ended up having to skirt BMO field to the north.

Across to Ontario Place.

A beautiful day on the lakefront.

Remembering Xavier Morgan.

We pause at the oak tree that was planted in 2008 by ARC in memory of all fallen cyclists.

Across the Humber.

Up Haig Blvd from Lakeshore.

Across the Ogden Ave pedestrian bridge.

It’s a tight squeeze for Geoffrey.

A brief pause before turning onto North Service Rd, which will be the most dangerous part of our ride.

Arriving at the crash site.

Installing the ghost bike.

A minute of silence in memory of the fallen cyclist.

There was a group of five or six riders from Mississauga who met us at the crash site. Dorothy, on the left, tells us how they are reviving a bicycle advocacy group so that they can pressure their city for better cycling infrastructure.

The Toronto group gets ready to depart.

Riding up towards the Queensway.

Taking the lane.

Up Royal York.

Thanks to everyone who rode with us today. Thanks also to Geoffrey for making the ghost bike.

Deepest condolences to the family and friends of the deceased.

That makes seven ghost bikes in the GTA over the past two months:

• Safet Tairoski in Unionville, June 17
• Helen Xiang in Oakville, June 23
• Geoffrey Mitchell in Whitby, July 7
• Robert Bragg in Mississauga, July 8
• Daniel Bertini in King City, July 24
• Pasquale Alonzi in Bolton, August 5
• Ahmed Kamal in Mississauga, August 6.

Please, no more.

Updates:

GHOST BIKE MEMORIAL RIDE: Thx to volunteers @RespectTO who rode into #bikeMississauga today to install a #GhostBike for the 35yo male cyclist killed on North Service Road at Dixie, Aug 6. Mississauga riders attending vowed to advocate for needed(!) safety measures R I P pic.twitter.com/406HQ0SQBT

— Mississauga Cycling Now! (@MissCyclingNow) August 13, 2020

Today with @MissCyclingNow we attended @RespectTO's installation of the 7th ghost bike this year. A man in his 30s was killed by a driver in one of the worst designed intersections we've seen – Dixie and North Service Rd in #Mississauga. #DeadlyByDesign #GTADeadlyStreets #BikeTO pic.twitter.com/lkP4lkLnSg

— FFSS (@FFSafeStreets) August 13, 2020

R I P @RespectTO @citymississauga pic.twitter.com/tpqlhiFAmU

— Janet Joy Wilson (@jsquaredink) August 13, 2020

Also this coverage from mississauga.com: “GTA cycling advocates in Mississauga, Bolton commemorate 2 who died back-to-back” Note that they basically recycling information from this blog post, as well as the linked tweets. Nevertheless we appreciate the coverage.

Sept 8 update: we updated the sign on the ghost bike. Thanks to Yvonne Bambrick for providing the new sign.

jump (inside) @JodiesJumpsuit
I would like to be placed in a sensory deprivation tank for the rest of 2020, thank you

ccg @ccg
Someone sent my 5 yr old home from the park with rollerblades. I have questions, but I also kind of want some now.

mkalus shared this story from AliceAvizandum on Twitter.

---

mkalus shared this story from wtyppod on Twitter.

---