The Stop That Wasn’t There

I moved to the Danforth area about a year and a half ago and am often waiting at Queen for the northbound 31 Greenwood bus. This is a problematic stop with northbound buses on either side of the street that also lacks a posted schedule for the primary line. Despite repeated requests to the TTC and even Councillor Giambrone over the past 18 months, I have been unable get a schedule posted for Route 31. I sense that I am perhaps not making myself clear, so I have drawn a frikkin’ schematic.

Route 31 is a peculiar stop because the northbound bus waits facing south on the west side of Greenwood, instead of facing north on the east. It does this because it makes the next two rights and a left to get back onto Greenwood. Unless it’s the alternate B line which runs for a few hours a day and appears on the more obvious east side of the street.

On many occasions I have had to inform (and startle) people because they waiting on the wrong side of the street. It boggles my mind that our city spends thousands on glass bus shelters, but cannot manage to equip these shelters with a basic schedule. TTC, please equip at least the main stops on your routes with information about those routes. Not to Deride the Rocket, but how are we to know The Better Way?

Introducing Wideslide: A jQuery slideshow plugin

A few months ago I was in Patzcuaro, Mexico working again on a website for the Hotel Casa de la Real Aduana. The co-owner, Didier Dorval, is a veteran photographer I met when we worked together at Masterfile. He has taken fantastic photos of the hotel and surrounding area, but when we started to put together slideshows for the site, it became clear that the images would have to be recropped to the same size; much to their detriment. Why don’t existing slideshow solutions handle varying aspect ratios?

To solve this problem, I brought in the big guns, Andrey Petrov, to help me design and build a slideshow plugin for jQuery, demonstrated here using some illustrations of my wife.

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Simply include jQuery, the plugin, and create a list of images with the class “wideslide” and you’re off. Want to try it, or try to improve upon it? We open-sourced it.

Download Wideslide on GitHub.

Our AutoShare Year – 2008

As posted in 2006 but not 2007, I’ve created a spreadsheet detailing our AutoShare expenses for the past year. For those of you unfamiliar with AutoShare, they provide excellent cars for hourly usage in locations across Toronto. Ideal for trips in and out of the city that require less than a day; after that point a traditional rental usually offers better value.

My wife and I are on their basic $10/month plan and over the course of the year incurred $25.25 of “Idiot Fees” (last minute cancellations, extensions by phone, etc.). We are very happy with the service and whole-heartedly recommend it. If only the nearby Beer Store would cooperate and provide AutoShare a spot, it would save us a 1km walk to the closest car!

A nice bonus was a $25 referral fee in August! Those are very welcome, so keep us in mind if you sign up!

ParkVu Brand Identity Done!

Though I’m primarily an interface design person, from time to time I work on brand identity projects. I recently finished some design work for a very compelling software startup. Though I can’t tell you the nature the software, I can show you the logo I designed.

I really can’t wait for the project to launch because I expect I’ll have a big attachment to it!