I have two weeks off so I’m spending the giftmas period with my parents. It’s hot, and I’m sitting on the veranda while Charlie pesters me to throw the ball. There’s a decent breeze, but it looks like we’ve missed the storms.
Dark mode fix: I fixed a bug on the site where it was always defaulting to dark mode. It’s been that way since I first implemented it because I was checking the truthiness of window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)") instead of the boolean window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)").matches. It should now respect your system preferences, and you can use the little icon in the bottom right to toggle between them.
Missing images: The backend of this site is running on WordPress, and there was a period of time where I was using it to photoblog. Anyway, some of those posts only contain a featured image and nothing else, and the featured image wasn’t showing up on this frontend site. So now feature images will show unless they’re already elsewhere in the post.
Dessert upgrade: I have acquired my mum’s family trifle recipe. It’s not beautiful, but it is my favourite. We made it together on xmas eve, and I’m so happy with it.
Hardware acquisition: I placed a late night ebay bid on an old Thinkpad and put Arch Linux on it, inspired by Josh‘s recent blogging. It’s a lot of fun and even though it’s a few years old, it’s way faster for day to day tasks than my M1 mac. Obvs not for video work, but I want to use it to get back into vector art. Though I see the Arch community has AURs for DaVinci Resolve which is shockingly difficult to get running on Linux, so I might dust off my desktop and put it on that as well.
Beyond that I made rum balls in my parents Thermomix and they came out alright. I blitzed up some almonds for a bit of health, and I think I’m gonna start making protein balls at home as a healthy snack. Do you have any good recipes?
I’ve also booked accommodation for my second week of holiday so I’m gonna take my new bike for a spin out to Bribie Island for a few days. No vlog cos it’s gonna be public holiday and kids everywhere. But I’ll post some bits on Mastodon.
OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps. Back in the earlier days I used to love running around gathering data and mapping every neighbourhood I could.
I reckon I contributed a pretty big portion of street names on the north side of Brissie, by riding around on my bike with my Nokia 6120c (great phone!) and a bluetooth GPS dongle, recording all the points of interest like a pro, to upload to the map when I got home.
It was a great hobby at the time, when vast swathes of Australia were completely blank. Now OpenStreetMap is pretty feature complete, it’s used everywhere.
A short history of maps as a web developer
Back in those days the state of the art for web mapping was the tile-based āSlippy Mapā.
Everyone used it, even Google Maps. You’d essentially have a Javascript frontend to let visitors zoom and scroll the map like you do today. But on the server a process would convert all the OpenStreetMap geodata into standardised image tiles (raster tiles).
Tiles were commonly created at 256×256 pixels, and were rendered at zoom levels from 0 (the whole world in one tile) down to zoom level 19 where the world would take up 274.9 billion tiles.
This was generally an on-demand process as rendering so many tiles would be infeasible. Ridiculous. Absurd. I can tell you this because I tried a couple of times. Not for the whole world, but a few times Iād tried to scrape, render, cache the entire of Brisbane for assorted projects.
Eventually Mapbox came along with an easy-to-use interface on top of the open source data, and reasonable enough pricing to make it worth switching over.
Later Mapbox standardised the Mapbox vector tile format which had a lot of benefits over the older raster tiles.While a raster tile could be styled to look however you want on the server, a vector tile could be styled on the client-side. That meant the same tile could power a hundred different map styles, even dynamically on the client-side. In addition, vector data makes things like animating between zoom levels look great. Generally, a huge step forward.
The new OpenGL map library was released to take advantage of these benefits and it unlocked a lot of really high quality maps for the masses.
By this point high quality maps were par for the course and radical innovation in the space kind of flattened out.
My opinion of Mapbox turned when they went the way of every venture backed startup; got involved in union busting, closed-sourced their tools and started turning the money dial up.
Thatās when I started playing with maps again.
Cycling maps
Since at least 2010 Iāve maintained briscycle.com in some form or another, and always one of the main features has been maps to show safe routes and how infrastructure connects up.
I’ve gone through phases of running my own tile server, using statically rendered tiles, and third party map services including Mapbox (who can’t do very good cycling maps fyi). But recently I figured I’d go back to rendering my own.
I donāt remember where I spotted tilemaker, but it has such a sweet looking website that it inspired me to have a go at building my own vector tiles. It wasnāt as easy as the website led me to believe, but after lots of trial and error, some coding in lua to get the right properties out, I managed to get a decent looking cycling map out of it.
extended it by customising the lua processor to pull out more cycling attributes (and skip attributes I wasnāt interested in.
styled the map using a standard json map style, but I also processed that on the client-side to add more repetitive things like road casings. You can check out the code here. (edit 2024: apparently maputnik lets you create style json in a graphical way)
Itās very fast because itās hosted in Brisbane for a Brisbane audience, so the map tiles don’t need to transit the globe before being displayed.
The tiles themselves are optimised pretty well and allow me to tweak the styles in almost real time. Thereās still a few weird bits, but I reckon itās a good base layer to add stuff to, like geojson routes (check out the brisbane valley rail trail).
Tonight for dinner I made pesto pasta. It was made all the more delicious by the fact I grew the basil myself, in my own little urban garden, and made pesto from scratch.
My little garden has grown a lot since spring. With the new tower next door finally being built I don’t think I’m going to get any sun at all over winter. So I’m not sure how everything will go over the newly imposed seasons. But it’s best to remain in the moment and admire the basil, parsley, spinach, and multitude of chillis I’ve managed to grow.
My chilli plants have started to flower, and this one has little fruits forming.
So dinner was great and I feel very accomplished even though the pasta was store-bought.
Today was any other day. It’s January 26th and I made the decision to work today and take tomorrow off. Part tokenistic, part wanted the long weekend, and partly because I have a bunch of work on my plate at the moment and wanted a chance to get it done in peace.
But let’s not talk about work.
I wanted to write a little retro because it feels like I haven’t been up to much, but I know I have and wanna get it all down.
Time for a new bike
In big news I broke my bike. Snapped the frame nearly in two.
I faffed around for months before finally getting myself a bike fit and starting the process of building a bike that’s gonna last me the next ten years. Unfortunately we’re in a bit of a supply chain crisis at the moment, so looking at months lead time with no bike I picked myself up a cheaper single-speed to get me by.
It’s been an absolute treat.
The scary thing is I rode this home.The new bike is SO COOL look at it
Truth be told now I have my single speed I’m not entirely sure what I want from my next bike. I know being a heavier guy I’m gonna destroy this one, which is why I want to build something more solid.
But I’m really loving the simplicity of the single-speed system, as well as how powerful it makes me feel climbing hills in entirely the wrong gear. It’s really good exercise. Follow me on Strava if you’re so inclined.
Reading is what?
Over the new year break I had a week to myself and I was driving myself up the wall. Not because of boredom, but with panic that I couldn’t work out what to do with myself. So I picked up a book.
A few, actually. I’ve been really enjoying reading again. This year I’ve gone through:
Tom Ballard’s I Millenial – I don’t even know how to summarise this one, other than to say it’s a neat summary of what led to our current day political clusterfuck through a socialist lens. It was a surprise, a joy, and led nicely into the next:
The Big Switch by Saul Griffith. It’s a pretty plainly laid out argument that Australia can take action on climate change right now with current technology by replacing all our fossil powered machines with electric ones, putting solar on our roofs, using electric cars to power our houses at night, and save huge amounts of money in the long run. Obviously there’s nuances, but the point is to go all in on the technologies we currently have, while we develop the solutions to the harder climate problems. And the government is listening.
I also picked up Stephen Fry’s Mythos which was interesting because I’d never studied greek mythology before, and it was an okay introduction to it. I found it a bit of a slow going, something about milllenia-old stories not having all the hooks of a modern page-turner. But it was interesting connecting the dots on concepts that trace back all the way back.
I think e-ink
After getting excited about it I put in an order for a Kobo reader from JB. The only ones in stock were all the way down on the Gold Coast so I scooted to the train just in time for them to call me to say there’s an error and they don’t have it after all.
So I sat with the thought and eventually talked myself out of the cheaper device and into the Kobo Elipsa, which finally arrived the other day. And honestly it’s pretty great.
I’ve got three books on the go:
Pictured is Heading South by Tim Richards. It’s a travel journal along the second-longest rail journey in Australia, from Queensland to Western Australia. (Fun* fact, the longest is from Queensland to the Northern Territory just due to the inefficient route, but that’s not as exciting)
At Tae’s recommendation I’m reading Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club. It’s funny, very easy to read, and I can’t wait to find out whodunnit.
I’ve also picked up the latest episode of Meanjin on a whim. I don’t know if it’s my usual style but I’ve been enjoying the short essays and different perspectives, and wanted to see how to transfer an ebook onto the Kobo š
The Kobo itself is great. I didn’t think I’d use the notetaking nearly as much as I have been, but it’s very slick. I’ve found myself making little checklists and notes that I’d ordinarily add to my phone, as well as keeping my workday organised. Maybe it’s a write-off!
Then there’s the social network
Josh and I have been running bne.social for coming up on a year now. I haven’t written about it yet even though I’ve been meaning to because I don’t know quite how to sum it up.
It’s basically like Twitter without the nazis and the queerphobia, and it’s run by volunteers around the world rather than being owned by one single billionaire idiot. It’s not without its problems but most people agree it’s a Nice Place where the interactions are genuine and it’s not filled with Brands.
I’d encourage you to hop over and make an account and hang out with us! We’re going to organise a meetup or Brisbane folks at some point, so don’t miss out.
Yeah that’s about it I suppose
I dunno, things are good. There’s more I could write about; my perfection of the banana-blueberry smoothie, the way I’ve optimised the lighting in my apartment to keep my indoor plants alive, the absolute classic CDs I picked up at the lifeline bookfest.
But for now I wanna go read some more The Thursday Murder Club and go to sleep, cos tomorrow the long weekend starts and I have a bike ride to do!
One of the better ways to explore a new city is by bike, because you can take as much time as you like to stop wherever something catches your eye.
As the owner of a not very well maintained biking website, I had a particular affinity for the Brisbane CityCycle scheme. CityCycle was the much maligned pet project of our milkshake duck of a former lord mayor to install a physical station-based bike hire scheme throughout the city, with the small catch that JCDecaux got to install advertising billboards throughout the suburbs as well.
CityCycle and Me
I had a bit of a love hate relationship with the scheme. For starters, Australia’s mandatory helmet law meant that a bike share scheme really required a helmet share scheme. Initially the council expected you to BYO helmet, which I think showed a complete lack of foresight or perhaps care. Eventually they relented and left helmets with the bikes.
But ick factor aside (apparently studies showed sharing helmets was fine) a lot of the time you’d arrive at a station to find no hardhats around anyway. So you had to run the risk of getting caught by police, or just walk.
I remember one night coming home from Toowong via ferry. There were no hats at the Orleigh Park station so I took the risk: after all what are the chances? A block away from home and the police pulled me over, lights and all. I was let off with a warning but I had to walk the the bike the rest of the way.
Beyond that, the payment system was way more complex than it needed to be, the bikes themselves were SO heavy, in the beginning the system closed at 10pm, and a lack of sensible places to ride at the time turned off a lot of people.
Despite all this, it was a great little scheme. The free 30 minute window meant if you timed things right you could pretty much ride all day without paying a cent, so it was a really great way to explore the city on the cheap.
And I think just having the bikes around town was good promotion for a sustainable and healthy transport option. Puts a spark of an idea in your mind.
The network
Being a river city, the Brisbane CityCycle network followed the ol’ brown snake from Newstead down to St Lucia.
Stations were dotted around the river and by railway stations, so you were never too far away from one, provided you didn’t stray out the network.
I took this screenshot from the map on the Brisbane Council site, but I don’t think it’s comprehensive because I know for a fact there was a Citycycle station up the street from my place which isn’t listed here. Alas.
The online subscription required a credit card and sent an email with an account number to plug in at the kiosk at each station. The website was painful to use because it wasn’t optimised for mobile, and each person had to sign up individually. So if I knew I was going out with friends sometimes I’d create a couple of burner subscriptions we could all use without having to sign up.
A day pass on the scheme used to cost $2.00 and usage was billed in 30 min blocks. The first 30 minutes was free, the next two blocks were $2, and subsequent blocks were $5, capped at $48/day. Slightly confusing.
But there was no penalty for checking a bike back in before the 30 minutes expired. So the trick was to check in before your 30 minutes was up, wait a moment for the system to reset, then check it back out again for another free thirty minutes. You could hire a bike for effectively the whole day as long as you checked it back in periodically, for a grand total of $2.00.
But once you were going there were no limits*!
I remember once I’d organised to ride with some friends but my own bike was broken. So I checked out one of the trusty yellow workhorses and cycled the heavy bloody thing along our route, and the only complaints were from everyone else that I was going too slow. I cycled way outside the coverage zone that day and I don’t remember how much that one cost, so it can’t have been too bad.
I also have a friend who legendarily rode a CityCycle up Mount Coot-Tha. A few people did over the years. I could never.
The ride took me fifty-seven minutes, end-to-end. Forty-eight of those were spent riding, most of the balance was waiting at the Hale St West construction site and refilling my water bottle at the top. Whatās sort of cool is that when a did a similar ride a few months ago, it took me forty-four minutes. That was slightly more circuitous, going around the graveyard but skipping the initial Planetarium climb, but the point remains that despite a CityCycle bikeās weight and positioning, it doesnāt really make that much of a difference. Nevertheless, the uphill segment of my ride did take the record for the slowest front-side Mt Coot-tha ascent.
The French style docked bike hire schemes were really a product of their time. In the late 2010s dockless bikes were trialled around the world with kinda horrifying results (the scale of waste in this photoset of abandoned and illegal bike share bikes in China for example is truly mind boggling).
But Bird and Lime changed the game with dockless escooter hire, launching in Brisbane in late 2018.
Despite not sticking around to see their work pay off, it really ushered in the era of micromobility for the masses. These days you can now find a Beam or Neuron scooter parked across the footpath on pretty much any city street, and the app-based signup is leagues easier to use. I still love my bike, but sometimes you can’t beat a scoot for the perspiration-free convenience.
In late 2021 the CityCycle stations finally began to disappear, one by one turning into car parks, scooter drops, or reverting back to footpath. The one thing that didn’t disappear though? Those JCDecaux billboards. Funny that.
Council has converted former CityCycle spaces on the footpath to e-mobility parking hubs. We are also continuing to investigate the future use of former on-road CityCycle spaces, including converting these spaces to other parking options where possible.
Works to decommission and remove each of the CityCycle stations included: saw-cutting, jack-hammering and core drilling to pull apart elements of the station, removal of the existing material around the station, reinstatement of the site area to match existing surfaces (as close as practical).
While CityCycle is gone, the pandemic and rise of the scoots means there’s even more people than ever looking to active transport to get around.
There’s still plenty left to do, but eleven years of council focus on cycling infrastructure has given us an increasingly comprehensive cycling and scooting network. It’s obvious that this is the best way to get around, and it’s great news that from here there’s only going to be more focus on making it possible.
That’s about it. If you’re interested in more, my vlog about the Brisbane Festival includes an art installation where the remaining CityCycle bikes were turned into sculpture.
I remember the old days pelting down Elizabeth Street on my bike (and probably breaking the speed limit) so I could make it up the hill on the other side and keep up with traffic. The citylink separated bikeway is way better š„°
Heading to Amsterdam to talk at Fronteers Conf next week. Iām starting my journey from Brisbane after a looong day of packing and goodbyes. Itās a 23 hour trip, so Iām planning to front load as much sleep as possible, but will see how that goes.
Anywho, Iām off to find the duty free kiosk. Will connect back up in Abu Dhabi.
My first moments in Europe
October 2nd, 2017 5:36am
Arrived in Amsterdam at about 3 PM, after some 23 hours in transit. Thomas, one of the conference organizers, met me at the airport and shuttled me to my hotel despite my arriving super early. It was a nice gesture.
My hotel room is tiny. It was a deliberate thing I booked because it looked cute (it is), but I had to shift the mattress to the floor because I donāt fit on the bed otherwise.
After checking in, having a shower, and a change of clothes I went for a walk. I was really happy with myself to have found the Amsterdam sign with only a cursory glance at the map as I left the hotel.
On the way there I saw a girl on a boat nearly get a concussion while passing under a ludicrously low bridge. Also there was also a game of polo going on nearby which isnāt something you see every day.
I kept walking, ended up getting lost in the Vondelpark before giving out to find a supermarket to pick up supplies. It was all in Dutch so I was excited to go around the produce aisles finding the the names of things I learned from Duolingo.
After that I had a burger and Sprite (itās sugar-free here and tastes of lemons), then caught a tram back home because itās getting late and despite my claims of not being jetlagged, Iām going to have an early one tonight because Iām exhausted.
Preparations for the conference
October 9th, 2017 7:52am
After my first day, things started to get busy. In preparation for my talk I spent a couple of days in the lovely The Thinking Hut, who charge by the hour and have fast Internet and a really sweet industrial chic. This meant I got to explore the Amsterdam Oost (East) neighbourhoods.
So I walked around, went to the botanical gardens, took a metro ride, hired a FlickBike then couldnāt find anywhere to park it, and ordered a vegetarian roti with egg from a suburban Indian kitchen in bad Dutch. I felt really good about that last one until it came time to pay and I realised I donāt know any numbers in Dutch. Oops.
Tuesday night was the NLHTML5 meetup, which I guess is kinda comparable to the defunct Web Design Group back in Brisbane. This meetup was resurrected from the dead by the industrious Paul VM especially so that it could run around Fronteers time, and was a cool crowd and a good way to ease into the tech festivities. There were three speakers; Ola talked about standards and how to report bugs, Stephanie went through how she built her awesome pixel art hardware project, and Martin talked WebVR which made me really want to build some VR projects of my own.
Wednesday night we had the speaker dinner at Pakhuis De Zwijger. We met in the hotel lobby and from there the organisers shepherded us onto a boat. This took us for a ride out the gracht (canal), down the Amstel river, and into the IJ to get to the venue. It was nice, we all got to know each other and network a bit. There were local folks and peeps from all over the world together in one place, and it was a good evening.
Afterwards we took the boat to Tolhuistuin across the water, where the FrontCheers pre-event party was taking shape. I figured Iād stay for one drink because I wanted to get back to my room to agonise over my talk, but after having a few beers and chatting to everyone I was among the last to leave. It was late enough the transport was sporadic, so we had to walk back to the hotel in the cold and the rain on the eve of the conference š®
Fronteers 2017
October 9th, 2017 8:30pm
The conference itself was inspiring. The venue was breathtaking, and the production was flawless.
The first day was great. Sara Soueidan was a great MC and opened the day perfectly, leading into Nielsā opening presentation and fun history lesson.
By far the most poignant talk of all was Jessica Roseās talk on imposter syndrome. The entire trip Iād been wondering what the heck Iād gotten myself into, and was terrified that Iād arrivve and people would exclaim āoh, sorry, we were expecting the _other_ Ash Kyd who does cool stuff and is actually supposed to be hereā. The talk sparked a lot of conversations and basically was a cathartic start to the festivities.
I really enjoyed all the talks, but I think my favourite tech talk of the day was Alice Boxhallās āDebugging Accessibilityā which ran through the stuff the Chrome team have been doing to improve accessibility. It introduced me to a lot of new concepts on the technical side which Iād love to play with more to produce tools to help improve accessibility testing.
The talks were a lot softer than I was anticipating, which is a good thing for the audience as it leaves a lot of room for the imagination to do itās thing. Though I was starting to worry mine was a bit much, and mightnāt hit the right targets.
That evening we went to De Industrieele Groote Club for drinks and lightning talks. I was on edge beause this time I _really_ needed to go through my talk for the next day, and the talk titled āwhat not to do when presentingā was probably useful but very not helping my cortisol levels. So I left after the first few, though not before Jake Archibald thoroughly destroyed the audience with a mind twisting, but very highly produced pop quiz.
Back at my room I ran a bath, prepared my clicker, and ran through my slides on my phone until the fingers on my other hand were dangerously pruned.
My talk
October 10th, 2017 8:30pm
On the second day I woke up early after not enough sleep so that I could practice one final time. I was prepared, the talk was good to go, and honestly I was feeling pretty prepared.
I missed the first talk because I was late to the venue. This was fine, I listened through the doors as I faffed around my slides. After the first talk finished, I snuck in through the side door and took a seat. I donāt recall much of that morning, I was too involved in my own anxieties.
As the conference took a coffee break, myself and the other speaker Ruben set up our laptops, prepared the video output, and made sure we were ready to present.
As we left the stage and the crowd came back into the theater, I realised I had forgotten to pair my clicker, and had no idea if it would work when I went onstage. Itās a Bluetooth thing, and Iāve concluded that buying it was a mistake because itās so opaque, I donāt even know how to turn it on without re-pairing it every time. So I frantically texted anyone if they had a presenter via our secret speaker back-channels, and Martin thankfully came to the rescue loaning me his.
The talk wentā¦ well. I was told that I looked collected, but I felt nothing like that. Itās an interesting feeling speaking in front of a large crowd, and to some extent I think my awareness of my situation disappeared when I went onstage, and aside some minor clicker issues I think things went smoothly. I eagerly await the video so I can dissect it, beat myself up, and ultimately improve for next time.
The rest of the day was a whirlwind of talks, indecision, āthe best burgers in Amsterdamā feat. a waiter for whom it was their first day on the job, an after party, and an after-after party including karaoke (bad) and an Irish pub with the stragglers at 2 AM in the morning. It was a very good time, and I want to write up a proper Fronteers wrap on my proper blog over at my prroper site at some point.
Queer encounters
October 11th, 2017 8:30pm
On the Saturday I wasnāt sure what I was doing, so my new local friend Mystery T offered to let me stay with him for a night. At the same time one ofĀ his friends had been pushing him to go to a gay party night for the local rugby team, the Amsterdam Lowlanders.
T was reluctant but asked me if I wanted to go, I was reluctant but wanted to experience the night life, so we ended up agreeing weād check it out and leave if it was too much. I dropped my bags at his and we sat around chatting for a while until it was time to tram back into the city.
A few days beforehand I walked down a street (Reguliersdwarsstraat) with a bunch of bars and rainbow flags hanging out windows, which I presumed to be a gay street. Turns out this was correct, so we walked to one of the bars to meet R (whose name I canāt remember but that it starts with R).
After getting to know each other and sharing stories (and talking about airline points, how has my whole life become talking about points) we left for theĀ actual venue. After two trams and some walking, we were at our destination; a somewhat unassuming building with blacked out windows and a big āWe <3 Rugbyā football out the front.
The party itself was amazing, it was full of bodies (mostly shirtless) dancing in an old industrial style thing. The music was nothing special, and the drinks were expensive, but everyone was having a great time and they gave out icy poles at one point which was cute and refreshing. I wasnāt feeling sugary,so I declined.
It started to wind down around 3:30 and got a bit depraved so we left soon after.
The next day I booked a little Airbnb in Rotterdam and we took the train down to explore the city. From Wikipedia:
The near-complete destruction of the city centre in the World War II Rotterdam Blitz has resulted in a varied architectural landscape, including sky-scrapers (an uncommon sight in other Dutch cities) designed by renowned architects.
Itās a really cool city, the center is modern and well laid out, whereas the surrounds are still traditional row type buildings.
I stayed out in the suburbs in a strange, converted house under the hofbogen, which is an abandoned elevated rail line which has had buildings build up underneath. The Airbnb was a two floor affair with stairs steep enough Iād consider it a ladder, but it was very cute indeed. A bad photosphere follows:
I only stayed a night, leaving the next morning on a Eurostar to London!
The Motherland
October 12th, 2017 8:06pm
I arrived in London and things immediately felt different. Being back in an English speaking country was kind of a relief, but it also spoils the magic of a place to overhear people having the same mundane Bad Takes just with a different accent.
But still, what an interesting city!
I arrived in the evening and the very first thing I did was pop outside St Pancras to take a photo. Once that was out of the way I grabbed an Oyster card and made my way on the Underground to Soho to find my hostel.
After taking some time to recuperate and charge my devices it was time to head to Brixton to see Grizzly Bear play. A cursory glance at the map suggested it was walkable, but the sheer scale of London eluded me and it was actually much further than I expected.
Still, I walked past a handful of landmarks including Trafalgar Square, Scotland Yard, Big Ben (which I passed without noticing at all, oops). Once I got to Vauxhall Iād had enough and caught the tube the rest of the way.
The calibre of the venue compared to anything in Brisbane was kinda eye opening and the event was amazing! I wasnāt especially taken with the autotune stylings of the warmup act, but Grizzly Bear themselves were stellar and well worth the trip. The venue was totally packed, the vocals were spot on, the band had some fun banter, and the bass was incredible!
The crowd favourite was probably Two Weeks. Overall A+ event.
Not wanting to jump straight on the Underground, I went for a walk to Stockwell tube station and subsequently got lost on the metro. Apparently not all tube lines are equal, and while Google suggested I change from the northern line to the northern line at a particular station, I scoffed and ended up inexplicably at London Bridge.
I feel I need to take a moment to express how shit London Bridge, the bridge actually is. Itās just a concrete thing with no defining features at all. I assumed it would be grand and British and some kind of landmark, but I would bet if it fell down tomorrow nobody would care at all.
I did have some good views of Tower Bridge as I walked across though, and thatās an impressive structure.
After getting some safe and sound I had a late start the next day. Instead of actually doing anything, I wanted to wander around and explore the place. Soho itself is super glitzy and honestly I didnāt care for it. So after stopping at McDonaldās for a bottle of water (Europe is dehydrating!) I trekked back out to St Pancras to do the only other thing I especially wanted to do in London: see the Black Books store.
They say you should never meet your heroes. Probably fair. Still, I have the selfie!
The rest of the day I walked around (about 10 km) exploring the place. I found a section of the Underground that was above ground which I thought was fun. There was a very handsome gentleman giving out Coke Zero out the front of Kingās Cross station. But generally it was nice to admire the varying architectures around the place.
After a couple of hours it was time to meet Tom and Shashi for pizza and 2-for-1 cocktails at The Black Horse, SE8.
āOkay now pull a faceā I said. Shashi pulled the very best face, but hated it so much afterwards that I had to censor it for the benefit of probably everyone.
Whirlwind tour of London
October 15th, 2017 1:55pm
Third day in London I packed up my hostel and lugged my stuff to Tom and Shashiās place. My original intention was to travel with carry-on luggage, but I had acquired stuff in my travels so I was working with three bags at the time.
One of the bags was full of stroopwafels and drop (dutch licorice) as a gift for Tom and Shashi, which I bought before finding out they both hate the stuff.
I mentioned I wanted some time out to catch up on Internet stuff so Tom suggested I have lunch at London Velo. I wasnāt expecting anything fancy, but it turned out to be a cafe/bike repair shop with a resident dog called Maurice who was super cuddly and plonked himself on my feet for scritches. What a cutie.
After doing some blog, checking some emails and all that I went for a walk to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) to catch a train to Canary Wharf.
Every time I say the name Canary Wharf Tom screws his face up in disgust, saying āwhat do you want to go there for?ā Itās pretty much a blando modern office precinct, but I wanted to see it because it was on the DLR line, and having grown bored of the touristy areas I kinda wanted to walk around.
I didnāt spend long there, but I had a look around and marvelled at the glass monoliths blocking the sky.
After that I started walking along the Thames path, finding misleading signs and locked gates galore. I read The Guardianās take on Privatised London: the Thames Path which is a fascinating tale of people and developers being bad dudes.
From the Isle of Dogs to Tower Bridge, just how much of Londonās riverside walking route is actually open to the general public? This specially assembled Guardian exploration party would stop at nothing to find out
I walked as far as Wapping before Tom and Shashi finished work and summoned me to dinner at the upscale food market Mercato Metropolitano.
Afterwards we toured a bunch of miscellaneous London landmarks.
The next day I was feeling a bit out of sorts so spent a fair portion of it inside. We did go for drinks and dinner, where there were several more dogs to play with.
London is a very Dogs place.
Toronto
October 16th, 2017 11:00pm
On the Friday I caught the train to Gatwick airport, and flew to Toronto.
Pearson International in Toronto had a weird inter-terminal shuttle train with rubber tyres driven by some sort of cable system. This took me to the train station where I caught a diesel train to Union Station. None of the tracks are electrified, so all the trains run on diesel in 2017; mind blown.
From there I tried to catch what I thought was a bus to my Airbnb, but actually turned out to be a subway train.
It was a bit of an ordeal because I couldnāt buy a ticket with my card so had to find an ATM to withdraw cash, then buy Pringles to break the note in order to put it in the machine to get subway tokens to use the subway.
Yeah, the subway uses tokens in 2017; mind blown.
My accommodation turned out to be right at the edge of all the action, overlooking Ryerson University, and three buildings across from where Dayle and Adrian used to live.
Sez Dayle:
Holy shit! Thatās our old hood! We lived at <redacted> gerrard for years! And i went to Ryerson for years too!!
Small world, right?
As I hadnāt bought a North American power adapter with me, I walked to Best Buy and bought one. Best Buy is pretty great; I talked to the dude in the Google display about the new stuff, and Iām thinking of getting a Daydream before I go back to Australia because theyāre $40 cheaper than back home.
With my electronics sorted, I faffed around town for a bit (and accidentally bought a smoothie bigger than my head) before retiring for an early jetlag bedtime of 10:00 (3 AM London time).
Day 2 in Toronto I was starting to feel pretty nasty and coldy, so I lazed around in bed for a few hours before getting up and facing the day.
There were a few landmarks I wanted to check out. One of them was the Loblaws that was just around the corner which Dayle said used to be a historical hockey arena before it was converted into a supermarket. It was massive and beautiful and they had Australian style licorice which I was tempted to get for the kitsch factor, but the CAD 6.50 price tag was sobering and I quickly calmed myself.
The next stop was Kensington Market which was a chaotic bohemian neighbourhood with lots of little shops and food stalls. There were bikes everywhere, people with bags and dogs all over the place!
The thing that caught my eye most was the stand selling empanadas. Having seen Empanada Dog and not really knowing what an empanada is, I really wanted to try one for myself.
However the little shop didnāt have a card reader, and after Pringles and the subway I only had a few dollars worth of coins. Also I have only vague notions of how tipping works so I panicked and walked on by without buying anything.
No regrets.
The third stop of the day was Toronto Island Park. The ferry deposited me at Centre Island, and my destination was the bike rental on the far side, so I set out at a medium pace.
Unfortunately, when I got to the bike rental it was closed, along with much of the island because apparently everything shuts down for winter and hasnāt opened back up again yet.
There was a pizza place closing up when I got there, so I got an old slice of cheese (the couple in front took the last two pepperonis, damn them), and walked onto the pier to contemplate my lack of cured meats.
Toronto Island Park reminded me a lot of Rollercoaster Tycoon, everything was very quaint with amenities scattered around the place, and various bits of landscaping at intervals. However I really wanted to drop a handyman to mow the lawns and maybe toggle all the shops to āopenā.
With nothing really to do, I ended up walking 40 minutes to the far side of the island so I could catch a glimpse of the planes landing at Toronto Airport, where I caught a ferry back to the shore.
The last stop was the Rogers Centre, and the CN Tower. Neither were especially interesting, but there were a bunch of old trains to play with and I got to walk on a skybridge to get to the subway.
With only a couple of hours left until the concert I went back to my room to change and recharge my batteries.
Travelling right round the world to see two of my favourite bands play on the one night
The concert itself blew me away. Massey Hall, built in 1894, was an incredible venue. Though it was all seated and wasnāt conducive to dancing, the calibre of the performances was just awesome.
Born Ruffians were one of my favourite bands for a period, but I wasnāt sure what to expect from them live. They were stellar. They gave a tight performance, had a super clean sound, and it was really well done.
Apparently they have a new album coming out which Iām really looking forward to. Hereās something from the old one: Oceans Deep.
The New Pornographers are wild; between three guitarists, two keyboardists, four vocalists and a strategic violin-percussionist they put on a great show.
The sound was a bit hit and miss with a few malfunctions, but it was still enjoyable and they know how to please a crowd.
My favourite bit was probably Simi Stone, touring member, singing Play Money ā a song I canāt a good copy on Youtube anywhere (2022 update: here’s a nice one). Instead, hereās another I like: This is the world of the theater.
A food tour of Toronto
October 19th, 2017 10:39am
I took some time out to be a lazy bum the last few days in Toronto.
My āfeeling a bit out of sortsā in London turned out to be a cold, which wasnāt super bad but rapidly moved to my shitty, asthmatic chest as these things do. So I spent the day lazing around eating Pop Tarts, a local delicacy which I understand are only legal to buy in North America.
When the sun went down I caught up with a new friend Mx who took me for sushi then showed me around the neigh(gay)bourhood. We later went for Poutine, which was an excellent, terrible mistake and I donāt know if Iāll be able to eat again.
The next day I went and caught up with the Vox Pop folks (who do Vote Compass). Theyāre doing some really cool stuff, and it was fun to see what goes on behind the scenes. I was super embarrassed to have a coughing fit in their tea room, apparently I was talking too much.
After that it was time to head to the airport.
See ya Toronto ya filthy, charming mess!
Vancouver
October 19th, 2017 8:30pm
Air Canada is more generous/sensible with their carry-on luggage quotas, so I didnāt have to check my bags and went straight from plane to train!
Vancouver was decidedly more wet than any other cities Iād visited, it was bucketing down when I got off the metro. Luckily my Airbnb was only a few blocks from the station.
Nice headphones! I finally got around to reviewing them on the plane.
Thereās a 3 hour difference between Toronto and Vancouver, and 10 hours difference from Amsterdam so the incremental changes were starting to catch up. I went to bed early, and was disappointed to find Iād woken at 6 AM.
It was a lovely, sunny day for an adventure so I headed out in the direction of Stanley Park with the intention to hire a bike.
After getting myself all mixed up and walking the dead wrong way for a bit (my internal compass is not calibrated for the northern hemisphere), I stumbled upon Urban Waves bike hire where I rented a fetching mountain bike named Norco.
Stanley Park is a peninsula to the north of Vancouver devoted to parkland. There is a seawall around the perimeter which is devoted to pedestrians and cyclists to tour the area.
From Wikipedia:
The land was originally used by indigenous peoples for thousands of years before British Columbia was colonized by the British during the 1858 Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. The land was later turned into Vancouverās first park when the city incorporated in 1886.
So I set off on my bike, stopping every few hundred meters to marvel & take photos. Vancouver is a very pretty city, especially in fall when the leaves are starting to turn.
The ride is fascinatingly varied, ranging from city to harbour to the shipping lanes, a little beach, then back to the start via a Rhododendron Garden. Itās a painfully beautiful touristy thing to do, and I would recommend it for anyone who can ride a bike.
After that I stumbled on a local cafe chain and my life changed forever.
Let me cast my mind back to the year 2004 when I was a student living in Highgate Hill with two other housemates possessing equally terrible tastes in everything. On very special occasions when we were up early enough and could be bothered enough, we would trek down the hill on a 20 minute pilgrimage to the Crepe Cafe in South Bank for a $2 breakfast. It was glorious..
Over the years the price of breakfasts went up. First to $3, then to $5, and eventually breakfasts were the same as any other time, $7.50 for an Aussie Sunrise crepe (bacon, egg, cheese and spring onion). Still a bargain if you ask me.
In 2015 when I was working in South Bank, my colleagues would hate going to the Crepe Cafe for lunch because it really wasnāt value for money and tbh it was pretty gross food. But it held a special place in my heart (and it had a gluten free option so Gav would always be excited to come with me).
In 2017 tragedy struck and the Crepe Cafe closed its doors, never to be opened again. It was like a little piece of my youth had been torn away.
So when I saw that there was a Cafe Crepe in Vancouver, I was pretty excited.
It was a little piece of nostalgia, and branding aside felt exactly like the Crepe Cafe I knew and loved. I had a roast chicken crepe with a Pepsi Zero, and for a moment everything in the world was good again.
After the fleeting joy dissipated, I tipped 20% and left.
The next day was rainy as heck, so I wanted to find inside things to do.
To start I went to Best Buy to see if I could find a nice Chromebook (I couldnāt). After that I went to Cafe Crepe and ordered a ham and cheese crepe with a Pepsi Zero.
After that, having exhausted my list of things to do, I jumped on a metro train to see where it would take me.
It took me to Waterfront, which is kinda the interchange for all the trains, metros and trolley buses with the cruise liners, ferries and helicopters. It was a super impressive sight, made even better by my accidentally stumbling on the Vancouver Lookout tower which takes you up a big olā elevator to a viewing platform where you can see everything.
I donāt have any good pics, but hereās a part of a photosphere that shows the cruise liner, a ferry coming in, a bunch of trains, and the helipad behind the beam in the center. I thought it was awesome.
After this I caught a trolleybus to who knows where. It was a bit of a mistake because it took me out to Gastown which is usually lovely but was basically a river at this point. I grabbed a slice of pizza and a Coke Zero to get out of the rain but there was no end to it so I walked back to the station with my increasingly dilapidated umbrella.
By the time I got back to my Airbnb my shoes were drenched through, my jeans, jumper and t-shirt were varying degrees of soaked. Iād basically had enough of this whole exploring thing, and vowed never to go outside again.
With only one more day until my holiday was over, I was both pensive and relieved. Itās been lovely, but I canāt wait to sleep in my own bed again
Wet shoes, heavy soul, the last day
July 13th, 2018 8:30pm
Itās been weighing on me that I never actually wrote about my last day in Vancouver on here. I sort of did on my blog elsewhere but it feels like things are incomplete.
The last day was weird, I donāt know if it was timezones or the calendar or what but I thought I was going home much earlier than I actually was. So I took a walk, randomly following points of interest on Google Maps.
One of my first landmarks was the Davie Street rainbow crossing which I stumbled on by accident and it really messed me up.
I donāt know if it was the post-holiday blues or what but the thought of coming back to Australia in the midst of the Coalition’s reprehensibly “postal survey” was desolate. I might have cried in the rain at one point.
My walk took me down to the water, across the Granville Bridge, and all the way along False Creek to the science center, where I took the train back to my Airbnb and bought some new shoes since mine were completely soaked through.
The flight home was comfortable, with the though of being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean only vaguelyĀ terrifying. The soundtrack was Cut Copyās Haiku From Zero (no fixed destination), which I think I will forever associate with that trip. The end.
