Review: “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing” by Adam Greenfield

First of all, I have to confess that it took me six weeks to get through this one. Significant, that, given that the subject matter is right up my digital alley.

“Everyware”, as described by the author, is literally the seeding of the world we live in with computers that are, well, everywhere—built into the devices we use daily, from our coffee cups to our refrigerators to our pets. Appliances, we are told, will communicate with one another, billing will be automatic, our needs will be fulfilled and even anticipated by an intelligent organized web of 1’s and 0’s.

Yes, this is one of those books which informs us that soon, like it or not, our very clothing will be monitoring us, and maybe communicating personal facts to the world at large.

Good thing I’m a naturist.

If some of this seems familiar, it may be because we’ve already started down the path. Consider the act, commonplace already, of using a cell phone to snap a shot of a real estate sign. within moments, if the sign contains an appropriate bar code, you can be taking a virtual tour of the property in question. A mere five years ago, this might have sounded more like something out of “Star Trek”.

And that is the whole point of the book: that the traditional concept of computer as PC is fast coming to an end, following its ancestors (the mainframe and the mini-computer) into relative obsolescence. Next up: tablets, readers, and ingrained processors.

    Greenfield makes no claim that all of this will happen tomorrow. Indeed, many of his book’s theses (instead of chapters) outline some of what prevents it: “The necessary network infrastructure does not exist’’; “Appropriate design documents and conventions do not yet exist”; etc. Perhaps most important of all: “As yet, everywhere offers the user no compelling and clearly stated value proposition”.

There are cautions here as well, some dealing with the continued erosion of privacy which everywhere might aggravate: “What if every fact about which we generally try to dissemble, in our crafting of a mask to show the world, was instead made readily and transparently available? ... who you’ve chosen to befriend in your life, say, or what kinds of intimacy you choose to share with them, but not others.” Clearly, everyware is about more than a countertop that displays traffic reports. “It brings along with it the certainty that if a fact once enters the grid—any fact, of any sort, from your Aunt Helga’s blood pressure at noon last Sunday to the way you currently feel about your most recent ex-boyfriend—it will acquire a strange kind of immortality.”

There are observations of how some countries—like Japan—are less likely to embrace the Internet than they are the mobile web. One wonders, then, if the near future in North America will look a bit like the orient today. (I can remember wondering the same thing back in 1999 in Hong Kong, where I first saw widespread sales of flat screen TVs.)

If the book has one major shortcoming—for this reader, anyways—it’s the overwrought use of the English language. Occasionally, it’s almost Victorian: “The discourse of seamlessness effaces or elides meaningful distinctions between systems.” Um, sure... of course it does. The pink ones, especially. I mean, I do realize that I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but sheesh...

All in all, however, not a bad collection of essays for the reader searching for hints of the possible future.

All I Want for Christmas

This blog entry was hand-written on a touchscreen, 10-year-old Personal Data Assistant (remember PDAs?). My Casio BE-300 "Cassiopeia"--I actually own two of them--has handwriting recognition, plays movies and MP3s, and can view and/or edit office files, photos, etc. I purchased it originally so I could write wherever I was, and also so I could read ebooks.

Flash forward seven years, and PDAs are yesterday's tech. Netbooks--suddenly I needed one of those. So I got one, a Dell with a solid state drive so I wouldn't have to worry about vibrations killing the drive. (Heat and a design flaw did that after four months, causing my first and only drive failure in over two decades of computing.) I got my netbook cheap, since all of a sudden...

...tablets exploded onto the scene. And having spent my tech cash over the years on five desktops, one netbook, two PDAs, and more upgrades than I care to admit to, all I could do was run to the end of my fiscal chain and bark.

I felt I NEEDED an iPad, dammit. Whoops, make that an iPad 2. And an iPhone 3, er, 4...4s. No, wait, isn't 5 on the way?

Good god. What exactly is it I'm looking for? What slice of happiness and satisfaction is missing from my life that I imagine can be filled from electronic, external sources? When I really examine the issue, I have to admit that I'm deluding myself.

I've lots of company, though. Especially in December.

I turned on the 'net a few days ago to learn that, down in the States, some shopper went berserk and sprayed her peers with pepper spray--all in order to be first at a pallet of discounted e-goods. What kind of a person does this?

It's times like this when I remember my stint of working in retail. I did this for a decade one year, the time served stretched tenfold by the neuroses of the public. I was a $6 an hour clerk working for someone who still believed in the class system, trying to work the till with a cheery smile. The customers, for their part, had just realized that the Kincaid-painted, Matha Stewart world of Christmas perfection had once again somehow fallen beyond their grasp. ("I needed only 3 more transparent blue bulbs to fill that string on my eaves...and all they had left was SOLID blue. Can you believe it? Christmas is ruined!")

They responded as only an affluent, Christmas-crazed culture might: they decided that the holidays were a sham, the most horrible time of the year, and that it was All The Direct Fault of the Evil, Minimum-Waged Clerk Behind the Till. The resulting bitchy snarling and downright meanness that resulted was at once both sad and amusing.

I confess, I had fun with it, by turning the whole affair into a bizarre social experiment. Depending on my mood, I began to offer my services in one of two different modes: 1) Pleasant and friendly but kind of pokey, deliberate and slow, or 2) Pleasant and friendly but super fast and efficient. Predictably, the result of mode 1 was a long line of Christmas shoppers that didn't move so fast. Just as predicably, Mode 2 resulted in a much shorter queue with smaller waiting times.

Not surprisingly, the public's reaction to these two styles of service was very different indeed. What WAS surprising was what those reactions were:

Mode 1 customers, who got the slower, friendly service, showed signs of calming down. Even the grumpier ones seemed a little better when I got to them, even as I took my time ringing them up, as long as I continued to serve them politely. Mode 2 customers, on the other hand--the ones who got the fast and efficient, yet still-friendly service? Those poor souls lost their minds.

At first I thought I was imagining it, but the weight of evidence grew. I went faster and faster, still giving the same polite, friendly service. The line grew shorter, waiting times dropped...and those served grew angrier and angrier. By the time my assistant and I reached the maximum speed the computerized till could handle, customers were actually wiggling their fingers at the printer, tearing their almost-finished receipts right out of it in a rage, then storming out the door. Some, during their abbreviated wait, actually pulled out their mobiles to complain to absent companions about the ''excruciatingly slow'' pace of clerks who obviously wanted to wreck their day. At least they tried to; by the time they'd started their rant, it was their turn at the checkout. This only seemed to enrage them more.

Then we'd drop once more to the pace of a snail--and the smiles would return.

I took away from this experience a trio of different things, one negative and two constructive. First, I learned that most people in the world are nuts, completely and utterly bonkers. But I also learned, at this time of year, to recognize in myself the signs of holiday stress. When that panic rises within me, that feeling of needing to get it ALL done, I simply remind myself that I don't. Forgot to stock up on eggnog? A glass of juice will do. Christmas light display a tad less spectacular than last year's? The neighbours will get over it. Kids (or yourself) miss A Charlie Brown Christmas? It's on now on three other channels. I've proved it to myself time and again: if I just let the holidays flow on their own, not forcing anything in at all, I'll discover later that our flawed, incomplete Christmas was the best we've had so far.

Lastly, I've learned just a bit to be kind. I know what the clerks in the stores are going through. Even if they seem grumpy themselves, I know they have their reasons. If I'm kind to them anyway, they just might respond to me the same.

And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

.

Review: Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything

For everyone plagued by digital clutter—you know, those tens of thousands of decade-old files filling up folders on your computer’s hard drive that you may not even remember you had, much less the purpose of—Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell have a solution.

Generate more of it.

That, of course, is not quite the premise of Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. Rather, Total Recall is meant to document the advent of what the authors see as the Next Big Thing in computer use: e-memory. E-memory, apparently, is the use of various technologies to capture and preserve as much of your life as possible. The authors once worked for Microsoft Research on something called the MyLifeBits project. Bell began recording his calls, scanning his documents, and wearing a camera and a biometric recorder; in short, recording his life. As a result of this, they have convinced themselves that e-memory will be something everyone wants very soon.

The premise of the book, then, is to somehow convince us of that.

With a forward by no less than Bill Gates himself, the book charges into it with Chapter One: The Vision. In this, we come across a paragraph that may well some up the excitement the authors feel for their subject:

With the same ease with which you can now search for just about any subject on the Web, you will be able to search your own electronic memory for any arbitrary item of knowledge you have ever encountered, any snippet of conversation to which you have ever been party, any document that has ever passed before your eyes, any place you have ever visited, any person you have ever met.

Beyond the obvious advantages of being able to do all this, the authors suggest more subtle ones. Software, they insist, will allow you to sort and sift through your digital memories to uncover patterns in your life you could never have gleaned with your unaided brain, for example.

The authors claim this software will store away the digital clutter of life, the 99% of it that is dull routine, while presenting only the highlights (unless asked to do otherwise). For example, if your e-memory GPS shows you in the same location for breakfast as usual, it will not consider that of much note. But if there are more faces at the table than usual, or if you are in a different location, than it will.

Part Two of the book devotes chapters to the supposed advantages of e-memory in work, health, learning, and everyday life and afterlife. Remember the 2004 Canadian film The Final Cut, starring Robin Williams? In that, everyone had memory chips implanted in their bodies as babies, chips that recorded every moment of their lives. After their deaths, Robin Williams’ character (a “cutter”), edited the contents of these chips down to a “rememory” film, the ultimate home video. This is sort of where the authors are going with that last bit.

And here is where the book hits one of its fatal flaws: it invites us to take our history and write it down in disappearing ink. As other researchers have pointed out, we are already doing this. For a quick example of what I mean, consider this scenario: a scientist has two items on her desk, a slab of rock with 8000-year-old hieroglyphics, and a 20-year-old research paper stored safely on a disk. Which of the two is she not able to read?

Answer: the modern document, of course. While the researcher has translated the ancient writing, safely preserved in stone, she is completely unable to read the contents of the two decade-old large floppy disk before her. Even if she could track down the necessary hardware—no longer manufactured—that disk may well have de-magnetized by now. And if not, how can she read the Whatever 1.0 file format the document was stored in? Is the company that made it still in business? Does Microsoft or someone make a format conversion plug-in? Are there software licensing issues to consider?

Consider that tape Grandpa made of his dad telling stories of his WW2 experiences. Sure, it was on reel-to-reel tape, but Uncle Bobby transferred them faithfully onto cassette back in 1972. Then brother Joe made CD copies of that for everyone in the family. Little Sarah, who has a thing for history, converted it all into MP3 for anyone who wanted it. Of course, MP3’s days are numbered now that FLAC is coming into existence…but someone will convert it again when the time comes.

Yeah, right, to all the above. The reality is, cousin Stan used that original reel-to-reel tape for packing ribbon 25 years ago. And this is where the premise of the book begins to fall apart. Even the author himself admits to putting films on VHS—and from there onto DVD. DVD’s days are numbered, as are BluRay’s (sooner than you think). And if you think there will always be someone available and willing to convert an ever-growing body of e-memory into the next format-o’-the-day, dream on. And if there was, even digital data can deteriorate, if converted from one format to another using consumer-grade applications.

The last part of the book promises to show the reader how to start recording his own life in a similar fashion. There are some good tips here, but nowhere near enough. The problem is one of data-mining, really—the more you got, the harder it is to sift through. And easily-obtained software that can do some of what is described in the book is not exactly sitting on the shelves of your friendly neighbourhood Future Shop.

All of this is not to say that Total Recall is not worth reading, however. The fact is, I very much enjoyed hearing what these two had to say. I myself have already managed to put much of my own life online (and discovered for myself some of the problems mentioned above).

I do not believe, however, that the average person is going to find his/her own life quite so fascinating that they would want to go to all the fuss, any more than I believe my own life is, really. It all seems rather a futile effort to try and achieve immortality by inserting oneself onto a chip.

And I’m sorry. That just ain’t gonna happen.

Bridge to Nowhere: Monument to Incompetence

“You're on a bridge to nowhere and you're gettin' there fast. 
Put it in the past, put it in the past.” — Sam Roberts

This past year, a mere five since expensive repairs were conducted to the historic Traffic Bridge that were guaranteed to make it last a generation longer, the bridge has again been condemned—this time, for good. Not only the bridge this time, but also the pricey Meewasin trail below it, Saskatchewan Crescent, and half the river. Why?

 Because the bridge is about to collapse under its own weight.

 This morning, Saskatonians woke up to the news I’d seen coming fifteen years ago: the Traffic Bridge is to be torn down. Yes, this is the old one, the first bridge built in Saskatoon just shy of 100 years ago, the one with the sign that read “Walk your horses” when it opened. Its demise is bad enough—but some interesting facts came out during the accompanying uproar that ought to make the blood of any sentient tax-payer boil:

> The bridge is made of iron. Iron bridges need to be painted at least once every fifteen years.

> The last time the Traffic Bridge was painted was in 1977. It’s been rusting away, unchecked by any effort of civic administration, for 34 years.

> City council did vote a few years back to put nearly half a million dollars into the bridge. They paid it to a foreign firm to attach strings of decorative LED lights. These broke down frequently for the first year, were not very visible against the bridge’s black (or rust brown) colour, and continue to be lit twenty-four hours a day for no apparent reason whatever (see my entry for 23 September, and Councillor Charlie Clark’s response to my question).

> At least one city councillor chastised the public to stop the blame game, saying no one was to blame for this. After all, how could the city engineers have possibly seen this coming?

 Huh?

 If ever there was a time for the blame game, it is now. As plans are made for the bridge’s hyper-expensive, taxpayer-funded replacement, shouldn’t we be asking just who’s butt is being canned, and how soon? Might the concept of criminal incompetence even come into play here? Should someone be going to jail? I’m no engineer, yet even I knew the bridge was failing. It occurred to me one day back in 1996 as I simply walked across it. No, I don’t have ESP, but I do possess the uncanny skill of BCS (Basic Common Sense). If the city engineers needed some (as apparently they did), they could have borrowed some of mine—or just about anyone else’s.

 (One Star-Phoenix columnist suggested that the condemned bridge be used to hold council meetings. That way, he observed, if the bridge collapsed, “at least we’d get a new city council”.)

 In the end, one is left with the following thoughts:

> The bridge as it stands being such a glaring symbol of administrative incompetence, you can bet that its demolition will be soon, and fast.

> It’s unlikely that such incompetence was entirely focussed on one small part of the city’s infrastructure. How many other bridges are about to fail due to unseen problems caused by lack of basic maintenance? What about overpasses and access ramps? What hidden faults lay in waiting at our power substations, civic buildings, etc? Maybe skyrocketing crime rates are the least of our problems after all.

> When the new bridge is built, will the taxpayers of Saskatoon pay it all off before it too fails? After all, the city didn’t bother maintaining the old one. Only an idiot would expect different results from the same set of actions—or the same administrators.

 “Walk your horses”, indeed.

Scotiabank Security: FAIL

In this day and age of identity theft, the last thing you want to discover is that your credit card has been lost or stolen.

Fortunately, of course, if you catch it right away, you can let your bank know. Once you’ve done this, you will no longer be liable for anything charged to the card. The trick is to quickly get hold of the correct number to call.

I made an interesting accidental discovery tonight, one involving my Scotiabank Scene Visa card. This is a great little rewards card that has gotten Maya and me into more than a couple of free movies, popcorn and all. Scotiabank allowed me the option of keeping my limit at an unusually low $500, since I use this for Internet purchases. (This as opposed to the usual half-million they normally want to give me, ha ha.)

But quite by accident, I’ve discovered a serious problem with Scotiabank’s security. I wanted to report a fraudulent charge on my Visa (by OnStar, no less, which I unsubscribed to a month and a half ago), so I found a toll-free number on the back of my statement and called it.

The phone rang and rang and rang, but no one picked up. No problem, I thought, I must have dialled wrong. I hung up, checked the number, and discovered I’d accidentally dialled the number to report a lost or stolen card instead. But had I really dialled that one correctly? No one had answered.

Intrigued, I decided to call the number again, so I carefully entered it and rang. And rang. And rang. After about 30-40 rings, a recording began:

“Your party is not answering. Please hang up and call again later. We’re sorry—but your call will now be disconnected.”

I tried it again in a bit, and got the same results. Three calls, over a span of twenty minutes, not one of which was picked up.

The message here is clear: if you want a Scotiabank card, make sure you keep the limits at rock-bottom, because if your card is ever stolen, you won’t have any way of reporting it when your branch is closed. And, if the chance of fraudulent use of even a low limit card is beyond your means…you may want to look elsewhere.

Weirdness at the Midtown Plaza

Well, that was weird.

I'm not the most attentive person in the world, but it seems to me, on entering the men's room by the Midtown Plaza food court recently, that I noticed nothing in the way of a sign saying the washroom was closed for cleaning. There may or may not have been a cleaning cart off to the side of the entrance when I entered (there was when I left)--I really didn't notice. One does often see such a thing in many public washrooms, anyway, as there is often a washroom attendant making his rounds during the day. I did notice the place was moderately busy, with several men or boys washing their hands, and two or three stalls occupied. No one was at the urinals.

I used one of those myself, my mind on the various chores I had to get done during the noon hour. First, a stop for lunch in the food court. I finished up, and turned around to see...

... a female mopping the floor, directly behind me.

As I said, I was not aware of anything different when I walked in. It is true that I did not specifically check the faces of each visible person to confirm their gender, but then again, I'm not in the habit of doing that when I'm in the men's room. Is anyone?

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned or something, but...yeesh.

Traffic Bridge “Decorative Lighting” On 24/7…Why?

[This post, actually pecked out on my netbook way back in July while I was on vacation, has a certain historical irony to it now. I'll post it here anyway, with an appropriate update in brackets.]

Everyone knows LED lighting saves power. That’s why traditional incandescent Christmas lights have all but gone the way of cassette tapes. As lights go, they’re pretty, though not exactly known to give off much light.

So it was with mixed emotions that the citizens of Saskatoon woke up one day to find their municipal government had spent close to half a million dollars attempting to light up a black bridge with LEDs. Well, sort of black. The iron Traffic Bridge, Saskatoon’s oldest, has been allowed to deteriorate over the years. It no longer receives new paint, so much of the black is now rust brown. That’s the main reason an inspector once condemned it on the spot, forcing the city to close it immediately. It would take maybe millions, they said, to make the bridge safe again.

It quietly re-opened a few weeks later, after repairs costing a fraction as much. “Good to go for another 20 years”, we were told. Um…thanks, I’ll take the Broadway Bridge. [Update: Here, of course, is the historical irony part: the bridge has been condemned again after only four more years. This time, it's probably for good. I'll blog again soon about that, but first, back to my original entry.]

But the bridge remained more than a bit shabby, so city council decided if you can’t hide it, decorate it. $400,000 dollars later, we were treated to a dim light show that broke down constantly, leaving much of it unlit for days at a time. The break-downs seem to have been solved for now, but here’s an interesting observation:

LEDs, while saving money, do use electricity. There’s a lot of lights on that bridge, effectively using a LOT of electricity. So why have these lights been allowed to burn for years, day and night, 24 hours a day?

That’s right—the Traffic Bridge “Christmas Lights”, invisible in anything but near-total darkness, are actually lit up all day, every day, from cold winter mornings to the blazing heat of an August noon hour sun. And no one notices, because LEDs aren’t bright enough to be noticed during daylight hours. The colour-changing light show goes on when no one can see. (How do I know? Because you actually can see them when you're standing on the bridge--see photo.)

Why has this been going on? And just how many taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize this mess? The environmental aspects alone…good grief!

But there's more to it than that. LED's rated life expectancy is not the time it takes to burn them out. LEDs do not "burn out"...they just slowly fade away. From what I've read, the life expectancy ratings for LEDs are actually the amount of time it takes from the time they are new to the time the light they give off has dropped to 50%. That's why, if you have one of the original strings of LED Christmas lights, many of them have all but faded to "off". Likewise, when the Traffic Bridge lights fade away--which they must do exactly four times faster if they are left on for 24 hours a day instead of six--they will need to be replaced. At considerable cost.

So why keep them on 24/7? Only one logical reason comes to me, and I'd better be wrong.

I’m going to attempt to find out more. I will share what I find in this blog.

[Update, 27 September, 2010.]  I thought I'd best check to see if these things were still being lit 24/7... I haven't actually been on the bridge since it was condemned, after all. They are, and I'm still looking into it.]

[Update #2, 7 December, 2010.]  A pair of e-mails was sent to Councillor Charlie Clark on 4 October, 2010, one of which asked for an explanation of the above.  (The other dealt with a transit issue, which had been entirely ignored by transit officials for years.) An auto-reply indicated he would respond to these when he returned after 12 October. Unfortunately, that response never came...

Traffic Rant #2: Saskatoon Gets Bicycle Lanes (Kinda, sorta, in a way…)

The city of Saskatoon (motto: “Let’s send it to another committee for more study first”) has finally joined the 1990s and adopted the idea of bicycle lanes downtown. Kinda, sorta, in a way.

Not wanting to rock the boat by simply imitating what them big-city folk do (in places like Kelowna, BC), Saskatoon went its own way and added bike “lanes” by painting bicycle symbols on existing lanes of traffic. They then ran around putting up “share the lane” signs.

Umm…in other words, they enforced the status quo.

Only one street, 4th Avenue, has a “real” bicycle lane, but unless you actually work on 4th, you’re going to have to turn off onto one of those “shared” lanes, as on 22nd Street. Really? I’d prefer to get to work alive.

Nor is sneaking onto the sidewalk an option, since “Walk your bike” signs have been stencilled there—and this is rigorously enforced by police. (They have plenty of time for this; it’s not like we’ve got the highest crime rate in the country or anything. Oh, wait…)

Still, it’s something at least, though I don’t necessarily feel any safer on my bike downtown. Perhaps if actual lanes existed, people like 64-year-old Barry Grosse (mowed down by 20-year-old Mitchell Rebryna, promptly let loose on bail and only just now given a gentle slap on the wrist) would still be alive.

Review: "Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ", by Richard Dooling

The cover of Rapture harkens to the days of green text on a grainy black monitor: the highlight is an electric smiley winking back at you. What’s behind that smiley? Does the almighty computer know more than it’s letting on? Not likely, you say…but will it, and if so, when? And what’s going to happen then?

These are the questions Richard Dooling attempts to explore in this engaging essay on the singularity: the point in history, predicted to happen soon, when the capacities of computing machines surpass the capacities of us.

Not a tame subject, and Dooling knows it. He isn’t afraid to go places with it, though, places that are sure to offend some, amuse others, and give everyone in-between pause for thought. The book is stuffed with technological tidbits…did you know the capacity of the human brain is 10 petaflops? That IBM created a machine three years ago that runs at 3 petaflops? That NASA’s newest is currently receiving upgrades that will bring it by 2012 to 10 petaflops—the same as the human brain?

That computer hardware will match us is not in question. What Dooling concerns himself with is more esoteric matters of the singularity—for example, will the software ever be written that can mimic the human condition? That bit is not so clear, and he cites the opinions of many experts in the various affected fields to argue yay or nay. There are religious or spiritual considerations as well, and these are delved into also. After reading some chapters of this book, I was beginning to see reality itself in a different light. Just what is reality, anyway?

And what about consciousness? Let’s assume we invent a machine that can match us in every way we can think (pun intended). It acts like us, dreams like us, has wishes and desires like us. Maybe even pack it into an android body. Okay…is it sentient? Does it, or should it, have rights the same as us?

Does it have a soul? Do we?

The mind reels at all these considerations—and Dooling delights in reminding us that we may need to be making these considerations in the not so distant future. (I did find it disappointing that he didn’t mention the very latest in experimental computing, specifically, the use of organic brain tissue. That’s a whole other can of digital worms there. Fifty years from now when the time comes to throw out your old toaster, is that toaster going to want to go?) Aside of all that, however, this book is just fun reading for your inner geek. Consider one prediction for the future in which computers, having surpassed our intellectual abilities (the logical follow-up to the singularity), decide that man isn’t actually needed. Didn’t Asimov write about that? Or Bradbury? This time around, though, the story may be for real.

The book rambles into other areas as well. For example, the fragility of modern-day documents. Why is it we can read documents carved in stone 3000 years ago, but ones placed in Starwriter format (or whatever) on big reels of tape (or whatever) 20 years ago may be gone for good? Not only does the hardware media fade away into obsolescence, so do the proprietary file formats we store them in.

Lastly, the book is peppered with informative, ironic, or hilarious quotes from near and afar. If nothing else, I’m glad I read it just to collect a few of these gems.

All in all, a thought-provoking, interesting read.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

As a techie, I just had to snap a picture of these giant voltsicles in downtown Saskatoon. There are electrical meters under there, somewhere.

Electricity … meltwater … a parking lot … what could possibly go wrong?

Review: Golden Pagoda Burmese/Asian Restaurant

On a damp late-winter evening recently, Maya and I went forth looking for a quiet place to have a late supper, one we didn’t feel like cooking ourselves. We meandered, sans reservations, into the city core, and found ourselves dropping in on the Golden Pagoda just an hour before closing. The location is one I know well, having spent many an hour there after the clubs closed back in the ‘80s—it was a Robin’s Donuts then!

Interestingly, not all that much has changed in the general shape or size of the place. Not to worry, though—the odours of donuts and cigarettes (smokers could light up anywhere then) is long gone. The aromas that have taken their place held great promise as a friendly hostess led us to our table. The décor, while simple, was adequate, and the restaurant appeared clean and taken care of.

I ordered, then watched as Maya put our server through the usual grilling and ingredient-substitution requests. (It’s one of those things I put up with in my beloved, as if she doesn’t have a world to put up with from me!) Our server fetched another person to help answer some of her questions, but no one seemed the least put off. The service, in fact, was cheerful and competent throughout our meal, something I wish could be said for more places we have dined.

The Pagoda’s appetizers include Burmese samosas or spring rolls, and tempura onion or squash sticks. Maya had the Ingredient soup, in a size big enough to swim in. I had a salad—I forget which one—which contained chic peas among many other things. Maya’s soup was filling and delicious, practically a meal in itself. My salad also was good, but far too oily I thought—might be fairly high in calories.

For our main courses we had one noodle dish and one curry. Both were excellent, and in generous portions; Maya required carry-out (the rest of her meal, that is, not Maya). On some curry dishes, Golden Pagoda gives you a choice of heat level from 2 (mild) to 8 (very hot). I went with the middle-of-the-road 5, and it wasn’t bad at all.

One very small criticism: We sat furthest from the windows for warmth, next to the “pagoda”, and there was a bit of banging coming through the wall from the kitchen. Not loud enough to be really disturbing, but present nonetheless. They could do with a bit of soundproofing there.

I should mention the parking, which is a darkish lot but right at the side of the building, mere steps from the door, so you won’t have to walk. They are licensed, and also have a take-out menu. All in all, we were impressed with Golden Pagoda. It was a great place to have a good hot meal on a chilly night. I believe the restaurant is owned and operated by new Canadians—welcome! We are looking forward to our next visit.

Golden Pagoda Burmese/Asian Restaurant
#3, 411 Second Avenue North
306-668-9114
http://www.goldenpagoda.ca/

Second Avenue Merchants Fed Up

In December, I blogged about a corner on Second Avenue in Saskatoon that seemed to gather more than its share of questionable characters. I’ve since seen two more arrests just while passing by. Now, it seems, the problem is getting worse.

At the beginning of this month, a group of six merchants in the immediate area spoke up: they’d finally had enough. According to them, the alleyways on this block have become a cesspool of human depravity: urination, defecation, drug use, loitering, etc, etc. These businesses are being held up, on one occasion by a 13-year-old. (Saskatoon Police never responded to that one, probably because they are overwhelmed by everything else happening in this town.) On one occasion, a street person attempted to go to sleep on the furniture in one store.

I find I have a personal connection to this group of businesses, since I once worked at a gift shop that occupied one of these buildings. That was back in the early 1990s, and it was no picnic even then. It wasn’t unusual to be tossing out drunks, even ones that found their way into the children’s area.

Now, however, these businesses are in danger of losing their customers. It’s not always safe on this street by day—see my entry for 14 December—and can be downright dangerous by night. I used to cut through an alley in this block on my bike in summer on my way home from work, but stopped when I routinely spotted people lying on the ground next to the dumpsters. Just lying there, chatting with one another—like it was a normal thing to do. As you can see from the photo, these lanes are barely clean enough for the rats.

That might be part of the problem. Maybe the city should sweep these areas clean daily, lose the garbage and the tossed-out furniture, etc. And pipe the appropriate music through the entire area. (Never mind the baroque, I’d recommend the new age mysticism of Robert Haig Coxon’s Cristal Silence series. Call me elitist, but I have seen it clear an area of everyone below a certain level of…well, let’s say ambition.)

I’ve been watching the area daily for a couple of years now, because I’m genuinely concerned about the way things are going. When the article came out in the newspaper (1 March), I was optimistic that things would get better. Surely this would strengthen efforts to clean the area up. What I’ve seen happening in the past two weeks, though, has not been encouraging.

Groups of unsavoury characters are larger, meaner looking, and more common.  Second Avenue’s 100 block north seems increasingly to be home to these, to the point where the problem is spilling over. While snapping shots for this blog (from the safety of our vehicle), Maya and I noticed a young couple walking through the alley between 1st and 2nd Avenues—just out for a Sunday stroll, only doing it for some reason of their own in a questionable back alley. Five minutes after that, we encountered them in the alleys between 2nd and 3rd. It appears that the downtown alleyways have become the streets of the Shadow People. It’s as if they are actively rebelling against efforts to keep the streets safe.

If the problem continues to worsen, some innocent person is going to get killed. Short of vigilantism, however, the average citizen has limited resources for dealing with it. One place to start might be the desk of the one person around who says he “most definitely” feels safe in the area: city councillor Darren Hill, who’s ward contains the neighbourhood in question. “Safety,” he told the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, “is an individual person’s perception of an area or certain persons around them.”

Um, no...no, it isn't. I can walk down any street with the perception that it's the safest in the world, but if the reality is far different, sooner or later I'm gonna get hurt. And it appears that six individual retailers lined up in a row all share a very different perception from Councillor Hill’s. Man, I am getting tired of seeing that kind of difference in this little town.

The public is not interested in perceptions, we are concerned about is the reality of what is going on. Mr. Hill needs to promote whatever action he can, quickly, to deal with this situation. (That is, after all, what we are paying him for.) He did also mention in the news that panhandling needs to be brought under control. That’s well and good, but there's bigger issues here.

Anyone else concerned about the situation? Let’s let Councillor Hill know about it:

Email:  darren.hill@saskatoon.ca
Home Phone:  (306) 384-9273
Cell Phone:  (306) 227-4322
Home Fax:  (306) 249-4469

Review: Twelve, by Nick McDonell

The cover of Twelve throws hints at you of what you’re in for: a young girl, fashionably dressed, moves breezily across it in monochromatic indigo, brushing past the reader and right off the edge. Where is she going? What’s in the oversized backpack? Wherever and whatever it is, we’re cognisant that it won’t end well. There’s bloodsplatter like gunshot holes, red across the blue.

It’s a well-designed cover, maybe appropriately so given the strength and colour of the prose behind it. For this, Nick McDonell’s first novel, is as gripping and gritty as they come.

White Mike is a teenaged drug dealer, working the dirty winter streets of New York. White Mike is a tortured soul…try as he might, he is not able to disengage himself from the consequences of his actions. Maybe it’s because, unlike most dealers, White Mike does not do drugs—especially this dangerous new one, “twelve”. Free to see clearly, he sees too much, and it begins to wear him down.

The novel is populated with believable characters, drawn with Dickensian skill by their creator. Nearly all are teens, rich white ones woven into the grotty fabric that is New York. This should not be surprising, given the fact that the author was sixteen or seventeen himself when he wrote it, and living in New York city. The resulting realism is only enhanced by his adeptness with words; the book reads less like a first novel than an eleventh. The word vivid sticks in the mind. You are there, walking the streets with White Mike, wondering along with him how this story will end. The interplay of personalities in the book build on the reader, drawing you in.

There’s grit in the book, of course—what novel about teens doesn’t have that? There is sex, there is drinking and drugs, there is violence to be sure. Still, the story somehow failed to depress this reader, even the bits where things turn tragic. Maybe it’s the ingrained optimism present in the mind of every adolescent (again, the author was a kid at the time) peaking through between the lines. Or maybe it’s just the fascinating, gripping insight into the lives of this particular subset of youth—wealthy, bored and ignored:
 

The two don’t move for a second, and White Mike looks from one to the other. Just a couple of soft kids standing on the street, trying to get some weed, have some fun, fill the time, talk a certain way, be a certain way because the way they come from is unclear and uncool and with no direction, because no one really has anything to do, all across the city no one has anything to do, so they all do the same thing and make the same references to pop culture and their childhood cartoons (like, Ghostbusters was so much better than Ninja Turtles), and everyone wants to get laid and be the cool kid and everyone wants to be a jock, and everyone wants and wants and wants. White Mike is worried now about what will happen if other kids start showing up at his door.

We follow White Mike and the others through the streets of their lives, in and out of arcades, bars and house parties. We see snippets of the interactions between the kids and their parents (rare), the kids and their teachers, the kids and other adults that drift in and out of their lives in the way that can only happen in a giant city. We learn that it’s not only the kids who are messed up here.

There’s poignancy. We see two separate teens on two separate occasions, camped outside their parents’ closed bedroom doors, wanting, waiting.

There’s humour, too, now and then. The black-talking white kids Timmy and Mark Rothko are penned delightfully over the top. Still, even their attempts to be something other than themselves are just a bit touching and sad.

New York City’s a character, too; McDonell sees to that with polished prose. In a world where so many novels—even good ones—are now written as straightforward as computer manuals, it’s nice to find an author who can still work a word or two to create a dramatic setting. Seventeen years old? Good grief.

Young or not, this new writer is a force to be reckoned with. The cover even contains praise for his book by Hunter S. Thompson, in a slightly self-congratulatory mood (“I’m afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine.”) I see there are already other titles on the shelf by McDonell. I can’t wait to see the books he’s followed up with.

In the meantime, I recommend this one.

The Death of Music

If you care at all about music—if kicking back with a favourite CD, mp3, or even old-school vinyl or tape is anywhere in your repertoire of happy things to do—then sit up and pay attention. There’s something you need to know, something that will anger and disappoint you if you care at all about music.

The record industry is making a change—and not for the better. They want to downgrade  not only the quality of future releases, but also previously released material you might not yet have acquired. It’s happening already, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you soon will.

Let’s start at the beginning, about five or six years ago. The industry, still glowing from the previous decade’s switch to CDs from analogue records and tapes, suddenly found itself on the wrong end of the new digital age. All of a sudden there was an even newer medium to contend with: a little something called the mp3. Suddenly, mere teens—a vital demographic to music industry honchos—could, in the privacy of their own rooms, share music across the Internet to others, whoever wanted it, for free!

The music industry responded by calmly dropping a brick in its drawers.

And then it picked up its phone, called its lawyer, and the battle was on. Suddenly, you could be sued for sharing out music. Sure, this had been going on for decades already, ever since the invention of the Compact Cassette. Back then, you dubbed music in real time from vinyl onto analogue tape. The industry winced, but let it pass. So why the freak out now?

Because now copying music was easy, and faster. Now you didn’t even have to walk to your friend’s home blocks away to give him a copy of the latest hot album. Now it was being done en masse, and now it was seriously cutting into the profit margin of the big giant music firms.

(Never mind that it didn’t have to be that way. Never mind that outfits like Sony could have embraced the new tech by launching their own online stores years ahead of iTunes. Never mind the fact that most people would have embraced downloading their music legally, if the infrastructure had been in place from the start. The quality of that Guns n’ Roses tune would be guaranteed, after all, unlike the crappy rip produced by too-fast second-rate software run by someone’s fifteen-year-old kid. But no, the industry thought it would be cooler just to sue its potential customers.)

Eventually, of course, the industry was forced to accept the new reality. Now, more music is purchased by way of legal downloads than through new CDs. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that, suddenly, the quality is no longer there. Please understand, I’m not speaking here of the comparison of mp3s to CDs, nor of vinyl to anything else. (Yes, an audiophile like myself would be happy to tell you that an iTunes 228 kbps mp4 file cannot compare to the 1441 kbps quality of a CD, but that’s not what I’m talking about.) Music just sounds different, no matter what format you get it in. Say, for example, that you’ve lost your 10-year-old CD copy of U2’s 1983 classic album October. You originally heard it on vinyl on your older brother’s stereo, and then you bought that CD. Both sounded fantastic, but now you’ve lost your copy.

No problem, you decide; you’ll just buy a new CD. So that’s what you do. And you take it home, and listen to it, and all seems the same. And yet…

…not quite the same. Somehow, the music on this new copy is harsher, especially when the band really hits those crescendos. You look with suspicion at your trusty old sound system. Is it time for a replacement? Are the speakers finally wearing out? Or is it something else?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s something else.

Maybe you’ll recall what happens when you load an mp3 player with random music. As you work your way through the playlist, you might notice that some tracks are much louder than others. There’s always been a variation in how loud some companies program their discs. The problem when you’re playing a mix is that you’re always adjusting the volume up and down.

Worse, if you’re a recording artist and your song comes up at a party and it’s quieter than the others…well, that’s the kiss of death. Unless someone cranks up the volume, your song will sound…well, weaker somehow. Less noticeable. Less noticed.

So recording company executives at Company A respond by upping the volume on their new releases. Company B follows suit, making theirs just a bit louder than Company A’s—it’s a competitive business, after all. So Company A begins making theirs even louder, then louder still, until…they hit the wall. See, CDs, like every other recording medium, have an upper limit to their volume. So what happens when that limit is reached, and you still feel the need to make it louder?

Two things. You keep going, for one thing, allowing the sharp upper peaks of the sound wave to flatten against the ceiling. This is called “clipping”, also referred to as distortion, and it sounds like crap. It’s what you used to get in the “old days” when copying a record onto cassette, if you brought your levels up so high that it caused the VU meters to dance into the red zone.

The other thing you do is, you start bumping up the volume of the quieter parts of the track, more and more, until they’re pretty much as loud as the loud parts. This is called “crappy dynamic range”, and it’s another thing that makes music sound really, really bad. It’s what many radio stations do when they want people to play their station at work, or in businesses. The last thing you want as a business owner is to be constantly turning down the loud songs (or the loud parts of songs), then turning it back up when the quiet ones come on. So radio stations filter their music to always play at the same volume.

It might not be so apparent on that mp3 player on your morning subway ride; it may even sound better because you’re not constantly going for the volume control. But at home, on a half-decent sound system? Not so good. It might not actually sound bad, but the clipping and constant volume wear you down on a sub-conscious level. Somehow, you are inclined not to listen to that album as often.

Which, of course, might leave you inclined to go back to the store for something new. Ka-ching, go the record execs.

The worst part of this is, it’s being done to classic albums as well. Recently I had the misfortune of purchasing U2’s October, a magnificent album released in 1981 by a talented bunch of guys. I say misfortune because it seemed to suffer at least some of that new over-modulated harshness. Suspicious, I checked out the album cover, and sure enough, there were words I’ve learned to dread:  “Digitally Re-mastered”.

Re-mastered. Right.

So as a little experiment, off I went to Tramp’s, a nice used-music store downtown. I picked myself up an old copy of October, one of the original 1981 CDs. I took it home, and sure enough, it sounded somewhat better. So I decided to rip them both onto my computer, and compare the results visually. The results were by far not the worst example you could find, but disturbing nonetheless.

First, here’s the 1981 disc (click to see better, use Back to get back here). The track is track 5, Fire:

Now let’s have a boo at the 2008 “re-mastered” version. You can see the difference visually:

See how the loudest parts hit the “walls” at the peaks? Let’s zoom in to one of the loudest bits:

That flat part—right where the vertical yellow line is—is clipped. That portion of the signal has been lost, and cannot be regained. It is, in fact, distortion, and it will sound bad when you play it. And by far, this disc is not the worst offender.

The tragic part of all this is, turning the volume down won’t help. It merely sounds like someone shouting quietly. It’s actually gotten bad enough that I run all my new music through an algorithm to reduce the volume to normal levels, and restore clipping as much as possible. It’s not perfect, but it helps.

Some artists’ music suffer from this problem much more than others. Bruce Springsteen’s (otherwise wonderful) album Magic, for example, has been called unlistenable by many…just read the Amazon reviews. I own the album myself, and love it, but listen to it far less than his earlier stuff. It’s just too…tiring. Californication, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers is also an awesome tune—but yikes:

For more information, see the links below; others have explained the problem better than I have here. As to the answer? Maybe a grass-roots write-in campaign to the masters of the music industry, letting them know how we feel.

This really has got to stop.

Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

http://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

http://www.turnmeup.org/

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm

What's Wrong With This Corner?

I’d really like to know what’s going on at this corner.

While great strides have been made downtown, we’ve also seen some ugly developments. Downtown lately seems to have striated. There are safe streets, and there are not quite so safe streets, and in Saskatoon they’re meters apart. Islands of “ick” have sprung up here and there, attracting a certain demographic class. In between are “normal” people, the downtown workers and tourists.

One such island can be found on the north-east corner of the intersection of 2^nd Avenue and 22^nd Street. For some reason, all kinds of street people seem to have declared this their turf. The benches in front of the McDonald’s are ones you want to avoid. Every day you see lowlifes congregating here, crowding nervous citizens off the sidewalk. A half-dozen times or more, I’ve seen the police in attendance.

It's not just the corner itself, exactly. On sunny days, I take a stroll during afternoon tea, and I’ve noticed quite a few things. There’s a great deal of foot traffic in the alleys between Second and Third Avenues, just north of 22^nd. Scruffy-looking people go in, and hand things to one another. It’s not unusual to see people lying amongst the dumpsters, feeling the effects of whatever they’ve taken. Disagreements and fights are common. I used to cut through there after work on my bike, but now I’ve had to stop.

One fine weekday afternoon this summer, all hell finally broke loose in the form of an all-out turf war. I was taking coffee in an empty lot, my face turned toward the sun. I ignored the yelling across the street behind me…nothing new, after all. Suddenly, there was a lot of yelling. I turned, and saw tourists and citizens up and down the street stopping to do the same. Everywhere, street people were running to and fro, or standing and shouting at others. Was it my imagination, or were some wearing a certain colour? And those ones over there…were they wearing a different colour? I reached for my cell to call the police.

“Thank you for your call. We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal volume of calls. Please continue to hold…” Good grief—it reminded me of an American sitcom I’d seen, back in the 70s.

“Come on!” Across the street, a skinhead with a Mohawk haircut screamed for his friends to follow. He charged up the sidewalk, tourists diving for cover, a long metal bar in his hand. He and his posse raced into an alley even as others raced the hell out.

“Thank you for your call. We are currently experiencing a higher-than-normal volume of calls….”

 Finally, I got through, and the dispatcher already knew. “Can you see the police yet?” she asked.

“Just the one so far,” I answered. “He’s looking lonely, though. He’s standing by some unconscious guy laying in the middle of Second Avenue, completely surrounded by…concerned citizens.” By now, though, you could hear the sirens. The bike cops were first to arrive, zipping into the alley.

Not much else to report, really...except that whatever’s going on at this corner seems to be getting worse. Not sure why, unless it’s related to the transit mall at the north end of the block - or maybe the Welfare department half a block south?

My humble suggestion for improvement is Baroque or New Age music, piped through speakers from the McDonald’s. Done properly, this actually works. Done improperly, it does not. (Witness the transit mall experiment. Note to city workers: No, Shania Twain doth not Baroque music make.)

Still, that’s really only a bandage. Fixing whatever’s going on here will need a whole lot more than Mozart.

[Update, 4 October: It appears that the city has removed the benches from the northeast corner of this intersection, the corner in question. There are still questionable characters hanging about, but perhaps fewer than before. The ones who are left are content to sit on the landscaping dividers, or even directly on the sidewalk, while some have crossed the street to get to the other side. It remains to be seen what the long-term result will be.]

Changes: River Landing Promenade

I’m back, after an extended summer made far too busy with looking after other things. ‘Tis blogging season once more!

It seems Saskatoon’s oft-delayed River Landing project has finally taken root, right on the wind-swept banks of the South Saskatchewan. Here’s the first of a few aspects I’ll highlight, featuring some photos from the summer.

The downtown portion of the riverbank, west of the Traffic Bridge, has never been soft on the eye. Three short years ago, this was a gravelled road trailing down to the water’s edge, a non-descript, weedy surface on which downtown workers parked their cars. Given our crime rate in Saskatoon, that would seem to be a gamble.

Now it is a place to take your kids, a promenade where lovers can take in the prairie sun. For the first time ever, this stretch of land—between the Traffic and Senator Buckwold bridges—actually looks like it belongs to a city, rather than a little town. For the first time ever, it’s a place to be enjoyed. Most notable of all is the water park for the kids, which shows the path of the river as it tracks across the prairies. Above, there’s art of sorts—those “sticks” in front of the new Persephone Theatre. There’s also a snack bar restaurant.

Lastly, the founders of our community are featured at the bottom of the traffic bridge, in the centre of a new traffic circle: Chief Whitecap and John Lake. (This occupies space near the present Meewasin Centre, the intersection of Spadina and Third Avenue.)

"Emerald", My Butt: Emerald vs. Brandon Cedars

I’d like to offer a public service to anyone in Saskatoon considering the purchase of an Emerald cedar for their yard, in the form of a bit of shocking news. You’ve seen them offered by the hundreds this year, from the Real Canadian Superstore to Canadian Tire. They’re beautiful, lush, green, and reasonably priced. And…

…they are NOT recommended for our climate!!!!!

Emerald cedars (Thuja occidentalis 'Smaragd') are rated for Zone 4. Saskatoon, like it or not, really is not Zone 4—it is Zone 3, at least when it comes to the planting and caring of pyramidal cedars. The Brandon cedar (Thuja occidentalis) is the one you want—if you can find it. For some reason or other, most of the major chains are carrying only Emerald cedars this year. Don’t buy them. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Some of those Emeralds, in fact, are already dying in the store’s lots.

I do own four of the things, lovingly nurtured for over a decade (note, however, that the ones in the photograph are the much more successful Brandons). If you do as I have done with my Emeralds—fertilize, water well, prune carefully—you too can have a nice crop of wilted brown lopsided monstrosities. Or you can pick up some Brandon Cedars, plunk ‘em in the ground, and watch a lush hedge sprout up in your yard. On my own property, I’ve got over two dozen Brandons, mostly purchased at end-of-season sales for three or four dollars. The older ones are taller than me now, and even thicker.

Why are so many places offering only Emerald cedars? One website I came across mentions the possibility of a breeding mix-up, coupled with a limited number of growers. There may be hope yet, though: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/pnw0152/pnw0152.html says we may be able to start new Brandons from cuttings.

I did find Brandons at Wilson’s this year, so you might still be in luck. If all you can find are the Emeralds, do yourself a favour: keep your money in your wallet.

Also, Alberta Dwarf Spruce: despite the name, really only good for a warmer clime.

[Update, 4 October, 2010:  This past year has devastated even mature cedars across Saskatoon, either Emerald or Brandon.  I lost much of a row of my Brandons, some of which were 3 metres tall. It appears the better taken-care of ones went first, probably because of the bizarre heat wave last fall (lilacs blooming in September?) followed by a sudden death deepfreeze. Instead of taking their autumn soaking into their roots for winter, they put it into fast autumn growth. The resulting shock to the tender shoots destroyed many mature trees.

Sadly, with the shortage of real Brandons about, I've had to break my own rule and replace them with Emeralds. Lots of Emeralds. Lots and lots of them, in the hopes that some will survive to maturity.]

Parkade

Only I would write a blog entry about a parkade, but this one seems worthy of mention.

I’ve shown the newly converted Hudson Bay Company building, as well as the newly converted King George across the street. Across the alley from the King George was what could possibly have been the grossest parkade I’ve ever had the misfortune of using. The place looked like it was about to cave in. There were no lights over the ticket machine, the crumbled floors dripped consistently, the railings were sketchy at best, and the whole place had an unsafe feel about it. Even the few businesses in the retail strip beneath it looked run down—or closed shop entirely.

A development company—I’m afraid I don’t know which—got hold of this pile of misery, and attempted to renovate it. Good luck, many of us who work downtown said. Better just to knock it down.

Again, we should have believed. The parkade has been transformed from end to end. They literally spent months on this (and who knows how many dollars). I’m not saying it’s an improvement to the downtown core, it’s an immense improvement. The car exit even features a keystone above the door—that’s elegant.

There’s new businesses in there too, much cleaner and more respectable ones. The railings have been replaced, the walls dismantled and rebuilt, new lighting, wiring…what a work of art.

Kudos to whoever did this. Another blight in downtown Saskatoon has been transformed into something good.

Saskatoogle

I couldn’t resist snapping this picture of a car that snaps pictures of us.

It seems the long arm of Google has come to town, or more accurately, the all-seeing eye. What you’re looking at is a Google car with a special camera on top, covered up for the day, apparently. I found it parked outside Superstore on 8th Street—even Google needs groceries, I guess.

For those unfamiliar with Google Street View, see the screenshots attached (click for larger view). Basically, it allows you to “walk” virtually down any street they’ve visited. You can turn around 180º, look up at high-rises, into gardens, etc. All you have to do is look up a city in Google, click on Maps, and drag the little yellow guy onto the map.

If the street has been covered, you’ll get a recent (say last year or so) image, one you can move around in. It will show you the address as you do so, so you’ll always know whose house you’re looking at.

Privacy watchdogs have been in a frenzy, but it seems a little late. The map shows parts of the world (in blue) where Google has already been.

This doesn’t include areas being scanned now, like Saskatoon. Google does make concessions to privacy: faces and licence plates are digitally blurred. They’re done so by computer, of course—imagine blurring every face down every road on the planet. As a result, sometimes a face gets missed.

There’s good to be had from Street View. Let us assume, for example, that you are being transferred to a new city. Now, not only can you hunt for houses virtually, you can check out the neighbourhood. Are those car parts on the neighbours’ lawns? Does anyone here mend a fence? Best to try a different neighbourhood—which you can do with a single click. And Google only sees what you would see driving down the street. They stay off private roads.

Still, this seems an extreme project just for the sake of…what? It’s interesting, to be sure. I’ve checked out Manhattan, strolled through Beverly Hills, walked down endless highways in the Australian outback. But it still doesn’t seem worth the enormous effort this must take. An individual more paranoid than I would wonder what they were really doing this for.

That’s likely why there’s been some pushback. A community in Britain, for example, formed a human chain to prevent Google from entering. And now, in Japan, Google is being forced to reshoot it all. The camera was too high, Japan ruled. You can see into people’s private yards.

Is Google Street View good? Or evil? Maybe the words of Sun MicroSystems CEO Scott McNealey ring true: “Privacy is dead, deal with it.”