Lane Splitting

http://laist.com/2007/08/30/lane_splitting_on_the_10_freeway_in_la.php

I don't really understand how this is legal.  "Lane-splitting" is the apparent term for when motorcycles decide that the lines in the road are meaningless to them and swerve in and out between the rest of the cars.

"If there's room, then it's safe" is a ridiculous argument.  There are two lines painted on the road that represent the lane in which a car is driving.  Presumably that moving car has the potential to move side to side within that space, no?  So while you might see that there's room for you up ahead, you have no way of really know that it will be there in the next 2 seconds.  I'm not talking about opening the door because you saw the guy on the bike coming, I'm talking about just driving like you normally would.  Whose fault would it be then?  The motorcycle for trying something stupid?  Or yours for not seeing him?

There's sure to be an audience of people that do this, that say "If you're against it, it's just because you're jealous that motorcycles can do it and you can't.  Who made you traffic cop?"  Well, wrong.  On your way by you can hit my car.  That bothers me.   There's a certain level of expectation between the cars - I stay in my lane, they stay in theirs.  I don't get too close to the guy in front of me, the guy behind me doesn't get too close to me.  It's a mutual thing.  Then along comes a motorcycle who in essence is saying, "Nono, trust me, I'm a better driver than you all.  I will do what I want.  All the rules you have set up between yourself don't apply to me, so you have no way to anticipate what I'm going to do.  But watch out for me anyway because if you get in my way you must have done it on purpose." 

Just Pay The Fare

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/13754211/detail.html

Rather than pay $1.70 for the subway, this guy (caught clearly on video) smashes his way through the divider gate, doing $2000 worth of damage.  I don't really get that.

I think it's particularly funny because it reminds me of a friend's divorce.  She discovered during her custody battle that her husband was on parole, unbeknownst to her.  His crime?  He did not like the subway gates, so even though he paid his fare, he would kick them as hard as he could went he went through.  Eventually they broke and sure enough, he got busted for it. 

Ride Your Bike

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/08/29/how-to-ride-your-bike-to-work/

A great rebuttal to all the "But's" associated with riding your bike to work (i.e. "But it's too far, but it's too hot, but it's too dangerous...")

Google maps tells me that my office is almost 30 miles from my house, so I think I'm out.  Although I do try to walk that last few miles.

Live Streaming Your Commute

http://bill.bitgravity.com/live/

Ok, this is actually pretty cool sheerly from the geeky perspective.  It's one thing to use GPS to do a live version of yourself on Google Maps (so you can actually track the guy on the road as he travels to work.   BUT, he's coupled it with a live traffic feed.  So what you've got is a very live shot of the traffic at any time, from the view of the car.  Not a helicopter, and not within the last 20 minutes or so.  I don't know about you, but I never rely on the news traffic reports because they never seem to still be relevant by the time I get on the road.

Imagine a headsup display of this information in your car.  Assume, of course, that there's lots of people feeding data back into this, not just this one guy :).  I have a choice of two major highways to take in the morning.  I could dial up somebody from each of them and see how the traffic is doing.   I could start to form the algorithm in my head to look for cars that are near a major intersection, both before and after, so that I only have to pick from relevant options.

The implications are interesting for traffic violations, as well.  Imagine there's enough people using a gadget like this so that at any given time, on a major stretch of road, there's pretty good odds that somebody's filming it.  And then they see an accident, or a crime.  Everybody always says, there's never a cop around when you need one.  Wouldn't it be great if you could simply email the video right to the cops?  You don't even need to remember the license plate, you'll have it!

Squadcast : Check It Out

I live by my podcasts.  No radio for me, no morning zoo or Howard Stern, NPR or even CD collection.  I listen to nothing but podcasts.  One of my favorites has always been Squadcast, although it's hard to explain why.  Imagine 4 guys getting together to hang out, and basically do what it is that 30-something guys do in such a situation.  Drink, eat chips, tell stories, play video games, and in general rag the holy heck out of each other.  You know they're good friends when you can tell them your darkest secret and be absolutely sure that they were hound you mercilessly about it.  Some of the funniest stuff I've ever heard come through my iPod.

Well, they went into a bit of a hibernation lately as the guys all went off to do their own projects.  But lately it's been reborn when one of them, Anthony, decided to resurrect the show.  Which is ironic, because in the history of the show he was always the technology illiterate one who couldn't get his ipod out of the box.

Anthony's been doing a "car cast", he calls it, where he just chats it up as he drives into work in New Jersey.  He talks to the gas station attendant, complains about the price of gas, yells about people on their cell phones.  Comments on the news.  Imagine you're sharing a ride with the guy, sitting right next to him in the front seat.  It's that kind of conversation, the sort that keeps you busy and occupied until you find yourself at the office.

(Last note, not really family friendly, as rants can include some choice language.)

 

Technorati tags: podcast, ipod, mp3, commuter

I Vant To Be Alone

Hi everybody, sorry I haven't been updating lately.  If you've got ideas for posts, or links to share, please email me (or comment). 

Anyway, this morning I'm sitting on the train and just getting my laptop setup when a friend's wife sits down next to me.  She's never on this train.  So we spend the 25 minutes or so into town chatting, mostly about her kids and her husband's job.

Would you rather have that, or silence?  Even if you drive in to work, what would you prefer:  some alone time, or some company?

I definitely prefer the alone time.  I mean, I'm not rude enough to avoid contact, or to tell people "Sorry, gotta get this done."  But given the choice I'm more comfortable when I've got my peace and quiet.  Even during the last leg of my commute, the walk in, I will sometimes run into one of the girls from the office during the last 5 minutes or so.  As I close up my headphones and put away my iPod so I can talk to her, I'm thinking "Hmmm, I was just in the middle of something good, when am I going to be able to get back to that?"

Don't get me wrong.  Social contact certainly has value.  You don't live in a vacuum.  It's nice to actually talk to people.  I'm talking about that jarring experience of "I am planning to do this for the next 15 minutes....oh, hi Phil, what' s up?  Me? No, not doing anything, hey how's the wife?"

Stupid New Currency

It costs me $2 to park at the train station.  Every morning I check my wallet to make sure I have two dollar bills so that I can efficiently get through the meter.  This morning for some reason I did not check, and I discovered I only had one dollar.  This is troubling to me because I could swear that yesterday at lunch when I went to get a drink, I specifically left $4 in my wallet for exactly that reason.  I remember thinking "I'll need those for the train tomorrow."  And my wallet was in my pocket all day, so I can't blame my wife for sneaking some coffee money.  Pixies.  Must have been.

But anyway I'm bugged, because I'm running late as it is.  There's a backup plan which is to get cash out of the ATM at the station ($20's only), and then get change at the ticket window.  But of course that's almost guaranteed to make me miss my train.  I check my wallet several times, still only a buck.  Nothing in the spare change pocket of the car door except one of those new gold dollar coins that are supposedly in circulation but are so rare that I've only ever seen that one, which I got as change from a vending machine at the post office.  That makes two dollars, but the parking meters take dollar bills, quarters, and tokens that you get from the ticket window, so that's not going to help me.

I arrive at the station at about 8:14 for my 8:15 train and get my cash from the ATM.  The train is still there, but much like injury time in a soccer match, I really have no idea how much time I have. Only the conductor knows for sure. Should I rush, and possibly miss it anyway?   I hate that.  I get my change from the ticket window and he gives me back cash plus two tokens for the machine, as expected.

The train pulls away.  That's ok, there's another one in 15 minutes.

Then it dawns on me.

The two "tokens" he gave me are, in fact, gold dollar coins exactly like the one I had in my car.  So if I'd taken that one in and tried it, I would have made my train.  Oh, well.

The Stuff You See

Walking home from work today I saw two people practicing a hula hoop routine.  As in, the girl was using her entire body to spin three hula hoops at the same time, from her neck down to her knees and back again.  Then she passed one off to her partner (a guy) who went off and did his own thing while she maneuvered sort of snakelike around the park, wriggling her body to keep the hoops spinning.

I have no idea what that was all about.

What did you see?

Buy a Hybrid, Or Pay "Congestion Charge"

I hope this doesn't become the new thing.  New York mayor Bloomberg is proposing a congestion charge on vehicles which will be lower for hybrids.  In theory it makes sense.  You want to cut down on pollution, then tax the heck out of the things doing the polluting. 

Here's my problem with it, though.  You don't just go buy a new car.  For many people a car purchase will easily last 5 or even 10 or more years.  Plus, hybrids are still several thousand dollars more than a non-hybrid.  So you're basically telling people "Ok, you're going to pay X more per year until you decide to invest in a new car that you had not planned on getting, that is more expensive than you planned on paying." 

I would rather see a plan that offers benefits for a variety of pollution decreasing options.  If I can work out a telecommuting deal with my job so I only get in the car 4 days out of 5, do I get a 20% discount on my congestion charge?  Probably not.  Does it matter if I'm driving an SUV or a sedan?  Again, doubt it. 

How Long Will It Take In Traffic?

My morning news has this thing where they measure the commute in minutes.  They'll say something like "Right now you're looking at about 18 minutes from x to y."  That's absolutely useless to me unless you also tell me what it should typically take, don't you think?  Is 18 minutes good or bad?

Looks like Google's trying something similar on their maps.  You know how it will always give you a guess at the time, like "59 minutes"?  Well now, for certain big city areas, it will also say sometihng like "Up to 1 hour and 20 minutes with traffic."  That's pretty neat.  And if you think about it from a software point of view (which I do because I'm a software guy, but you might not care :)) it's actually pretty straightforward.  Normally you'd keep an average speed associated with lengths of street, that's what allows you to estimate 1 mile/minute on highways (roughly 60mph), but only half a mile/minute on smaller roads where the speed limit is more like 30mph.  To calculate traffic times I think that you'd just carry two numbers for each road, a sort of max and min, for your optimal time and your average traffic time.  Naturally if there's something big that causes a complete stop you'd never be able to predict that, but it should be pretty easy to say "Ok, every night at 5pm this road slows from 60mph down to an average of about 7mph.  Just right in this 20 mile stretch here."

Since most of my commute involves a fixed train schedule, there's not too much I can do with this information.  But if you're all about the drive, it might be for you.  Now what I want them to do is figure out the traffic patterns based on time of day.  I've noticed in the past that if I left the house at 7:05, for instance, I would hit traffic differently than if I left at 7:20.  Sometimes I would even get there faster if I left later.

 

Technorati tags: Google, maps, traffic