
The start of one car living
I've primarily been blogging about various tech and computer items of interest to me, tossed in with a bit of beer and cycling. But starting today, the site content is undergoing a change with a new equal focus on my cycling, pedestrian, and transit experiences. My firsthand experience has shown me that the time is way overdue that modes of transportation other than the car. How did I get to this point?

A Crosswalk Too Far
Streetsblog draws attention to how the proverbial deck is stacked against pedestrians in our auto-centric culture. I've encountered so many situations here in LA where those who walk are second class citizens, but these are some incredible examples as to how planners don't keep walkers in mind.
Carnegie Road in Cleveland is dreadful. Running just south of downtown, it is so frequently interrupted by highway exits, it’s more of a high-speed off ramp to somewhere else than a part of the city. Chris Stocking singled out this area — Carnegie by East 9th Street — for its utter un-traversibility.
Were one to walk from the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown to the popular Aladdin’s Restaurant on the other side of the street, the journey would be nearly a quarter mile.

A more private Strava
Strava allows users to set a privacy zone which will hide your exact start or finish location with a 1km circle of privacy. I don't feel as though this is enough, so I discovered an easy way which allows you to expand the hidden area around your home or office.

A new campaign for safety
California state Senator Carol Liu’s introduction of SB 192 got me thinking. Why stop at cycling in a misguided attempt to save lives? If we all work together, we can use mandatory helmet laws to also falsely attempt to reduce … Continued

Bike lanes
In 2011, Casey Neistat received a $50 ticket from the New York Police Department for not riding his bike in the bike lane. Neistat made the point that it was pretty difficult to do so when the bike lanes were … Continued

Seatylock: now in pre-order
I think the original foldylock is a great idea, and its easy connection is an improvement over the Abus folding locks, which are great. Enter seatylock, which is effectively a seat with a foldylock built in. It’s a win-win, as … Continued

Helen’s Cycles customer service fail
I’m a huge fan of shopping locally, but supporting a local business doesn’t guarantee you’ll be rewarded with great customer service. Instead, you might run into an black hole of service with a company that obviously cares little about its … Continued

flxble wood bike rack
Very cool flexible wood bike rack from Germany. Need to get someone to bring one to IBC. According to the folks at Urban Velo, it’s made out of a single piece of wood. http://www.flxble.com/

Apps I Love: Triage
I get an enormous volume of email every day, with several hundred received every 24 hours. Dealing with the volume is minimized a bit by utilizing Gmail filtering, which is absolutely brilliant. When mail is received, it gets filed into … Continued

Apps I Love: Alfred
The next offering in the “Apps I Love” series is Alfred, a killer application launcher. If you’ve never used an application launcher before (Quicksilver was a previous standard), they are great for quickly navigating through your system. But the thing … Continued

Apps I Love: Fantastical
It may seem as though I’m calendar-obsessed, but frankly it’s a critical part of what we do in the collaborative workflow of fxguide and fxphd. In the Chicago offices, we have several calendars which we use to track production, term … Continued
Using Google Calendar instead of iCloud
iCloud is still very much in beta, experiencing the loss of several useful features from MobileMe when making the transition to the new platform. A huge shortcoming of Apple’s calendar functionality is that if the person you want to share … Continued
Another Sydney Sunday Morning Run
Well, actually, this included some hiking, trail running, and a bit of photo taking walking. I got up to go running and again it was raining early on Sunday morning. Luckily the showers were brief and I was able to … Continued
Sydney Sunday Run: Flat Rock
One thing I really enjoy about traveling is running in a new location. I’ts my third day in Sydney and I got up early to to go out, but it was pouring rain. Luckily around 9 it tapered off as … Continued
We’re number 50!
I’ve been dealing quite a bit with our health insurance industry in the states, attempting to provide insurance for the employees of fxphd. That’s a different and fucked up story, but it has opened my eyes to how state-supported healthcare … Continued