I attended Toronto's Executive Committee meeting today to depute on the new Street Furniture Harmonisation Program. Unlike the the last time deputed at City Hall however, my deputation was much clearer. Sadly though, despite the stronger opposition this time, we lost everything.

This whole Strong Mayor system is quite interesting really. Basically, you have a group of councillors who's sole function is to vote as the Mayor wishes -- regardless of what their constituents want or what they personally feel. This was most evident in Councillor Moscoe's statement that he was going to vote for this project, but he'd be "holding his nose" in doing so. I was appalled really at the lack of interest in Democracy.

We had city staff, who despite the high praise hefted upon them by Miller, really did a shit job on this project. They used financial and quantifying numbers not from their own research, but from numbers supplied by the ad companies bidding on the contract. In one case, they even re-wrote the system of measurement, claiming that even though the amount of ad-space (and eye-level ads) was increasing, the "units" of advertising were smaller.

So lets be clear here. Six square feet of ads on a garbage can on the ground, vs roughly twenty-four square feet of illuminated, eye-level ads are comparable in the eyes of city staff. ...I don't know what to say here.

It was right about at this point where David Meslin referred to this whole process as legalising bribery... and he was right. Astral Outdoor is paying Toronto a lot of money to violate our bylaws.

From our position, we deputed on a variety of different subjects. From the lack of allowed public input, to style comparisons with other cities, to the environmental concerns surrounding energy for illuminated ads, to the fact that Astral Media has a well-documented history of non-compliance with city bylaws. Only one of us mentioned the overabundance of ad-space in this contract, but that was the only thing Miller's council focused on at the end... that is, he focused on it and promptly dismissed it.

I don't know what it is that causes me to think that this sort of thing would work. Clearly, when this project came about two years ago, there was no need for consultation or debate. In a sharply divided council favouring the Mayor, Miller gets what Miller wants. Logic be damned.

On my way home from a climate conference, I stopped at the Green Living show looking for some food and was struck by a small revelation:

The Green Living Show is exactly like every other consumer show: claims by hundreds of vendors that you to can be a better person if only you would buy their stuff.

I don't know how it happened, but somehow, this child of the anti-globalisation movement, the green push, was transformed into yet another way to sell people stuff they don't need.

When will people learn that we can't consume our way out of this hole we've dug ourselves? Buy this compostable cup; it's "good for the environment", just don't mention that it's made in China and shipped/trucked 6000km to help feel good about drinking from a disposable cup. Or better yet, adjust your investment portfolio to target these "green" companies, ignoring the fact that any company, based on the current economic models, is unsustainable because it has to favour growth over environmental stewardship.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see so much interest in doing the Right Thing™, but I just see it all going the wrong way -- it's as if we've learned nothing.

'Course the fact is, we haven't, and that's why we're screwed.

Looking to take a tour of a neighbourhood in Toronto? Or maybe you're just curious about the history of a pretty building on in Parkdale or Cabbage town? Whatever your interest, Jane's Walk is a free guided tour through the neighbourhood of your choice by a knowledgeable Toronto resident. Prominent Torontonians such as John Sewell and Adam Vaugn are on the list of tour guides, and some the list of neighbourhoods is also really diverse.

I'll probably be going to one, though I'm not sure which one yet. If you're interested in a particular trip, let me know and maybe we'll go together.

Thanks to Stephen for the link :-)

The Mayor has a plan to make Toronto greener. And while he thinks it's ok to install thousands of street furniture that use coal-fired energy to broadcast ads, he also has some good ideas too.

On the list are:

• Doubling the size of the tree canopy to 34 per cent, which would at least triple the number of trees the city plants every year from around 60,000 to 175,000.
• Cutting water consumption by requiring all homeowners to install a low-flow toilet, which uses 6 litres of water per flush. A conventional toilet uses 13 litres.
• Conserving 90 megawatts of electricity by 2012 -- enough to power more than 60,000 homes.
• Implementing an annual parking or motor vehicle registration fee to fund retrofits and renewable energy

All important goals, to be sure, but increasing the tree canopy has to have the greatest effect since it will reduce load on the sewer system (water retention in the soil), reduce energy use due to natural cooling in the summer time, and increase air quality... not to mention make Toronto prettier.

Anyway, the Star is doing an online poll on the above options, so if you're interested, you should check out their in-depth article (from which I copied the above items).

I had this thought today on my way home and I thought I would share it, if only to be able to say later: "I saw this coming years ago" :-) The following may sound technical for the non-geek, I'll explain myself better if you ask questions, but if you're bothered by geek-speak, you probably just want to skip this post.

One of the big problems with online communities is the load on a centralised server. The wider your user base grows, the greater the load on your servers. This issue leads to the second problem: corporate control and need to use advertising as a revenue stream to support the server load.

Now with most sites, this in an unavoidable problem. After all, sites like imdb.com are largely a repository of information in a centralised location for access by all. However, with community-oriented portals like MySpace and Facebook, the content is largely member-generated and hosted in one place either out of tradition or because the user base lacks the capacity to host that information locally.

But as hardware gets cheaper and wireless access more prevalent, we're going to start seeing a lot more in the way of mobile computing. The inevitable result then is that we'll be able to host our own information on our own machines and provide (or not provide) that information to the public through an open protocol.

So, for example, under this system, you would go to a central site (for the sake of argument, we'll use Facebook) and search for "Daniel Quinn". The site will have a basic record that these n people match your search criteria and that their information services can be found at their respective addresses. You could then issue a friend request to that user which would be managed only between you and I and the servers we're running on our personal devices.

Once a relationship is established, it exists only on my device and yours -- the key being the host site doesn't store this information, doesn't need to collate and back it up, or handle the bandwidth requests for other users wondering who my friends are. All relationship information, images, shared notes, etc. etc. would be managed by the devices operated by the user you're querying.

This sort of thing is a while off I would think. Frankly though, I think the real limiters would be the writing of an open and scalable protocol to handle a network like this, and the fact that most computer users are idiots who would have no idea how to configure their own server. A system like this, however inevitable, will have to depend on really slick software that does the majority of the work for you, and a solid, open framework upon which to base each application.

Ok, I'm done. Rant over. Wait for the "I told you so" in about 10years.

Toronto's weather these past few days has been amazing. With clear blue skies and 15°-25°C weather, the city was screaming for bike riders. Everywhere you looked, people were dusting off their old two-wheelers and partaking on a relaxing roll through the city... but not us. No, I called Stephen Saturday morning and said: "Lets ride to High Park!" and so I hopped on Syria and rode West to Spadina & Bloor, picked up Stephen and started our killer journey.

Now it should be mentioned that this sounds like a really big deal, but an experienced cyclist would probably fall over laughing at the way I'm describing this trip. I make no claims that this is an exceptional journey for everyone, but for an out of shape programmer, this was tough run. We rode out to High Park, back along Roncesvalles, down Dundas West until we ran out of working road (they're doing construction), to Spadina, down to Queen (NOT fun), down Queen to Church, up through the villiage to Wellesley, where we parted ways and I went to Pape & Bloor for Lukie's birthday party.

Along the way, we stopped for some tasty ethnic food in the Polish sector (Roncesvalles & Queen) and had some ill-conceived icecream in the villiage. Total trip distance: 26km. Total time spent: 6hours. ...and I hurt. I'm sitting on Stephen's couch right now blogging this and my feet STILL hurt. This must be how people who go to the gym feel :-)

I had an interesting experience last night.

I called and talked to my old friend Annie to work out the details surrounding her upcoming wedding. I needed to know which days I should be in town, so I could properly book my flights to Edmonton and then to Europe. It was lovely to hear from her and we figured everything out rather quickly; after which we chatted about what we're doing in our own corners of the continent and just basically caught up.

It wasn't until after I hung up, finished working on my inbox and closed the laptop that I realised it: I'm becoming Torontonian.

I recognised a pace in my transaction with Annie to be the same tone and speed I'd seen in the few Toronto natives who'd come to visit Vancouver. It's fast, unemotional and very to the point... and it was all over my conversation.

I know that before I came out East, I'd always been a fast-paced, no bullshit kind of person, but it's as though I can feel that Vancouver-ness, that laid-back, friendly side of me is going away. ...and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it back when I go home. Is it possible that people back home will refer to me as "the guy from Toronto"?

I just made a pitch to my office manager to switch the whole office from standard office paper to FSC-certified paper. And we'll probably do it because the costs are the same.

I just did some quick digging today and found that while we were spending roughly $50 for 5000 sheets of paper (10reams @ 500sheets each), we could get the very same quantity of Domtar FSC-certified paper from Staples for $49.96.

Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't do this.

Is it wrong that I identify with Dieselsweeties a little too much today?

Bill is one of my personal favourite bloggers to read. He's a former coworker from back in my Moshpit days and his style is high-larious. His post today specifically though is exactly the kind of thing I needed to read just now. Thanks Bill :-)