Bad sectors in Centretown

Back in July, my hard disk drive crashed, losing two months' worth of photos (about 1600). At the end of October I got a surprise call from the guy I'd brought it to, who said he was able to recover over 90% of the data. I was able to push this to about 97% of the photos that I had taken since my previous backup.

Some of them, however, were damaged. The hard drive had bad sectors and in the recovery many of the photos were damaged (only a very small number were completely unreadable). The damage inflicted on them actually has a bit of an artistic tone to them. Here's a photo of 222 Queen Street (which is where the RMOC headquarters were before it moved to the building that's now City Hall):

I discovered that I actually had a more recent backup on an external drive, up to mid-June. From this, I was able to push the recovery rate to about 99% of my photos, since many of the damaged photos were taken before then. Here's the original of the photo above:

One last (hopefully) blast of winter

The weather forecast suggests that we'll be getting another 20-centimetre blast of snow in the next couple of days. This might be my last chance this year to get some of my winter-related photos out before trying to forget that season and focus on spring and summer. So here goes.

Here's an inuksuk I built outside Bridgehead on Elgin after a snowstorm in December. It was one of those ones with really sticky snow. A couple of days after falling, that sticky snow had hardened into snow you could cut chunks from.

That was actually from the storm pictured below on Gladstone, where the snow 'flakes' were the size of frosted mini wheats. I hope this week's storm doesn't bring us this heavy stuff:

Around 150 Slater

I haven't written much about the Export Development Canada building at 150 Slater since the three-part series on the demolition and excavation. I doubt there's much interest in construction photos, but here are a few shots of the building itself.

Here is the building at nighttime, from Slater and O'Connor. Notice the spotlights on the underside of the podium canopy:

The finishes make for some interesting surfaces. You can see the exposed concrete pillar inside the building, next to the shell that surrounds the podium.

Within the podium enclosure is a two-storey marble projection above the ground floor. The counterpart is a set back ground floor with retail (the Slater Street frontage seen below is still vacant in 2013).

Along O'Connor, a Bridgehead and a Marcello's have opened up. Like the other small downtown locations, this Bridgehead closes at 6pm. If I recall correctly, the Albert and Bank location is the only one north of Somerset to open late, and even then it still closes earlier than the ones in residential areas.

In contrast to the Slater and O'Connor frontages, the Laurier Avenue frontage on the south side of the lot (separated from the corner by a smaller office building) is very unflattering and hostile to the streetfront. Not one, but two sets of garage doors and a bleak surrounding.

The massing of this side is similar to the Laurier Computer building that was torn down for 150 Slater (I assume this is merely a coincidence). Although that building used to be larger, as covered in a history of the Rideau Winter Club and other curling rinks in the city over at URBSite.

The Birdcage gang

These three birds were at Bridgehead on Elgin one day recently, lined up like three gangsters up to no good.

They've been around for a while, and they have a record of sealing from Bridgehead customers. I put my spikey helmet on top of my plate to protect my food from them when I go inside!

I blogged a bunch of photos and videos in this 2008 post. In 2009, I took some photos of this one helping himself to my muffin. You can see the threatening mobster look in his eye, saying "don't even think about doing anything about this!"

He's got backup watching from the ledge, to make sure I don't try any funny stuff. They mean it! One of them left a 'surprise' on my head the other day.

And they were raised so well by their mother. Where did they go wrong?

Just kidding about the mob stuff! ;-)

But in other bird-related news, the free outdoor film festival Centretown Movies will be showing The Birdcage tonight (which was screened separately last year in the Village), 7pm at Dundonald Park. On the Friday screenings, donations collected go to a specific group or cause. Tonight's proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood Ottawa.

Donations collected at the Saturday films go toward the festival's operating costs to keep it free. Last week's screening of E.T. filled the park with moviegoers on their blankets, camping chairs, and even a couch!

Bridgehead Roastery opens Tuesday!

Local fair-trade organice coffee chain Bridgehead's long-awaited new flagship roastery at Preston and Anderson will be opening tomorrow to the public. This will be the 15th shop Bridgehead has opened in 12 years. In addition to the on-site bean storage and offices, there is a coffeeshop, with all the familiar trimmings of Bridgehead stores, and more. Because I had bought a "Plant A Bean" card (a form of community-supported financing where my upfront payment is repaid in installments every six months on my Bridgehead card, with interest), I was invited to a special preview of the roastery yesterday morning.

The above panorama is a view from just inside the entrance, which is off of Anderson Street, only a few steps from Preston Street. You can see the coffeeshop in the foreground, the roasting equipment off to the left, and the second-floor offices at the back.

The building was constructed in 1921 as stables for the Bell telephone company. Its double-peaked roof with riveted steel trusses is unique in Ottawa.

More recently, it was the home of Preston & Lieff Glass. Here's a view from April 2011, looking from the corner of Preston and Anderson (two blocks south of Somerset, across from Plouffe Park):

Light Rain

On Monday, July 19, 2010, it was raining, and not lightly. But the sun was mysteriously out while the rain continued.

It made for an interesting sight, as at the rear entrance to the Bridgehead on Elgin at MacLaren:

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Welcome Signs of Spring

Spring is coming to Centretown. There are signs of it everywhere.

For one, the patio at Bridgehead has been set up. Here's a shot of the truck delivering the chairs and tables earlier this month:

Don't worry, I'm not missing the wonderful weather today. My new laptop battery lets me enjoy the sun as I compose this post on Bridgehead's patio.

Pure Gelato has also been preparing for the nicer weather by rebuilding their front entrance:

On my way over today, I found the many benches installed on Bank Street between Laurier and Somerset. They're all very well used at all times of the day, which really livens up the street. And thankfully, they aren't those ghastly cafeteria chairs that were tested last fall.

The artistic bicycle racks promised for Bank Street haven't yet been installed, but the omnipresent blue bicycle racks were installed on Elgin this past week while I was enjoying an after-work drink at Bridgehead:

I caught a shot of the workers installing the racks and their van outside Boushey's:

The windows at the government building at 333 Laurier (department of the half-beast?) got a good cleaning by workers with very, very long poles:

Neither a sign of spring, nor a welcome sign, but a sign of the times: the Ottawa Citizen has removed many of its newspaper boxes, leaving only a few in the central core. At this rate, the multi-unit newspaper boxes may become unnecessary.

And the best sign of spring is the annual Eco-Stewardship Fair at the RA Centre. Among the many displays was one of the City of Ottawa booths advertising the green bins that are coming in 2010. They were giving out paper leaf-and-yard-waste bags advertising this announcement. A sample green bin was on hand, which was the first time I got an inkling of how big these things will be (the answer: not very):

The company building the processing facilities for this organic waste also had a booth. Apparently they're starting out with the capacity for 200,000 tons of material per year from the City of Ottawa, but will eventually grow their operations to accommodate 200,000 tons. Private companies, like condo buildings and restaurants, will also be able to dispose of their waste there. The facility will be funded by a combination of dumping fees and sales of the processed material to farmers.

If you ask me, 2010 isn't soon enough to start diverting this stuff from landfills!

Happy spring!

Traffic Operations Division Tour, Part III + epilogue

This is Part III of the tour given to the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee of the City of Ottawa's Traffic Operations Division at 175 Loretta Street, just off of Gladstone past the O-Train tracks. This is the building from which they monitor and control traffic operations, as well as prepare signs and signals for installation. At the end of this post is an epilogue on the lessons I learned from the tour and the subsequent RCAC meeting.

When you walk into the building, you can see the pride that its inhabitants take in their work to keep Ottawa's traffic flowing smoothly and safely. There's a display case of awards at the front of the foyer, and portraits of long-serving and retired employees grace the walls:

After the traffic control room (Part I of the tour) and the sign shop (Part II), we headed to the rooms where they program, assemble, and test the traffic signals and signal boxes.

Here are some demo units. In the back is a demo bus priority signal--the white bar above the red light indicates priority for buses. At the front is a demo of the pedestrian countdown signal which had been set up in the foyer of City Hall following this report, which was the basis for the approval of these units. Eventually, all crosswalks will have the countdown signals, starting with those at least four lanes wide.

There's a relatively small room in which they assemble the controller cabinets for each intersection. Each one of these boxes has about $12,000 worth of equipment inside, and a full intersection costs about $150,000. They're tremendously complex instruments.

Here, our tour guide Tom Fitzgerald, who is the supervisor of Traffic and Parking Operations, told us about the equipment inside. The controller units are made by an Ottawa-based company, which also makes them for the province. It takes in all the information--its programmed cycles, plus information from signal loops and buttons, and controls the signals. A device called a conflict monitor ensures that you don't get a situation like two directions getting a green light at the same time. If it detects a conflict (which could be caused by a short circuit), it puts all signals to flashing red.

Back in the signal assembly room, Jim Bell talks to the group and Tom looks on. Here is a stack of those pedestrian countdown signals ready to go:

Okay, so the three signals aren't as tall as Jim--he's well behind them. But they are big. Here's a pedestrian signal and a traffic signal facing each other. In the back are some large boots, and you can see that the top of the pedestrian signal is about waist-high:

And here's a larger signal with larger lamps for the red light and green arrow, plus a backing plate (I might have learned the proper name for these parts if I had been paying attention instead of taking photos!) For perspective, that's my pen next to the light:

Here are some four-way signals that hang in the middle of intersections in less-populated areas. I remember there used to be one at Byron and Churchill, which has since been replaced with a full intersection. One direction flashes yellow (proceed with caution), the other flashes red (stop, then proceed with caution if the way is clear).

Now that there's an idea of how big these signals are, you can start to understand how much room was occupied by these racks of assembled signals. The rack along the right wall was at least twice as long as the one on the left:

And that's the end of the tour. I still have some photos to share, though. Outside the building, you can see the Queensway on the right, and behind the parked cars you can make out some metal streetlight posts. Behind that is the O-Train trench:

And what would such a post be without photos of installation. Just a couple days after the tour, workers were working on the wiring at the intersection of Bank and Gilmour, and a police officer was directing traffic. Last August I posted a photo of a worker replacing the bulbs on a traffic light at Elgin and MacLaren.

Epilogue:

Unfortunately, the City cut tours of its facilities from its budget as a consequence of the 2004 Universal Program Review, and I think the City is worse off for it. This somewhat exclusive tour of the Traffic Operations Division gave a lot of insight into what the City does and how much work goes into keeping Ottawa moving smoothly. It gives a reminder that "City Staff" aren't a bunch of useless bureaucrats wasting taxpayer money, as the Mayor might have you believe, but rather they are people that do real, tangible work.

This became very clear when Rob Orchin, Manager of Mobility and Area Traffic Management, told us where we were in terms of spending the money budgeted for 2009 for the Ottawa Cycling Plan. Currently, nearly all of the requests for cycling infrastructure are handled by one person--Robin Bennett. This goes everywhere from adding a cycling route sign, to reviewing the geometry of a proposed major roadway to ensure enough space for cyclists, and everything in between. Robin is a cyclist and he is very passionate about doing the best job he can.

The Ottawa Cycling Plan, which was passed last year, promises to spend much more on cycling infrastucture--$5 million per year, up from less than one-tenth that amount. To cope with this increase, the Traffic Demand Management (TDM) department (which works to support ways to get people out of their cars) asked for more staff in the 2009 budget. Unfortunately, this request was declined, as part of the Mayor's drive to cut staff and due to the ongoing hiring freeze. As could be predicted, this has had drastic and costly repercussions.

The department had planned to spend the first part of 2009 on creating a list of cycling projects that would make the best use of the $1.5 million or so that was budgeted for this year. Whatever wasn't finished on this list would then carry forward and be the basis of the 2010 list, and so on. But because of the staff shortage, they had to contract that out to the consultants that developed the cycling plan instead of doing it in-house. See this Sun article from Monday about Councillor Maria McRae's discovery of just how much the City is wasting with this type of arrangement:

But there are other factors that make this molehil into a mountain of a problem. The 53-day bus strike kept the TDM department completely busy trying to find ways to help people who needed alternatives to the bus--things like carpooling, etc. This diverted resources away from creating that project list.

Then the Federal Stimulus package came in and added a whole new dimension. Since cycling funds are scarce, the department tries to get the best use of them by adding cycling facilities alongside larger road projects. This requires the larger road project to go ahead, but it isn't guaranteed that any stimulus project will go ahead. So Rob Orchin and his team have to juggle cycling projects that depend on road projects that depend on stimulus funds, and so on. It's very confusing.

Another complicating factor of the stimulus package is that cycling projects budgeted in 2009 are usually tendered in the fall and built in 2010. But the stimulus funding will make a lot more work in 2010, driving up the price. So it is beneficial to get as many of the cycling projects built in 2009 as possible, which is hard because of the staffing shortage.

Whatever ends up getting planned, the folks in the Traffic and Parking Operations department will do a good job of implementing it!

The Bridgehead Birds (with videos)

I had the opportunity to visit Beijing a few years back (just before the SARS scare), and one of the tings I remarked over the 10 or so days I was there was that I only noticed two birds during the whole trip.

In Centretown, the situation is much different. Here's Bridgehead on Elgin, as taken from the 2nd storey of the Fox and Feather Pub--essentially the reverse of the first photo in this post. (Note: the steak was good at the F&F, but everything else was pretty cheap. Salad was tasteless, and dressing comes in individual Kraft packages.)

I frequently go here after work, and if it's a nice day out (or if it's freezing inside), I'll sit on the patio, read the papers, do the crossword, meet a friend, or perhaps prepare a blog entry or two. Here's a nice shot of the view from mid-June:

There is a small flock of birds that likes to hang out in the little garden next to the patio, and these birds bring much pleasure and enjoyment. Here they are this past week, one of them (presumably the mother) feeding the others crumbs off the pavement: