That time I was on the Skate Patrol for ten years (Family Day finale)

Today is Family Day and the last day of Winterlude, which makes for a good place to finish my series about my time as a member of the Rideau Canal Skate Patrol. You may want to first read part 1 and part 2.

Starting in 2011, the NCC wanted a skate patroller to be up on the ground level for the annual flag-raising ceremony which marks the official opening of the canal, and I was that skate patroller. I wasn't in the scrum during the actual flag-raising, instead I stepped back to take a video of the flag raising. I believe this one was take 2, because some of the media photographers missed the flag going up the pole the first time:

I then posed for some photos, including this one with an Ice Hog mascot (think groundhog, but with ice) and someone who was introduced to me as a dignitary from the insurance company that sponsored the skate patrol that year:

3D Thursday: Super Men's barbershop

On March 12, 2014, I learned via Twitter that 504 Gladstone was on fire. I didn't get there until around 10pm, after it had been successfully defeated. The fire damage appeared relatively contained to the end unit, and the street had reopened to traffic. I took a 3D photo, which is actually a bit chilling because you can see right into the damaged unit through the window opening:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

I learned about the fire shortly after a neighbour across the street tweeted a couple photos around 6:30 p.m.:

Gladstone totally shut down pic.twitter.com/RgxeCq91Ok
— Upgrayedd (@DeportPanther) March 12, 2014

By the next day, the units on the west end of the row had been boarded up. The fire appeared to have been most severe in the commercial ground-floor unit at the west end, which contained an antique store, and previously a "Teleologist" (which a few years ago sparked a discussion, of which I can't find any record any more):

This wasn't the first close call for this building. In January 2007, a rather nasty (though, I understand, non-fatal) collision at this corner tore a traffic signal pole right off its footing and just missed smashing the windows of the art classes.

At the east end of the row are an art class place and the Super Men's Hair Stylist & Barber Shop. I started going there a few years ago after my previous barber on Bank Street kept jacking his prices up with decreasing customer service. These talented Iraqi men do it for much less, seven days a week (though the price has increased slightly since this photo was taken in November 2011):

Due to the smoke damage, the barbershop decided to move across the street, next to Fil's Furniture. It's a much larger space which will allow one of the barbers to move his art studio into the back:

His website is www.FirebySaba.com; an unfortunate name given the circumstances, but arising from his technique. His thickly-covered canvasses are a "controlled riot of colour" (according to the website description), and I'd say some of them are even astral. The first time I met Sabah, he had been in Canada for just two months and had never experienced a real winter. He's easily one of the most interesting and passionate people I've met.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

Snow removal on Bank Street (video)

On the left, the snow accumulation on Bank Street's west sidewalk from the previous snowfall. On the right, the mostly-bare road and sidewalk minutes after the City took the same snowbanks away from the east side of Bank Street last night:

I described the process in more detail in my 2012 post, "Snow removal on Kent." In summary, some very deft sidewalk plow operators push the snow from around various obstacles on the sidewalk into the road. Then graders like this one go by to arrange this snow into a straight row on the roadway:

Then, of course, the big snow blower machine comes by to whisk the snow (and ice!) all away with ease, while a lineup of trucks follow in wait of their turn to collect the snow from the blower:

I took a video of the blower going by. Watch it in stunning HD:

As described at a briefing last week at the City's Transportation Committee, snow removal (that is, physically removing it from the road and taking it someplace else, as opposed to snow clearing, which is just pushing it aside) makes up the biggest part of the City's winter maintenance budget. Of the $11.8M spent to clean up after the December 20 storm, most ($7.2M) was spent on snow removal. By contrast, $873,000 was spent on sidewalk clearing during and after that storm, which amounts to about a dollar per person for that one storm.

Flashy bike

Near the end of December as the Rideau Canal skateway was agonizingly close to opening, I went on a Bike Ride along the canal one night to take some photos of the canal. With my bike resting on one side of the Bank Street bridge, I took a picture of it. Realizing I'd accidentally got it when the flashing purple lights were off, I took another. At the suggestion of a friend, I made it into an animated gif, and it works pretty well!

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

Peds on Weds: Toronto-style sidewalks part 3 - the downsides

There has been a fair amount of criticism of the Toronto-style sidewalk design since it was made the standard in the City of Ottawa in 2006, just as there have been various challenges implementing it. As with any standard, you can't please all of the people all of the time, especially in a constrained physical environment like Delaware Avenue, below:

In the first part of this series, I described what "Toronto-style" sidewalks are and how they're supposed to work. In the second part, I detailed the rather technical history of how this sidewalk design, also known as "ramp-style vehicle access crossing", became standard, following through minutes from post-amalgamation City of Ottawa through to 2006.

Feedback about the design started as soon as the sidewalks on Delaware (pictured above) and Holland Avenue were installed for the pilot project. Since then, the design has also received its share of criticism from various sources. Today I'll be discussing these criticisms, and other issues the standard has encountered. I'll finish the series next week with a review of alternatives, starting with how Ottawa's sidewalks have been designed through the ages.

3D Thursday: Rideau Canal Skateway

On Twitter yesterday I asked if I today's 3D photos should be of the Rideau Canal or of the World Exchange Centre theatres, the only vote was from the Rideau Canal Skateway account. This is notable because in previous years there were only accounts for Winterlude (which is now run by the Department of Canadian Heritage) and for the Rideau Canal waterway (which is run in the non-skateway season by Parks Canada). Now both the Rideau Canal skateway and the NCC itself both are on Twitter, and the Skateway account actively engages with the public.

Given the warm temperatures on the weekend, today might be your last chance to skate on the canal for a while. So to entice you, I bring you photos of the canal, which opened on the relatively early date of December 31, 2013. Here it is that day at dusk at the Concord rest area at the far east end of Centretown:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The night before, I also took photos of the Canal. Here's a stunning 3D nighttime view of Bank Street bridge with Lansdowne Park's construction cranes in the background. Make sure to view it full screen and zoom in if you can:

3D Thursday: Gladstone block

I haven't blogged much about the Gladstone Avenue reconstruction project, perhaps because as far as street reconstructions go it's fairly straightforward; only four blocks, and not a major commercial street like Bank, Somerset, or Preston. My only Gladstone reconstruction post was also a 3D Thursday post. (Incidentally, there's an open house this Wednesday for the Queen Street redesign, 11 December 2013 at 5:30-8pm, City Hall)

Due to time constraints, the contractor only undertook one block this year, between Metcalfe and Elgin. Some years the snow comes pretty late, allowing for an extended construction season. This year, unfortunately, is not one of them, and snow fell after the curbs were put in for the much-wider sidewalks:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The next photo shows in 3D what you can't see in the 2D equivalent (linked immediately below the photo): that the curbs (under the orange tarps) are higher than the sidewalk bed behind them.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

It was a bit of a mess at the Metcalfe end of the block while all this was sorted out.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The following week, the road and sidewalks were stripped of the snow and graded with asphalt. It was probably the least snowy street in Ottawa (even if it was also the least-paved one). This excavator has a neat side-to-side pivot on its bucket.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The sidewalks have been paved in asphalt temporarily for the winter, using this miniature asphalt layer vehicle (like the ones used for roads, but only about six feet wide). This might be my first attempt at nighttime 3D photos with flash, and I'm glad with how it turned out.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The remaining three blocks between Bank and Cartier will be done next year, as will the finishing work on this block. It'll be a big improvement over how it used to look: an excessively wide street with no trees, lots of potholes, and narrow sidewalks.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

3D Thursday: Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau #nbog13

I took a number of photos during this year's rainy-but-well-attended Nuit Blanche Ottawa+Gatineau on September 21/22, but only two 3D photos. I no longer have two cameras and it's hard to take a pair of stills with moving people in the shot.

Both of the 3D photos I took were in the Market. This tree was nicely done up on George Street, I think by the O-Town [Yarn-]Bombers:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

You can see the two exposures by closing one eye, then the other. I think between exposures, a couple of the lights were turned off in the condo building in the background.

With brightly-coloured things like this, the colour shots don't work quite as well because red objects only appear in one eye and blue objects only appear in the other. Here's the same photo again with the colours removed before converting the layers to red and cyan:

The next one is a photographic sculpture by Susy Oliviera at SAW Gallery, called Have Everything and Die. The wall behind was red, so I didn't even bother trying to do the 3D conversion in colour (but I've left the colour in the source photos below).

This sculpture is ideal for photographing in 3D, because a regular photo doesn't capture the essence of it. It's a bunch of pieces of photo moulded together into a kind of sculpture (she had another, photographed on Peter Simpson's Big Beat blog here), but instead of the face put convex (with the nose pointing out), it's concave (with the cheeks and nose going inward):

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

That's a pretty important part of the piece that you don't get with a regular photo of the sculpture.

But a really neat thing about the 3D photos is if you flip your 3D glasses around (i.e. the red filter on your right eye instead of your left eye), it looks convex! This is a neat twist on the old paper dragon illusion or the rotating mask illusion.


While I'm talking about Nuit Blanche 2013, I should mention that I happened to be in Toronto this October to see Ai Weiwei's Forever Bicycles sculpture, which was installed outside Toronto City Hall for their Nuit Blanche. The colour-changing lighting scheme prevented me from taking any photos in 3D (since I'd need to take two photos in succession), but it's still really neat:

The description says that it's made up of 3,144 bicycles, and the title is a play on the name of China's largest bicycle brand, Yong Jiu, which translates as "forever".

They're not real bicycles, but rather a steel representation of bicycle frames. But the wheels are real bicycle wheels and they all spin freely!

It's possible I'm just imagining it, but from a distance, it looks like the shape of the sculpture is a pair of giant bicycles heading each other off on Nathan Phillips Square:

Truly mesmerising! A shame I couldn't get this shot in 3D!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

3D Thursday: Darkness

Back in mid-May, before the finishing touches were done on the O-Train pathway, I swung by at night and took some photos. I had my tripod with me and some time, so I thought I'd see if I could get the right shots for some 3D photos. I think they turned out pretty well.

This one is of the stairs leading down to Louisa Street off the pathway. The railing had just been installed: (click on the image to see it larger, you can even make out the depth of the blades of grass!)

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

When you're using one camera to take two exposures for a 3D shot, it's difficult enough in the daytime. The colours or lighting levels don't always match, you need to make sure the subject is stationary, and that the camera location is moved enough to have an effect, but not too much to spoil it. At nighttime, it's even harder. Night photos all but demand a tripod, and my point-and-shoot cameras aren't always consistent in producing the same settings for the same shot.

At the time, they were making rapid progress on installing the ramp in the sidewalk along the Somerset Street viaduct where the pathway comes uphill to meet it, so that cyclists could safely cross the sidewalk. They had left it for the night with the rebar installed and a fence segment laid over it, for safety I guess. This provides a great contrast of depths that works really well in 3D photos.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

While I wanted to come back to take a 3D photo the next day, I knew that there was a good chance they'd have poured the concrete, so I went ahead and poked my camera through the construction fence, held it still as best as I could, and took a photo. Then I poked it through the next hole over and did it again. And it turned out pretty good!

As it happened, I had to go by there anyway the next day, and they hadn't yet poured the concrete! But it was a good thing I had taken the photo the night before as I was in a hurry and could only snap a quick photo or two from across the street:

I hope you're enjoying the O-Train pathway, especially now that the O-Train is back in service!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

Jane's Walks this weekend!

In case you haven't heard, Jane's Walk Ottawa happens this weekend. I haven't given any since the Rescue Bronson Jane's Walk I gave two years ago. It was fun, but a lot of work. So instead I'll try to go out on a couple of other people's walks. Here are some I'm looking at that are within Somerset Ward, with the description on the Jane's Walk Ottawa website linked to the headings:

Apt613 Blog Walk of Somerset
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 2pm-3:30pm
Meet at Dundonald Park, Somerset and Bay

Staying on the Bronson theme of my 2011 walk, Apartment 613 is holding a walk in Chinatown, whose businesses are suffering from the closure of the Bronson/Somerset intersection. This one has a neat format, where they'll interview some of the business owners in the same way they do interviews for their blog entries, only it'll be live and you'll be there!

Local Confectionaries
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4pm-5pm
Meet at Somerset and Preston

A great segue from the Apt613 walk, local cartoonist/illustrator Colin White is giving a tour of the corner stores which feature often in his drawings. I don't think I've met him in person, but I like his depictions of familiar hyperlocal landmarks.

Bixi's back for 2013

As of today, Capital Bixi is back in action! For subscribers like me, that means my key should work for the remainder of my one-year subscription (which I bought last June). And for you readers of my blog, that means I'm going to blog about it!

I never got around to blogging my Bixi photos last year (and the year before, my season-opener blog post used photos from the 2009 pilot), so I get to include some of those with this post. For example, the one above was taken last June at the Museum of Nature's east lawn, at Elgin and McLeod. On Saturday night, the bikes had been re-installed, though it was decidedly snowier: