Just an everyday normal web geek trying to figure out how to live life. I thought I would document the journey and help those who might be doing something similar. Posts tagged with “Bicycle”
Vision Unlimited
After visiting Portland, and returning home to Victoria, I realized that Victoria has some pretty cool things (just like Portland). While in Portland it is easy to be impressed by their bike friendly roads, interesting neighbourhoods and nice people. The thing that made Portland so cool for me was the edges. The edges are the interesting things you see, the edgy, the not super polished. These edges were everywhere in Portland and makes the city enjoyable, different and cool.
Fernwood has these edges and it Is one of my favorite neighbourhoods to ride by bicycle through. While riding through you get to see a great community garden, friendly people, the interesting Fernwood square, a vibrant bicycle culture (I saw a family using a cargo bike to haul the kids), and community decorated telephone poles. Fernwood is a community who doesn’t have limited vision, this is a community working towards a colorful and interesting future.
Fernwood, Thanks for the inspiration.
Our Favs in Portland
Portland is a fun place. Both Tanya and I love this place, and why not, it has all the stuff we love, cyclo-culture, amazing beer, foodie options, cool districts, chilled out just enough and just a little rough around the edges to make it interesting.
This isn’t an extensive list, we only had two days in Portland and one day was July 4th (everything was closed). These were our favorite activities.
- Rent bikes, if you have a little ones, go Dutch with Clever Cycles
- Get away from the heat in Forest Park
- Buy a baguette from Ken’s artisan bread and and fill it with goods from City Market
- Go to Hop Works Bike Bar
- Eat a Swedish breakfast at Broder, show up early to avoid a line
- Check out Alberta Street
- Eat ice cream from Salt and Straw
- Check out some of the many farmers markets
- Drink coffee in one of the cafes and think up skits for the next season of Portlandia
Other options?
Tanya and I are foodies and our travels usually have a food and drink spin, so if that isn’t your thing, download a copy of Travel Portland Magazine for many more options of what to see, do, and eat.
Other people do this as well (cover their seats worth plastic bags). Good seats are just worth covering.
I have started to take a netbook to work. Not to use at work, more to use on the way to work. With my long commute I have found a way to make the time fly by and also I have found a great way to become productive. It is a win win and I love it.
How it works
I have a smart phone running android. This operating system (brilliant) has the option that allows you to broadcast a wifi signal that uses you datatime to connect you to the internet. This is great, and one of the reasons why I didn’t get an iphone. So now I have my phone broadcasting a wifi signal and I can do my work while sitting on the bus.
What do I do on the bus?
I often wonder what that person beside me is thinking? After all I typically have a few terminals open, reading drupal documentation the net with lynx and typing code at the same time. What really happens is this.
- I build drupal websites (locally on my netbook, configuring files, theming sites)
- I maintain websites (the internet has made bulk communication easy, now I am connected with that and I can send out a newsletter to a hundred people with easy, thanks drupal)
- I communicate with email and twitter, I have most of my conversations on the bus *Write blog posts like this one
This leaves me some free time when I get home to do the things that just aren’t really possible with a 10 inch screen stuff like
- Designing websites, I have a 24inch monitor hooked up to a quad core i5 at home, this little netbook is painful compared to that.
- Surf the net and download files (it is all about bandwidth, because I really enjoy surfing)
- Hang out with Tanya (this is my partner, not my computer)
Data-plan
One could run through their data plan awfully quick if they were surfing the net on their computer, so I have a few rule that I try to follow as much as possible.
- Don’t surf – Surfing for the sake of surfing is not going to be that enjoyable and really isn’t that productive anyways.
- Use a text based browser – I told a guy that I use a text based browser (lynx is its name) and he claimed that he used to use it all the time and loved it…in 1996. 15 years later an aspiring web geek has found the beauty in browsing the web with a text browser, mainly becuase I am on the bus on a data plan with a slow connection, it still rocks.
- Don’t download anything – So when I am doing Drupal development on my netbook on the bus I do download things. I download modules, most modules are small and don’t take up much room. I even downloaded D7 once, but that is also small.
- So there I sit, uncomfortably on the bus, making websites on my local machine. The time flies, I remain productive and I improve my skill set all at the same time. It is pretty cool and this is something that wasn’t really that easy to do couple years ago. Not anymore.
Skills I plan to master sitting on the bus
- Command line operations
- The essential Vim program
- Drupal module development
- jQuery
For the first time in my life I am forced to sit on a bus for 2 hours a day. I am going to use this time to learn new skills and become more skilled in the process.
So why the photo of the bicycle handle bars? Once I get off the bus I get on the bike and ride from Langford to Victoria (About 14km), which is a great way to stay in shape, but is also and great way to start the day, I get to work and I feel refreshed and ready to start working.
Bike To Work 2011
As part of the Bike To Work committee for the Cowichan valley, I volunteered to take a photo of a cyclist that could be used for the poster. I wanted to have something different the most years, so I decided to add a little more style to cycling. I thought the photo turned out great despite the grey April day in Duncan.