logloglog

We killed Pepe today.

No, don’t worry; not with a saw, a spade or a pitchfork. And we didn’t even do it ourself. The vet did the dirty work with two injections. This photo was taken during the dress rehearsal on Sunday. I dug his grave and Alison let him try it out.

Eight years ago Pepe and I got off to a rough start. He bit me the first time I slept in his (and Alison’s) bed and ate half of my expensive mouth guard a week later. I wrote to a friend that this licking Chihuahua monster was awful. But over the years we got closer. And because Alison was away a lot I took care of him a lot in the past months. Fed him every couple of hours, regularly carried him outside so he could pee (and didn’t do it all inside) and tucked him in under his blanket.

I’ll miss him.

For a longer report of the events, illustrated with my photos, I direct you to Alison’s story, I’m too tired to type more right now.

On her weblog above you can also find some previous posts she wrote (eloquently) about the final weeks of Pepe.

And you can follow this link for much more Pepe.

(No need for sympathies in comments or emails; he had a good life and we’re fine.)

What do Bixis do at night? Since yesterday I know. They take the car!

I happened upon a guy that was transporting Bixis from “full stations” to “less full stations”. Not by just riding them from station to station but by loading and unloading them on a trailer. He stopped at several stations before he found one “less full” station and started unloading a couple of bikes from his trailer.

Wait. Doesn’t Bixi has an informative website were you can see “in real-time” how many bikes and free spots are available at every station? Apparently Bixi employees don’t use that map. ‘Nuf said.

Today I saw the installation of a Bixi station. It’s not as easy as they told us on their website —the stations are unloaded from a truck and ready to go— . In reality the Bixi stations are transported in modules that need to be attached together. Also the solar panel needs to be put on a pole and installed. It takes approximately an hour, and three people, to set one up.

PS When I braked to stop and take this photo my (brand new) tire punctured. The revenge of Bixi?

A. and I tried out Bixi today. I used my own bike but for A. we wanted to get a Bixi.

We went to “our” Bixi station and I tapped the solar powered touch screen. Two icons were visible, one of it disabled. After I tapped the big icon I was presented with the screen shown above. There appear to be 50 pages of this legalese text, with Article 1 to x, in either English or French. Rather overwhelming, and maybe at the page 10 there are instructions, but I never clicked through so far.

Instead I just put my credit card in the credit card slot.

After a short while two other icons appeared, but before I could figure out what they meant (there is plenty of room to add a text next to it, and after 50 pages of text one or two words would be really helpful here) the printer printed a ticket. It had a 5 digit code on it, and a pictogram how to enter it. After a moment of confusion I found out that next to each bike there was a small keypad where one would punch in the code. The code contains only the numbers 1, 2 and 3 only, so it’s not to hard to do. I entered the code and a red light started flashing. Not good. After three more tries we entered the code in another bike’s keypad and finally it worked: a green light lit up, the lock released and the Bixi bike was ours to use.

We adjusted the saddle and off we went. It was A.’s first ride in the city in decades, so we started on a quiet residential street. The steering of the bike is a bit “nervous” but after a while she got used to it. She liked that the centre of gravity was very low.

Our destination was the Jean-Talon Market about 1.5 km away. I had a iPhone map that linked to the map on the Bixi website that supposedly shows realtime information about the amount of Bixi’s available at every station. More importantly, it shows how many free spots there are at each stand. Because the Bixi has no lock, and after 30 minutes of “free” use it gets really expensive. If you’d use the Bixi for three consecutive hours a whopping $16.50, on top of your $5 daily fee, would have been charged to you credit card.
In order to not break the bank you have to bring back the Bixi bike to a station within 30 minutes. Fortunately you then can immediately get another bike, and use it for free for the next half hour. But this means there should be stations, with free spots, at regular intervals, otherwise you are more or less stuck.

According to the map that I checked when we left home there were 7 free spots at the Henri-Julien/Jean Talon stand. There was none. I checked the map again on my iPhone, and it still said 7 free spots. Next stand, 300 metres further away on Chateaubriand/Bélanger. According to the map, 5 free spots. In reality, none.
Finally we found one free spot on the Bréboeuf/Jean-Talon stand, 800 metres from our destination, but in another direction. Again, the map said there should have been many free spots, and there were only two. Since this bike station was almost nearer to our house than to the Jean-Talon Market we felt kind of cheated.
We decided to cancel our visit to the market and instead to go back home. In order to do that we needed to unlock another bike. I typed in the code from my ticket but got a red light. We tried all bikes but none of them would unlock. The code-ticket had a phone number on it that I called for assistance. After a short wait a man answered me in very poor English and told me to swipe my card again and I would get a new number.

Of course! The old code was only valid for that station, and had expired after I unlocked the bike. But swiping your credit card repeatedly feels quite dangerous, especially because there is absolutely no feedback on the amount actually charged. (I still don’t know, since my online credit card record shows no charge at all.)

Again, some printed instructions, either on the pay kiosk or on the ticket would have been immensely helpful. They might have been there, but buried in a 50 page puddle of legalese, it’s unlikely that anybody would find them.

After I swiped my card again, I got a new code (I now figured out the two icons meant print code and show code on screen), unlocked a bike and rode back home.

So our first experience with Bixi wasn’t that positive. The bikes are great, but the information how to use it isn’t great,worse, it’s almost non-existent.

Also, if the information on the Bixi website is not correct and up-to-date, you can’t plan a trip. Without my iPhone, I wouldn’t even have known the locations of the “nearby” stations. A printed map on all the stations showing the nearest stations would be a really obvious solution here.

Bixi is nice, but you shouldn’t want to use it to go to a destination, like the Jean-Talon market, or a cinema downtown or things like that. Chances are that you can’t drop off your bike and either you pay a lot of money or have to walk quite a bit. Or both. I later learned there is an icon that becomes active when the station has no free spots left that will extend your half hour with 15 minutes so you have time to find a station that does have room to drop off your Bixi. But since the icons have no text there is no way you would know. When there is no room for your bike you don’t go to the touch screen to find a solution. At least I didn’t.

The ratio between bikes and stations is not good. On the Bixi website they talk about 3000 bikes and 300 station. Most stations don’t even have 10 places, so when nobody uses a Bixi, like at night, all bikes should be parked and everybody should have put them perfectly very spread out over the network. That isn’t going to happen. Realistically there should be two or three times more parking spaces than bikes.

And then there are those instructions: 50 pages of legalese interspersed with instructions is just ridiculous. Quebec user interface designers are either terrible, or those things are designed by the son of the director who is studying graphic design at a Cegep. I have no idea. The same applies to the interface design of the STM Opus terminals, but that is another rant.

I know Bixi is still in its infancy and not completely rolled out yet, but many of the above points are basic design flaws that could have been easily avoided.

For know, I don’t think A. will get a Bixi pass for her birthday, and not only also because she told me she would never use it to go to work downtown. She has more reasons than the ones pointed out above but still.

Bixi is Montreal’s new shared bike system and it was recently rolled out. Not all bicycle stands/stations were installed immediately but according to this sign they were going to install a Bixi station 150 meter from our house last Saturday. These stations install very fast. They are solar powered and after they are lifted of a truck they require just a few bolts and that’s it.

But somebody in the street thought it was wrong and glued this note on both of the signs:

Saturday came and went and no Bixi station was installed.

Sunday came and went and no Bixi station was installed. 

Monday came and went and no Bixi station was installed. 

Tuesday came and went and no Bixi station was installed. 

But finally, on Wednesday, a big truck came and dropped off this station. The bikes were added today. It is not installed in the original location (which would have cost two parking spaces) but, just as the note asked/said, on the other side of the intersection. So now it’s 170 metres from our house. We have many stations nearby, another one is 200 metres in the other direction, and there’s a third a bit further away, almost 400 metres, near the park.

This weekend I’m going to convince A. to make a test ride. And if it’s a success she might get a Bixi pass for her birthday. Or a bike.

If you have an iPhone or iPod you might want to check this site to get an interactive map that you can load in Google Maps which shows the location of all 300 stations and how many bikes (or free spots) are available at every station. Because some stations are at times totally empty and others are totally full, which is a problem when you either want to get a bike or want to drop one off.

Click for bigger version.

I took Wim (who does a lot of stereo-photography) to the Sami’s fruit and vegetable store. He was amazed by the giant mountains of veggies and took some stereo pictures of me. This one if while buying some bunches of Cilantro. Click the image for a bigger stereo 3D image. Red/Blue are glasses required to see the stereo effect.

(On a related note: I just read that Cilantro is the most profitable vegetable you can grow. So now you know.)

According to an article I read this morning (in French) it hasn’t been this cold since January 2003, my first winter here. I remember I bundled up back then, and I will do the same thing later today when I have to go outside.

My friends from the Netherlands and Belgium, here to install that machine, are extremely lucky they can witness this. Later they can tell stories about it to their grand children. They want to go skiing this weekend, but I had to temper their expectations.

Co-incidentally Poupoune’s new winter snowsuit arrived today. She hates it! I’ll post a picture later.

This is a machine that makes poop. They’re installing it now in Montreal and it will be on public display from Friday onwards. (You can go to http://cloaca.be to find out more). My friend Wim, another Wim than the artist that made this machine, is photographer and he’s here in Montréal (for the second time already) to document the setting up of the machine. There are also stereoscopic pictures on display that he made over the past few years.

The opening of the exhibition will be this Thursday 16 January and there will be plenty of food, for both human and mechanical lifeforms. Yes, this machine eats the same as we do, and it gets digested into the same excrements. You’re all invited.

Here is more info about the exhibition.

Made it to Yulblog on my skis. Here they are signing up blogs to be included on the register of Montreal blogs. I had already signed up from home, so this post might show up on their meta-montreal-feed.

Poupoune likes walks, but when they involve doggy boots, windproof capes, a biting cold and blowing snow? Not so much.

Another big fire 2 blocks from here. Co-incidentily a few of the same appartments that burned down two and a half years ago were damaged this time as well. But the fire started a few buildings to the North.

It’s -17 outside, with a strong wind. I don’t envy those firemen that have to work in a mist of water that freezes when it hits something solid. Like this tree, or their helmet.

Now I stink of smoke.