pointing out the obvious

It should be ridiculously easy to log everything I have listened to on my ipod touch, into my last.fm profile. Unfortunately, this is not the case. It doesn’t matter what version of last.fm, or scrobbler I use, they all can’t seem to figure it out.

While I’m thinking about it, I’ve read that if you do get the ipod touch / last.fm thing working, tracks within a podcast are not tracked. I recall last.fm mentioning that podcast id3 tags are less reliable than single song id3 tags. Surprising. Aren’t both user generated?

If and when I get my cbc radio 3 podcasts properly logged in my last.fm profile, I’ll ask the next question - why aren’t the last.fm recommendations very good? I thought collaborative filtering would work better than this…

I might get the chance to think about this problem a little more at work.

This personalized experience makes me feel cold and alone.

Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the MoveOntario 2020 plan last week.  You can find the real details of this plan outlined by Steve Munro here.  It’s an ambitious plan, but a great move for southwestern ontario.  I still can’t believe the announcement, and really hope it happens.

This is a great move to reduce congestion on our highways, take a stab at pollution and help our cities grow.  While it’ll take time to implement, and it will take time to get people out of the ‘car’ mindset, it’s a great start.  If this happens, this is going to be a historic period in toronto’s transit history.

completely awesome.

I have successfully rented, driven and returned a ZipCar twice, from two different locations and here’s what I thought…

The reservation process is pretty slick online - easy, intuitive, quick. I managed to rent with about 30 minutes notice without a problem, then rented a few days in advance without a problem. Awesome.

Searching for cars was a little buggy - if you select or unselect ’show me cars that are unavailable’ it doesn’t behave the way you would think. Someone needs to look at that, it’s not consistent. In my case, I wanted to find out when a truck was available, so not being able to see all trucks in the area that were booked or not booked was a little frustrating. But I figured out a way to make it work.

The cars are great. I rented a pickup on both occasions, so I expected it to be a little messy. However, the truck was relatively clean, a few scratches here and there, but it’s meant for moving things, so I was not surprised.

Upon returning a truck on Saturday morning to the Church and Wood St location, I found myself without my ZipCard. I likely lost it at the hardware store loading lumber and cement into the back. So this presented an interesting situation - I wasn’t able to lock the truck to complete my reservation at the lot.

Luckily, it was booked immediately after my drop-off time, so the other ZipCar member was there, ready to drive it away. I asked for the ZipCar number, and promptly called to remedy the situation. However, in order to get through the automated system and speak to a living person, I needed my ZipCard number. But I lost it, so I didn’t have it. I tried the normal ‘0′, or ‘*’ to get a living person, but it kept me away. It was very frustrating.

Eventually, I got the member waiting for the truck to call for me. Thankfully, she spoke to a ZipCar rep and cleared up the situation. But, if she had not been there, I would have been screwed.

Ultimately, the experience was a positive one. Having a truck available is EXTREMELY handy. AutoShare only seems to offer vans, which would have worked, but hauling bags of cement or lumber would have made a mess. With the pickup, I just swept the back out after my reservation and it was ready to return.

I’m hoping I find my ZipCard some day.  I’d like to rent again, it was a positive experience.  If I don’t find it, I’ll have to suck it up and pay $15 to have one reissued.

I was convinced to try ZipCar over AutoShare (at least initially) by way of a promotion that eliminated the application fees and gave me a small credit to try out the service. While I still feel as though I’m a better fit for AutoShare because it’s Canadian and has existed in the city for a while, I’m itching to give any car sharing service a spin.

So, I applied to ZipCar on Tuesday, picked up my ZipCard on Thursday and am waiting for the insurance approval step. The website suggests a typical approval takes 2-3 days, and it’s Friday, day 3.5.

I feel like a kid in a candy store. I just can’t deal with this.

While contemplating a green car recently, it struck me that I am doing exactly what auto makers want me to do - purchase a new car. I want to support green cars, and show that there is interest in producing more sustainable vehicles, however, I also want to curb the consumerism, which is just as much a problem as non-sustainable products.

A comment left by Aleem Kanji got me thinking more about consumerism and how it affects my life. The comment was a little misleading, but it brought thoughts of consumerism front and centre in this discussion. Somehow, I’ve reached a point in my life where purchasing things gives me this small rush of happiness, and I’m not sure how I got here. Case in point - I purchased an Airport Express last week because I thought I needed it. After opening the box, setting it up and playing with it for a few hours, I haven’t touched it. I need to break the connection between purchasing things and gratification, it’s a vicious circle that isn’t helping my bank account or the values that I’m carving out.

With this in mind, I took a different angle to the green car research - car coops. The idea behind car sharing is simple - there is a pool of cars that the car sharing company has at your disposal any time of day or night. Of course the ’share’ part of this idea means this same set of cars is also available to anyone else subscribing to the service, but ultimately, it means there are less cars sitting in driveways, thus less cars produced, and a smaller overall ecological footprint for all of us.

I struggled with the idea for a little while, trying to determine the difference between an auto share and car rental company. The main differences of an auto share are hourly rates, included insurance, included gas, and local availability. The two auto shares that I’ve seen in Toronto are AutoShare and ZipCar. Both offer very similar cars, which are mostly low impact vehicles, a few hybrids and a few vans, both have decent pricing, and both have cars parked in areas close to my house. There is a great article comparing AutoShare with ZipCar written by Torontoist - if you’re serious about the service, you should give it a read.

I’m still in the ‘thinking’ stage of the game, but I’m thinking this might be a great overall solution. I can always try it out for a few months, see how it works, and comment from there.

I took the leap a few months back and discontinued my account with Toronto Hydro and signed up for Bullfrog Power. Bullfrog is a green electricity provider in the GTA, who sources their electricity from low-impact sources including wind and water.

While I have yet to receive my first bill, the difference in cost should be around $40/bill, which works out to be about a 33% increase. Not so bad considering the net effect - no nuclear, no fossil fuels, much less CO2, and a whole sheet of little bullfrog stickers for my water bottle. awesome.

Now here’s where I come clean - my involvement in most of these social/environmental initiatives are directly attributed to my spouse - think Bill and Belinda (minus all the money and ideas). There, I said it.

You can also thank my friend Juan at global-culture.org for encouraging this.

As a result of a comment by k-fleXxX in a previous post, I realize just how little I do for social causes. I’m certainly not speaking for everyone, but I’m a relatively aware person but do not actively participate in or donate to social causes. I am guessing that most of my peers are in a similar position. It’s a sad state of affairs.

These are some of the things I like to do…

• Support small/independent businesses because I like to see the little guy succeed (and feed his/her family).
• Want to see an indie flick? Check out Lightchasers.
• Looking for some fair trade coffee? Checkout Responsible Harvest.
• Avoid unethical companies. Though, watch your sources, some are whacky.
• (rant…) Tip wait staff, taxi drivers and other service industry staff well because I’m only going to burn that extra $5 dollars on something insignificant - I also know revenue canada targets them for undeclared income, which is sad because 1 well-off person likely shelters more income from the tax man than a dozen service staff.
• Donate to something.. usually it’s wwf.ca, and as a result I have a growing collection of animal beanie babies.
• Donate old clothing, appliances to goodwill. They have started coming door-to-door!
• Use recycled building supplies and find treasures.

But my overall financial contributions to the cause are terrible. I spend more on coffee than I do donating in a year. That’s pathetic. Do I really need that car? Do I need that computer? Do I need those jeans? no.. no and no. Is my whole generation like this?

we’re doomed.

and yes, I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself this morning. awesome.

I think bookmooch hit the nail on the head. For those of us who are looking for a particular book, don’t want to spend $22 and have a bookcase full of other $22 books collecting dust, this site will make your day. I’ve been a member for a while and am guilty of not actually doing a book transaction yet, but I’m in a bit of a reading rut.

Reading ruts are usually well solved by Indigo or Amazon’s “other people liked” recommendation engine. If that doesn’t work for you, LibraryThing aims to fill the void. While none are perfect, they give you helpful suggestions that end up pointing you in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this gets me all hot and bothered about the state of online personalization. It seems no one has an effective solution yet for recommendations, aka cross-selling. I could go on and on about this, so I’ll save the rant for another post.