Incursio

Only 1 million payments of $4000 each!

Today after work I wanted to walk a bit. Since I needed to be at Gabriel Park this evening I figured I would give it a shot. I cheated a little by taking the streetcar down to South Waterfront, and riding the Tram up to OHSU. Which was pretty cool in and of itself, as winds were around 50mph and the car was swinging...

From a recent article in New York Magazine: New York’s streets are getting new ownership. Lane by lane, curb cut by parking space, in steps so scattered and incremental that they hardly get noticed, people on foot are wresting control of the asphalt from those behind the wheel. and the basic unit of urban life: the street. There, lifestyles intersect and city dwellers co-exist with people different from themselves. It’s where we learn toleration, where leisure shares space with urgency, commerce with activism, baby carriages with handcarts. When it is narrowed by garbage or overwhelmed by traffic, then the street reverts to its most primitive use: as a corridor. But a truly public place allows people to move at many different paces, or not to move at all. The article talks about Robert Moses. Who was Robert Moses ? He was an extremely powerful developer and politician for four decades in New York City. BikePortland has an i nteresting article and subsequent discussion about...

I have been involved in many discussions held in many forums about the Portland OHSU Aerial Tram. Now, all controversy aside - one common opinion that I hear frequently concerns me. Often, the Tram will be disregarded as a valuable link in Portland's bike network. To all who would say that the Tram does not provide a valuable connection or link for bicyclists, I would suggest heading down to the base of the Tram and look around. I did.

I don't care how much the "industry" tries to tell you that RFID in things like credit cards, passports, or IDs is OK - it is not. RFID is not (by design) secure, and never will be. The companies and lawyers can lie and lie and lie - and most of the population seems to believe them - but RFID systems can be hacked easily, and are hacked regularly. Don't trust RFID. Here I am linking to another blog post, simply because it is easier than reciting the entire story here... But the credit card companies don't want you to know that RFID is insecure. They badly don't want you to know, so much so they bullied Mythbusters into not airing it in an episode. Mythbusters gagged by credit card companies over RFID episode Now, I know I am just a "dude on the internet" and have no real authority. So if you don't want to believe a couple of bloggers, I suggest you Google around a bit and find out for yourself. Just don't whine when something b...

In my previous post about Topographical maps, and other Macintosh GPS utilities - I completely forgot to mention one that is a great tool. Load My Tracks . Using Load My Tracks I can pull my GPS tracks right off my device and save them for use by other applications: GPX files, even KML for use with Google Earth. Load My Tracks supports geocaching and a pretty good range of devices. But while looking into Load My Tracks, I also found some more resources: Here is a list of GPX resources . It is a pretty good list, and covers multiple platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Mobile, and cross-platform). Some other applications that I have not tried, but I am including here in case they might be something you can use: GPS Connect : A Freeware Garmin GPS Connection Tool for Mac OS X. Mac SimpleGPS : a Macintosh application designed to manage waypoints, routes and tracks on your GPSR. Between these links, and my previous post , you should have more than enough to get you started wit...