Calgary is removing all of its pay phones. There's less than 20 left in the city, and they'll likely be gone by the end of the year. Killed off by ubiquitous cell phones.

Now the main reason why Telus wants to get rid of them is because of the cost. A payphone is expensive to buy/maintain/keep connected. They are tough beasts, but no one is making the parts anymore, which means areas that want to keep them have to order expensive custom-made parts, or cannibalize other phones.

I think we should keep them. Or rather, I think we should replace their functionality. Hear me out.

Why is a pay phone expensive? Well, they need to built like tanks so people don't bust into them for loose change. They need to have power and connectivity to the phone network. They need to be fixed. So how do you get around that?

One solution came from a talk I went to a few years by a city traffic engineer. He said that putting new lighted intersections in was a factor of magnitude cheaper now than it was twenty years ago. Then, you needed to dig up the street so the lights had power and could talk to each other (you don't want contrasting traffic lights both going green at the same time). Now you could do all of that with wifi/solar/batteries. An intersection that took a million dollars to build now took less than $100,000.

Next, don't charge for the phone call. A lot of why pay phones need to be tanks is to keep people from stealing them. Telus should simply provide this as a service (we'd need to legislate this - there's no way they'll do it on their own).

So what would these new payphones look like? You'd have the post in the ground/side of the building. It would contain a rechargeable battery and a solar panel. There would be a radio inside that talks to the cellular network (and provide the phone number). Now you don't have to worry about digging up the street.

Attached to it would be a heavy duty phone. Metal case, tough buttons, Metal cable and handset. And that's it. It would have a simple connection behind it that connects to the radio/power. It would bolt on so that all of the connections were hidden. And if it broke, a technician would simply unbolt it and replace it. The individual units would be repaired off site.

Where would you put them? In Calgary I'd suggest one at every C-Train station, plus every civic building or Telus facility. Give malls an option to set one up if they'd like.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I think it would still be useful, but I acknowledge it will never make a profit. That's why it's a public service, which isn't a dirty word.

The Circle Route (72 goes clockwise, 73 goes counter-clockwise) is a venerable bus route in Calgary. It covers a wide swath of the city, and has been around, with minor tweaks, for my whole life. It seemed eternal, and it was always a nice surprise to be in strange part of the city and see a 72/73 bus stop. You knew, no matter how lost you were, that you could get home. In the days before ubiquitous smartphones, that was a comfort.


But all good things come to an end - Calgary Transit is retiring the circle route. To give you an idea of how much heavy lifting this route did, it's taking 13 other routes to duplicate it. Its last day will be Sunday, November 18.

Which gave me an idea for some odd fun: A Circle Route Brewery Tour. Once around the city, stopping at assorted breweries along the way. My tentative route:

• Brentwood Station: Start.
• EB 41 Av NE @ 1 St NE: Citizen Brewing.
• EB 32 Av NE @ 12 St NE: Zero Issue Brewing and/or Minhas Micro Brewing.
• SB 36 St SE @ 8 Av SE: Common Crown Brewing and/or Tool Shed Brewing and/or Red Bison Brewing.
• SB Barlow TR @ 61 AV SE: Good Mood Brewery
• SB Centre ST S @ 58 AV S: Prairie Dog Brewing. Also, this is the closest approach to the Manchester portion of the barley belt, so there's about nine breweries within two kilometres.
• WB Richardson WY @ Bishop WY SW: Wild Rose Brewing.
• Brentwood station: End.

If I do the 73, reverse the above. I really haven't decided yet.

Now that's I've impressed you with my genius, let me convince you not to join me:

First, I never get anyone to do these weird-ass things with me. It's one of the reasons I never post with lots of lead time - I can at least convince myself that the reason no one comes is because it was short notice. But enough about my issues.

Second, It takes three hours to go once around the circle route. Figuring four brewery stops with just one brewery each stop for an hour and we're looking at a seven hour day (and probably more like eight - see below). Some of the gaps are over an hour long.

Third, Some of the walks from the stops are long. Citizen isn't too bad, nor is Zero Issue. Common Crown is nearly three Kilometres - that's a 30-minute walk one way. On the bright side Prairie Dog has a bus stop outside their front door. Long walks don't bother me much, unless it's ass-biting cold.

Finally, It'll be mid-November, so the odds of it being ass-biting cold, or having impassable sidewalks, are very high.

Will I do it? Maybe - I certainly want to do it, but it's over a month away and a lot can happen. I think if the weather isn't firmly in the might-get-eaten-by-wolves category, and I don't have any more social options on the day, I'll do it. It'll be like my summer bike rides - an excuse to waste some time and get some exercise.

If I do it, I'll live-tweet my journey, so at the very least, people can meet me on the part of the route nearest their house, and go to the next brewery stop. It'll be an adventure!

Uber, the ride-sharing platform that makes a lot of money for the organizers, and not much money for the drivers, is moving into Calgary.

I predict that we're going to have a long, cold war between the city and Uber. One where the city says "you can't be here without abiding by these rules", and Uber simply ignoring them since the fines will fall on the drivers (whom they don't care about). Attempts to fine Uber directly will result in long protracted legal battles that end when we settle out of court at a sufficiently small amount that Uber's profits aren't too badly dinged.

Throw some Uber execs in jail, they'll come around.

I'm certainly not against the concept of casual taxis. I'd like to see, at a minimum:

• Drivers need their Alberta class 4 license.
  
• They need to pass a background check. I've had this done and it's neither expensive nor onerous.
  
• The cars need to pass a regular inspection.
  
• They need to have sufficient insurance.
  
• They can't go over a defined amount of hours per year, or they're no longer casual and need to get a taxi license. 200 hours of time available as a driver on the system (as opposed to time actually driving) seems like a good point to start the discussion.

Oh, and if any of these criteria aren't being met by the taxi companies, that's not a counter argument - it suggests something they're not doing that they should.

If this no longer makes Uber a viable option for making a living, the fault is not the regulations, it's that Uber is exploiting its drivers. Consider that.

CalgaryNext is the proposal to use land in Calgary's West Village (between 14th street and Pumphouse Road) for a new sports arena complex. That complex will be the new home of the Flames, Stampeders, Roughnecks, and Hitmen.

I like the vision of this plan. I think this sort of complex is something the city could really use. Replacing McMahon stadium is long overdue, and a case could be made for the Saddledome as well. CalgaryNext, as an idea, is a good one.

But the presentation, and assumptions suck. Councilor Farrell describes the problems with financing here. Basically they low-balls the costs, ignore all the infrastructure required, and only describes the positives. The whole website comes off as a shady timeshare presentation writ large.

I've had marketers blow smoke up my ass enough times to recognize when it's happening, and it's happening now. This will not cost $900M, it will cost at least $1.5B. And aside from $200M, that money is going to be from tax dollars. For an example of what I mean, the cleanup cost for the land is estimated at between $50M and $300M. When people say that, they mean $300M. Note that the Creosote cleanup is absolutely necessary to using that land, and it's not factored into the cost. What possible reason could you have to not include that in the cost?

Now I have no problem with taxes being levied for things we need. And I have a very liberal idea of need compared to most people. If CalgaryNEXT was up front with the true costs, instead of the lowest of all estimates, I'd probably be for it. It's not like that $1.5B is being used in an arcane ritual where we burn the money and a an arena magically appears. That money is going to be pumped into the local economy. It's going to be used to pay for materials, it's going to be used to pay people to build it. That means several years of steady work for a lot of trades. That means families are going to be supported and those people will be paying taxes. Money for capital projects means we get the capital project, and the economy gets a welcome boost.

But does it have to be this project? This project is basically facilities for a bunch of for-profit businesses (some of which are very profitable). Can't they afford to make this themselves? If they can't do it themselves and still be profitable, do they deserve to stay in business? I appreciate that sports are popular, but if we were talking about building a bunch of office towers for a handful of oil companies, would we be so gung-ho about it? OK, bad example, this is Calgary, we'd totally be up for giving an office tower to an oil company.

I also hate the design. I'm no engineer, but I know that whenever anyone in this climate tries to build a stadium with a roof that does anything but be a roof, it fails. Calgary's freeze/thaw cycle will play merry hell on that transparent roof. I expect it to leak like hell. I'd much rather they had a well-engineered roof that can support twice the weight of the snow that's going to get dumped on it every year. Maybe cover the whole thing with solar panels to make it more green. It really doesn't need to be transparent.

I'd love there to be development on that chunk of land, and I think a stadium complex is a good fit for the area. But they really need to do more homework:

• Redesign a more conservative complex - one that is tried and true for our climate.
  
• Give us a better estimate for the true cost of this endeavor, including cleanup costs, and all of the necessary infrastructure improvements.
  
• The Flames and the Stamps need to pony up a greater percentage of the costs. I don't expect them to pay for the whole thing, but they need to do more.

Do all that, and I'll reconsider. Until then, this is just going to irritate the security mindset part of my brain.

Nerd Nite Calgary had their third event tonight. It was pretty good. This was the third one and I was at the first one as well. They seem to have a pattern of three speakers: One speaker was someone who did something that "went viral" (the first one was the guy who wants to go to Mars, tonights was a pair of roommates who decided to have a Buy Nothing Year). Another speaker is someone in a local community that's in the nerd orbit (the first was a member of the local skeptics society, today it was members of the maker community). Finally, there is a local scientist (the first was a palaeontologist working on dinosaur buoyancy, today it was a fellow working on computer visualization of the brain).

First, the talks. Then, impressions, a little therapy, and a request.

Jeff de Boer and Shannon Hoover were the first speakers, talking about wearable technology. Their example was the Tech Tie, which they're developing with some big names in tech (IBM for example). An open source, computer driven tie that would respond to motion, change its own design, and do all the shit that Google Glass does, but better because its size restrictions wouldn't be nearly so tight.

They had me right up to the Google Glass comparison.

Ok, I get it, privacy is simply going the way of the buggy whip. Soon every jackass will be able to film me without my knowledge everywhere I go. There's nothing I can do about it because eventually the tech to do this will be so small and unassuming as to be invisible. Doesn't mean I have to like it. I really don't want to spend every public moment wondering if my fashion choices are going to get me onto a people-of-Walmart style website.

Other than that, it looked cool. As a vehicle for self-expression, I think it's a wonderful idea.

Next up was Julie and Geoffrey, who decided to make wholesale changes in their lives by not buying anything (with some caveats, like staggered beginning times for different values of "buy stuff") for a whole year. They were the most engaging speakers and also the one that was most personally inspirational. I'll never make the stuff Jeff de Boer makes, but I can purge my junk and try to live a less consumer-driven lifestyle. Plus I don't need to be nearly so balls-to-the-walls about it as they were. Stop going out for sushi? Not in the cards.

Anyway, they did it and came out the other side both wiser and more open. Good for them.

Finally, there was Dr. Christian Jacobs, who does the sort of stuff I imagine nosarious would be right into. Visualizing the human brain in such a way as to allow one to take an interior tour of its structures. This also tied in with a project to do the same thing for medical training with the whole body. Either a full on simulation of the body (not just a static image, but one with a beating heart, moving muscles, and other things that make us more than just a lump of hamburger) - which would take an insane amount of computation - but also a "cut down" version that one could simply use on a tablet for reference.

If this guy's grad students wanted a job in something comparatively dull, but that would use their graphical computing knowledge, I could probably set them up.

All in all a good set of talks and well worth my time and ten bucks.

Now for some random thoughts and impressions.

First, this was a smallish venue and they didn't even fill it up. That's probably a good thing since there were two giant pillars in the middle of the room which sharply reduced the number of decent seats. Basically my entire table, except for the one corner I was sitting at, couldn't see the stage at all.

As for not filling it up, that's just pathetic. If Comic Expo can get 10K+ attendees, there is not one good reason these guys can't get 100. They also all seemed to know each other. That might be my mistaken impression as an outsider, but it sure looked like everyone had an easy time chatting with everyone else. I feel like they've saturated one small part of the local nerd community, but haven't "broken out" to other valences.

I was firmly in my usual "alone in a crowd" mode, which was bothersome, but not super-bothersome. I figured I'd just sit in a corner and observe and do my usual quips and bon mots via twitter instead of verbally to whomever I knew nearby.

But I got caught. Namely by Julie (one of the speakers), who quizzed me about whether I was live tweeting the event, and who also immediately followed me. This was quickly followed by Erika doing the same.

Of course, when strangers introduce themselves to me, my ability to act like a perfectly rational human being goes away and I start talking like a Vulcan robot. I am getting better at snapping out of that, though it did take a few sentences this time.

So a small amount of anxiety, but it was good anxiety because I got through it positively. However, I would like to not be the one guy by himself. Again.

So here's the request: Next Nerd Nite is going to be November 20th. This is close to my birthday, but also at a time I'll be in town (I'll likely be away on my actual birthday), so I'd like people to join me, for my birthday, at Nerd Nite #4. Hell, I'll bake a cake if enough people I know confirm and buy tickets.

About ten days ago on a Saturday morning LA and I participated in City Chase. Our team name was, of course, Grätüïtöüs Ümläüt. Here's a quick recap with some hints for future City Chases:

We started at Eau Claire plaza and endured a lot of talk from the MC. A coworker and his race partner were honored for winning last year and also for raising about 3K for charity.

The race started when the MC announced that "security guards on Prince's Island have the clue sheets". This triggered a mad dash by all involved. LA and I second-guessed ourselves and went to one of the remoter parts of the island on the assumption that they'd be spread out. Nope, they were all smack dab in the center at the major crossroad of the park.

advice: During the opening announcements, you'll be in a large area that can fit everyone. It will likely be next to a big empty area where they'll hand out the clue sheets. Be at the border between the two if you can.

The clue sheet had puzzles describing each of the Chase Points that we had to go to. There were 37 ("Thirty-seven!") of them IIRC. There were some odd groupings you had to do, and also some "do this or that, but not both" situations where teh chase points were very close to each other (for example, two where a block away from each other on Kensington Road).

We hunkered down and started solving the puzzles, which required middling knowledge of the city and some google-fu. Make sure you have a smart phone. It took us a little over half an hour to have solved the majority of the clues (we only got one wrong, owing to neither of us having ever been to Flames Central) and have a semi-optimal route chosen.

advice: Take a snap-shot of the clue sheet and email it to a helper, then bolt to one of the mandatory check points!

Our route? Start at the University of Calgary and work our way back. So it was onto the train to go to the northwest.

Chase Point 1: At the UofC, near the library tower, we had to do each of the following:

• skip rope simultaneously with your partner.
  
• Run a soccer ball through pylons.
  
• kick the soccer ball to each other through the pylons.
  
• Leapfrog with your partner.
  
• Solve a four-piece puzzle.

The difficult part for me and LA was the difference in our heights, she being wee and me looking like Herman Munster. We managed it though.

Chase Point 2: We ran down to the Volleydome (just south of the University in Athletic Park) and got to play another team in beach volleyball. We lost 5-2, but had fun.

On the way back to the train we stopped at DQ for ice cream treats. Any race where you can have ice cream in the middle is a good race. Sadly, I dropped my cone before I could finish it. Oh well, it was just going to get into my mouth anyway.

Chase Point 3: At the North Hill Fire Station there were two possible chase points. One was for anyone who had raised $50 for charity. We qualified, so we got that. The other point was for doing a bunch of fireman stuff - dragging hoses, carrying a body, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, they only had a few fireman on hand to supervise and one or two sets of equipment. This led to a long line that wasn't really moving. Someone said "40 minute wait", which I can believe, except I think that number was a guesstimate. We skipped that one, even though it looked like a lot of fun.

advice: We should have rushed to this one first and beat the lineup, solving other puzzles along the way (after all, we had to go there anyway to get our charity point). Failing that, raising $150 instead of $50 would have got us the point and allowed us to skip to the head of one lineup! This would have been a good choice for that.

Chase Point 4: We took the train down to Riley Park and found a fitness setup. You had to pick a snack from a list. They then told you how many calories was in that snack (it had things like a Mars bar, doughnut, muffin, bag of chips, etc.). Once you had a calorie value, you and your partner had to burn that many calories. They had a bunch of exercises there that you could do (examples: fifty sit-ups burned 40 calories, thirty 10-pound bicep curls burned 15 calories). This, more than anything else, contributed to my being stiff and sore the next day. I chose the Mars bar, since I know donuts and muffins have no standard sizes and can be as big as you like, but a Mars bar is constant. We had to burn about 350 calories.

Woof!

Chase Point 5: We headed south to Kensington road and had a choice of two chase points (we could only do one of them though). We went to Pages book store (the one beside the Plaza theatre) and were instructed to go to the upper level and find some "visual poetry that is neither part of a book or on a bookshelf" and identify the creator. A lot of second-guessing and we finally found artwork on one of the windows made up of a maelstrom of letters.

Chase Point 6: At the Kensington Running Room we had to find five differences between two mannequins, the mannequins being decked out in an assortment of merchandise. LA found four of the differences, despite my having the brilliant plan of taking pictures of one of the mannequins and using it to compare to the other (they weren't beside each other in the store).

We had now run through most of the convenient northwest chase points.

LA: Why don't we take the loser-cruiser to Inglewood?
Me: What's the loser-cruiser?
LA: The Bowness-to-Forest-Lawn bus.
Me: Of course!

Chase Point 7: Once in Inglewood we went to 4 Cats art store to do some finger-painting. We had to use three methods of getting paint onto a canvas and "recreate" some pollock-style art on the wall. One of the methods had to include popping a water balloon with paint in it (not much paint, thank Groo).

Now we had a dilemma, we could go to the nearby chase point at Fair's Fair Books, but that would mean missing the bus back into downtown. Or we could catch the bus and hit a chase point in downtown on the way down to 17th avenue. The bus was coming in two minutes, so we opted to skip Fair's Fair.

rant: Why does the city only run the #1 bus (the "loser-cruiser" referenced above) every 30 minutes on Saturday? Every time we were on it it was standing-room only - hell it was "move to the back of the bus so others can get on" crowded. That's not even including the handful of race participants. This bus is clearly being used and used well - crank up the frequency Calgary Transit!

We got downtown and discovered that what we thought was a chase point wasn't. We had got the clue wrong (which hurts more for this pair of geeks). We headed down to Melrose Cafe with less than an hour left in the race. Maybe we could finish if the chase point was a quick one. It wasn't.

Chase Point 8: At Melrose Cafe, the lower level was taken up by a martial arts school. What school you might ask? Ninjas! However, before we got to the ninjas, we had to cool our heels for a half hour in line. A line that went right by Melrose's bar. Any race where you can have a pint of ale in the middle is a good race.

We had to go through a bunch of ninja exercises to qualify for the point. Having read comics and watched movies throughout the 80's I had a bad opinion of ninjas (specifically the Westerners who learned it) as pretentious goofballs. Our guide did a lot to lift that bad opinion though. It seems like a fairly egalitarian martial art, and that pleases the socialist in me. We had to run through some obstacles, demonstrate our ability to skulk, sneak, dodge sword thrusts and missiles and finally we got to throw some shurikens! This was probably my favorite of the chase points that I completed.

This does suggest that the local SCA could get involved - volunteer to do a checkpoint where people put on armour and tabards and did quick one-off combat with Nerf weapons. Maybe not though - the ninja stuff was decidedly non-contact. Oh well.

We now had ten minutes left to get back downtown and check in before the 4pm deadline. We weren't going to be getting those last two chase points. We were a few minutes late, but were told before the race that they would have the finish line open until 4:15. This turns out to be incorrect, they finished at 4 on the nose and we missed check in, so there is no record of our team finishing.

All the race participants got treated to a free drink at Flames Central. Sadly that venue isn't quite large enough for everyone; neither LA or I were able to get seats as we were amongst the last people to get there.

City Chase was a blast and I recommend it to everyone. Vancouver peep: It's in your neighborhood on August 25th!

Calgary doesn't have a lot of good buildings. Booming in the 70's and 90's its buildings tended to have a blocky sort of utilitarianess that broadcasts this is a place for working, not for enjoying. Calgary is, sadly, a city of ugly buildings placed inside a beautiful river valley. When people talk about how nice Calgary is, it's because of the wealth of natural resources we find ourselves in, not the architecture.

There are exceptions of course, but not many. One of my favourites is the Barron Building, site of the Uptown Theatre.



Calgary's first skyscraper, it was designed in an age when we still tried to make office buildings attractive. It was opened in 1951 and has seen a range of owners since then. The reasons for keeping the Barron Building around - for restoring it to its former glory in fact - are plentiful.

I know a guy (he's on LJ and contributes to calgarians, so he can out himself if he chooses) who was the former projectionist for the Uptown. A few years ago, he was kind enough to give me a behind-the-screen look at the workings of the theatre. It was around that time that the Uptown went from being one of my favourites to my favourite. I especially love the upper theatre for it's slanted design, it's "secret" viewing room and spacious stage. It's a great venue to watch a movie on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The first movie I remember watching there was Xanadu (I was 12, don't you judge me) during it's first run. I've seen animation festivals, foreign and art movies, documentaries along with big Hollywood epics. It was my go-to theatre for weird shit I wanted to see that I couldn't convince others to join me for. The last film I saw was Rango some months ago. I was literally the only person in the theatre, which is a little sad.

In short, the Uptown was a movie theatre for people who loved the movies. Not just liked the movies (and who doesn't like movies), but loved them.

Aside from being a patron of the theatre, I have no other connection to it. I'm not affiliated with either the building or theatre owners.

And now it's closed, pending the resolution between the theatre and building owners. You can read the Uptown's side of the story here. Strategic Equities, the Barron Building's owners, aren't talking. TL;DR version: The Uptown claims that Strategic hasn't been providing adequate heat or maintenance to the property, so they're suing. Strategic has applied to have the Uptown's marquee demolished.

My suspicion? Strategic doesn't want the Uptown in their building but can't simply kick them out. That pretty much just leaves making them want to leave. It's not a new tactic for Calgary building owners. I remember back in early 80's when the building on the corner of Memorial and 10th street (where Julio's Barrio is now) burned down after being largely abandoned following the 80's bust. Vagrants got into it during the winter to use for shelter, built a fire to keep warm and it got out of hand. A similar fate befell the Buena Vista house in Crescent Heights in 1999 - a building that got multiple offers to buy every month, but sat empty for years.

I wonder about the motives of a property owner deciding that it is better to neglect a building to death rather than either develop it properly, or sell it to someone more willing. Historical buildings are more expensive to upkeep and restore, and there are often extra rules involved in doing so. I suspect that a lot of owners bought historical buildings for the value of the land. When they find they can't simply do what they want with it, they get pissy about it. If they can't do what they want, then nobody can do anything with it. But then, why buy a historical property in the first place if you know you can't simply turn it into condos?

Proving such neglect was intentional is difficult. Sometimes people aren't malicious, they're just stupid.

The Barron Building is largely disused now. I think a handful of offices are occupied, but most of its ten floors certainly look abandoned from the outside. That's a sad fate for a landmark that was largely responsible for all the oil companies coming here instead of Edmonton. I'd rather not read how vagrants broke into it and accidentally set fire to the theatre lobby, and well, it's just too expensive to rebuild the theatre, so lets use this alternate redevelopment plan we just happened to have on the shelf.

In my ideal world, Strategic sells the building to someone with the money and vision to restore the building to its retro glory - a 1951 Art Deco marvel with modern amenities for the best businesses the city has to offer. Maybe provide some space to the arts community (Practice space for amateur theatre troupes for example). Above all, a newly revitalized Uptown theatre, showing the best movies that the accountants working for the movie-megaplexes don't think are middle-of-the-road enough.

Sadly, I'm not rich, so I can't do it myself. I do imagine it whenever the lottery pay-outs get high enough though.

Anyone else have a story about the Uptown theatre or the Barron Building? I'd love to hear it.

(Cross-posted to calgarians)

We just had a wrath-of-god prairie hailstorm blow across the work place (I work in Research Park, just north of the University). This makes me glad I work indoors and the car is in the garage.

I don't think this one was powerful enough to wreck my roof shingles (which happened to my folks 19 years ago) - the hail was only golf-ball sized and the duration was only ten minutes. Still, you wouldn't want to be caught in it.

A survey of the parking lot at work revealed nearly every car's roof was now dimpled with hail stone impacts, but all the windshields seem to have survived intact. At least one car alarm was triggered.

( Images of the hail in NW Calgary... )

(Crossposted to calgarians)