"Transit City"

Thought I'd share this video I stumbled on while talking about transit the other night. Sounds great. Rotterdam and Cologne have pretty similar systems in place now, and they seem to work really well (the little I took them). But in the meantime, why can't we start running rapid transit buses in dedicated lanes? Especially when it comes to routes like the Finch hydro corridor.

What I'm really disappointed by, though, is the lack of upgrades in the Downtown Core and West End. My opinion: the time has come to close Queen Street. At least between Jarvis and Bathurst, where Richmond and Addelade are already better equipped to handle the traffic. One lane for streetcars, one for bikes, wide sidewalks with room for kiosks (a la the north side of Queen between Peter and Spadina)... How is this not a no-brainer? Cabbies wouldn't like it, but we could let cars drive in the streetcar lanes after the stores close, so they wouldn't lose the bar traffic.

Anyway, I present to you the (eventual) future of rapid transit in Toronto...

Looking for a simple CMS? Radiant vs. Frog

I've been doing some research for an upcoming project, which has a simple, easy to use content management system as a requirement. I've recently fallen in love with Radiant, but there's some chance the server this project ends up on won't allow me to use Ruby on Rails. So, I was happy to find that there's a PHP port of Radiant, Frog.

Upon first glance, the two look very similar. They haven't, however, quite developed in parallel.

First, licensing: Radiant is distributed under the MIT License license; Frog is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License. I honestly have no idea what the practical differences are, though. They're both free/open source; that's what matters to me.

The Radiant team, as is common with Rails developers in general, is committed to keeping the project core as simple as possible. The admin interface has only three tabs by default: Pages, Snippets, and Layouts. But, there are dozens of ready-made extensions, which add support for common needs like calendars, file attachments, WYSIWYG page editing, translation and more. Creating custom extensions is surprisingly easy, as well.

Frog, by contrast, comes with more features up front (drag-and-drop page ordering and file uploading, notably), but has fewer 3rd party extensions available. (Partially, I assume, because writing PHP is a pain in the ass, but mostly because the Radiant team has created such an OUTSTANDING extension system.)

All in all, both are excellent choices. If you've ever tried to create custom layouts for Joomla, Drupal, or other heavy-handed CMSs, you'll find Radiant especially to be a breath of fresh air. But don't take my word for it, check out their live demos:

• Radiant
• Frog (user: admin, password: password)

Or, download one and give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.

Less pop, more jazz

Schwartz talks about how rules and incentives can actually degrade our ability to do the right thing.

It's something I noticed and talked a lot about in England last year. Cameras, "anti-social behaviour" laws, overwhelming police presence - none of these emphasize our responsibility to one another, yet they relieve us of our duty to think about what's right and what isn't. There are certainly better, more universally appealing reasons not to harm others (or spit gum on the sidewalk) than the threat of punishment. Overprotective parents make for bratty children; overprotective governments, I believe, make for bad citizens.

I'm a sucker for gratuitous swearing

That help screen rocks ;)

Need a bit of inspiration?

Wow! I love the story about Tom Waits.

Getting Real - A Free E-book by 37signals

I've just started reading Getting Real, a book on software development by the developers I (and many others) most admire - 37signals. They've built some of the hottest new applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack and Highrise, not to mention a good chunk of Rails itself) with a very simple less-is-more philosophy. To quote them, "We aim for the software sweet spot: Elegant, thoughtful products that do just what you need and nothing you don't."

I highly recommend checking it out!

Charles Leadbeater on open source

Leadbeater shows how the open source movement is a force that cannot be stopped and why institutions should be embrassing the model rather than standing in its way.