Month: July 2004

Baltimore is not Bike Friendly yet.

In response to the sun article on July 12th about the critical mass bike ride in Baltimore I would applaud the riders. I have lived in Baltimore 2 years and after working with Constellation Energy to get a bike rack placed between the Candler building and 750 East Pratt the majority of my commute has been on bike. I am happy to say that I can no longer use the bike rack on most days because it is full.

I see more and more cyclists on the street every day especially in the summer but I would not call the city bike-friendly as Mr. Brown said. The Inner Harbor has a critical shortage of bike racks. Parking has always been an issue in the city and one way to encourage cyclists is to provide a safe and secure place to lock up your bike. I would urge all shops, supermarkets and offices in the area to look for a location where they could put a bike rack.

The Inner Harbor also lacks a safe place for cyclists to ride. The service lane that runs along Light Street and Pratt street which is briefly marked as a bike lane outside the National Aquarium would be perfect. However it is frequently blocked by Delivery Trucks, Taxies, and worst of all Tour Busses. I would like to see the whole of the service road clearly marked as a dual use bike lane and horse and carriage lane with a divider down the middle and the bike lane symbol at each entrance. I would also like to see the police ticketing illegal parking. Eventually this could be expanded from Fort McHenry to fells point or Canton.

My final note is to the National Aquarium. Please have someone on duty to guide tour buses to legal parking location. Your location quite often has close to 8 or more buses waiting to pick up or drop off people and many are blocking a clearly marked bike lane. I really hope that your new extension has plans for ample parking these tour buses when finished so they will no longer block the only section on Pratt that is marked as a bike lane.

I am very happy living in Baltimore and I hope that it will become more bike friendly over time.

Ian Macdonald
Baltimore City Resident

Grumble Mac grumble.
When I copy a folder into a directory that already contains the folder I expect it to copy the files into the folder not delete the folder then copy new files in. This might be a Mac OSX talking to a samba file server, but it is fucking annoying.

looks like nasty credit card practices are moving to the uk. The same thing happened to me when I got my fleet fusion card. In order to get the 6 months interest free credit you needed to transfer a balance, which I did. I always pay off the balance in full, but if I bought anything after the balance was posted they would use the payment to pay off the new stuff not the cash advance. When I phoned they told me that they reserve the right to use the money I pay against any balance. They suggested paying off the card then not buying anything new for a month.

mildly productive day. I made an appointment to get my hair cut. Just a trim, I am not getting it cut short. I started my garden. I bought one red, one yellow and one orange dandelion like things (i managed to pick up three pots with out a name tag on them. 2 pink mini rose like things (I have the tags for those but they are outside and it is dark). The 3 dandelion like things are now in a large pot together and the 2 rose like things are in a window box that sits on my back porch.
I also put up a new glass shelf in the bathroom.
And finally I am about to put a usb 2.0 card in my desktop machine so I can download and upload music to my ipod.
For me this is a productive day.

All I heard was a crash as the cat jumps at the window. Then I see what she is chasing. I yellow bird is perched on the other side of the window looking straight into my bedroom. The cat pounces again. The bird doesn’t flinch, somehow knowing that there is a sheet of glass between it and my confused cat. This goes on for about a minute then the bird flies away.
I took some shots but I will have to wait for the film to be processed.
Sara is now looking out the window wondering where her new play toy went.

Geeking out today.
I bought a 30 day ssl certificate for iwasdot.com to test that I could get everything running. I now have imap over ssl, ssl over smtp and https running. I have 30 days to convert to full ssl cert.
I also saw spiderman 2 today at the uptown in DC. I seem to be running back and forward to DC even though HY isn’t living down there at the moment.