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Le «blog personnel» de Joe Clark

Le «blog personnel» de Joe Clark
Sammy King  |  by blog.fawny.org. All rights reserved. 27.02 | 22:38

Not that beauty is necessarily a criterion (let’s start with function), but why not compare two sources half a decade apart? Katherine Ashenburg, “Motion pictures: When commuters board the subway on the new Sheppard line, they’ll ride through stations notable not for their architecture, but for their public art, each stop like a visit to a neighbourhood gallery,” Toronto Life, August 2002 When it was built, in 1996, Downsview [station] raised alarm bells at the Ministry of Transportation. David Lawson[, architectural coordinator of the Sheppard line,] summarizes the bureaucrats’ reaction to the chic, column-free layouts: “How much did this flash cost?

” The designer details – what they considered “fripperies” – had accounted for 10% of the total, so when it came time to plan the Sheppard line, the ministry cut the budget accordingly. The austerity meant much less high-end terrazzo and much more exposed concrete on the floors and walls. In 2006, funds of $600K have been approved with $500K to be accommodated from under expenditures in other programs.

A further $1.5M was also included in the years 2007–2009 for this project . Approve the award of the Museum Station detailed design assignment to Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc.

( . What else could we do with that 0.5% increase?

What could we do with $1.5 million misdirected to a station redesign? (It is a station redesign, moreover, that nobody needs and that only the Toronto Community Foundation [who?

]; its mink-stole, Bill Thorsell–style backers; and TTC management want.) And here’s another question: If the TTC can “sole-source” a half-million-dollar contract to a star architect, then turn around and , why does it refuse to talk to the Spacers until some unspecified other tender is in place? They’ve grossed more from subway buttons in two years than the merchandising contractor did from its entire line in one year.

The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2007.01.09 16:59.

This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is:
http://blog.

fawny.org/2007/01/09/velvet-posts/

Lynn Crosbie, Globe and Mail. 2005.

02.05: Lately, it is the unlikeliest of heroes, the long-capsized NYPD Blue star Davis Caruso, who has emerged as a vocal stylist nonpareil . The show starts, and Caruso appears on some blood-lashed crime scene and discovers a lead.

He, without fail, raises his ubiquitous sunglasses and comments, in a way that implies he is inventing language as he goes along. Then the Who’s Roger Daltrey slices through in a scream that punctuates the fervour in motion. I watch this show every week with a friend and we both scream along, like bong-carrying disciples at a monster rock concert.

And then it occurs to us: We have become excitable maniacs over the delivery of such prosaic comments as “Ricky. He doesn’t know what’s going on. But we do” or “Accidents happen, that’s quite true.

And so – so’s murder.” With all due respect to the writers, the words mean nothing. It is Horatio Caine (Caruso’s character) we are flipping the heavy-metal index and pinkie at; it is his staggered, drawling and almost insanely portentous delivery that ignites the dormant lighter in all of us; that lets us know we are in the presence of the kind of star heat that burns all the more brightly for its rarity .

I too enjoy the spectacle of this leathery ginger acting with his eyeglasses and blazer, after the manner in which J. Roberts acts with her bosom. Now: D.

Caruso–A. Rodriguez slash fiction? I would attend a staged reading.

I would perform at a staged reading – acting with my Gore-Tex hat, veganist Docs, and Carhartt pantalon. The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2007.01.

08 16:48. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.

) The permanent link is:
http://blog.fawny.org/2007/01/08/wipers/

Well, it’s either this or .

“Queen’s”? Don’t be so obvious. The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2007.

01.05 18:04. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen.

(If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is:
http://blog.fawny.

org/2007/01/05/denuded/

(NOW WITH ) Long before he was chair of the TTC, I knew Adam Giambrone was 21st-century enough to surf the Web. I know because I sat some distance behind him in City Hall committee rooms and watched him dick around on IE6 during dull moments. We definitely need to get him on Firefox or Opera, but this at least shows he acts like every other 29-year-old in Canada.

It may make him cool in some generic way, but it does not mean we should do TTC work for free at his behest. It was over the weekend that, upon his ascent to the TTC throne, Giambrone called in head Spacer Matt Blackett for a two-hour meeting. I doubt I would disagree significantly with any of the suggestions Blackett might hypothetically have, although some of them must surely involve financial deals between Spacers and the TTC.

(It goes without saying that the TTC will eventually sell the Spacer subway buttons or other fan merchandise.) But as soon as that meeting was publicized, there was Giambrone in the Star (2007.01.

01, p. B1) calling for the addition of a trip planner to the TTC site (also ). Then it was revealed that Giambrone and Blackett agreed to combine the forces of several blogs, including , to poll readers about what they wanted from a redesigned Web site.

While this online consultation is needless duplication (and I say that as someone who, in November, used oldschool roadblock methods to promote my drive), there are bigger problems:

  • It empowers people to say the same thing over and over again. Yes, we know we need a trip planner. Even the head of the TTC knows that.

  • It tackles only half the problem – the latter half. Everyone’s talking about features. But you can’t add features until you have a decent code base (standards-compliant HTML).

    And how do you make a trip planner accessible? Has anyone other than me done any thinking about that?

  • It will tempt TTC mandarins to add new features to their existing platform.

    Do you really think the TTC wouldn’t take the cheap and expedient way out on any issue that does not involve rolling stock? We already know they’re looking at “the ‘quick fix’ issues on the TTC Web site” ( [ ], 2006.03.

    30).

  • It misleads an organization that already doesn’t know how to put a Web site together that this new plan (surveying the public via the same blogs they’ve always ignored) is the right way to do it. Public-opinion polls, which is all these things are, can be useful to driftnet for some people’s wants and needs.

    But if that’s all you go by, then you end up with today’s site with a few features grafted on. This faux-consultation does not take the place of professional needs analysis, prototyping, and testing with browsers, with adaptive technology, and with users, including users with disabilities. (And that doesn’t mean just blind people.

    )

    • In short, it’s nice that everyone thinks they’re contributing, and maybe that’s what everyone really is doing, but what the TTC needs is a cadre of standardistas, a generous development timetable, lots of time and money to test everything, and a resistance to bad ideas. Let me put this another way. Giambrone may surf the Web, but he’s a Windows IE6 user, making him almost the worst possible client.

    The entire TTC is Windows plus IE6. These people, by definition, don’t know the first thing about real Web sites and will conclude that if it works in their browser the whole job is done. We are not making a Web site just for you, or me, or Giambrone, or TTC staff.

    It has to work for everyone who wants to use it, with only rare and unavoidable exceptions. And there is one way to do that: Use (nearly-)valid, semantic HTML, comply with accessibility guidelines, and test everything. The TTC’s level of ignorance would lead to a transformation of the site from its current state of tables for layout, unusable drop-down menus, crawling marquees, and impossible graphic design and usability to a site that looks marginally better but is still a complete disaster under the hood.

    Or it might just go all-Flash, like . In short, all this ostensible consultation may lull the TTC into committing a Failed Redesign. They’ve already been sued over inaccessibility and lost ( ).

    I don’t think they’re competent enough even to get to the following point of understanding – that anything less than the absolute state of the art will expose them to another human-rights complaint that they will invariably lose. Fixing the Web site might easily cost $100,000; fighting a losing human-rights complaint will cost that much on top of whatever they spend on a Failed Redesign. The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2007.

    01.04 16:19. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen.

    (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is:
    http://blog.fawny.

    org/2007/01/04/ttcca/

    Or is it a lyre? Such coffee (“soyaccino”) was of course held, at my invitation, at the brand-new . A mere six weeks later, the fruit of Fiorito’s investigation into the politics of Venti® .

    I’m the kind of person who signs his name to pretty much everything, so it seemed rather odd never to be named in the piece (some other people were). I was merely his “source.”
    I’ve never been an unwittingly anonymous source before.

    I thought it was amusing at first. He had in front of him a thing that he said, with a straight face, was a soyaccino[:] a soy cappuccino. With an ironic face.

    “Is that what they call it?” Fiorito asked me. “It’s what I call it.

    ” “I’m a vegetarian,” he explained. I do. I just don’t support theirs.

    “Anyway, the coffee’s better here.” It is. I just don’t appreciate some alabaster-white guy with Korean tattoos making me feel like shit for going there.

    Plus their physical plant is a dump and their indie-rock music is grating and overloud. I finished my espresso and buzzed off to the Tango Palace, a very stylish coffee bar with a beautiful old-fashioned espresso machine. [W]hy does Apple remain so completely bigoted against us blinks?

    [ ] Why can’t an iPod talk? Because Apple doesn’t want it to. Why doesn’t Apple want the iPod to talk?

    Ask Steve. Is it technically feasible for an iPod to talk? [ iPods all] had more than enough compute power and storage (with zillions of bytes left over) to run a speech synthesizer.

    Having walked through the iPod interface with a sighted guide, I can also state quite clearly that offering the interface as a self-voicing application would not challenge the talented Apple engineers to[o] much. [ ] Effectively, the iPod has no accessibility features because Apple thinks of accessibility well after anything else they design into their products. Speech in an iPod would have been relatively cheap and easy[,] but Apple thinks of “cool” first and nerdy ideas like universal design just isn’t cool.

    [ ] Why do we insist on giving Apple a free advertisement for a product that might as well have a sign saying, “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” hanging on it as far as we blinks are concerned[?] The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2007.01.

    02 17:24. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.

    ) The permanent link is:
    http://blog.fawny.org/2007/01/02/zunestader/

    The New Year’s levee is a Canadian tradition – and a term in Canadian English pronounced like Chevy.

    It is generally pleasing to attend these public receptions held by mayors, lieutenant governors, premiers, and other officials. Today I managed to avoid being interviewed by the many reporters present who were researching (indoor) streeters from those of us in line. Just before you meet the dignitaries, you are handed one or the other of two free lapel pins.

    Like last year, I pigeonholed our mayor-for-life, David Miller.

  • I showed him (“ David Miller’s Medallions”), which drew a good laugh.
  • I mentioned that last year I asked him to get rid of the megabins, which has mostly happened.

    He said they’re going away slowly.

  • I told him the street-furniture project was going to be much worse than people thought. Why?

    There will be tens of thousands of corporate logos (I said 23,000, and I’m not going to bother looking it up now), and whoever doesn’t win the contract is gonna sue. But there won’t be 23,000 ads, he replied. No, 18,000 square feet, I said (and ditto on looking that up).

    Well, let me ask you something, he said. What is the city supposed to do when all the contracts come up for bus shelters, garbage cans, and the like? Produce with a zero-advertising budget, I said.

    Well, we can’t afford that. Ah, but the city never came up with a budget to prove it. I don’t need a budget; I know it’s fiscally impossible.

    This entire city was set up to fail by the Mike Harris government. Then I asked him whom to talk to about city-wide typography and was pretty much whisked away, albeit with thanks for knowing such “specific” information.

  • TTC vice-chair Joe Mihevc listened to me for a moment and pretty much told me to just show up at this month’s TTC meeting to talk about shitty TTC signage.

    I believe he actually gently touched my elbow and pushed me away. In fact, I watched the dynamic in and just beyond the queue, and not only is it all about throughput, pretty much everybody is treated like a crazy. Certainly there were quite a few street-involved and/or mentally-ill-looking and/or transgenderist and/or senior and/or disabled people in attendance.

    I know I shouldn’t, but being treated like a crazy leaves me feeling embarrassed.

    • Tomorrow I document all my plans for public space in ’07, among other . It ain’t all about the Spacers, and I let it be known that I don’t want to do everything by myself.

    Read more on by blog.fawny.org. All rights reserved.
    Keywords: Joe Clark, Station Redesign, Failed Redesign
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