Posts Tagged ‘Kingston’
Kingston 2014
This is my favourite photo of Kingston. Yeah, I know, it’s been doctored with some silly Photoshop antics, but it manages to captures the uniqueness of the city in a manner that only someone who has lived there would appreciate. The old S&R department store, a mainstay of downtown Kingston closed in 2009, but has […]
Pentax K-5
I mulled about this purchase for quite awhile. The K-5 is probably the best DSLR produced by Pentax to date, and it caved in the competition when was first released. It is a 2010 model though and part of me was desperately in love with the silver edition (why Pentax doesn’t make this absolutely gorgeous […]
Goodbye King Pen
Despite running a tough-on-crime agenda, tabling the obnoxious omnibus punishment legislation, scaring votes out of the public and promising to BUILD sixteen billion dollars worth of new prisons across the country, our wonderful Conservative Government of Canada (note how I use their descriptive terminology of choice…because I sure do not feel they deserve the title […]
Eating Flies @ Lemoine Point
Kingston is experiencing some kind of fly breeding season. Millions of these little bastards are infesting the airspaces and while they are merely a nuisance to pedestrians, they are down right nasty when you are riding. I rode out to Lemoine Point this afternoon and came back covered head to toe in little black flies. […]
SURP 2008 – 2010
In September 2008 I wrote my first SURP-related blog entry. I was hoping to have some more inspired thoughts for my last entry in an attempt to jive with the first, yet my head remains firmly incapacitated from a very long night of liver abuse. So I don’t. I’ve just got this photo. Two years. […]
Portsmouth Village
Although I don’t really live in Portsmouth Village, I like to say I do. Technically, I live in Alwington neighbourhood, which is right on the eastern edge of Portsmouth Village. Close enough. *tangent* – recently (past three months or so) I’ve noticed that I’m becoming more ambivalent (than usual) toward planning research. As identified in […]
Walking: Second Class Citizen?
I’ve was working on a brief regarding the walking/cycling school bus methodology for one of my classes when I came across this quote in one of the papers I was reading: Despite the accepted health benefits of walking, in some Western cities it has become an almost counter-cultural activity, and ‘a sign of powerlessness or […]
Yellow Bikes
I beat the crap out of my old Bianchi this winter. After several months of winter riding I have no brakes that work, a busted front derailleur that barely shifts and the rear derailleur is completely stuck…meaning I’m constantly pedaling in high gear. I rode for awhile with a braking system that hardly worked, but […]
The Most Dangerous Coffee in Kingston
I’m in a transit planning class and our first assignment has us evaluating an intermodal journey. This basically means we have to walk, skip and jump our way to another city via the street, public transit and some sort of other non-car mode…then write about what we liked and didn’t. Grad School is tough (honestly […]
Lonely Planet – Mackenzie, B.C.
Wandering around the downtown yesterday landed myself inside a rather busy Indigo bookstore. Whenever I’m in an Indigo/Chapters I have a routine route I take. I’ll wander the new releases (trade/paper/hard), move through the ‘theme’ tables, then meander upstairs the the ultra ‘no-one-would-pay-normal-price’ discounted publications. This is followed by a stop at the travel section. […]
Winter Ride
The uber-urban citizens of Copenhagen ride like crazy during the winter. Canadians…who like to pride themselves on their rustic hardiness and terrified of winter and snow. I’ve the one or two public meetings I’ve attended regarding transportation (one was in terms of transit, the other, cycling) tortured cries of “what about the snow?” in an […]
2010
Seven years of website fun! I suppose I could have waited until a 10 year operational anniversary, but…I needed a good topic for the first post of the year. Connected with descendents of my Great Uncle’s Typhoon squadron Was provided information regarding a memorial cairn created for my Great-Uncle in France. Acquired a long-term internet […]
2010 Olympic Torch Relay – Portsmouth Harbour
This will be my second Olympic Torch experience and I find that rather odd given that I’m can be indifferent regarding Torch relays. Yet the flame keeps stalking me… First, it was Nanjing, city of 6 million….right past my apartment accompanied by 500,000 screaming well-wishers. Now it’s tiny Kingston…this time it is on a boat, […]
Prison Land
Why would I be mentioning King Penitentiary? I often walk past it on my way down to Portsmouth Village and usually there is line of vehicles parked in front of the King Street entrance. Visitors. It is a rather depressing sight actually. I often wonder who they are visiting. Kingston Penitentiary is home to some […]
Tipping
Written thoughts about a conversation I had last night about tipping and the fact that I didn’t tip for a four dollar beer. Despite having several family members who worked or are presently working in the service industry, my feelings regarding the culture of tipping have always been mixed but have recently been sliding toward […]
Why I went into Urban Planning
To play with models of course! Unfortunately, I never actually get to play with them, and rarely see them either. The closest I’ve gotten to any kind of urban modelling is my crappy AutoCAD brownfield redevelopment I did last year…and I really cannot stress the adjective ‘crappy’ enough Chicago Urban Model vs. Davis Tannery Site, […]
Canada’s Top Infrastructure Projects
Canada Line – Vancouver Romaine Hydroelectric Complex Project $6.5 Billion Hydro Quebec’s monster generating project in North-eastern Quebec. 1550 MW with a completion date of 2020. Bruce A Nuclear Generating Station Restart $5.25 Billion Refurbishing of two CANDU reactors 250km north of Toronto on Lake Huron and construction of two additional reactors to be completed […]
Urban Cross-Country Skiing
This is a very new phenomenon for me and I still remain surprised that I never considered it before given that more complex and site specific pastime of urban riding (of the alpine and snowboard variety) is quite common in the streets of ski town of Rossland BC. I saw my first skier along the […]
Library Loans
“Planning in Ontario 1966-1975: A Review of Activities” – according to the library record, the last person to sign out this beast was in 1986. Given the huge popularity of this masterpiece I am only provided a measely one week loan – the rationale being that this is a government document and that Canadians around […]
AutoMAD
Yeah, I’m still around – but don’t expect any big post in the next few weeks. If you do, it is because I need to bust myself away from the super-duper exciting world of planning school examination/project period. I swear, I will die at my computer…while using AutoCAD. I’m not kidding when I say my […]
Wolfe Island Wind Farms
As an Ontario newb, I generally have no idea what is going on in this province and this ignorance presents a rather large liability when studying a profession that is heavily weighted towards local examples. Take for example an upcoming presentation I am giving on Ontario’s latest sexed up regional ‘smart-growth’ plan. The region in […]
Small fridge = good city
That was one of the wrapping ideas of architect Donald Chong pushed through during his guest presentation this morning, the notion being that an essential component to improving cities actually begins inside the home embracing the ideas of seasonality and local food markets instead of hoarding food stuffs in giant freezers, pantries and fridges. I […]
Weekend Update
I’m currently munching my way through a multiculturalism planning paper so I’m a bit empty headed regarding posting concerns but I think I might post the paper when I’m finished as it is not very long and reads more as a narrative story rather than an essay. Some interesting things from this week: The Canadian […]
Coffee and Gyms
I’m not generally against coffee house background music, provided it adhere within the confines of the term ‘background music, tubed music, canned music or even shit music’. Several places of coffee persuasion can be found within the limestone quarry of Queen’s campus and the particular one I am patronizing at the moment chooses to play […]
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