Great disappointment

I can't imagine anything more disappointing to a person (me, of course) dreading surgery, but looking forward to general anaesthetic, than being informed that you won't be going all the way under. A spinal injection to numb my lower half, and a bit through my IV to "make me happy", as the anaesthetist said, was all I got. I could even have declined the latter and been fully focussed on watching the surgery on the monitor, but I informed him that the less I knew about what was going on, the better. But the semi-lucid state that I was in during surgery and for a few minutes afterwards wasn't half bad.

Trudeau-mania

Justin Trudeau was at the University of Manitoba this past Wednesday afternoon to give a speech that I had the opportunity to attend. I was interested to hear what he had to say and how he would say it after all the hype surrounding the man following the Liberal leadership convention.

First, let me be clear. I'm not a political junkie. I enjoy political news as much as the next guy, but I'm not terribly partisan. In my brief voting career, I've managed to cast a ballot for all four of Canada's 'major' parties (NDP, Green, Liberal, Conservative), either provincially or federally.

So I went, not to worship like the Pierre Elliott fan during the Q&A who buttered up Justin before asking whether he would run for election, but to listen. And he had a few good things to say.

Trudeau began by talking about the environment and global climate change, which it seems everybody is doing these days. A strong point was made about the use of natural gas, a clean-burning fossil fuel, in extracting and refining oil from the tar sands, a much less clean fuel. He then tackled issues of collective and individual responsibility, the role of youth in bringing about change, and Canadian identity and it's role as a problem-solver and world leader.

It was here that it got interesting. He used the analogy of pushing a car out of a snowbank to describe Canada's generosity and neighbourliness, which sounds about right, given how self-congratulatory people typically are after the relatively minor deed of getting motorists back on the road. Trudeau also talked about Canada as a project of cooperation between Britain and France, a rather curious assertion that isn't on the firmest footing historically, although he did qualify that statement somewhat.

It was an hour-long speech (well, 40 minutes followed by Q&A) with a fairly large crowd, and the church effect eventually took its toll on me (drowsiness and lack of focus as the quantity of oxygen in the room slowly diminishes, combined with a stomach that should have been fed hours ago) so I didn't absorb everything. However, he seemed most well informed when talking about environmental issues, and most passionate when he answered a question by underlining the importance of youth involvement in programs like Katimavik, with which he is involved.

Anyway, even though he avoided saying 'yes' to the question about whether he'd run for politics, it seems like it is only a matter of time, and with the emphasis on the environment these days, you should be prepared to see of a lot of this guy in the future.

And in celebration of my going under the knife on Monday, here's a killer song from The Knife:

The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health [5.8 MB, mp3]

Questions answered

I received a nice response to the email I wrote to Winnipeg Transit and documented in my last post:

Thank you for using Navigo and for taking the effort to express a
concern. I managed to track down why the 18,79 option that you
described was omitted. It was simply due to a missing piece of data.
Navigo uses a list of transfer locations that are optimal, and that list
is missing the combination from 18 to 79 at Corydon and Edgeland. We
will correct this as soon as possible.

In your email you expressed curiosity regarding Navigo's algorithm. It
actually searches through all possible trip combinations. Numerous
heuristics are applied to reduce the size of the search, but these only
eliminate options that definitely would not make the list. This means
that options such as the 18,79 should never be missed. If they are, it
usually means there is a program bug or a data error. Sometimes though,
the issue is just differing interpretations of which options to display.
Navigo presents the quickest total trip, the earliest arriving trip (in
the "depart after" case), the trip with the least walking, and uses
various (tweakable) formulas to fill in the remaining options. These
formulas try to find trips with good combinations of travel time,
walking, waiting, etc.

Feedback from customers is quite helpful in bringing these issues to our
attention, so thank you again.

There had to be a good reason why such a painfully obvious trip didn't show up. There was a real problem and it is now being fixed.

You mightsay that I've increased the amount of useful time for those who travel between River Heights/Crescentwood/Fort Rouge and Charleswood by several minutes. Call me an information age minor hero, if you must. Or, if you're one of those who thing the pace of life is too fast already, you can accuse me of contributing to the problem.

In any case, that was a fun exercise in participatory bus ridership.

Stumped

I've never been quite convinced that Winnipeg Transit's Navigo feature always provides the best trip results from point-to-point. So from time to time, when planning a trip, I engage in a solitary game of "Stump Navigo" where I try to find a better route than the options given. Until today, my efforts hadn't met with any success, but after seeing a list of 2-transfer trips that would have taken north of the Assiniboine, down Portage, for a trip to the doctor (from Point A to Point B) that needn't have crossed any river at all, I was convinced that I could do better. So I did some sleuthing, found out I was right, and wrote a letter.

This isn't the first time I've written a letter (OK, email) to Winnipeg Transit officials. When I was in high school, the paper transfers that you would receive when paying with a ticket had facts about the city on them (how many kilometres of streets, number of trees the city maintained, etc.) When I was in Grade 11 or 12, the facts were discontinued. I emailed to ask why, and I was referred to the designer. Perhaps this letter will receive a more interesting response.

I think, in the back of my mind, I was inspired by this book that my brother owned which is a collection of letters and responses, written mostly to hotels and airlines, on the most inane topics that often resulted in the letter-writer receiving free stuff. I have no such expectations.

Here is my email. I just sent it so I am awaiting, and am currently awaiting a response:

A comment and a question:

The comment first. I'd just like to say that I really appreciate the Navigo feature of the transit website. It makes life whole lot easier than those days when I'd have to make 3 or 4 telebus calls to plan the best trip. I've noticed incremental improvements over the last several years, none more vital than the "leave right away" feature. The utility of Navigo is approaching that of the site I used while living in Holland (www.9292ov.nl)

Now the question:

As a former computer science student, I'm curious how various trip options are ranked and selected for the 'top 5'. I'll provide you with a concrete example. I was investigating a trip from my address (removed) to 3318 Roblin Blvd, leaving at 18:48. The options given were


Intuitively, I thought the best trip would be to board a south/westbound 18 bus, disembark at Corydon and Edgeland, and the continue on the 79. Searching the two legs separately, I found that I could ride the 18 from Osborne/River to Corydon/Edgeland between 18:49 and 19:08, wait twelve minutes, and ride the 79 from Corydon/Edgeland to my destination from 19:20-19:26. It would seem this option is preferable to all of the options listed except possibly Option 3, which is faster by 2 minutes (for all others, my proposed trip has a shorter total trip time, less walking and fewer transfers than #2 and #3). Or does your algorithm seek to minimize waiting time (at 12 minutes, my trip would have the longest wait)?

Obviously an algorithm that exhausts all the trip possibilities and selects the best would be too expensive. Is my trip simply one of those that slips through the heuristic cracks?

All the best.

I'm sure it's a coincidence, but I haven't been able to connect to Navigo since I wrote the email.

Update: See my questions answered above.

Quotation

These are a couple of quotes from today that I rather enjoyed:

In what he called his first major speech as Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion told a Toronto business audience Tuesday that Canadians can make enormous profits fighting climate change.

"Yes, Canada will cut megatonnes of emissions, but we will also make megatonnes of money," he told a joint breakfast meeting of the Toronto Board of Trade and the Economic Club of Toronto [link]

I'm imagining Dion uttering the phrase with his characteristic French accent and, in my head, at least, it's quite funny.

And, from one of my classes. As an introduction, my prof was lecturing on algebraic techniques regarding 'norms', which essentially are the measure of the length of a vector:

And so, if you want to get rid of norms, and by that I don't mean you're an iconoclast ...

It's a big word for the math crowd, and I think it flew over the head of most, but I rather enjoyed it.

Cold morning

This morning was one of those mornings where I debated whether it was worthwhile getting out of bed. I made the wrong decision.

Here's a timetable of my morning:

7:10-7:45: Play a game of truancy chicken, getting up at seven-minute intervals to hit the snooze button.

7:47: Out of bed, I fire up the computer to check the weather. It is -35 C, -47 with the windchill.

7:55: Dressed and out the door, headed for the bus stop.

7:58: The bus and I arrive at the stop at the same time. Not the express bus that I usually take, but it will get to the university anyway, so I climb aboard.

8:02: The bus isn't following its typical route. It doesn't take long for me to realize that I've gotten on the 16, which isn't where I want to be. I'd assumed by the number of people on the bus and the clientele (mostly young with backpacks) that it was the 60, a university route. Not wanting to get off right then and there, which would require walking several blocks, I decide to ride a little longer and transfer later.

8:16: Bus stop at Bishop Grandin and Dakota. Of the 10 or so people crammed into the bus shelter, I am the only one who isn't a Chinese UofM student.

8:25: Climb aboard the 75. Next stop, university.

8:45: Arrive at school. Stats class at 8:30, with a slow-moving prof and her broken English, seems pointless enough already. Arriving halfway through, when I'd probably have to sit at the back beside the old guy who smells like pipe smoke is even less appealing. Instead, I head to the library, to kill time for almost 3 hours until my next class.

So that's the kind of day it's been. Apparently it's the coldest day we've had in two years (3 years for me because I spent the winter of '04-'05 in the Netherlands where the mercury didn't dare drop this low), but I can remember weeks of this kind of weather when I was in elementary school, trudging along my flyer route.

I shouldn't really complain, though, because on the coldest day of last winter, in my former abode (100 years old this year, just like the house I'm currently in) the pipes froze (and burst). This may have had something to do with our energy conservation policy of keeping the thermostat at 14 degrees, but that's water under the bridge.

And, since the post is at least peripherally about Winnipeg Transit, here are a few complaints I have about an otherwise invaluable service:

1. People who don't know what bus they're on (ironic, isn't it!). The 61 University Super Express doesn't stop between the University and Confusion Corner, yet people will request a stop somewhere along Pembina, and will either have to be told by a fellow passenger or the driver that they're stuck on the bus for another 15 minutes.
2. Standing etiquette. I stand at least 50% of my trips, but there are still those who either a) don't walk all the way to the back or b) stand in the middle of the exits. On a related note, I'm excited for the launch of the new articulated buses, due this year, on the routes I ride most frequently (60 and 61), though I think some stops will need to be moved so that the greater length doesn't block any intersections.

The high temperature for tomorrow is -19, which wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't scheduled to work outside for two hours.

I almost rolled over and stayed in bed when I heard the promo for CBC's "The Current" which today featured a segment about the way the Phoenix Suns and Canadian Steve Nash (21 assists last night, and for those of you - probably all of you - who aren't basketball fans, that's a lot, considering Nash leads the league averaging just over 11 per game) are changing the game of basketball. [listen, RealAudio stream]

First Post '07: Odds and Ends

I wrote a few weeks ago about putting together a year-in-review mix for '06. I started with the idea of making a dance/synth-pop mix but I ran out of good songs after a while, so I added a few others to fill out the disc. Here's the list, quick and dirty, for those interested:

1. Junior Boys - "Double Shadow" (mp3)
2. CSS - "Alala" (mp3)
3. Metric - "Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT remix)" (mp3)
4. Justin Timberlake - "My Love feat. T.I."
5. MSTRKRFT - "Bodywork"
6. Sebastien Grainger - "When You Go Out" (mp3)
7. CSS - "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above" (mp3)
8. TV On The Radio - "Wolf Like Me" (mp3)
9. The Dears - "Ticket to Immortality"
10. Swan Lake - "Nubile Days" (mp3)
11. Thom Yorke - "Cymbal Rush" (mp3 - live version)
12. Final Fantasy - "This Pooka Sings"

Found some good cover art too, because who was more 2006 than Stephen Harper?

Now, I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions, but I have two this year. The first, because I've been seeing, over and over, the Gatorade infomercial during TSN's coverage of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships, is to drink more water. I surely don't drink enough, and too much can't hurt (oh wait, it can).

The second falls into the "use it or lose it" category. I've updated my personalized google page to include a news feed of Dutch news with the goal of reading one story a day to keep my third language skills sharp. Today's article was about calls for the board of the national train carrier to return part of their salaries because the trains didn't meet the punctuality standard of 86% in 2006.

Cereal pays. I got my free book in the mail today, from a General Mills promotion. Have a look around yourself - the selection is pretty poor. So I picked the dictionary.

I think my plant is dead. It is a Dieffenbachia transplant that never really took. Perhaps it is time for a new one, to determine if I am in fact a serial killer.

Why not watch some of my friends jumping off their roof?