PipesDreams

Ever since leaving the Attorney General’s somewhat formal office environment (black suits, grey suits, pant suits, twin-sets) for the significantly more eclectic atmosphere of Cabinet Office New Media, I’ve been feeling the pain of the bureaucratization of my wardrobe.

At the height of my funkiness, circa my Silver Snail Comic Shop employee days a few years back, my dresser was crammed full of graphic tees embellished with interesting ribbons, hand-sewn patches and funky bias-cut necklines. Pink and black skirts sporting a shameless quantity of taffeta were hung next to purple velvet blazers in the closet. The clothes may or may not make the woman, but I was definitely kicking my own style.

From my former technicolour splendour, I have sunk into a monochrome abyss of black pinstripe and grey tweed. Given my blindingly caucasian skin-tone and dark hair, most days I feel like I could blend into the set of Pleasantville with little or no effort. I’m sure my coworkers would be quick to remind me of my experiments with striped and lime-green tights, but the fact remains: the situation has become dire. My clothes suck.

Today was the breaking point. I went to U of T’s Rotman School of Management for a really excellent talk by Rahaf Harfoush (a New Media strategist who worked on the Obama campaign) and naturally, what with Rotman being a business school, there were suits, suits, everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Being a keener, I sat in the front row, which put me at eye-level with Alexander Manu’s feet. When he sat down for the after-talk discussion, I noticed he was wearing one orange sock and one green sock. Brilliant! A splash of irreverence, of creativity, of colour in an otherwise crisply professional facade.

On the way home from dinner after the talk, I was drawn into a local clothing store. I can’t really say what happened while I was in there, but I walked out with $300 worth of stuff. There’s a lot of polka-dot and corduroy action happening in that bag. There’s also a pleated dress that looks like it might have time traveled out of the 1960s. And a green and gold striped sweater with a cowl large enough to conceal a parachute pack, if I ever wanted to carry such a thing surreptitiously on my person.

The insanity didn’t stop there. Never forget my awful addiction to the Internets. When I got home with my loot, I paused to check my e-mail. Lo and behold, a message from Glarkware. They’re having a “Black Friday” sale: all t-shirts $5 and all hoodies $10! Sign me up! Another $50 later, and I’m the proud new owner of a large quantity of absurdly nerdy t-shirts, some featuring sock monkeys.

For now, the beast is sated. I will rest my poor weary Visa for a while, and absorb these new pieces into my closet, hopefully rejuvenating my tragically deflated sense of personal pizazz. But the hiatus won’t be long – it’s winter, and baby needs a new pair of snowpants. Not to mention a crazy Christmas sweater to wear home for Mum. Perhaps some new boots. And some dark red gloves, to match my glasses…

EDITED TO ADD! Joy! At Web 2.0 summit today (November 26, 2008 circa 1pm) in Toronto City Hall, Mayor David Miller committed to putting Toronto on Google Transit by mid-2009!

As of today (November 12, 2008), the Hamilton, ON Hamilton Street Railway has become the fifth Canadian city to feature route planning on Google Transit, joining Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Fredericton in beating out Toronto’s glacial progress in this area by a wide margin.

According to our TTC Commissioner’s Office, Toronto is "in discussion" with Google and "working towards" a solution, and we can expect to get this service sometime next year. But these discussions have been underway for five years now, so I’m not holding my breath for 2009. AAARRRRRGGGHHH!!

Direct quote from the TLCHamilton blog article on this: "Hamilton is the fifth city in Canada to receive this treatment. Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Fredericton were first. How did Hamilton get the service before Toronto? Google spokesperson Tamara Micner says the city of Hamilton was "very co-operative" in the partnership."

See the fruits of my prior expressions of frustration on this subject, below. WTF, TTC?

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Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 5:11:03 PM
To: TTC Chair; minister@mto.gov.on.ca
Cc: mayor_miller@toronto.ca; mintc@tc.gc.ca; msnider@globeandmail.com;
torontonewsdesk@metronews.ca
Subject: Please get Toronto listed on Google Transit!

Dear Mr. Giambrone and Minister Bradley,

I am writing to you as a citizen of Toronto, a citizen of Ontario, and as someone who uses Toronto Transit and GOTransit every day, to ask  you to take action and get our city – and eventually our province – listed with Google Transit.

This resource would be a revolution for Torontonians in finding the best TTC routes to get where they want to go, and would make our city instantly more navigable for tourists and visitors of all kinds. Not everyone knows where to find the TTC website, or how to use it, especially if English is not their first language – the whole world knows Google.

For GOTransit riders in the province, an alternative to the existing, extremely hard-to-read GO train and bus schedules would be a welcome change.

I read the Staff Response to the Commission Inquiry about Google Transit Trip Planner put forward in December 2005, and can see that the obstacles to participation were "costs incurred by the TTC to prepare the back end of the data conversion / ongoing link to ensure that the latest information is being made available" and that the TTC was waiting "until Google is in a position to provide the system requirements to the TTC" and that at that time Google Transit was "still a work in progress".

These objections have since been answered – Google has made it infinitely easier for cities to participate with their Transit FeedSpecification toolkit . Just follow the instructions, fill in the blanks, and voila! You have a Google Transit feed.

Private citizen efforts to map our transit onto Google, such as those by Ian Stevens and Greg Smith, started in 2006, which makes me wonder why an "official" version of a Google Transit map wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

I am not alone in feeling this way: the online conversational thread on the Google Transit group page expresses some fairly negative and despondent views about the responsiveness of Toronto Transit to the desire of its citizens for this online resource to become reality.

In Canada, Vancouver, Fredericton, Ottawa and Montreal have all joined in to link their city’s transit options to a Google Transit feed. Why is our city not participating in this amazing project? Has any progress at all been made on this file since 2006?

Please let me know what the current status is on this project, as I would like to see both our city and our province take advantage of this incredible opportunity for global marketing and service improvement to private citizens using web technology.

Thank you.
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