Stephen Rees’s blog

I have gone back into the SFU posts and added photographs by Jason Vanderhill (with his permission of course). I am trying to ensure that posts here have a balance between words and pictures - or rather illustrations (”For what good is a book without pictures or conversations” thought Alice) and I really appreciate his blanket approval. Jason is not only a better photographer than I, but he also uses a Sony Cybershot which seems to get images that my Nikon 4800ED can’t manage.

I have been reading John Taplin’s blog about the American economy, and he seems to back up my worst fears.

And, by the way, if you have been thinking we are doing well becuase our dollar is at par to theirs, think again. This graph shows how many of our dollars it takes to buy a Euro.

And that is not good news either. (This is not one of those charts where up is positive) I find the Sauder School UBC Currency Trends service very useful. As Taplin points out since oil is priced in dollars, the apparent rise in fuel cost is not hitting them. And they also do not have to worry about a flood of cheap US imports of goods - since the US does not make make nearly so much these days, and what they do make does not fit all that well into a European lifestyle. Although Tony Blair did drive a Dodge Caravan (which says a lot in itself).

And also I have been reading Erika Rathje’s suburban observations. She didn’t like my suggestion of using Google image search but for some reason I found this appealing

I have also been avoiding the news about the property price crash in the UK

I am joining the ranks of the hopeful - that continued overseas interest in Vancouver and the chance of a quick Canuck buck off the Olympics will keep our market bouyant. Not that I intend to move again after this one.

The SFU City Programme has been making videos of these free public lectures. I have now inserted links into the first four lectures for this year Andres Duany, Mike Meyers, James Sallis and Douglas Farr. You can find the complete list at the SFU video page.

Instead of a new post I simply inserted a brief report of yesterday’s Green Party’s “Free Transit” panel into the earlier post. There was video, but I am not sure when it will be available as the camera operator was off to that “Inconvenient Truth” boot camp.

The crack addicted gerbil strikes again

We did not break through 20,000 views, but the growth is still impressive.

One reason for publishing this data is to blow an electronic raspberry at a few people who have been trying to post negative comments here - apparently someone thinks I am a “waste of electrons”.

On March 18 the blog had its best day ever at just under a thousand views, and since it started there have been well over 100,000 views. And over 2,00 comments (and 20,000 spam comments trapped by Akismet). I did find out one reason why that post about the Port Moody campaign for SkyTrain is so popular. At least one reader has used that as a bookmark rather than the home page or an RSS feed. I am also puzzled why people put the entire blog name into Google rather than the address window.

But I am very glad that so many people find this blog useful and interesting. Thank you for reading.

On Friday and Saturday I am at a conference for bloggers at UBC. Moderated comments may not appear until later - depending on how busy I get.

It is a high energy, fun place already - and there is to be another transit camp session and one on using blogs for social change. Interesting!

Lunchtime update

I got props from the CBC lady ( Lisa Johnson editor of Your Voice) - and from a real economist I think half the people here have ADD or as they probably like to think of “multi-tasking ability”. Their lap tops are open, but very few are blogging or making notes on what is going on. It is a bit like a party where people who are talking to you are also looking over your shoulder to see if there is someone more interesting just coming in. Though the people I have talked to have been all very polite and good company

Last time I looked there were over 1,000 photos of this event on flickr

This post is not important for what it says so much as for what it does. I spend too much time at home at my computer. I need to get out more. And I also need to have more variety in how I blog, as I have a painful case of “blogger’s shoulder” - repetitive strain injury from mouse use.

So this post is being created at the Library using a wi-fi hot spot and my new notebook. In future I am going to try live blogging. Maybe I should also learn tai chi too.

Updated:

Sarkozy’s rescue plan for suburbs

TransLink board pay soars

Cascadian ports target pollution

£2bn of public money goes down the Tube as Gordon Brown counts cost of failed deal

I have updated the Cambie Street piece with photographs. This was inspired by a comment which included a link to a very well done virtual tour. My original instinct to avoid the area because of the traffic congestion was misplaced. It was almost empty yesterday lunchtime. South Cambie up to 41st was almost car free.

Also this morning the SFU web page has the podcasts of the “City Making in Paradise” talks so I have updated (and added to) the links in that piece. Similarly updated are the Price and Munnich lectures in the SFU City series which are also now available from their web page.

The bit about Randall O’Toole has not changed but the comments and rebuttals keep growing

If you are looking at this web page with Internet Explorer 6, it screws up the formatting, especially when I put in my own photographs. I am sorry but the only way I know at present to overcome this issue is to suggest you use IE7 or, preferably, Firefox 2.