Friday, December 25, 2009

Good news from Jamaica

As mentioned in an earlier post I left my Acer Aspire One with a guy in Jamaica.
He has been having his challenges getting all the stuff he wants working on that machine. He has asked a few questions, but has mostly found his own solutions.
He's been trying hard to get the video conferencing (with empathy) working. Not much joy there, I've had trouble myself, tends to be a bit hit and miss + the AAO can struggle a bit with voice and video.
Anyway, this mornig I got a video call from him :)
Some Italian guy from the Ubuntu forums had helped him install the latest pidgin, talking him throught a bunch of terminal stuff.
Ubuntu you are awesome.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Copenhagen shows what can be done if you are serious about supporting cycling

The video here shows what can be done if you are serious about promoting cycling in your city.

Some of the things they have done:

  • Lots of double width cycle lanes
  • specially designed junctions to cut down serious accidents
  • LED's to warn right turning vehicles about bikes
  • traffic lights co-ordinated so bikes travelling at 20km/h never have to stop
  • bike counters to a. monitor and b. let everyone know how many bikes there are.

Such a refreshing change from the world's worst bike lanes. Hopefully, other cities will start to catch on.