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Video of the Day: Creme that egg

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the Day: Creme that egg

A most creative way to break a creme egg:

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Video of the day: Family Guy rides his 10 speed

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the day: Family Guy rides his 10 speed

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Video of the Day: Bad Driving

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the Day: Bad Driving

Even if you own a car, you need to know how to drive.

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Video of the day: Day drinking with Pete and Brian

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the day: Day drinking with Pete and Brian

Day drinking with Pete and Brian. This is too funny.

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Video of the day: Better airline safety announcements

Monday, March 16th, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the day: Better airline safety announcements

How to get airline passengers to listen to safety announcements, by Southwest Airlines

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Video of the day: Ray LaMontagne plays Shelter

Monday, March 16th, 2009 Posted in Of The Day | Comments Off on Video of the day: Ray LaMontagne plays Shelter

What a voice, what a song. Ray LaMontagne doing Shelter for BBC Sessions

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3 causes of traffic and 3 cures for you

Monday, March 9th, 2009 Posted in How To | Comments Off on 3 causes of traffic and 3 cures for you

Sometimes it seems a traffic jam just materializes on the road at the most improbable times or places. Sometimes you’ll get past a jam and find no accident, no construction, no police cars, and wonder what the heck was that? It’s like an invisible accident.

But why? It has to do with the ripple effect that causes traffic and our misunderstanding of traffic in the first place. What if, ultimately, most traffic is caused by human error — drivers overreacting to events — could we learn how to prevent it and spread this knowledge massively?


Photo credit: Mazda6 (Tor) on Flickr

Well, it’s been studied and proven. It’s not just about too many cars on the road — human error is actually a significant cause of traffic, and, at the least, you can actually do something to reduce traffic and increase your driving sanity.

Cause #1: Bad use of brakes
Cars slow faster than they can accelerate. Sudden movements and not indicating lane changes cause other drivers to overreact. Overreaction means braking and lighting the brake lights. Each successive car that brakes will brake a little more, and a shockwave jam of bunching cars appears, traveling backwards through the traffic. This needs no explanation — just check out this video:

From New Scientist:

Researchers from several Japanese universities managed the feat by putting 22 vehicles on a 230-metre single-lane circuit (see video).

They asked drivers to cruise steadily at 30 kilometres per hour, and at first the traffic moved freely. But small fluctuations soon appeared in distances between cars, breaking down the free flow, until finally a cluster of several vehicles was forced to stop completely for a moment.

What this means: human error is needed to cause this “shockwave” traffic. It’s more than just too many cars on the road.

Cause #2: Riding the brakes

Your car’s brakes, according to the car behind you, are either on or off. When you ride the brakes, meaning you are lightly resting your foot on the brake, causing very slight or no deceleration, the brake light is still lit… increasing the chances of shockwave traffic behind you.

Cause #3: Following too close

Regardless of it being a safety thing or no big deal, following too close is just another precursor to shockwave traffic. When you see red brakes lights lit ahead, you’d be more likely to preemptively hit your own brakes in anticipation, even if they’re not needed.

Cure #1: An engineer’s theories

Electrical engineer Bill Beaty spent his daily commute in Seattle’s traffic, where he realized that, as an amateur traffic dynamicist, he could do something himself to help alleviate traffic; and actually anyone can do it. As he puts it, “Sometimes One Driver Can Vastly Improve Traffic.” (Ironically, he had all the time to think about this while sitting in traffic…)

How? When you’re stuck in a jam, slow down until there’s enough space between you and the car in front so you can cruise at a constant speed without braking. You’ll effectively eat up all the mini jams in front of you for all of the cars behind you. You’ll notice that many truckers drive just like that.

Imagine, in the future, cars might come with a more complex form of cruise control, one that will automatically maintain a constant distance from the car ahead and less variation in speed, and alleviate the shockwaves automatically. Cool!

Cure #2: Better braking

Learn how to use brakes sparingly, albeit safely. Better braking would alleviate overreactions and shockwaves. On the technical innovation side, car companies (notably Mercedes and BMW) have started using adaptive brake lights. “It allows those behind you to clearly see whether you’re lightly tapping the brakes to slow down or applying full force for a sudden stop,” from BMW safety site.

Watch this non-embeddable Youtube video demonstrating one variation of this.

Another variation is flashing brake lights when the brakes are applied heavily. Check out this MSNBC piece “Will flashier brake lights reduce accidents?

The NHTSA had originally refused to make a permanent change to its auto safety rule, which requires the steady illumination of vehicle lights, but relented when Mercedes said it wanted to show its flashing brake lights improve car safety by preventing rear-end crashes. Dubbed Adaptive Brake Lights, these brakes lights are only activated when the brake pedal is pushed heavily for a hard stop. The feature is already available in Europe in Mercedes S-class and CL-class cars.

Although this is primarily aimed to reduce rear-end crashes, it also serves to show drivers behind if you are slowing down gradually or stopping urgently, so they can react accordingly.

Cure #3: GPS and cell phone traffic tracking
Technological advances in traffic monitoring will give drivers more real-time information and options to avoid traffic. GPS devices can tell you the best way to get to your destination by factoring in accidents, congested roadways, or construction zones. They are also using the location and movement of cell phones (with embedded GPS or tower triangulation) to create a real-time map of traffic congestion, supposedly with personal information removed, of course.

Bonus cures:

  • Better adaptive traffic light synchronization, which responds to where the traffic is and timed to maximize car flow
  • Pace cars in rush hour: notice how police cars in traffic keep a steady flow of cars behind them? No one wants to drive erratically. Designated cars could line up and pace traffic at a steady pace.
  • Don’t take your car, take public transit. Cities could continue to make better public transit. Alternately, take your bike, walk, carpool, work from home (or at least more often), or work less. The Onion once wrote: “98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others.”
  • Citizen tagging of bad drivers? This is a crazy idea. Would drivers tag, dare I say it, “bad” drivers (those who are erratic, unpredictable, and overreact) through a mobile social community? Ha, it already exists.

No more traffic! Destroy traffic jams!
Sure when you’re in a rush, the tendency is to drive closer to the car in front. We think that will push that car along or push them out of the way. Well, if it doesn’t get you there faster, it’s likely changing driving habits and accumulating traffic behind you.

Well, you can now believe that single drivers can have huge effects if they drive differently, effectively changing the capacity of the highway by eliminating bottlenecks.

Call to action:

So how can we educate people? Is it possible to spread new understanding of traffic and convince people to leave more space between cars and ride the brakes less?

What do you think? Your solutions are needed. Without them, we’ll continue to be stuck in traffic endlessly…

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Top 10 extreme ski runs

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 Posted in Sports | Comments Off on Top 10 extreme ski runs

Here’s a nice use of cross-referenced images and videos on this great list of top 10 extreme ski runs in North America. It’s a great list and well considered, and, of course, I skied the one called Climax yesterday.

Update: the link has been taken down – our apologies!

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Follow live Habs updates on Twitter

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 Posted in Sports | Comments Off on Follow live Habs updates on Twitter

Twitter user @habstwit is covering great play-by-play of Montreal Canadiens‘ hockey games. For some more Habs-following Twitterers, try Andre Nantel, laurentlasalle, TanMcG, JohnnyCanuck, stephdau, and JeromeParadis (taken from Metblogs’ Twittering the Habs game).

And of course, there’s also #habs real-time Twitter results.

Update: Streaming video is also available at Habs Online TV, Justin.TV, CBCSports.ca (except when they show figure skating instead of the Habs), and RDS (subscription service). Great audio coverage with Murray Wilson and Rick Moffat is on CJAD 800 Montreal. Also, the game summary at the Canadiens official page comes in handy. You see, not all Habs fans get all the games broadcast where they live, and well some probably don’t even have TVs.

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How to use Twitter

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 Posted in How To | Comments Off on How to use Twitter

Tricks for skeptical first timers…

Everyone is talking about Twitter, not just the tech geeks.

At this point, you’ve probably considered giving it a try, or you’ve already signed up and couldn’t figure out what the big deal is all about.

So consider giving it a try, and here’s why — Twitter is an amazing tool to do the following within moments of starting up:

  • get an inside view into the lives of interesting people
  • hear compelling tidbits from the “influentials”
  • learn about breaking news

Later, you will be able to share what you know and create a very rich dialogue (including links and photos) with the people you will eventually connect with on the network. BUT FIRST…

Twitter starts off as a VERY simple service. You may be surprised how simple it is.

Try this:

Sign up and add at least 10 frequent and interesting Twitterers. Maybe you like celebrities, successful investors, professional athletes, musicians. They’re all here, and more will be here soon:

CNN Breaking News, Britney Spears, The New York Times, Lance Armstrong, Al Gore, Shaq, Demi Moore, Tina Fey, Coldplay, Jimmy Fallon, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Ashton Kutcher, Evan Williams (founder of Twitter), Robert Scoble (ubergeek), Guy Kawasaki (marketing guru), Stephen Colbert, The Onion, David Pogue (tech reviewer for NYTimes)

Just go to their profile page and lick “FOLLOW” (assuming you’ve already signed up for Twitter!).

You can also use Twitterholic and Twitter suggestions to find other popular Twitterers to follow.

Visit your Twitter homepage and refresh to read these very short entries. It is very refreshing to learn so much through such a short note!

Your friends on Twitter

Soon enough, you’ll find your friends or other members of your community on Twitter.

Your status

Eventually you will also want to contribute you status, anything to answer “What are you doing?” Seriously, you can write from the most simple notes (“walking the dog in the sun”) to express opinions, post pictures, converse with a friend, send links, etc. But don’t be intimidated. START SMALL AND SIMPLE, and you will eventually see how you can add value to the network with your comments.

Next steps

Soon enough, you’ll learn how to add pictures, link to other sites, reference other Twitterers conversations, use Twitter from your cell phone, and possibly even want to use other programs (clients) for using Twitter on your PC, iPhone, or Blackberry.

Further reading

Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners

Top 10 celebrities on Twitter (and a few more because we like them)

All a-Twitter: You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder why – all in 140 characters

NYTimes: Twitter? It’s What You Make It

Tim Ferriss: How to Use Twitter Without Twitter Owning You – 5 Tips

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