dsandler.org/wp

Chronicle: Culberson wants rail along Southwest Freeway. “The Houston Republican wants Metro to align the rail route with the Southwest Freeway from Main to near Kirby, where the sunken road, in essence, runs through a long concrete box.”

What Culberson, the Afton Oaks residents, and other rail opponents miss (through honest or willful misunderstanding) is that the Universities line is not intended to be primarily a commuter rail. It is instead a part of the ongoing long-term process of revitalizing and integrating Houston’s central neighborhoods; it will connect residents and students to existing workplaces and retail inside the loop. If you build the Universities rail line where there are no residents and no businesses, nobody will ride it. Now that’s a waste of tax dollars.

This isn’t urban planning; this is rail sabotage, and election-year constituency pandering that will have a detrimental impact on Houston revitalization for decades. To read more about resident-focused and business-friendly urban planning that can be brought to bear on the problem, poke around Christof Spieler’s Intermodality blog (look here for hard facts about rail on Richmond).

(Update, 12AM: When, by the way, will the ridiculous argument that “this line was voted on Westpark” die? Anti-Richmond-railers argue that the ballot explicitly places the east-west Universities line along the Westpark corridor, because that line’s bullets are under the heading “WESTPARK”. Does this mean we should also expect a rail line along a road called “SOUTHEAST”? METRO hadn’t yet conducted feasibility studies for the Universities line, and so the “WESTPARK” section is consequently quite vague, especially when compared with the other sections which identify specific roads and rights-of-way that will be involved in those other lines. Besides, even the Westpark corridor doesn’t extend all the way to Wheeler Station; Richmond must be involved somewhere, and as you can see it’s a part of every proposal METRO has put on the table.)

Update 8/14: Charles Kuffner follows up the Chron article with a clear statement of the anti-rail endgame:

The plan is simple: If Richmond is off the table, Metro is forced to put forth a lesser plan, such as this elevate-it-over-the-freeway scheme. The required feasibility studies then show that ridership will be insufficient and the expense will be excessive. Naturally, the Federal Transportation Administration refuses to provide funding, leaving Metro with the choice of finding its own money or giving up. And thus the anti-rail forces win.

Yes, it’s true: we love the Sirius radio that came with our new Mazda3. (Photo essay forthcoming.) The Wikipedia page for Sirius offers some geeky details (for those into that sort of thing); for example, there are terrestrial repeaters in major cities to improve reception for receivers that cannot hear any of Radiosat 1, 2, or 3. Other places to poke around: SIRIUS Backstage, SIRIUS Fan Network, DogstarRadio’s satellite orbit and terrestrial repeater map, more info on the SIRIUS constellation from Spaceflight Now.

While I was in Vancouver, I got into the habit of finishing my day by taking my laptop down to the conference floor (where there was free wireless, courtesy USENIX). On Wednesday night, at around 10pm, the floor suddenly came alive with the sound of the grand piano in the foyer. It was clearly not someone hired by the hotel (the official pianist could be heard distantly in the bar, accompanying a dreadful braying version of “Too Damn Hot”); the unknown pianist was noodling around, pounding out some seriously grandiose chords.

After a while, I realized the barrage of harmonious key-mashing was the “chorus” from Ben Folds’ “Trusted”. Ever more curious, I picked up my PowerBook and wandered down the hall, where I found Ping, iPod earbuds trailing from the sides of his head, picking out the song!

No mean feat.

It was a shame, then, when the night manager came by and kicked us out.

Whoa!

Pressing the space bar in a read-only rich-text or HTML view (e.g. Mail.app, Safari) advances the scroll position by a page (satisfying habits of Eudora or more users). This is old news. But I just now discovered that holding down Shift will reverse the scroll direction.

Brilliant.

[Yes, yes, I’ll write a little about Vancouver and USENIX Security in the next day or two. I’m still recovering; it was a long week.]