I’ve listed some upgrade caveats – from my professional perspective – on an other blog.  But I’ve been asked what I like about Lion.  Here’s a list.

• windows can be resized by grabbing any corner or edge, not just the bottom-right corner
• full-screen mode can be useful for eliminating distractions from other windows
• state of open windows and applications can be saved at logout or shutdown

Suddenly, a wild Portfolio appears

As promised, it was only viewable in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.  In Preview or any other PDF viewer, all I got was the same understated concern for my optimal experience.

The key here is “PDF portfolio”.  Despite the .pdf extension, this is not a PDF file but a PDF portfolio – a bundle of PDFs of other files, according to Adobe.  Particularly annoying in this case, because the portfolio contained just a single PDF file.

For the best experience, open the PDF portfolio in Acrobat 9

It’s not obvious that there is any way to extract a PDF file from a portfolio without using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

The Spectator, in the second sentence of their report, tells us that “the boy … was not wearing a helmet”.  We are told nothing about his injuries or the impact, nor of the possible relevance of his not wearing a helmet.    Last week, when a child ran into a car (and was more-or-less OK), we were similarly told that the child wasn’t wearing a helmet, though there was no indication that he had head injuries.

For some twenty years now we have been hearing the loud and persistent (and in some cases legislated) mantra of “wear a bike helmet!” and it seems that we have come to feel that wearing a helmet is the beginning and ending of cycling safety.  So when a cyclist is in an accident, the first thing we ask is “was he wearing a helmet?”  And if he wasn’t?  Well, as absurd as it sounds at first blush, I believe that we have been conditioned to answer “well, I guess it’s his own fault, then.”

If the police and the media are serious about cycling and cycling safety, then they need to stop telling us about helmets unless it seems likely that not wearing a helmet contributed to an injury.  Otherwise, they are just perpetuating the “all that matters is that you wear a helmet” myth and implying that a helmet would have made a difference – and allowing us to draw the inevitable conclusion when the cyclist wasn’t doing that sole, important thing.

I guess “cycle themed” is not the same as “cycle friendly”.  Disappointing

Please Don't Hit Me

Lancaster University sociologist Dave Horton has a wonderful essay about the Fear of Cycling on Copenhagenize.

He argues that the emphasis on cycling safety is necessarily an insistence that cycling is extraordinarily dangerous compared to other quotidian activities.  And so campaigns to convince children to wear helmets and schemes to provide safe cycling paths away from the roads actually discourage people from riding bikes.

Most interesting, perhaps, are the quotes from cycling advocates of the 1930s and 1940s, who clearly foresaw where safety measures being discussed at the time would lead.  For example …

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that most people and organisations who advocate cycle paths are not actuated by motives of benevolence or sympathy, although they may declare that their sole concern is the welfare of the cyclist … A great deal of the cycle-path propaganda is based on a desire to remove cyclists from the roads. That is why the request for cycle paths is so often accompanied by a suggestion that their use should be enforced by law. Therein lies a serious threat to cycling.
Cyclists’ Touring Club 1937, 11-12

‘[the] use of any rear warning weakens the sense of responsibility of the driver of an overtaking vehicle to avoid running down a vehicle or pedestrian in front of him’.
Cyclists’ Touring Club

Image via Wikipedia

… the incident serves as a reminder to parents they must “always make sure your kids are wearing helmets.”

Although adults are not required to wear a helmet on a bicycle, it is best for children if parents “lead by example” and use one.

Child cyclist survives collision with van – The Hamilton Spectator, Thu Jun 23 2011

The boy didn’t hurt his head; that fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet is not relevant in this accident.  He ran a stop sign; that’s why he hit the van.  Yet that’s not the message which either the police or the reporter chose to convey.  Instead of a relevant message about the importance of obeying traffic laws and acting predictably, we get the automatic, thoughtless “cyclists must wear helmets to be safe” mantra.

Kee-righst.

Anti-helmet-law activists often claim that one of the problems with helmet laws is that they make people believe that cycling safety is all about protective equipment; I sometimes wonder if that’s really the case.  But this is a good example: having repeated the mantra about helmets, both police and press feel there’s nothing more they need to say; job done.

Predictable, lawful behaviour by cyclists combined with a greater number of cyclists on our streets will do more for cyclist safety than helmets on the heads of each and every darting, sidewalk-riding, stop-sign running bicycle rider.

Welcome to Downtown Hamilton

I’m downtown, outside the bike shop on a Wednesday morning, putting my laptop and sportcoat (with wallet) in my bike basket, when I overhear a loud conversation between two people on opposite sides of John Street North.

“No, man,  no.  I can’t.  I can’t go there anymore.” says 30-going-on-50-year old woman with the bleached hair.  ”Yeah, I fucked up.  I fucked up again.”

“Are they being assholes?”

“No, I’m just back on the crack.  You know … back on the crack.”

And then I biked off up John and along King Street West, past the punks and through the clouds of smoke outside the bingo hall.  While the Gore Park fountain played in the glorious sunshine.

The suburbanites who rag on Hamilton are not as wrong as I sometimes think.

“It’s funny, but I do have an earth goddess.”

“Gaia?”

“*stck* Call her whatever you want …”

Gaia.  How jejune.

Image via Wikipedia

My MacBook Pro DVD drive is shot.  My iMac can share its DVD drive, but only to a MacBook Air.  Unless I do this …

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=455975

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Awesome.  But sort of rotten that it’s so obscure.