Today I pranked people who surf my T-Comm site every day looking for “special sightings” of buses that are assigned to routes which they normally aren’t assigned. I swapped buses around such as putting articulated (long) buses on regular routes, changing the types of buses on particular routes, etc. It turns out that what caught more attention was the fact that my ‘backup’ buses in the D40LF and LFS range were being randomly assigned as cover for buses that were already swapped, rather than the actual swaps that I had intended. Here are some screenshots of some of the swapped Continue Reading
Dennis
I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP.
Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.
The end is near for Whistler’s hydrogen fuel cell buses
In one week, Whistler’s fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses will be parked as their five-year pilot project ends. Nova Bus diesel buses will be replacing them as of April 1st, 2014. The fleet of twenty buses is currently the largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses operating in the world. The fuelling station for the fleet is also the world’s largest hydrogen filling station. The hydrogen fuel cell buses were brought to Whistler by a five-year demonstration project sponsored by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, and the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. The buses arrived in late Continue Reading
Transit highlights from my Toronto trip
While I was in Toronto these past few days, I got a chance to see two of Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) newest transit vehicles. For those unfamiliar with public transportation in the Greater Toronto Area, a number of transit authorities provide local transit service within different regions in the GTA. The TTC provides transportation services within the Toronto proper, including the subways, streetcars and bus service. I suppose a more detailed introduction to the different public transportation services would be ideal in a separate post. The articulated buses The first were the Nova Bus LFS articulated buses. These buses, introduced Continue Reading
A real MacBook Pro
I bought my MacBook Pro back in 2009. It was a Mid-2009 (2nd generation) version with a Core 2 Duo with the basic 2GB of memory and 250GB hard disk drive. I chose Mac because of many reasons; here are some of them, ordered by what I thought most important first: Solid construction: The unibody construction was a huge factor. The size was quite slim and easily portable. The aluminum exterior felt solid. Since getting the laptop, I’ve only dropped it once. The hard drive died as a result (expected); was not a big deal to replace it. Battery Life: Continue Reading
Steve Jobs’ Clicker
I was snooping around the A/V desk at the RCAV One Conference that was held last Saturday at the Vancouver Convention Centre, and came across one interesting piece of equipment that I didn’t really recognize. It turned out to be a PerfectCue receiver, identified by the convenient markings on the rear of the unit that I was facing. So I proceeded to look up more information about this little unit. And it turned out that it was also the same system that Steve Jobs (and Apple in general) used in his keynote presentations! Before the black clicker, there was a blue Continue Reading