The Heartbleed vulnerability has been all over the news this past week. As usual, the media sometimes twists the facts, sometimes intentionally, other times inadvertently. For example, I’ve heard Heartbleed being called a virus, or being framed as something that was deliberately created to be malicious. Also, from reading people’s comments on the online news articles and blog posts, it seems that many people don’t really understand what Heartbleed is or does. From my point of view as a software developer, I would like to provide some information and resources that I believe are true and report the facts (but Continue Reading
The hello world hackathon project
This past week, the co-op students at A Thinking Ape participated in an internal hackathon where they had two days to develop something to show the rest of the company. Among the games and tools that resulted, one project stood out to me: a hello world app. Yes, a hello world app. (For those not in the software development field, “hello world” is usually the first output that developers code when trying out a new platform or language.) It had a white background, black text that said “Hello World,” and a green button that was labeled, “I am a button.” It Continue Reading
Happy April Fool’s Day
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
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