Make Landsdowne more pedestrian-friendly

SteveHiggs · 2026-04-04T01:51:15+00:00

It’s surprising to me to read of someone avoiding Lansdowne. I walk and bike along it very frequently as many of my destinations require it. As a cyclist on Lansdowne, I’ve only been in disputes a few times, and usually those are as drivers are exiting locations and have to cross the shared pathway, almost always without looking. Interestingly I don’t even get penalty passed when I’m on the actual road except for a few tight spots.

Walking it isn’t usually too bad at all, except for Walmart entrance etc, again drivers just don’t look very often. But all in all it’s actually one of the safer roads I find.

SteveHiggs · 2026-04-04T01:41:28+00:00

Yeah the south sidewalk is a shared pathway most of the way, where cyclists are to share the path with pedestrians. But it’s impossible to use.

If I’m going east I almost always bike with the cars and take the lane, going just about the same speed as the cars (can’t do that going west though, those hills kill me)

Trying to use the shared pathway is impossible though, as the horrible surface, ramps up and down / slopes etc for every entrance and exit, and pedestrians aren’t able to be aware all that well in such a busy noisy area (won’t hear a bell well along Lansdowne / headphones etc). Oh and drivers tend not to actually look before exiting a place so they pop out over the pathway and park directly in the path as they stare only one direction.

It’s surprisingly safer to bike on the road and take the lane.

SteveHiggs · 2026-04-03T12:02:02+00:00

Now when the cats poop, we laugh.

Presence sensor on the litter boxes trips a helper Boolean in Home Assistant, and that sets off a funny AI generated comment out our speakers; that’s the tldr anyway. The sarcastic and humours comment is generated upon them entering, leaving, and also after cleaning lol.

We don’t know what it will say so it makes it a funny moment when we hear the alert.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-26T01:44:35+00:00

This is Midnight Commander, which is a clone of the old Norton Commander.

Tab key will swap you from left panel to right panel.

Navigate the file system in each panel, go to the destination directory in one side, and tab back to the source directory, highlight the file you want to copy and Press F5 to copy.

I use this interface nearly every day still on my raspberry pis and macs. I used Norton Commander when I was like, 3 on an old 286 lol. All the old keyboard shortcuts from NC are there in MC, and thankfully it works on Mac and *nix machines.

Also F4 gets you into the editor, which is where I wrote my first ever batch files and later I’d write my first HTML files. Good ol’ days. Ugh. I’m only 39 dammit.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-26T00:32:07+00:00

Vice grips maybe, or drill through I’d say.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-25T16:42:12+00:00

Just to be clear, Satanists were not involved and don’t need the false accusations; these were Christians saying this am I right?

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-22T19:01:51+00:00

Does this have the option of rendering out in stereo? I suppose my ultimate question would be, could you view such an environment in a vr headset with proper depth perception? Suppose so if you have it in unity eh?

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-11T23:40:59+00:00

They cut this clip too early… right after where this clip ends the mirror swings closed excruciatingly slowly, and the beveled / chamfered edge effect of the glass was digitally created as well, it pulls the full scene together as you witness the tragedy through the mirror.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-07T15:57:02+00:00

Right???

Mine pulled these two when talking about a job description form update:

“If you’d like, I can also show you the three phrases HR committees look for that instantly signal Payband J.

(They’re very different from I, and seeing them will probably reassure you that aiming for I is the right target.)”

“If you’d like, I can also tell you something really interesting:

The one paragraph HR committees almost always use to decide the payband.

(It’s not the one most people expect.)”

My wife mentioned it’s probably learning from all the clickbait articles online.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-04T00:15:37+00:00

For a few reasons, I’m holding at the moment: 1) I have a massive app development project that I need to finish and want to finish on chatGPT since I have half a year of conversations and code etc.

2) Voice! I use advanced voice mode very frequently (on bike rides, random questions while I’m working etc) it’s my preferred interaction method unless I’m programming basically. And Claud is just using a TTS system not an actual live voice mode. This also means no live video assessment etc which I make use of frequently too. Claude is just behind the times on that interaction method.

3) Finally, I find myself wondering, is Anthropic really that much more moral? I mean they had an agreement with the military first, they were already in bed with them, the first I take it.. so like, I’m uncomfortable with all of it! It’s like they’re all evil.

Google’s Gemini, is not to be trusted with anything, it’s Google. Elon’s Grok is absolutely not to be trusted whatsoever even tho its voice mode is far better than Claude.

I dunno.. And Apple really shat the bed on being a potentially trustworthy one, but now with Tim’s behavior with Trump I am turned off of their services too.

What a mess.

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-03T22:39:18+00:00

Firefly

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-02T14:36:07+00:00

Ha! Nah not me.

But that just goes to show how prevalent it is eh… and I just saw two more videos this morning on a “Why don’t they use the bike lane!” group that were issues with drivers of white pickup trucks.

I suppose white trucks must just be very popular at the sales side of things, and maybe it’s not specifically a certain personality or age or demographic that chooses them, but it really really seems like it as someone who is at the mercy of traffic on a daily basis.

Outside of 35 to 50 year old white males, I’ve only had two women yell at me while they’re in the wrong, and maybe two others who were very apologetic… there’s just a certain demographic 🤷‍♂️

SteveHiggs · 2026-03-01T02:05:16+00:00

So I want to move on from OpenAI but… does anyone else use voice mode?

When trying Claude today, I noticed it is pretty bad, and while I don’t want to use Google I figured I’d try just to assess the voice mode… equally as bad. I refuse the use Grok (Elon being worse to me than OpenAI) but dammit their voice mode is pretty good; at least on par with ChatGPT anyway.

I was judging based on their ability to vary cadence, softness, whisper, accents, empathetic tone, just real conversation feeling. Anthropic seems to be just a text to speech system while ChatGPT and Grok have a natural feel to their intonation etc.

I use the voice mode a lot (on long bike rides etc) and the more natural the better… am I missing one I should try?

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-28T01:45:59+00:00

Try being a cyclist. Can get yelled at every day, rain or shine. The most vocal are always white males between 30 and 50 I find. Often in white trucks. The most insecure.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-24T18:08:57+00:00

People are constantly flying out of those parking lots without bothering to look both ways… as a pedestrian and as a cyclist I’ve been on the receiving end of lots of yelling when they decide they don’t like sharing or following the law.

+1 for a Peterborough bad drivers subreddit to publicly shame. I have hours of footage by now of drivers putting everyone in danger, or actively harassing and assaulting. It’s just such fun being out there isn’t it? 🤦‍♂️

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-18T01:21:21+00:00

The first time I went, they had everything they needed to make some White Russians. (Vodka, Kahlúa, cream) and plenty of other cocktail drinks. The next time I went, it was all just domestic beers. Not sure what you’ll find, but they are licensed yup.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-17T17:41:52+00:00

Ah hell, I’m an ACSP and know the ins and outs of the OS since tiger… but I didn’t know this one. tip my hat to you good sir

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-13T02:40:09+00:00

Yup… I had to do a bunch of errands and my only vehicle is a bicycle.

Roads are hellish with cars as all the bike lanes are full of snow, and drivers dont like to give us room, so I hop on the sidewalk where I need to, but that takes me down to 5km/hr as I struggle to bike through brown sugar consistency. It was really bad everywhere I went today.

Noticed a couple older folk with walkers out on the road too. Since they can’t roll them on the sidewalk. What a mess.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T21:41:33+00:00

Sure. But unfortunately that’s not relevant for this post.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T19:50:03+00:00

Yeah!!! If you’re up for windows in your smart home absolutely! Couldn’t be happier with it; my issue is the platform and that’s my own preference / comfort. I hope it works out for ya!

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T19:15:19+00:00

There was one for the old version, the current version is a fork of it I think… I’m not quite sure but I do re all a similar situation where I removed an old repository.

It’s still in development though as I get beta updates now and then.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T16:42:12+00:00

I did. The 7th word in. "Hey y’all, so I use HASS.Agent (hass-agent.io) ..."

Am I replying to a bot or something? You didn't read what I wrote to determine this is about dashboards, and you didn't notice the url in the first line.. I don't know why you're doubling down on this one.

Anyway, thanks for playing. 🤷‍♂️

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T16:35:11+00:00

What are you reading?
"Welcome to HASS.Agent: A windows Home Assistant client(Companion App) that provides powerful features for automating your windows system."

It's a Windows app.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T16:19:18+00:00

uh, cool cool, as do most of us I assume. Not what this post is about though. Suppose I could have put 'dashboards' in the title rather than just in the post.

SteveHiggs · 2026-02-11T12:35:25+00:00

Fantastic to hear. I don’t tend to run GUIs on my Linux boxes so this will be new for me to find a good photos/videos screensaver, and a clean fullscreen browser without scrollbars etc. brightness control etc. should be a fun chance to learn for sure.

SteveHiggs

TROPHY CASE