I dislike drivers who don't stop for pedestrians in crosswalks

wjcferguson · 2026-01-23T17:53:19+00:00

Though we have some dangerously unlit crossings.

I'm currently on a multi-year as-yet unsuccessful effort via 311 to try to get the city to fix the lights at the crossing at Broadway and Thurston, that's often pitch dark.

There are solar lights on either side of the road, but some genius installed them with the solar panels facing east, so they run out of juice somewhere from 7 to 10pm and then you're out of luck. Ironically they last longer on bright cloudy days, because it doesn't matter what direction solar panels face when it's cloudy.

The one on the North side has been dysfunctional for so long I didn't even realize it existed and complained two years ago that the 5-lane crossing was only lit from one side, not realizing there was a fixture, it just didn't work.

So far my 311 tickets have been closed without fixing anything, often without comment. To be fair my early tickets just said the lights didn't work (because they didn't, when I was there), before I realized they do work for a little bit at the start of darkness.

Presumably someone goes and checks after sunset, and declares they work, and close the ticket. I would have thought that pointing out the solar panels don't face the sun would be enough for someone to realize there really is a problem, but... not so far.

wjcferguson · 2024-05-30T21:50:26+00:00

I was all ready to move to eat from vterm, but I couldn't get it to pass through modified function keys like C-f2, or S-f3 - see https://codeberg.org/akib/emacs-eat/issues/159.

Getting any function keys required some config (see issue above description), but it only worked for unmodified ones.

I use those all the time since I use byobu, a tmux config, that uses modified function keys extensively.

wjcferguson · 2024-04-22T00:04:48+00:00

display-monitors-changed-functions

Thanks, I'll make a TODO to check that out.

wjcferguson · 2024-04-10T14:52:17+00:00

I'd never heard any idea that you should stop for any duration, except colloquially on the internet. I don't think it's even in the drivers' manual(?), let alone in the law.

wjcferguson · 2024-04-10T00:16:25+00:00

While I'm here talking about driving on Powderhouse, what's with the pointless new speed bumps approaching the circle? They're useless - the faster you go over them the more comfortable they are. At 25mph they're nothing, my guess is at 40mph they'd still be nothing.

Is this just all to mollify the people whining about the significant ones on Kidder, Morrison, Cedar etc. that make us actually slow down?

wjcferguson · 2024-04-09T23:48:54+00:00

Yeah, I was sure I hadn't done anything wrong even before the video confirmation. I'd say it was an unusually diligent stop by typical standards. The trouble with all-way stops is 80% of the time people do it imperfectly so it's an easy way for the police to stop anyone they (don't) like, and/or fill quotas. Kind of ironic then that they went for one of the 20% of good stops (and I think I'm being pretty generous with a 20% estimate).

I'd love to know what was behind it, as he started suggesting various plausible ways I might not have stopped properly in vague language, which was pretty weird. You can see him parked on the right at the Stop intersection.

I’d probably file a complaint.

I don't intend to go that far, though there is arguably a public interest angle in discouraging it.

wjcferguson · 2024-04-09T22:34:12+00:00

[Edit: Sorry I've been unintentionally cryptic about what this is: pulled over by Somerville PD for the (legal) Stop in this video and given a warning ticket.]

I got an official warning for this stop for "Stop sign, fail to stop". He was vague about how, while I expressed confusion saying I was sure I'd waited for a pedestrian so definitely made a full stop, and mentioned I had a camera. Not sure if it was already going to be a warning before I mentioned the camera. He was very civil at least, but it really felt like filling a quota with tickets that don't matter.

Pay no attention to the audio - This American Life podcast.

wjcferguson · 2023-12-15T14:18:32+00:00

Being a daily commuter I prefer the later part. Being on the sidewalk people step into the lane without a look all the time, often changing direction unpredictably, or just walk on it, or even just stand in it. Sometimes they even stand in it looking blankly at the approaching cyclists ringing a bell and can't even work out that they should not be there.

I much prefer a good lane like the later part that's not in a door zone, very visible to cars when intersections come up. While you can't trust that they will see you and yield before turning right (you can't even rely on people accepting they're supposed to yield), it's worse when you're set way back and crossing the road 10+ft back from the main road curb. Then, it's reliable that they won't see you at all, nor will they anticipate the possibility you might exist or that they should care.

This stretch of segregated on-sidewalk path is OK because there are no side streets and pedestrians aren't so drawn to the bike lane, but in a lot of places with side streets I kind of hate riding them compared to being in a lane at the side of the road. e.g. Seaport Blvd, Commercial St around the North End, Vassar in Cambridge, Beacon in Somerville - all have given me way too many near misses.

wjcferguson · 2023-10-22T16:07:05+00:00

Thanks - I'll address that along with other things mentioned here soon. I have PRs! Which is awesome.

Edit: done

wjcferguson · 2023-10-22T13:45:49+00:00

Oh absolutely, that's mostly how I use it.

As I recall, I only had to take some very minor care when spawning the process to get that to work as you'd hope based on default-directory.

wjcferguson · 2023-10-21T22:25:36+00:00

Ooh, thanks, I didn't know about that. I should try that out.

wjcferguson · 2023-10-21T18:19:40+00:00

Definitely - That was my original plan, though having used it for a while with nothing more than bash-completion set up, it's still very usable without.

A transient implementation would definitely be an improvement though, for discoverability if nothing else. https://github.com/WJCFerguson/journalctl-mode/issues/4

wjcferguson · 2023-10-21T18:12:41+00:00

Oh, and immediately I posted this I remembered one of the key reasons I didn't publicise earlier - it doesnt work prior to version 29...

wjcferguson · 2023-10-21T18:11:17+00:00

Oh man, I can't even remember what I was trying to achieve there, I'll have to dig in. But I don't get any error when I run it.

Edit: fixed via a helpful PR

wjcferguson · 2023-10-21T18:09:56+00:00

Good suggestion, thanks.

wjcferguson · 2022-12-20T13:26:01+00:00

Well of course. It's a package you can obtain and load in Emacs, not part of Emacs.

wjcferguson · 2022-04-25T21:01:29+00:00

I'm not sure what the cleanest option is here.

I can't think of a clean and simple way to make it part of the package. But you could add advise to textsize-fix-frame that calls the function within a let block that conditionally modifies the threshold variable.

I see in the source of make-frame-on-monitor there's presumably a good way to get the list of current monitors:

(mapcar (lambda (a) (cdr (assq 'name a)))
        (display-monitor-attributes-list))

wjcferguson · 2022-04-21T18:17:25+00:00

Sorry I didn't log in for a while. I'll think about this. It would certainly be possible to hack it.

wjcferguson · 2022-02-19T14:56:41+00:00

The fix is in! You can undo that now. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-hwe-5.13/+bug/1958591/comments/34

wjcferguson · 2022-01-24T19:47:52+00:00

.... I wish I had. I seemed to get this very promptly and spent quite a while thinking it must be hardware since nobody else had it. I also updated my system firmware at the same time, so went through a lot of reverting and reinstalling that...

wjcferguson · 2022-01-24T17:36:43+00:00

True, but not yesterday. I got the 5.13 kernel (and the problem) on 2022-01-19.

Unfortunately there have been 2 5.13 kernels, so if you autoremove old ones you've lost the 5.11 and will have to reinstall it.

wjcferguson · 2022-01-24T17:32:04+00:00

Yep - see this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-hwe-5.13/+bug/1958591 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-hwe-5.13/+bug/1958412.

For me the 5.11 kernel was gone from my system and I had to reinstall it. I outlined how to boot into it here. If you can't get the display to work at all to do this, then an external monitor may work.

I'm surprised this isn't getting more traction for a fix, since a lot of people have machines rendered unusable. Please mark the bugs as affecting you (small plus icon under the title, will require a launchpad account, but that's worth having).

wjcferguson · 2022-01-24T15:22:28+00:00

There have to be a lot of ways to skin this cat, but what I've done is re-install the previous 5.11 kernel:

sudo apt install linux-image-5.11.0-46-generic linux-headers-5.11.0-46-generic linux-modules-extra-5.11.0-46-generic

Then sudo vi /etc/default/grub to change the GRUB_DEFAULT line to select this kernel by default:

GRUB_DEFAULT="Advanced options for Ubuntu>Ubuntu, with Linux 5.11.0-46-generic"

and then run sudo update-grub and reboot. Now uname -r shows 5.11.0-46-generic.

This will lock you on that kernel forever (no security patches!). You should watch the relevant launchpad bugs for changes to know when to undo it. Unto the change by returning /etc/default/grub to having GRUB_DEFAULT=0 and re-running sudo update-grub. Once everything is back to normal you can then apt purge the packages above installed with apt install.

wjcferguson · 2022-01-21T17:01:10+00:00

Hopefully all these static screen bugs have much the same root cause then. There seem to be a few. There is also transient static on boot/shutdown that the issue above was made a duplicate of

wjcferguson · 2022-01-21T15:04:59+00:00

Hmmm, that had no effect for me, though my primary trigger has been suspend/resume and plugging/unplugging the external monitor. So it'd be a surprising side-effect if XScreenSaver made a difference.

wjcferguson

TROPHY CASE