Aesthetics of Everywhere

Recently I signed up for a Capital Bikeshare membership to replace one of the bus rides on my commute. Before becoming a member I had only used Bikeshare once, to get home from a friend’s party in the Waterfront area. Here’s my first week using Capital Bikeshare (CaBi):

Saturday. Rode to the Orange line and transferred onto Metro to go to lunch out in Virginia. The bike’s heavy so it felt like more of a workout than when I ride my own bike. It’s also very upright. I made the mistake of not confirming the location of a Bikeshare station before heading out, but managed to find a station by asking a fellow CaBi rider. Docked a couple blocks from the McPherson Square Metro station, where there was some construction going on. Nice weekend morning ride.

Sunday. Didn’t Bikeshare – just rode my own bike around all day. But I did notice that there’s a CaBi station near my friend’s house, which is way up 14th Street. The pace of expansion is pretty sweet, with several new stations planned in Arlington, and some stations on the National Mall!

Monday. Rode to the Orange line again since I work in Tysons Corner and I’m trying to use Bikeshare to regularly replace one leg of my commute. I saw a neighbor leaving for work from the same station. Also, I downloaded the Spotcycle app for finding CaBi stations on the go. The UI is a bit wonky but it’s vastly more useful on a smartphone than the station map on the website, which isn’t mobile-friendly.

Tuesday. Morning ride had the benefit of pleasant weather, though it was warmer than I thought and kept shedding outerwear along the way. Shed scarf as I wait at a stoplight, and so on. Evening ride was non-existent. I was a bit late getting back into the city because I went to happy hour with coworkers and all the docks at my two nearest home stations were full (checked on the Spotcycle app). Walked back from the Metro, but by the time I got there it appeared that a bike-shuffling truck had been by because there were now 4 empty docks.

Wednesday. Morning ride was great – ideal weather, no jacket riding, few cars downtown around the time I left. In the evening I ran a bunch of errands, which was improved by being able to bike between several points. The stations are, at least for me, conveniently placed. Capital Bikeshare even crowdsources suggestions for new locations here: Crowdsourcing Map. A lot of people must have been hanging out in Dupont Circle (or maybe a lot of members live around there?) because the dock was full at the Massachusetts Ave & Dupont Circle station and a couple others on CaBi bikes were waiting for a docking spot to open. After errands I rode home from Dupont with no issues.

Thursday. Again, superb weather. Just cool enough around 7:30am that I wasn’t feeling too warm by the time I got on the Metro. Also discovered one of the best features of Bikeshare – the Rental Statistics on your member page! See total distance traveled, calories burned, CO2 saved, time spent riding… perfect for any data geek like me. Rode back without a hitch after going out with friends.

Friday. Rode a little further in the morning, though it was grey and (relatively) chilly out – saves me a couple of stops on the Metro for not much more effort. The ride back almost didn’t happen. The Spotcycle app told me that there were no docks open at either of my home stations, but I took the chance and rode to my nearest station… full. Then I biked over to the next-closest and there was one spot open!

Week 1 Statistics – or really, 6 days -

• Total Distance: 14.02 miles
• Total Calories Burned: 602.86 calories
• Total CO2 Saved: 9.52 lbs.
• Total Duration (last 200 trips): 2 hours, 52 minutes, 43 seconds

Not bad for what would have been bus rides instead.

Here’s another cyclist’s story of how bikeshare was his ‘gateway drug’ into commuting by bicycle. And, it’s faster than any other mode of transportation within the city.

Been busy lately with work, side projects, and visiting friends, so here are a couple links to check out for now.

MapCrunch: Randomized Google Streetview images. It’s fun to select “Hide location” and guess with friends where in the world the view is from. We’ve spent probably hours doing this, tallying up points and starting to learn the differences between the features of the different Scandanavian countries, for example. You can think of it as a high-speed contest in the vein of Andrew Sullivan’s View from Your Window contest. But yes, it’s absolutely geeky.

Try this one:

but does it float: A collection of art projects with a tendency towards the abstract. Great mix of photography, drawings, typography, computer-generated imagery, etc. It’s easy to lose a lot of time exploring this site because you can scroll down for as long as you’d like.

Graph of Cosmetic Surgical Procedures: This is how the number of different types of cosmetic surgery in America changed from 2000 to 2011. I find it interesting to note that the number of plastic surgeries dropped from 1.9 million in 2000 to 1.6 million in 2011 – a drop of 17%.

Other notes:

Planning to do the One Day Hike this year. Really excited about doing it but haven’t done much in the way of training yet – guess I need to toughen up my feet and my resolve.

I’m visiting a friend in Boulder, CO in May. I’d love any suggestions about what to see/do there, since it’ll be my first time there. We’re planning to do some hiking and sample many delicious microbrews.

And speaking of cool cities, I’ve also been getting to know Baltimore, MD a bit better and it’s a really fun, artistic place. Last night we grabbed a beer at the Brewer’s Art and struck up a conversation with a Texan girl who’d been living in Baltimore awhile before moving to DC. She happened to be back up there this weekend and we talked a bit about all the great (and more affordable) places to eat in Baltimore, the way the music scene has been changing in the last few years, and how she’s trying to convince all of her friends in DC to move to Baltimore.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard current and former Baltimore residents rave about how great of a place it is to live. Its proximity to DC means that there are even people who opt to live there and commute daily into DC – trading a shorter commute for lower cost of living, amongst other things. Job-wise, I’m not sure how attractive Baltimore is, however.

Another thing I find interesting about Baltimore is that there’s a group, Baltimore Green Currency, that is trying to spread a form of local currency called the Bnote. They report that over 130 local businesses currently accept Bnotes as payment. One of the bars we visited let you purchase Natty Bohs for 1 Bnote each; the equivalent of only 91 cents for a beer!

São Paulo’s class divisions are written in black paint. The subculture that has risen around pichação, a stark, runic form of graffiti, is described in this New York Times article:

Their graffiti, called pichação, from the Portuguese verb “pichar,” or cover with tar, reflects the urban decay and deep class divisions that still define much of São Paulo, a city with a metropolitan population approaching 20 million. It is just one reminder of the social ills that Brazil’s economic boom has so far failed to resolve, and may perhaps even be accentuating, despite recent strides in reducing income inequality.

Had a great time at last night’s GeoDC meetup. Here’s a quick list of some of the cool projects at top of mind this morning, mostly to get my thoughts down in one place.

• Map Kibera and its empowerment of people living in Nairobi’s informal settlements. And on that note, next month‘s GeoDC topic is slum mapping!
• The Pacific Northwest and the ‘Last Settler Syndrome’ – one always wishes s/he were the last to discover the beauty of a place, and to keep it uncrowded.
• It’s essential to remember the user experience when creating maps, whether static or interactive. GIS developer AJ Ashton of Development Seed walked through some of the choices a designer makes in creating intuitive, easy-navigable maps.
• Andy Chosak of the Mobility Lab discussed transit spider maps, such as this spider map of the H Street Corridor and its nearby transit lines by Peter Dunn. It’s modeled after the spider maps used in London (example below). Spider maps are a great way to display these sorts of systems because they show all the modes of public transportation branching out from a single area, making it easy for a

I hope by now everyone’s wrapping up the year and spending a lot of time with family and friends. Here’s my roundup of 2011 roundups. Add your own in the comments!

• Zeitgeist 2011: Year in Review Video (Google)
• Best Maps of 2011 (Spatial Analysis)
• Best Memes of 2011 (Know Your Meme)
• Best Websites of 2011 (Time Magazine)
• 10 Worst Social Media Marketing Blunders of 2011 (Advertising Age)
• Top 10 Best TED Talks of 2011 and Top 10 Culture-Tech Stories of 2011 (ReadWriteWeb)
• Another List of Lists at Listgeeks Staff Picks for Best of 2011
• Rusty’s Top 30 Songs of the Year and Top 50 Albums of the Year
• The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011 (FlowingData)
• From one of my favorite new art blogs of the year, A Colossal Year
• Conversational Reading’s Favorite Films of 2011
• Doree Shafrir’s Top Longreads of 2011
• Ryan Little’s 10 Best Local Tracks of 2011
• The Most Important Graphs of 2011 (The Atlantic)
• The Geography of the Year in Music (The Atlantic Cities)

In 2011, I…

• Kept a running list of new things I learned almost every day.
• Read fewer books than I did the previous year, which isn’t a good thing – but I have a long commute by bus/Metro so I’m looking to up that number in 2012.
• Joined – and became slightly obsessed with - Quora. It’s the way online Q&A should be done.
• Cooked a lot and tried out many new recipes, including a bunch of kale soups, pierogies, kimchi chigae, the best sweet potato fries recipe ever, and homemade salsa and tortilla chips.
• Traveled to South Korea for a few weeks with my brother and my boyfriend. Went hiking on Soraksan, danced in Korean clubs, visited royal palaces, and made new friends.
• Took shorter trips to Philadelphia, Austin, New York City, and Baltimore. All of them are exciting cities with vibrant cultural and artistic life.
• Greatly expanded my knowledge and study of urbanism, public transit systems, and mapping projects.
• Rode my bicycle all over DC, and on fun rides like the Seersucker Social, the Tweed Ride, and bike caravans with friends.
• Started taking Capoeira classes. Fun, challenging, and an incredible workout.
• Moved to the Bloomingdale neighborhood of DC, which is definitely my favorite place I’ve lived in Washington, DC.

Looking forward to setting some new goals in 2012!

Projects abound these last few weeks. I keep forgetting it’s nearing that time to stop and take a break.

8: There are a variety of ways that allergists test for allergies. Allergy specialists use skin tests or blood tests to test the patient against suspected allergens, and several are usually tested at the same time.

9: Vacation photos of hotels can often be misleading. Check out Oyster’s Photo Fakeouts for some particularly exaggerated ones.

10: Random Hacks of Kindness is a hackathon devoted to creating software solutions focused on disaster risk and response. Programmers assemble in groups all over the world to work on projects like raising awareness of emergency hydrants in San Francisco or this analysis of health facilities distribution in Haiti.

11: Google has a product called Fusion Tables that allows you to import your data and map it fairly quickly. Somehow I missed when this came out, even though I’m a geek about making maps. I’ve played around with the sample and though Fusion Tables isn’t what I’d call a great product yet (it’s still in beta), it’s certainly nice to see the act of mapping data simplified and opened up to the masses. See examples here.

12: In September 2006, the mayor of São Paulo banned all outdoor advertising in the city – to include billboards, flyers, ads on buses, and other forms of “visual pollution.” This Clean City law was a move intended to wash away all the garish adverts that covered virtually every surface and increase quality of life for those in São Paulo. For some thoughts on how effective this has been, see the responses on Quora.

13: The Cupertino effect is a widespread error in texts of a certain time period that originated with spell-checking software. When the word “cooperation” (without a dash between “co” and “operation”) was typed on an older computer, the word would auto-correct to “Cupertino”, a word that was commonly found in the spell-checker’s dictionary.

14: A talk by Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice, always an entertaining topic. ”The way in which we value things depends on what we compare them to.”

15: The LuminAID is a solar-powered inflatable LED light designed by two Columbia University graduates, Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta. It’s lightweight and waterproof, making it ideal for disaster relief. They also position the LuminAID as “a cheaper, safer alternative to kerosene lamps.”

16: Apparently there’s a language fad among female college students called vocal fry, a kind of “creaky” sounding voice. Hear an example here. But be warned, this is one of those things where once you hear it, you’ll start to hear it everywhere.

17: Read “The Movie Set That Ate Itself” and just try not to think about The Truman Show. Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky began a mock town inside of Kharkov, Ukraine, placing cameras all around this set and making it home to over 210,000 cast and crew members for six years. They’re recorded 24 hours a day, living out their roles. This is for his film Dau, and filming is scheduled to end in 2012. If anything, it’s an undertaking.

18: Composting your food waste has benefits for the environment, because less organic matter that ends up in landfills means less methane gas produced by the landfill. Currently about 98% of America’s food waste goes to landfills according to the EPA. Reduction of food waste is even more essential, as America wastes 27% of the food available for consumption – around 30 million tons of food each year.

19: An amazing story from a researcher conducting ethnographic fieldwork in China: Street Vendor Life in China.

20: Get geeky with these 3D pixelated animals by artist Shawn Smith. He uses balsa wood which he cuts to length and paints, arranging each ‘pixel’ to form these striking figures.

“For the past few years, I have been creating a series of ‘Re-things.’ These whimsical sculptures represent pixelated animals and objects of nature. I am specifically interested in subjects that I have never seen in real life.” (via Colossal)

21: Though I am planning a round-up of great end-of-year lists, The Atlantic’s In Focus series of photos from 2011 is especially noteworthy: The Year in Photos (Part 1 of 3)

22: A third of all restaurant searches on Google are made on a mobile device. Seems obvious, since people are usually looking for directions or perhaps reading Yelp reviews on their way there, but it’s important to think about if you’re looking to improve your restaurant’s visibility in search results.

23: A good question: How much tech should be allowed in competitive sports?

24: Art has the power to transform lives. See some of the artist JR’s work, especially his famous mural of women’s eyes in Rio de Janiero’s oldest favela. He’s done a similar project in Kibera, Nairobi.

25: Urban planning in Africa still largely follows adopted models from the global north that often don’t apply to African cities. Urbanized areas in Africa need to be assessed according to their own needs. That is the aim of the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS), an organization that seeks to reform Africa’s urban planning education. Nancy Odendaal, project coordinator of AAPS, explains that the colonial planning strategy that is traditionally taught “simply does not have the built-in flexibility to accommodate the diversity of livelihoods pursued in a typical African city. Conventional urban plans typically criminalize the informal economy, for example, where street vendors are harassed by police and have their incomes curtailed.” Therefore it’s important to understand the unique features and issues associated with each place. An African city should not be designed to imitate the cities of British tradition (or otherwise).

26: Starlings, when they talk, are pretty creepy. They’re loud and spend a lot of time mimicking sounds, including human speech.

27: The Where’s George bill-tracking data is available online. Where’s George is a long-running project to track the movement of dollar bills as they exchange hands throughout the nation. The dollar value of all the tracked bills totals over $1 billion.

28: Cycling more just makes sense. Commuting by bicycle costs less in dollar spend, but takes more of your time. You can think of that extra time spent as an investment in your health. I have a coworker who used to ride his bike two hours a day to work – now that’s active transport. Via Streetsblog, “Can America Afford Not to Bike More?“

29: Map Kibera is a project to map one of Nairobi’s largest slums. The central goals of this crowdsourced effort, as outlined in the Map Kibera proposal, are:

• Raise general awareness of the living conditions in Kibera by mapping, as much as possible the extents of navigable streets and other mappable features within the informal settlement.
• Catalyze the local community and expand the capabilities local participatory mapping, expanding previous work and initiating mapping parties within Africa starting with Kibera.
• Test the licensing mechanisms of multiple mapping platforms by making raw data freely available and uploading that data into multiple systems.

30: A toy that has seen more of the country than I have, in the cross-country adventure Address is Approximate by Tom Jenkins. (Navigation using Google Maps Street View.)

I spent this past weekend in Austin, Texas, filling up on lots of Tex-Mex and seeing more cowboy boots in two days than I usually see in a year. The temperature was in the high-80s and it was sunny, which was a little shock to the system in late October – I’d already been bracing myself for fall weather in DC. I’ve always heard good things about Austin and found it to be a pretty cool city. Although it has a higher population than DC proper, Austin is larger so things are more spread out. It also has a smaller surrounding metro area – less than a third the size of the Washington, DC metro area. This lack of density made parts of the city core feel somewhat empty at times. There are a few buses but not much other public transit to speak of. Didn’t see as many bicycles as I’d expected, either. I’d say most people drive.

Austin has a lot of colorful murals, a constant schedule of events, and some interesting architecture (check out the Arthouse at the Jones Center, right in downtown). Muted tones under the hot Texan sun and fun art deco touches on buildings made up the unique aesthetic of the city. The bars are kind of quirky – we went to a dive bar with a huge jackalope replica that you could sit on and another place with a mechanical bull and an extensive list of shooters. South Congress Street has a row of boutiques and antique shops, including Uncommon Objects, the best antique store I’ve ever stepped inside. And the University of Texas at Austin has the largest college football campus I’ve seen in my life.

One highlight of our visit to Austin was seeing the incredible display of 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats flying out from the Congress Street Bridge to catch their dinner. We watched them from the bridge, but there’s also a park nearby where many Austinites and visitors gathered to watch the nightly ritual. Some others opted to take a tour boat, kayak, or paddle-bike on the river, which looked fun too.

Despite its slogan as the live music capital of the world, we unfortunately didn’t make the time to catch any shows. The streets (especially Sixth Street) are lively, though – you hear music streaming out from the bars onto the sidewalks. Since most of the bars have live music, it’d definitely be feasible to hear a band every night if you wanted to. Austin is also home to a couple of the most popular music festivals, including South by Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits (ACL). The Austin Film Festival was ongoing while we were in town, and the city has several beautiful historic theatres.

But really, if you need one reason other than the music to visit Austin, it’s the food. Austin is at the top of the heap when it comes to Tex-Mex and BBQ. Most Tex-Mex restaurants had veggie options; one taco joint on South Congress even had a vegan menu. We ate so well – and so much. Everything’s bigger in Texas.

Headed to Austin, Texas today for a friend’s wedding!

Tonight and tomorrow night we’ll be staying about 45 minutes outside the city in the Texas Hill Country, close to the vineyards where the wedding will be held. Then Sunday and Monday we’ll be in downtown Austin by the Texas Capitol, exploring the city for the first time. I’ve never been to Austin (or anywhere in Texas), so I’m not sure what to expect – but I only hear good things from my friends who used to live there.

I’ve asked friends for Austin recommendations and their responses include:

• Get some proper Tex-Mex at the Chuy’s on Barton Springs. It’s also where Jenna Bush got arrested for underage drinking.
• South Congress Avenue has a lot of good food.
• Go to 6th Street for bars and music – but live music is to be found all over the city, every night.
• Mozart’s is an excellent coffee shop that has beautiful views over the lake.
• Take a hike up to Mt. Bonnell and watch the sunrise/set!
• More recommendations for good eats: Las Manitas Diner downtown. Ruby’s BBQ on Guadalupe. Chuy’s in multiple locations. The Saltlick BBQ in Driftwood (outside of the city).
• See the nightly bat extravaganza at the Congress St. Bridge.
• Try Gourdough’s donuts.
• Bows + Arrows is an amazing boutique. And there are plenty of other good boutiques around there.

Add your own suggestions as a comment here if you’ve ever been to Austin!

8: The Alamo was a mission in modern-day Texas built by the Spanish empire in the 18th century, though it is better remembered as the site of an important battle in the Texas Revolution to gain independence from Mexico. Though the siege by Mexican troops on the Alamo ended in defeat, many joined the forces fighting for independence afterwards, under the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo!“

9: Familiar with the great Velib’ bike-sharing system in Paris? The French are at it again with the launch of Autolib’, a car sharing program with all electric vehicles. It’s run similarly to Zipcar – pay a yearly membership fee then rent the car by the hour when you need it with a small cost for each rental. Hopefully it leads a lot of Parisian drivers to ditch their cars. The lower environmental impact and energy savings spell progress in our relationship to driving; the Bluecars of the Autolib’ program seat 4 and are zero emission. (NYT)

10: Check out this fun infographic of ingredient pairings created by David McCandless and Willow Tyrer using data from over 1,000 recipes: Taste Buds (clever title!)

11: Tightly-knit communities tend to fare better in most of the quality-of-life indicators that have been studied, but research by two sociologists in Louisiana have found that in communities where people have stronger attachments to each other, disasters may be, well, even more disastrous. Read more at The Atlantic‘s Cities blog.

12: From 6 billion people on the planet 12 years ago to 7 billion (on October 31, 2011), a lot has changed.

Oil prices shot from a low of $13 a barrel in 1999 to $113 a barrel earlier this year, and they’re now hovering around $86. The prices of grains and other essential foodstuffs have more than doubled. Hunger and severe poverty have made a comeback. The fight against climate change has been nearly abandoned. The global economy has been battered. Economic development assistance has fallen short of expectations. Water scarcity and resource limitations have grown more acute. And the transition to a green economy has not been as swift as many hoped. In the meantime, world population keeps on growing with no end in sight. If fertility rates don’t continue to fall, population could soar as high as 15 billion by the end of this century.

It’s a scary thought, so there’s your Halloween gift. (Via Grist)

13: Plant a tree to raise your property value? A study by the U.S. Forest Service shows a positive correlation between number of trees on a property and the property value.

…

In personal news, I’m moving to Bloomingdale (the neighborhood in DC) at the end of this month, which I’m very excited about even though I’ll have a longer commute. I’m also going to Austin, Texas for the first time next weekend! It’ll be my first time in Austin and my first time in Texas.