I had my first ride of the year this evening along the Ottawa River.  Just a short ride to the War Museum and back because it was getting late.  Though I have both a tail light and a head light, none of the other cyclists I encountered on either the path or the roads, except one, had any lights or reflectors.

HTA 62(17) – Lights

a bike must have a white front light and a red rear light or reflector if you ride between 1/2 hour before sunset and 1/2 hour after sunrise and white reflective tape on the front forks and red reflective tape on rear forks.  Set fine: $20.00

That’s taken from the MTO’s Cycling Skills website.

It’s not like lights are expensive.  You can pick up tiny white and red LED lights from Mountain Equipment Co-op for under $4/each, so there’s really no excuse for cyclists not having lights if they’re going riding at night.

WordPress 2.5.1 was released earlier today.  It fixes some bugs and has some performance enhancements.  More importantly, it contains a very important security fix.

The security fixes affect the following files:

• wp-includes/pluggable.php
• wp-admin/includes/media.php
• wp-admin/media.php

If you’re using Subversion to maintain your WordPress installation, you should only need to login to the server, switch to the root directory of your blog and enter the following command:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/

Since WordPress 2.5.1 does contain a security fix, you should upgrade immediately.

There’s a group of houses in Gatineau that were built at the foot of a hill where they shouldn’t have been built.  Somehow the builder(s) obtained permission where it now appears older geologic assessment reports said nothing should be built.  Hydro workers inspecting something at the top of the hill noticed a large crack in the ground and alerted the province who immediately ordered the evacuation of the homes.  Since then it’s been determined that they can’t ever be reoccupied.

Hindsight is 20-20, isn’t it?

So, the home owners who bought the houses in good faith are now faced with the prospect of losing their homes.  The Quebec government is offering up to $100,000 in compensation.  The City of Gatineau is offering an additional $75,000, but only if the owners agree to give up their right to sue.  (For reference, at least one of the homes was reportedly worth almost twice that total amount.)

Basically, the home owners are screwed because someone didn’t pay attention to a map that said “don’t build here” or something similar.

CBC reported on Thursday that the City is looking for lots that the houses can be moved to.  Now, moving a building is a non-trivial task that can costs thousands of dollars.

I haven’t seen an in-depth discussion of the geology in that area in any of the reports, but chances are it’s similar to what’s found on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River: leda clay.

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