I took a few photos (ok, 292’ish… whatever) at the B-52s concert at the Ottawa Bluesfest. I’ve dropped some of them into a gallery, which you can view here.

Commentary sometime Friday. 🙂

Just a quick photo of the B-52s on stage at Bluesfest during Private Idaho.

More pictures to follow…

The 2010 edition of Blog Out Loud (Ottawa) is taking place this evening at Irene’s Pub on Bank Street from 7pm to 10pm. I’m not reading, but it should still be a good time. 😉

I headed out for a short bike ride this evening and ended up at Parliament Hill shortly before sunset. While I was standing at the fence behind the Library of Parliament, I watched a family taking the usual tourist shots. One of the RCMP officers that was nearby went over and offered to take their picture. He got them organized, but something wasn’t right. Reaching into a pocket in his vest, he pulled out a small Canadian flag, gave it to the little boy and then took the pictures. Then he swapped places with the father and posed for a couple of pictures with the rest of the family.

Though he wasn’t wearing the Red Serge or sitting on a horse, I’m certain the family didn’t care.

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I was out for a walk along the canal earlier today. As I approached Pretoria Bridge I noticed there was something floating on the water. Getting closer, it became clear that this part of the canal is the Rideau Canal’s equivalent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, except for pond scum (mostly).

Now, I know that the canal workers will be clearing this out as they do every year, but I was surprised at just how much there was. And I wasn’t alone in this – I heard a number of people talking about it as they walked along.

Not exactly the best thing, perhaps, for tourism, but at least the ducks seemed happy as they munched on it.

I was visiting someone in an old age care facility recently and was quite surprised with how cleverly the elevators there operate. The facility has two floors and residents are able to move about the facility pretty much at will. Access in and out is carefully controlled to minimize the chances of someone wandering off.

Some of the residents have Alzheimer’s. One of the characteristics of Alzheimer’s is a tendancy to wander. Thus, one of the goals when designing a care facility for people with Alzheimer’s is ensuring that there aren’t any dead end corridors that could end up frustrating them while they roam about. Elevators pose a special problem because of the potential for someone to get frustrated, or even trapped, if the doors close and they can’t figure out how to make them open again.

Some places use access controls such as swipe cards or keys to control access to elevators, but in this facility the elevators are designed to minimize this problem while allowing the residents to use the elevators on their own. Rather than requiring someone to push a floor button, they detect when someone enters the car and automatically go to the other floor where they patiently wait for people to exit. Very clever.

I’ve been grumbling about this for a while now and a couple of recent incidents have prompted me to stop grumbling about it in private and rant about it in public on the Internet (again), so here goes…

If you’ve driven on the Queensway, you’ve almost certainly encountered slow drivers puttering along below the posted speed limit for no obvious reason. The roads are clean and dry, it’s not raining or snowing, and there isn’t an accident or something else causing traffic to slow down.

They’re. Just. Driving. Slowly.

And chances are that they’re in lanes other than the right-most one.

“So what?” you might ask. “As long as they’re travelling between 60 km/h and 100 km/h they’re not breaking the law, so suck it up.”

No. Bzzt. Wrong.

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