solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)
[personal profile] solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.8.0 – 8 June 2025 – is now available on github, along with MEGAMAP 1.7.1. This version is mostly, but not entirely, about Seattle.

Seattle DOT have dropped a new bike map for 2025/2026, but have chosen to show several incomplete and/or entirely unstarted projects as completed. We respectfully disagree with this decision, as it will direct map users to infrastructure which is not actually present for most or all of this year.

Therefore, we have chosen to stay with Seattle 2023 as our Seattle-area base map. We will take on the additional work of updating it over the next year, continuing work we have already been doing. In addition to not showing incomplete/nonexistent infrastructure, this means we will continue to group “Neighbourhood Greenway” and “Healthy Street” under the same common green colour, rather than separating them into green and blue markings.

(Seattle 2025 breaks them out into greens and blues, but unfortunately at the same intensity, meaning there’s no difference for those with colour vision limitations.)

As additional Seattle projects are completed, we will add them to our maps. Once all projects shown on Seattle 2025 are completed, we will most likely transition to Seattle 2025 as our Seattle base map.

There’s only one change since 1.7.1 for outside Seattle, but it’s big:

  • Juanita Drive bike lanes are finally open (again) in Juanita! There’s still a little construction on sidewalks, but functionally, they’re done

I’ve been looking forward to that finally being finished since they started work! The bike lane standard is meaningfully higher than it was before. It’s not consistently up to Kenmore’s standard, but it’s a significant and welcome improvement.

Note that sidewalk construction isn’t quite complete, but there’s very, very little left and should not interfere with biking the route.

Updates since 1.7.1 in Seattle include:

  • 1st Ave NW neighbourhood greenway north of Greenwood to Broadview added
  • S. Walden/Della neighbourhood greenway added
  • Ashworth Ave mix of neighbourhood greenway and ped/bike shared path added
  • N. 120th St. neighbourhood greenway from Ashworth Ave to Corliss Ave added
  • N. 130th St. bike lanes north of Haller Lake added
  • W. Marginal Way SW bike lanes extended north to 17th Ave SW
  • 6th Ave NW steepness indicator in Fremont corrected
  • 6th Ave NW Neighbourhood Greenway corrected (was marked as bike lane)
  • Alki Drive/Beach Drive SW Healthy Street in West Seattle added
  • Maple Leaf Reservoir Neighbourhood Greenway and related ped/bike path added
  • Pike Street bike lane hillclimb over I-5 updated to reflect upgraded status
  • 21st Ave Greenway/Health Street from Columbia to Yesler added
  • Greenway/Healthy Street connection between 30th Ave S east of MLK to Mountains-to-Sound Trail added
  • 39th Ave South Greenway/Healthy Street from south of Othello to Kenyon added
  • One block of Neighbourhood Greenway on 27th Ave NE north of Lake City REMOVED
  • Several small corrections/adjustments, carrying forward Seattle map corrections/adjustments

Rather than the usual MEGAMAP preview, here’s a comparison between on section of Seattle across the two maps.

The same area of map from Seattle 2025 and Greater Northshore/MEGAMAP 2025 June 8. The Seattle map shows a Neighbourhood Greenway which does not yet actually exist. It also inaccurately describes on-the-ground conditions of the Ashworth Ave N Greenway in ways which cause confusion on the ground. The Greater Northshore/MEGAMAP corrects both of those, but fails to distinguish between "Neighbourhood Greenway" and "Healthy Street."

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Done Since 2025-06-02

Jun. 8th, 2025 04:14 pm
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

... so I still haven't done a full con report -- it's been almost a week -- so in the interim I'll just refer you to last week's "Done Since 2025-05-25" (posted on Monday) and "Thankful Thursday" posts. The only parts of the trip it doesn't cover very well are the songs we sang ( "Millennium's Dawn" deserves full S4S treatment), the hotel (the breakfast and dinner buffets, included in the room price), were noteworthy), and the travel.

Right. The travel. Tips:

  • Don't leave anything in (travel guitar)Plink's case -- it could delay inspection (and did, at Hamburg).
  • On arrival, stay in the plane until somebody tells you that your wheelchair is ready. Hamburg again.
  • If you don't look disabled (like m, for example), take a cane and hobble out of the plane with it. This is especially true for Schiphol -- the Dutch tend to be ablist.

Yesterday N, m, and I had a good band practice/conference, including more tweaking on "Millennium's Dawn", scripting for several songs that still had only two-person arrangements, and harmony arrangements because we finally have someone in the band who can reliably sing harmony. We're also going to want a keyboard. Or two, since m is leaving tomorrow for Seattle.

Health-wise, I don't think I'm doing all that well, so it's a good thing I have an appointment with a cardiologist soon, as well as with an oncologist.

If you're interested in word origins, check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which includes some fascinating articles as well as the dictionary entries.

Notes & links, as usual )

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)
[personal profile] solarbird

HEY! Any Nova Soctia bike or bike-supportive people – particularly in or near Halifax – here? Time to show up!

“Mayor Fillmore has called for a halt to all new cycling infrastructure, using “rationale” very similar to what Premier Doug Ford has used in Ontario to attack Toronto. There will be a vote on Tuesday.”

Deets saying what to do are on Mastodon. You don’t need an account to read it. Let him know what you think.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (molly-computer-all-lit-up)
[personal profile] solarbird

ooooooookay so

loooooong time ago I did a lot of work on a CSS overlay for Dreamwidth’s Neutral Good/Evil styles to make them work properly on mobile devices as well as Desktop. If you apply the CSS as Custom CSS to your journal, it keeps working on desktop and starts working right on mobile. All the nightmare noise from Dreamwidth’s old mobile-ish style went away, it got way more information dense, and most of all

no

goddamn

horizontal

scrolling

ever.

Not even with the navbar turned on. It’s stupidly tall, but it no longer scrolls.

(That was some work.)

I handed off that code to Dreamwidth ages ago, but they’ve got a tiny staff and I don’t know how important it ever was to them or even how much made it into the codebase.

Turns out tho’… seems people are still using mine? And I just got an issue report. And I have an edit that fixes it on my machine. And I fixed a subject line issue while I was at it.

sooooo uhhhhhhhh

I guess I’m dropping a new release!

Anybody want to test Version 0.85 before I make it official?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Thankful Thursday

Jun. 5th, 2025 04:48 pm
mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

  • The folks we met at DFDF, and particularly the concom, for a wonderful convention. Additional thanks to whoever came up with the con's memorable URL.
  • My nibling and bandmate m.
  • The two wheelchair pushers at Hamburg, without whom we wouldn't have made our flight home. NO thanks to the security people at Hamburg, nor to the wheelchair pusher at Schiphol, who tried to claim that m didn't have wheelchair assistance.
  • Myself, for remembering to check under-seat bag size restrictions on KLM, and Red, my little REI backpack that is squishable enough to just barely fit. NO thanks to companies that claim their bags fit under an airplane seat, when they actually don't. No thanks, also, to airlines that keep reducing the available space year after year.
  • Ticia and, especially, Bronx, for letting me sleep and giving me all the lap-cuddles.

Done Since 2025-05-25

Jun. 2nd, 2025 09:38 pm
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

This weekend, Thursday through Sunday, m and I were at D.F.D.F. | Das Frühlingsfest der Filksmusik in Hanstedt, Germany -- one of the two German filk cons. We got in a couple of good rehersals, Sunday and Wednesday. We'd signed up for a two-song set in the Main Concert, which is basically a couple of hours of two-fers interspersed with voice auction items. This is f'n brilliant, because the auction items overlap the tech setup for the next concert set, allowing the whole affair to proceed seamlessly.

Our "set" was Millennium's Dawn and Ship of Stone. We'd done quite a bit of hacking and slashing to bring "Millennium's Dawn" up to date (removing the verse that starts "There ought to be talking computers...", taking out the first chorus, and making some minor wording tweaks.) We absolutely nailed both songs.

The open filking mostly started after my bedtime, We did get to perform Gentle Arms of Eden and The Bears (middle-sized and middle-aged). m stayed up later, and their singing was also well-received. We'll be back.

There may be a proper con report in a few days.

The flight back was not fun, with hassles in both Hamburg and Schiphol. And Sunday afternoon and evening were kind of a blur due to a health issue )

that had me very worried. Fortunately it resolved this morning.

I note in passing that the song pages for Kaleidofolk are in pretty sorry shape right now and badly in need of troubleshooting. Later this week. I also need to put up a page for our new album (in progress), Winds of Time.

Notes & links, as usual )

solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)
[personal profile] solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.7.1 – 1 June 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.7.1.

Additions and changes since 1.7:

  • Extension of bike lanes in Kenmore on 80th Ave NE up to NE 185th/186th street – this is new paint, done because they could; they also made their own city bike map;
  • Refinement of intersections with streets on Interurban Trail North in Snohomish County;
  • Small additions (short bike lane, shorter trails) around Totem Lake;
  • Small addition (short mixed-use trail, pedestrian first but bikes permitted) in northern Woodinville at 130th/132nd;
  • Addition of north bike exit from Shoreline North 1 Line station – possibly part of the Trail Under the Rail system? It’s not signed as such but it’s in the right place for it;
  • Text cleanup in Redmond, replacing/moving certain street name text which gets cut off on the Greater Northshore map so that it is no longer cut off.
Screen-resolution preview of MEGAMAP 1.7.1 released 1 June 2025

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t.

Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-grar)
[personal profile] solarbird

Here’s a good short piece on Elon Musk’s propaganda campaign to recover/rebuild his image.

Morons, fools, and co-conspirators – by which I mean the bulk of the so-called political press in the United States – will almost uniformly fall for it. They’ll in fact do their very best to fall for it, because it’s a nice story and because it means they can take what they’re being spoon-fed and not have to think about it too hard as they type – much less think about their enabling role in this whole nightmare.

Musk got most of what he wanted. Not all of it, but a lot – particularly in fucking up the government in general, ending all those pesky investigations into all his illegal activities, and in loading himself up with nice fat corrupt government contracts. Cutting medicaid and medicare and throwing women and non-whites out of government were bonus points.

Now he’s partially – I stress partially – stepping away, to a degree because he’s sick of all those people who are equally sick of him, but more I think to try to staunch the bleeding damage he’s caused to his own businesses. Particularly Tesla, where $TSLA share price is so key to all his other leveraged wealth.

(Oh, Elon, so you know, I’ll be at the Tesla Takedown on Tuesday. But if you lock yourself into one of your own burning “cybertrucks” before then, then I’ll be glad to stay home.)

Regardless – the press will absolutely let him off the hook. So will all the people who don’t want to think about anything, and the people who want to assuage their feelings of guilt about being on X or buying one of his shitmobiles.

So I’m asking – can we not all fall for the same stupid fake reputational redemption arc for once? Please? The press will, but… please don’t join them this time, okay?

And don’t let others join them either. That’ll be the harder part.

Most of you reading me, you’re probably less likely to fall in.

But ask yourself: will your friends fall for it? Particularly the techier ones, easily distracted by shiny rockets and who still pretend that wasn’t a Hitler salute at the inauguration, the one that matches frame-for-frame to actual Hitler throwing the actual salute?

I think we all know that answer. Try to keep them from buying in.

And if you can’t… don’t go along.

Do that much, if nothing else.

Don’t. Go. Along.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit!

Jun. 1st, 2025 08:26 am
mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
[personal profile] mdlbear
Welcome to June, 2025. Almost halfway around the year.

The usual "done since" will be posted tomorrow, after the con.

this will keep going until it can’t

May. 31st, 2025 10:38 am
solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
[personal profile] solarbird
J.K. Rowling announces that she will be using her private wealth from the Harry Potter series to develop the J.K. Rowling Women's Fund, an organization dedicated to removing transgender rights "in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces"

A preview linking to this article in The Advocate. Here’s some quotes:

“I looked into all options and a private fund is the most efficient, streamlined way for me to do this,” she said. “Lots of people are offering to contribute, which I truly appreciate, but there are many other women’s rights orgs that could do with the money, so donate away, just not to me!”

It is not the first time Rowling has used her over $1 billion net worth to influence legal cases involving so-called women’s sex-based rights — a dog whistle used by herself and other anti-trans activists to exclude trans people from public spaces and reduce women to their genitals.

Note the “workplace” and “public life.” Note how it – as always – gets expanded. Note that it means everywhere outside your goddamn house.

For now.

Don’t worry, they’ll get there.

And the thing is…

The thing is…

The more she does this, and the more that people keep giving her money by supporting her work despite that, the more that other people of similar mindsets see that it’s safe to follow her example.

It shows her, it shows them, it shows everyone that they will not be punished for trying to persecute and terrorise trans people entirely out of existence. Eradication of trans people is polite politics. It’s respectable. It’s fine.

So if you – in the sense of an arbitrary person – support her work, you are not only confirming her thesis, you are encouraging others to join her and do the same.

This cycle will continue until it can’t because people finally stop handing these fascists their fucking money, which they absolutely will not fucking do.

But if and when that should finally happen, this will finally stop.

And not one minute before.

So the ball’s in your court, Potter fans. Frankly, after decades of watching straights throwing their money at anti-queer eradication activists my entire goddamn life, no matter how explicit and forthright they are about their genocidal aims, you know what? I’m not holding my breath.

But prove me wrong.

Please. Seriously. I’m actually begging you.

Prove me wrong.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

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