Kickstarter Group Phoenix Looks To Bring New Life To That Dusty HP Touchpad
Remember the Touchpad? Or WebOS? Yeah it seems like ages since we’ve heard those names. In case you’re unfamiliar with them, WebOS was a mobile operating system that was created by Palm and sold to HP when Palm folded. The Touchpad was HP’s first go with WebOS and both the device and the OS flopped. That resulted in a fire sale where Touchpads could be had for a cool $100 bill and I, like many, gave in and bought one. Personally I really liked WebOS and felt like it had huge potential but developers didn’t seem to think so as nobody wanted to develop for the platform and that, along with other missteps, lead to its demise. The Touchpads themselves could be saved thanks to some Android magic. With a couple of clicks of a mouse you could install and dual boot Android on the device so that it didn’t become a large paperweight. While it wasn’t perfect, it worked. Now another method of adding some additional functionality to your aging old Touchpad has come forth. A group called Phoenix is working on a project that will allow Android apps to be installed directly onto WebOS; no dual-booting necessary. You get all the functionality of cards from WebOS AND get some apps to run on those cards finally! The group put their project up on Kickstarter to help garner some funding and they’ve already met and exceeded their goal of $35 000. Who would’ve guessed that there were so many WebOS and Touchpad fans out there still. The guys of Phoenix hope to have at least a fairly functional solution working by July so this is something I’ll be keeping an eye on. How many of you guys out there got caught up in the fire sale and have a Touchpad kicking around collecting dust? [ KickStarter ] Kickstarter Group Phoenix Looks To Bring New Life To That Dusty HP Touchpad is a post from: Android in Canada Blog The post Kickstarter Group Phoenix Looks To Bring New Life To That Dusty HP Touchpad appeared first on Android in Canada Blog . Related posts: TouchPad woes LG Purchases WebOS, What Does It Mean? OUYA To Begin Shipping To Kickstarter Backers On March 28
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Kickstarter Group Phoenix Looks To Bring New Life To That Dusty HP Touchpad
Piece By Piece Facebook Is Dying…& Promoters Are Killing It
Promoters are killing Facebook. Someone make them stop, please. One of the greatest features about Facebook which I use above all else on the site is the Messaging/Chat app and feature. But promoters seem to want to kill it and drive it to irrelevancy as quickly as they did Events. Exhibit A is above. This really happened and I am still waiting for his response. (I don’t actually expect one.) In February 2011, @unmarketing aka Scott Stratten wrote a blog post “ How We Are Killing Facebook ” which talked about how people are killing Facebook by creating what he called “event apathy.” Essentially, event apathy is caused by people using Facebook to invite others to events that are just completely not targeted towards them (be it due to them living thousands of miles away from the event, being not interested in the topic, or being outside the target demographic, among a host of other reasons). Because of this, as Scott mentions, many people have begun to ignore Facebook Event invites to the point that the function may not as well be on Facebook at all. I know I turned my event notifications off months ago because, quite frankly, they were getting too darn annoying and were draining my cell phone’s battery. I’ve had people miss events that I invited them to that I know they would have loved coming to because they simply didn’t see the invite. I know a number of people who have once again begun using services such as Evite or Paperless Post because they know we still check our emails but ignore Facebook events. Who is to blame for this? Scott doesn’t really narrow it down in his post but I am going to because they are the worst offenders: Promoters. Before I go on let me be clear I have nothing against promoters. Heck, I am currently partially responsible for running one group’s Twitter account: @ElevateUrNight where I am making it more awesome and less spammy than any other promoter’s Twitter feed I have ever seen. Go on, check it out, I’ll wait right here. Now that you’re back from checking out the promoter group’s Twitter account I am helping to manage I will continue. I wrote about how promoters are killing one aspect of Facebook in my post a while back “ Changes Facebook MUST MAKE To Photo Tag Options & Privacy Settings ” and since then Facebook has changed the way tags work – thankfully. But the Events feature is still as good as dead as evidenced by this screenshot: That is really in my Facebook Events inbox right now. I am invited to THE SAME EVENT 4 times and 3 times by different people. Each promoter obviously makes money if I go in on their list and if other people see that I am going or invited to the event so they send out as many invites as possible. (Facebook only makes matters worse by having “suggested events.”) It got to the point that people who were part of the same promotions group were inviting me each to their own version of the same event. Those people have since been set to be permanently ignored for all event invites. You might ask why I don’t just unfriend all of them and the reason is because I am not just Facebook friends with them, I am actually friends with them in real life. The solution is so much simpler and I am puzzled as to why Facebook has yet to make this change since it will only benefit them. Limit the amount of Events someone can create/invite people to unless they are (a) a brand/business page or (b) paying a premium for their account. Limit the amount of Messages/Chats someone can send people in a given amount of time unless they are (a) a brand/business page or (b) paying a premium for their account. Think about it. What person who isn’t running a business is making events on Facebook multiple times per week every week? The people who are making multiple events per week and inviting thousands (literally) of people to them are making money off of Facebook’s platform and ruining it for the rest of us so why doesn’t Facebook at the very least take a cut for themselves? Also, the person who sent me that message currently has 3,710 Facebook friends. Assuming he decided to send that preformatted message to all of them he was sending A LOT of messages in a relatively short amount of time. What normal person who wasn’t running a business would do that? No one. Personally, I like the idea of forcing them to become a brand page more than forcing them to pay a premium because – as I said – I am still friends with them in real life so want to be on Facebook too. If they are forced to have a page and not just be a regular Facebook user then it becomes easier to be their friend while not getting constantly annoyed by them. Or maybe we should all just switch back to MySpace. Filed under: Contemplations Tagged: Facebook , Facebook Chat , Facebook Event , Facebook for Business , Facebook Messenger , Facebook Pages , Promoters
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Piece By Piece Facebook Is Dying…& Promoters Are Killing It
Repurposed Art Deco Allenby Theatre On The Danforth: Exploring Toronto Part VIII
A while back I was driving down Danforth Avenue and I passed an Esso & Tim Hortons which was – to say the least – different from most every other I have seen. The address for this building is 1213 Danforth Ave ( map ). I grew up in North York and didn’t spend a lot of time in The Danforth area of the city so seeing this structure was completely new to me. What struck me was that it clearly was no longer a movie theater even though the facade appeared to be one. And those movie titles…”Tim Hortons”? “On The Run”? Those weren’t movie titles, they were store names! I looked into it some more once I got home to a computer and found this document from the City of Toronto - 1213 Danforth Avenue (Allenby Theatre) – Alterations to a Designated Heritage Property (PDF Link) - which identifies the theater building as a “Designated Heritage Property” as the title indicates. It also gives some great details into the history of the building which you can find quoted below the next picture: Looking from the east side of the building. The Allenby Theatre (more recently known as the Roxy Theatre), was constructed in 1935 by the partnership of Kaplan and Sprachman, the firm responsible for between 70 and 80% of all movie theatres constructed in Canada between 1921 and 1950. The Allenby Theatre was designated by the City in 2006 as a representative example of the style of theatre constructed between World War I and II with notable Art Deco / Art Moderne detailing …
New York Public Library: I Have A Slightly Overdue Book… Part II: The Return
People who have read my blog for a while will remember that in June 2011 I wrote about a book taken out of the New York Public Library in 1971 which I found in Toronto. For those who don’t remember the post, here’s a link to it. As I mentioned in the previous post, the book was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and it was due back at the library on June 23, 1971. I wrote of how I intended to take it back to the Mid-Manhattan Library: Literature & Language Department at 5th Ave & 42nd St in Manhattan the next time I was in New York City but I didn’t foresee it taking this long! I brought the book back to New York City last weekend when I went in for a family thing and boy was that huge book heavy! I swear, my bag on the way home was way, way easier to pull along on the street when I wasn’t laden down with Mr Shakespeare’s entire library. Since I was staying at friends on the Upper West Side the first place the book had to go upon returning to its hometown after leaving my bag was the New York Subway aka Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I had done some of the math in my previous post based on what the warning on the inside cover of the book said would be the overdue charges on the book and I figured out further since then that since: 41 years * 365 days = 14,965 days and 14,965 days + 110 days (April 20 is 110th day of the year) = 15,075 days and 15,075 days * $0.10 for each day it was overdue = $1,507.50 Yup, that’s right. There was a distinct possibility that they were going to try and charge me over fifteen hundred dollars for this book which had been taken out a decade before I was even born. But that was a risk I was willing to take because I felt it my civic duty as a member of the human race. I brought the book into the library at 42nd St & 5th Ave and asked a security guard where I could find the Literature & Language Department and he sent me to a room on the third floor. Side note: This library was like nothing I had ever been in before and next time I go to NYC I fully intend on taking a proper tour around their facility because everything about it was just glorious. I went into the indicated room and went up to the desk to a man who looked like he was likely a patron of the library the day the book was taken out in 1971 and told him my tale of my travels and of finding the book in Toronto, Canada. The guy was taken aback and kept repeating “Oh, wow!” as he examined the book from every angle. He pointed to the way the spine was partially coming off on one side of it and how the book wasn’t in the greatest condition and I mentioned how I had found the book 500 miles away in another country. He was amazed, I think, at the fact that I took the time and energy to bring the book back to where it belonged. I asked him if he could tell me a bit about who took the book out and when it was actually taken out of the library – if you look at the picture above you can see that the last number in the year is pretty smudged and I can’t actually be sure the year of its due date was 1971. He replied the negative 2 different ways: He didn’t think the book was even in their system anymore because it was so old and had been “on loan” for so long. Even if he could find record of who took the book out of the library in the first place he couldn’t tell me for privacy reasons. However, he said, he wasn’t going to attempt to charge me for the overdue charges on the book – which was probably a great call seeing as I was prepared to argue it until the cows came home that since I wasn’t born until the early 80s I couldn’t possibly be responsible for the book. I also was going to attempt to rally all the people you can see in the above picture quietly using their laptops to my cause that I should be heralded and given a ticker tape parade through the streets for going above and beyond the call of my civic duty for even bringing the book back in the first place. Actually, it’s a pity in a way as I would’ve loved to try and stir up that group of otherwise disinterested New Yorkers just for the fun of it, haha. If anyone in New York is reading this, have a look and see if you can find the book on the shelves after the few weeks I assume it will take them to do some cosmetic work on the book and then put it back into their filing system. Two other pictures of the book from my previous post on the subject of this book. Inside the book’s front cover. Click to enlarge to full size of 3264
1 Simple Way To Increase Potential Clients Picking Up The Phone When Your Business Calls
Ensure your business has a name displayed that shows up on caller ID when they call out. Boom! You just increased the likelihood that people/clients/potential customers will answer the phone when you call them. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. Read on to find out why… If this is a business calling they’ve lowered the chances of me answering by 87% by not having a name showing. The other day I got a call from what seemed to me to be a random number. The phone number showed up but I didn’t recognize it so I ignored it because I was busy with other things. They left a voicemail which I didn’t check because who checks voicemail these days? Further, who checks voicemail if you don’t recognize the number? Beyond that, they didn’t text me or call me back so I thought it absolutely couldn’t be THAT important, could it? A little while later I checked and it turns out it was the car dealership where I bought my car saying I need to get in touch with them. (Well, that’s pretty important wouldn’t you say? Good job, Dan!) If you say you wouldn’t pick up this phone call, you’re lying or on the other line with the President. This business is missing connecting with a customers because they don’t they have their business name attached to their line! Who are they hiding from? They’re a business! Having their name attached to their phone number only increases odds that people will answer the phone. This is especially true because so many of us have name display on our cell phones ( Rogers and Fido have offered it since June 2006 ) and pretty much everyone on a landline with call ID has name display. We’ve had it since the 90s! Remember these? We bought these in the 90s when Call ID became a thing and our older phones didn’t have screens on them just yet. If you don’t have your business’ name attached to the number on outgoing calls there is a strong likelihood you are missing out on connecting with your clients. This is something which is so simple to do – it would probably take anyone in any company very, very little time to accomplish and there’s no special training required except being able to dial a phone to call your phone service provider. Of course, the only thing worse for a business than not having a name display when you call people is having your number blocked. The only company I can think of who actually has a reason to do this are collection agencies and even they shouldn’t bother because we’re not picking up those blocked calls anyway! Do you pick up when there’s no name display and you aren’t supremely bored/expecting a call? Let me know in the comments below! NOTE: The number you see above in the screenshots is a stock Google number they use when someone calls out from Gmail and isn’t a Google Voice user. I saved it in my phone with the Google Mountain View name for the purposes of this post. It won’t connect you to anyone at Google and won’t even go through but by all means be my guest and try. Filed under: Contemplations Tagged: business , Business Tips , Call ID , Call ID for Business , Caller ID , Name Display , Science and Technology , Simple Business Tip , technology , Telephone number
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1 Simple Way To Increase Potential Clients Picking Up The Phone When Your Business Calls
Battle Of The Sexes: The Toilet Seat Debate
The battle of the bathroom between the sexes has raged since 1927 when Tom Bradney invented the toilet seat. The question: Should The Toilet Seat Be Left Up Or Down? – Women argue that it should always be left down because they don’t want to have to look before they sit down. They say that because men stand in front of the toilet and have to aim they are required to look down so the onus is on them to notice if the seat is up or down and adjust accordingly. Men more often than not acquiesce to the ladies in their lives and leave the toilet seat down only to find themselves getting in more trouble when a few drops end up on the seat because they can’t be bothered to raise the seat before relieving themselves or to check the seat for drops after the fact. When this happens the argument starts right back up because the man’s point of view is that he wouldn’t have gotten the seat sprinkled if it hadn’t been down in the first place. Toilet with the seat up. The bane of every lady’s existence. Guys, I know that essentially the female side of this debate boils down to a reality which finds them walking into the bathroom backwards, never actually looking at the toilet before sitting down. Unfortunately, though I don’t agree with their logic, I have to side with the ladies here. The seat should be left down. Here’s why: Why The Seat Should Be Left Down – The seat should be left down. It isn’t because I am choosing to pander to women. It isn’t because, mathematically speaking, it needs to be down more often than up – as men need to sit on the toilet sometimes too. It is for a much simpler reason. The seat has to be down in order for the lid to be down too. “Wait, what?” you’re asking as your jaw sits agape staring at the screen uncomprehendingly. Yes, you should be not only lowering the seat each time you use the facilities but lower the lid too! Why The Lid Should ALWAYS Be Left Down – It is simple science really. When The Atlantic interviewed microbiologist Dr Charles P. Gerba he told them that toilets have an aerosol effect when flushed . An aerosol effect. That means that whatever particles are in the toilet are being sprayed OUT of the toilet into the rest of the bathroom every time you flush. The article I read quoted Dr Gerba saying that when you flush with the lid open “[d]roplets are going all over the place — it’s like the Fourth of July.” Think of what goes on in and what is put into the toilet in your house on a regular basis. Now think about all the things you leave out in your bathroom: cups, toothbrushes, bar soap, hair brushes, books, magazines, and the list goes on. Think about the air you’re breathing every time you flush. Would you like there to be more or less particles from your toilet sprayed up your nose, into your mouth, and onto your stuff you use to keep yourself clean? I choose less thanks very much. When you leave the toilet lid open droplets are going all over the place – it’s like the Fourth of July! (Photo credit stephenthruvegas on flickr) The beauty with my solution, ladies and gentleman, is that it is more sanitary. As well, the ladies won’t ever have to worry about falling in and getting their posterior wet because they didn’t look before they sat down and men don’t have to feel like they’re losing this battle. My solution is elegant in its simplicity and beautiful because nobody wins at the same time as everybody wins! The problem has always been that men aren’t trained as children to put the seat down when they’re done and women aren’t trained as kids to check the seat before sitting down. This takes the whole discussion out of the men versus women arena and brings it to a unisex solution that benefits everyone from a sanitary perspective. You’re welcome humanity. Men’s & Women’s Bathroom Sign Images from Microsoft Office “ Explosivo Toilet ” by stephenthruvegas on flickr Filed under: Contemplations Tagged: Bathroom , Battle of the Sexes , Charles P. Gerba , Restroom , Toilet , Toilet Lid , Toilet seat , Toilet Seat Debate , Washroom
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Battle Of The Sexes: The Toilet Seat Debate
4 Ender’s Game Movie Battle School Army Logos Revealed Today!
– Today, Summit Entertainment , the film studio which is making the Ender’s Game movie gave a number of hardcore Ender’s Game sites the opportunity to share with their readers the Battle School Army logos which will be used in the movie (which will be in theaters on November 1, 2013). They shared four different Battle School army’s logos on four different fan websites forcing us fans to go to each of the sites to check them each out. I decided that because I didn’t like having to go to each of the different sites I’d throw them all together in the helpful image you see below: – Ender’s Game Battle School Army Logos (click to enlarge) – The various sites and posts where these were found were as follows: Salamander Army from EnderWiggin.net Rat Army from EndersAnsible.com Dragon Army from EnderNews.com Asp Army from EndersGameFanSite.com You’ll notice in the above graphic I maintained all watermarks they added as well as adding a web address for each and their Twitter handles. As far as I can tell each logo stays true to the information about the army in the book (where applicable). Salamander Army’s colors were listed as Green-Green-Brown and Dragon Army’s colors were listed as Gray-Orange-Gray. The other two armies’ colors weren’t mentioned so I am guessing the production team just went with whatever they saw fit. In ordering the above image I decided to go with the order in which Ender himself was part of those armies with Asp Army being last as Ender was never a part of that army. Below, I have also included a larger versions of the army logos individually. Clicking them will take you to their sourced blog post: Salamander Army – Rat Army – Dragon Army – Asp Army – I hope the sites are cool with me reposting these all in spot. I am excited for the developments of this movie and for its release because, as I have mentioned before , I absolutely love the book Ender’s Game and its follow up series – which is still being written and I am still reading as they are released. All in all, I think the logos are pretty good. I don’t know why they didn’t bother staying true to the color combinations of the different armies and instead chose one primary color per army to go with but that kind of small change in the book to movie transition is something I can definitely be OK with. I’d also be surprised if we see these logos in anything more than passing and background over the course of the movie so it probably matters very, very little. What do you think about the logos? Filed under: Life, The Universe, & Everything Tagged: Asa Butterfield , Battle School , Battle School Army Logos , Ender Wiggin , Ender’s Game , Enderverse , Harrison Ford , Orson Scott Card , Summit Entertainment
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4 Ender’s Game Movie Battle School Army Logos Revealed Today!
Pics From When I Met Michael Nus, Casie Stewart, & Other Awesome Folks At #KloutTO
My friend @MichaelNus recently wrote a post on his blog called “ The Day I Met Chris Brooker .” The post, which I’m given to understand will be one of a series, is a great post by a superb gentleman about @cbrooker , someone whom I cannot begin to express enough praise. Chris Brooker is a really special human and I am privileged to know him. Nus’ post brought to mind the day I met a bunch of different people involved in social media and tech in Toronto (I refuse to call it the “Social Media Scene” or the “Twitterati”) and then somehow it got brought to mind last night by a complete different person in a completely unrelated manner. It all started when Sandy aka @sassygirlcanada tweeted this: I was just thinking about the first people I met #IRL from twitter!! Can you remember the first people you met in person? — SandyT (@sassygirlcanada) February 07, 2013 Which led to my friend Raymond Motee aka @FunkyBarrister replying with this: @ sassygirlcanada First person was @ LateJuly . First tweetup was #GirlsNightTO where I met @ fragileheart & @ TheDanLevy among others.— Raymond Motee (@FunkyBarrister) February 07, 2013 That tweet brought me into the conversation and brought to night the aforementioned night when I first met in the real world people from Twitter. The night was an awesome one hosted by Klout . They called it #KloutTO (yes, amazingly that hashtag search still brings in results from June 2010!) and I met a bunch of stupendous individuals many of whom I count among my friends today including Team SidewalkHustle : @TristanBanning & @HawleyDunbar , Casie Stewart ( @casiestewart ), Michael Nus, Chris Brooker, Joallore ( @clickflickca ), Dave (now @BlueFoxCA and not in Toronto but he had a different Twitter handle back then), and many others who right now I can’t remember that I actually met them on that day. I went that day even though I wasn’t an “influencer” which was the reason Klout was throwing the party for the influencers and due to a partnership with Virgin America Airlines and was immediately welcomed into this group of the “cool kids.” I tweeted this with that rush of fond memories warming my brain: @ sassygirlcanada @ FunkyBarrister mine was #KloutTO in 2010! Met @ casiestewart @ MichaelNus @ TristanBanning @ HawleyDunbar @ clickflickca &more!— Dan Levy (@TheDanLevy) February 07, 2013 That night the cool kids were so welcoming, in fact, that we ended up grabbing some supper together at Czehoski after the #KloutTO at The Gladstone Hotel event ended. Due to the fact that I suddenly had that memory brought to the forefront of my brain once again I remembered that that night, Casie’s phone had run out of battery and we all joked about how because she wasn’t tweeting a continual stream people might be worried about her. As such it was decided that Nus and I would stage a kidnapped Casie photo and tweet them out demanding a ransom. Fast forward to 2013 when Nus and Casie heard I had found these photos they expressed their interest in the pics and this blog post was born. Here, in all their glory, are those pics from the night I met Michael Nus and Casie Stewart – among many others – and we ended up kidnapping Casie and holding her for ransom. (Life’s weird like that sometimes.) Above is what we must have used as the “ransom photo” because the one below is just blurry, Nus is untying the napkins which were holding Casie, and I’m mostly out of the frame, haha. Also, I clearly make a horrible kidnapper/ransomer with that huge smile plastered across my face! It honestly amazes me that those 2 pics were taken almost 3 years ago. It feels as if no time has passed and I can’t even imagine what my life would be like without the people I met that night and those I continued to meet via the Toronto tech and social media community. My only regret is not getting involved in the community earlier. I should mention that it all wouldn’t have happened the way it did if I didn’t force myself to go talk to Dave @BlueFoxCA. At times I can be one of the shyest people ever. That night I remember going into The Gladstone, registering, getting my nametag, a beer, checking in on Foursquare, and standing in a clever pretending to tweet. Everyone at the #KloutTO party seemed to know each other and I knew no one. I sipped that beer hoping I didn’t look awkward or, worse yet, creepy and debated what to do. After a few more minutes I said to that inner, shy voice to piss off and walked over to Dave and introduced myself (it wasn’t difficult, I was wearing a nametag with my name and Twitter handle on it!). I realized that if I didn’t go talk to someone coming out would have been an utter waste of time. I don’t remember the actual conversation but recall it started with something along the lines of me asking if he was one of the lucky, popular folks getting a free flight to San Francisco or Los Angeles from Klout and Virgin. I also almost immediately openly identified myself as a guy who came out for a free beer and to meet/see who were the lucky tastemakers of Toronto. Dave knew some other people there, introduced me into a circle of folks already deep in conversation and from there I somehow ended up at Czehoski grabbing something to eat, holding Casie ransom, and building some friendships that mean more to me than I can express without a way, way longer blog post. In fact, as I write this I realize just how much more there is to this story and how it should be a whole blog post on its own so I’m going to leave it here. Filed under: Life, The Universe, & Everything Tagged: @michaelnus , CasieStewart , Gladstone Hotel , Klout , memory lane , networking , Social Media , Toronto , tweetup , Twitter
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Pics From When I Met Michael Nus, Casie Stewart, & Other Awesome Folks At #KloutTO
Legally Turn Left On A Red Light? In Toronto?: Exploring Toronto Part VII
Sign allowing left turn on red light southbound on Hilda Ave onto Jonathan Gate No, technically this sign is not in Toronto. This sign and the intersection for which it is giving instructions is in the Greater Toronto Area in the city of Vaughan a bit north of Toronto’s city line. I have never seen any other sign like this or an intersection like it anywhere else in North America so I thought it was interesting enough to share in my Exploring Toronto series of blog posts . How I wish that light had been red when I took this picture! This sign which says that at this intersection it is permitted for a driver to make a left turn on a red can be found at the intersection of Jonathan Gate and Hilda Avenue in the community of Thornhill in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. I have known about this intersection for well over a decade as I have a number of friends who grew up right around the corner from here and have always taken a special pleasure in making a left turn on this red light…although to be honest I almost never have reason to because I almost never had a reason to go down Jonathan Gate. Just look at where it is (in the Google Maps screen grab below). Sometimes – and this is even rarer – something even more maliciously fun is if someone who doesn’t bother reading the sign is sitting with their left turn signal on and not moving at the red light you give them a nice, long honk and point out your window at the sign so they realize the error of their ways. Don’t judge me! It’s sometimes fun to not be the nicest, most polite person out there, admit it! You are, at this point, probably wondering why the heck this sign exists allowing drivers to do something which is so contrary to everything we are ever taught here in North America. The reason is actually very simple and logical and it is amazing how much common sense the municipal government had when they put it up. If you look in the above picture and the panoramic below you’ll notice a couple of things about the intersection: There is a cross walk at the far side (it is bright yellow and on the ground and has a sign denoting its existence). There are no traffic lights from Jonathan Gate onto Hilda Avenue, only stop signs. Jonathan Gate ends at Hilda Avenue and becomes a driveway. The driveway has “No Entry” signs for people coming from Jonathan Gate. Jonathan Gate & Hilda Ave, Thornhill, Ontario panoramic shot looking south. Click to enlarge. All of the above factors mean that when the lights are red there is no chance of anyone driving through the intersection from Jonathan Gate onto the driveway so a driver must only look to their right to see if anyone is coming out of the driveway. Even the probability of that isn’t high more often than not because the driveway is a school’s driveway so the traffic on it – except when school is starting and finishing – is fairly light. Beyond that, often when the light is red it is because someone triggered it to go red by pushing the cross walk button. Because the stopping line is set back from the intersection (behind the cross walk) it is illegal to make a right turn onto Jonathan Gate from Hilda on a red light which means there is almost no danger in someone making a left onto Jonathan from Hilda coming from the other direction! This is definitely one of the strangest intersections in the Greater Toronto Area or even anywhere I have ever seen. It sure makes a great trivia GTA question though! Another strange intersection I have seen in Toronto is one in the Forest Hills neighborhood where Vesta Dr and Old Forest Hill Rd and Dewbourne Ave meet. I blogged about that strange intersection here. Have you ever seen any strange intersections like this one? Filed under: Life, The Universe, & Everything Tagged: Canada , Driving , Exploring Toronto , Greater Toronto Area , Hilda Ave , intersection , Jonathan Gate , Legal Left On Red , Stop sign , Thornhill , Toronto , Traffic light , Vaughan
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Legally Turn Left On A Red Light? In Toronto?: Exploring Toronto Part VII
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