Montreal's Bixi Bikes

I tried out the Bixi bike rental system last weekend. Many people have already written about them so I thought I would add my cents as well.

Pros:

• Convenient locations around downtown
• Cheap prices if you get a yearly subscription and use less than 30 minutes each time
• You can rent friggin’ bikes!
• Promotes biking in the city

Cons:

• Requires one credit card per bike rented
• Puts a hold on $250 in your credit card each time you use it
• Instructions for some things (like the 24-hr access) not very clear
• Lack of billboard with info on nearby rental stations.

Another side-effect of the design of the system: When I tried to get a bike to go back home, the first station had no bikes, but luckily the one where I had returned my bike still had one left.
Oh, and here’s an official video from Bixi explaining how the 24-hr access works.

BIXI – 24-hour access from BIXI on Vimeo.

Imagine

Links: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Imagine Peace

Festival on the Main

This weekend, the Main was closed from Sherbrooke to Mont-Royal and was turned into a pedestrian street. All businesses put out their merchandise, or food, or anything else and that part of the city was alive!

While on our way back home we ran into a breakdancing crew doing their thing, so I broke out the Qik camera.

Noteworthy: At around the 3 minute mark, the breaker in green seems to have hurt himself but I never figured out if he actually did.

Tamtams and journée des Patriotes

I was walking home yesterday, when I saw a huge crowd and what appeared to be a protest next to Mount Royal Park. My first guess was the usual Sunday Tamtams, but when I got closer I saw a large number of Fleurdelisé. I assumed it was just a pro-sovereignty rally and continued walking to go record a bit of the tamtams madness. But last night while doing my rounds in the blogosphere I found this interesting article on the topic which answers my questions about the rally and I think it’s a good read.

And here’s the video I took yesterday, but unfortunately I had my earphones on and didn’t get any of the audio. I have to say the sounds of hundreds of drums playing was incredible!

Making work for myself

These days I’ve been spending my time home somewhat idly. So, to break this bad pattern here’s my solution:

1. jot down some ideas I’ve had (mostly computer related)
2. start with the easiest one and hope the rest will follow

I’ve now completed step 1. Lets see how step 2 goes! My easy idea is to re-work the photo gallery that I have on the site.