Roll on

I started to notice it two years ago: the room designated for bike lockup at work would fill up earlier and earlier to the point where if one arrived after 8:30 AM, it meant locking one's bike on the street. There's a definite trend here in Montreal, as in many other North American cities, towards increased bike usage. With increased fuel costs and people wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, urban cycling is on the rise. The recent start of construction on a bike lane connecting east and west parts of the city along De Maisonneuve and the addition of sharrows on other streets to improve the flow of cyclists show that the city is encouraging this trend. A Wired article on trends in bike sales also shows that people are looking for simpler, practical bikes to use for city commuting.

For those of you who've never tried cycling to work (and live close enough to do so), give it a whirl. It's a nice change from standing on an overheated bus or cramped metro. For drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists, please use your heads when using this newly shared space: expect the unexpected as people slowly become accustomed to changes in their normal paths to work. For cyclists, biking with your iPod just in't smart. Please don't do it. Cities are busy and you need your ears to pick up on audio cues signaling a potential accident. People who care about you don't want you to end up like this teen. Happy riding.

The hope for Rock Star

The Cambridge, MA based company which brought the gaming world Guitar Hero is coming up with an extension of the idea of game-based music making with Rock Band. In the game, four players will play the parts of vocals, guitar, bass, and drums along to tracks in order to win points according to how closely they can follow a song.

It sounds like fun, but I'm more interested to see if experiencing something which resembles actual music making pushes some people to upgrade from plastic controllers to the real things. Pushing a button which sounds a guitar chord on your TV is one thing, making a real guitar crunch out chords through a humming amplifier is something else. I agree with what one of the company's founders had to say in a Wired article about the upcoming release: it will change how some people experience and appreciate music in that they'll be excited about 'playing' a song. Hopefully, that will help the real musicians who have dedicated a large part of their lives to learning their instruments gain new respect and appreciation for their talent and dedication and perhaps give some people the push they need to create their own music.