Toronto Cycling Map at iBikeTO.ca

I can’t quite recall where I read it (probably Joe Friel’s excellent Cyclist’s Training Bible) but apparently during your first year of cycling training, you need to log about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of foundation before getting serious about skill-targeted training regimes.

That’s a lot of miles, and although I have some favourite routes in the city, it’s still nice to mix it up occasionally and discover new trails.

Toronto Cycling Maps

There are great maps of Toronto cycling routes, in pdf form (here on toronto.ca) and as a Google Maps mashup (here on iBikeTO.ca).

Accessing New Routes

At Tommy Thompson Park, in pursuit of Toronto Cycling Routes

New opportunities for discovering routes are appearing all the time.

TCAT pointed me to the Bikes+Transit site, which invites Toronto cyclists to avail of new GO Bus racks for transporting cycles.  In addition to making Toronto a more cycling-commuter friendly city, the bus additions now also allow cyclists to access other routes across (and out of) the city.

You’re even supposed to use Flickr and Twitter to record your explorations. I love Flickr, so I’ll aspire to join in the photo taking. I don’t usually bring my SLR on cycling trips, but that hasn’t stopped me from taking sketchy photos and videos with my phone in the past.

Niagara trails are also more accessible now (see here). You can also take the Greyhound bus between Toronto, St Catherines, and Niagara Falls.

Is there an App for that?

Being a Blackberry user (actually a Blackberry lover), the one thing I can’t find is an app the would turn my blackberry into a GPS-enabled cycling map, for the times when I occasionally lose my way on a new route. (Apparently the iPhone has a bunch of cycling apps available!)

If anyone knows of such a Blackberry app, I’d be very much obliged. Even a generic app that would allow me to overlay a Google Maps mashup like the Toronto cycling one would be great.

Learning the Lingo

Bonus cycling link: Dictionary of Roadie Slang (the Profanisaurus of cycling, useful for a Cat. 7 like me)

Capilano Suspension: Bridging worlds, simple elegance

I spoke with a headhunter last week who is looking for designers who have experience using Expression Blend to enhance the usability of line-of-business applications.

The demand for designers who have worked on Silverlight or WPF projects currently exceeds supply.

The adoption of those two “XAML-based” technologies has been accompanied by a growing community of developers that have adopted the new frameworks, often “wearing the designer hat” to get the job done.

But a designer who understands how to craft solid XAML markup using Blend’s visual toolset thinks differently from either a developer, or from a designer whose thinking is not informed by the basics of Silverlight and WPF.

Designers needn’t give up their existing tools, but to optimally contribute to a Silverlight or WPF project, their thought process should be informed by these technology frameworks, both when working with their existing tools and with Blend.

Yes, we’ve all heard of these highly coveted “dev-igners,” who bridge the dev and design worlds with the simple elegance of the Capilano Suspension Bridge, but these are unicorn-esque in rarity.

So the good news is – if you’re a designer who does know Expression Blend, I know people who are looking for your skills!

[p.s. shameless plug - Empowering designers to wield Blend like a paintbrush (in ways that I can't) has become one of the greatest joys of my work. If you're a designer (or know a designer) interested in mastering Blend, and learning the basics of Silverlight/WPF in the process, send me mail through the blog.  Maybe you'd be interested in a crash course.]

I am now offering WPF and Silverlight courses through my consultancy, Carrington Technologies.

After tremendously enjoying the process of training a team of developers and designers to use WPF, these courses are the result of turning that material into a course that could benefit other teams who are learning these technologies.  The training methodology grounds the learning in a current project, with guidance from an instructor who’s been developing with (and passionate about) those technologies since they were only known by their Microsoft codenames.

For more information, please see my consultancy’s training section.