Consistency in Software: Case #3841-22

chrome $ unzip --help
UnZip 5.52 of 28 February 2005, by Info-ZIP.  Maintained by C. Spieler.  Send
bug reports using http://www.info-zip.org/zip-bug.html; see README for details.

Usage: unzip [-Z] [-opts[modifiers]] file[.zip] [list] [-x xlist] [-d exdir]
# 2 dozen lines of helpful info omitted

chrome $ zip --help

zip error: Invalid command arguments (no such option: -)
chrome $ 

There's a very logical explanation for this, similar to why certain words in English are spelled in apparently arbitrary, inconsistent ways. For
example, while it might seem maddening to remember which adjectives end
in "able" and which end in "ible", all you have to remember is whether
the Latin word the adjective is derived from ends in "abilis" or "ibilis".
Another useful cue,which I can't come up with a concrete example for, is
knowing in whch rough century a word entered the English language. Knowledge
of the fashion at the time could help remembering whether a trade, for
example, would end in "er" or "or".

It's similar in software. Sometime around the turn of the century the GNU
Coding Standard calling for "--help" for command-line help options was
adopted nearly universally. Before that common ways of accessing help
were "-h", "-?", or programs often left the help to the man page[2].

The link program I run has a 2005 copyright on it, while the zip program
was last compiled in 1999.

So obviously to be a fluent user of a system you need to know when the
various tools you use were last compiled. Chances are, if you knew that,
you wouldn't need the online help -- there's enough in your head already.

Any program that supports "--help" and doesn't have a "-h" option, and is
unlikely to ever tie it up, might as well map "-h" to "--help". Doing
otherwise leaves the impression that the user is an incapible moron and
software is inflexable.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine-Interfaces.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces
was dropped

[2] http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch10s05.html

Vancouver's Bike Lanes: We're Eating Airplane Food

One of the first times I saw Father Guido Sarducci was on Letterman, back in the days when Dave was funny ("hip" and "ironic" were big terms in the 80s, because so few shows were), Sarducci was asking why airplane food was so bad. (Yes, for my two readers who weren't around then, airlines used to serve passengers real meals on flights over 3 hours long. With metal cutlery and real plates. What could they have been thinking???) Anyway, he said if you were trapped in a well for a week, and after the rescuers pulled you out and offered you a typical airplane meal, you'd think it was pretty good. But otherwise, no.

Tonight's talk by Mikael Colville-Andersen on bicycle design for cities reminded me of the Sarducci routine. Andersen's talk was entertaining, of course. But during the questions from the audience, someone asked him how he felt about Vancouver's bike network. We had already seen the slide of the broken chair which can still support a grown man standing on it, just like the bike infrastructure. But with that question, Andersen got serious, and took the city to task for ignoring the "best practices", just copying and pasting, and instead built things like two-way separated lanes which Copenhagen had tried and tossed out 20 years ago.

This isn't the first time I've heard something like this. But after spending decades in various North American cities dodging errant BMWs and other sundry 4-wheeled scum while trying to get from point A to B, I was like that guy in the well, just happy to have a few crumbs of separated bikeways tossed my way. And forgetting how it should be.

Now that we know that one separated lane on the Burrard Bridge doesn't have morning rush hour traffic backed up 16 blocks -- it's more or less like it was before the lane change -- it's time to put in the separate northbound lane and return the east sidewalk to the pedestrians.  I personally don't mind the two-way lanes on Hornby and Dunsmiur, but I can see how less-seasoned riders might. If they need to be included to meet the city's goals for 2040, then finish the job and put in dedicated one-way lanes on Richards and Georgia to complement the other two.

But then I also used to make my own lunches back in elementary school with Venice Bakery's airline-style buns. Shows you what people will put up with when they don't know any better.

Andersen's talk will probably find its way online somewhere, but you can hear the gist of his talk at Wednesday's interview on The Current

And if anyone can find the Sarducci sketch I mentioned, please let me know.  I vaguely recall he read some of his correspondence with the airline in question, where they apologized for the meal that didn't meet his expectations, and he said that he wasn't referring to a specific meal. He was referring to the Platonic notion of an airplane meal (which is now more of a Buddhist ideal).

The Fridays sketch is just a placeholder. Think of it as an incentive to get someone to find the clip in mind. I need to refresh that 30-year-old memory.

Salt Spring: Maybe the best ride I've ever done

It's been a typical late-June Vancouver weekend, I'm exhausted, but there are some people waiting to hear how the Salt Spring/Velo Village (those would both look better as single words, but I'm not going to quibble with typographical conventions here) ride went. A few words first, then a few pictures.

Background: as a prelude to the Velo City conference in Vancouver this week, some people I never got to meet organized a mini-conference on rural cycling on Salt Spring. The highlight was a first-time ever bicycle-only ferry from Swartz Bay (north of Victoria) to Fulford Harbour, at the south end of Salt Spring, followed by a 15km ride on the second route to Ganges, with no northbound car traffic to deal with.

I haven't been to the Gulf Islands a lot, but everytime I've been there I realized it would have been nice to cycle, but you have to deal with a combination of narrow roads, steep hills, plenty of curves, and, of course, cars. The shoulders are thin or non-existent. So when I heard about the ride, I realized it was a great opportunity to truly enjoy one of the islands.

But June weather in this part of the world can be unpredictable,  and this year's was unusually wet. The weather forecast wasn't looking good, with "rain" on Friday, and "showers" on Saturday. When they say "rain", they're talking about the kind Ken Kesey described so well in the opening chapter of Sometimes A Great Notion. You want to get a towel and sit in front of a hot air register after reading that chapter.

But on Friday the next day's forecast for Vancouver and Victoria was just showers, and light showers and sun for Salt Spring. I called Heather at the must-see must-buy-everything Salt Spring Bakery, to see what was happening there. "It's raining right now". Obviously that meant the rain would pass, so I asked her to save me one loaf of Apricot-Almond, and one of whatever she was making with ginger, booked my Velo Village ride ticket, and figured out how to fit everything else in for the weekend.

Another thing about June in Vancouver, is a lot of big events happen then, under some assumption that everyone leaves town in July and August. Some people do, but the exodus is miniscule compared to places like Toronto or Montreal, to name the places I'm familiar with (when I lived in Ottawa everyone was either starting out or had young families and not at the cottage-buying stage of life; don't know if they are now).  So among the things going on this weekend were also the annual MadSkillz juggling and-other-stuff festival, Maker Faire, Greek Day (lemon-lamb souvlaki...), the jazz festival, a family birthday celebration. Plus the usual other things to do every weekend.  But this bike ride might be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

So I went to sleep Friday night listening to heavy rain, woke up around 5 AM (before the alarm -- how did that happen?) listening to incessant drizzle, got everything in the car, and headed to Tsawassen, and saw a few dozen cyclists pulling gear out of cars in the parking lot and getting ready. Did I mention that about 5 miles before the parking lot my wipers started complaining that they had nothing to do?  One of the best sounds you can hear when setting out on a ride.

Enough words, here are some pictures…

My attempt at capturing pure fog

Normally there are mountains in that background, gives you a better idea of the weather we were looking at.

Check-in for the bike ferry

Best ferry waiting line ever

Boarding

Entertainment provided by the Fabulous Flakes

All that space…

Getting ready to ride

First hill out of Fulford

Locals singing, dancing, and drumming at the first Encouragement Station

Bike art, one of about 100 scattered over the island

Toughing it up the main hill

And getting closer to the top

Island forest bliss

This hill was nothing compare to the previous one

Salt Spring's answer to Slugging

Red Sara and Lori K, with unidentified happy guy behind them.

90 minutes to go up (with stops), maybe 10 minutes to get to Ganges. Here's the bike park.

It's Salt Spring. Custom goat cheese at the market

Custom chocolate

Ghost artbike on the way back

 A perfect day for riding. I learned that I can deal with big island hills way more easily than I can deal with cars. And did you notice what's not in the pictures (not that I realized it when I was taking them): hardly anyone was wearing the full boat cycling gear. Some cycle shorts, but the only other synthetics were typically for dealing with rain, not resistance. Most of the people were out for a fun, relaxing, enjoyable ride (given a few steep hills). And got it.

I don't know when Salt Spring, or any of the other Gulf Islands will be running a ride like this. But does want to do the Chilly Hilly next year outside Seattle?