Category: Toronto

Back in libraries

To do my part in reducing the reproduction rate of COVID-19, since March 2020 I have been avoiding indoor spaces and largely only going out for grocery walking and exercise walks.

I had stepped into a few U of T libraries to pick up and return books, but tonight was the first time I have gone in and read for several hours since pre-pandemic. Three surprise nice features:

  1. Being at Gerstein and Robarts made me feel like a student again, not just an ex-student with a very long incomplete overdue assignment
  2. The legibility of books under these lights is a reminder of how dim the lighting fixtures are in my current Byq Bepuneq Ubzrf apartment in North York (along with the flimsy plumbing fixtures, cheap locks, woeful lack of insulation, and notably inefficient furnace and AC unit)
  3. Seeing people wearing masks properly and voluntarily — because it’s the rule and because it makes sense — is heartening when so many in Toronto do a terrible job (useless clear hard masks, masks around chins, and loudmouths demanding service unmasked in shops and usually getting it because nobody wants to confront them)

As part of completing 50 page drafts of my political opportunities, mobilizing structures, repertoires, and framing chapters I am going to try reviewing and prioritizing the contents of paper printouts in these libraries during the short time ahead.

Pandemic walk heat maps

As part of playing around with my GPS data from my exercise walks since I wanted to make a heat map showing the likelihood of being in any particular place.

Here’s one I made using Seth Golub’s heatmap.py Python script (radius 5, decay 0.75):

I also made one in QGIS. First I converted the tracks to a set of points in a CSV file. Then I created a spatial index of the point layer, created a hexagonal grid of polygons of a sensible size, and counted the number of points in each. Then I rendered that as brighter or darker hexagons:

Here are the hexagons semi-transparent and rendered on a faux watercolour of the Toronto area:

The walks have sometimes been lonely and sometimes been scary, but they have been the main thing getting me out of the house and providing exercise during the pandemic. They do make me feel like I have a broader understanding of the city, though walking through a neighbourhood at night with headphones on only gives you a certain kind of perception.