Week 5: Riding the Rocket

It comes to no surprise to anybody that I am unbelievably busy. Possibly because I am soft in the head, I took on a practicum in addition to the rest of my work and volunteering, and even worse, it's in Scarborough. (In my defense, it's a really cool practicum that is literally working on The Future of the Book--my main project involves working with the code behind digital scans of a 15th century Ethiopian manuscript, how cool is that?) But what it does mean is that I spend a lot of time in transit to and from UTSC, which takes an hour and a half each way. 

So, faced with an insane amount of transit time and a propensity towards motion sickness, I can't really read on the subway or the bus. What I end up doing is trying to mentally plot out assignments. Last week, I set myself the #transitchallenge of coming up with some examples for the encoding challenge. Unfortunately, faced with so much transit, the only thing I could come up with was the subway map.

But wait. What if I did do the subway map?

"How I See the TTC", http://imgur.com/UEtze3W

The opportunity for working with branches and intersecting lines is interesting, as is the opportunity to tag the different lines and stations. How to tag a station that fits on two lines (St. George, Spading, Kennedy, etc) would be a challenge, as would trying to make the code turn into something that serves the purpose of the subway map (i.e., a way for people to navigate the Toronto public transit.) Add in the streetcars, and it becomes even more of a mess. 

Unfortunately (fortunately) for me, my ride ended, and my partner (the incomparable Chrissy) came up with a much better idea: the Doves' Press Bible! So this will have to be shelved for another commute.