From John Gruber's first impressions of iPhone: “Booting: A cold boot takes about 20 seconds. (Sleep/wake is effectively instantaneous – far faster than any Mac.)”

From Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow:

There was a cheap Malaysian comm that he'd once bought because of its hyped up de-hibernate feature -- its ability to go from its deepest power-saving sleepmode to full waking glory without the customary thirty seconds of drive-churning housekeeping as it reestablished its network connection, verified its file system and memory, and pinged its buddy-list for state and presence info. This Malaysian comm, the Crackler, had the uncanny ability to go into suspended animation indefinitely, and yet throw your workspace back on its display in a hot instant.

When Art actually laid hands on it, after it meandered its way across the world by slow boat, corrupt GMT+8 Posts and Telegraphs authorities, over-engineered courier services and Revenue Canada's Customs agents, he was enchanted by this feature. He could put the device into deep sleep, close it up, and pop its cover open and poof! there were his windows. It took him three days and an interesting crash to notice that even though he was seeing his workspace, he wasn't able to interact with it for thirty seconds. The auspicious crash revealed the presence of a screenshot of his pre-hibernation workspace on the drive, and he realized that the machine was tricking him, displaying the screenshot -- the illusion of wakefulness -- when he woke it up, relying on the illusion to endure while it performed its housekeeping tasks in the background. A little stopwatch work proved that this chicanery actually added three seconds to the overall wake-time, and taught him his first important user-experience lesson: perception of functionality trumps the actual function.

All week I wondered about iPhone's responsiveness after "putting it to sleep" (no, as a good Canadian, I have to wait to get one), and John says it's zippy. I still can't help but wonder, though, if Apple pulled one over on people like the Malaysians did on Art.

This morning, Roland, Karen and I went to the launch of Vancity Bike Share, to wait in line and eat pancakes served by Libby Davies, Gregor Robertson, and Shane Simpson, all BC MLA and pick up my shiny red, Vancity logo-emblazoned one-speed cruiser plus non-branded red bike lock and non-branded red helmet. And a Vancity logo-emblazoned red t-shirt. Pretty good score for writing a 98-word blog post. After three weeks of going who-knows-where with the bike, I'll be handing it off, likely to Karen. Photos forthcoming from me, but Roland already has a set on Flickr. This will be my first ever bike ride home from work, so I'll have to dig deep for my signals and etiquette, having lived in the Lower Mainland for 10 years but having ridden a bike two times at most in that timespan.

I'm already a Vancity member, so they're not winning a convert out of me. As far as PR campaigns go, "releasing" bikes to share then donating them to PEDAL could be a lot worse.

From Rob Cottingham and others, comes a link to the Vancity Bike Share experiment. The basic idea is that Vancity gives me a bike, I keep it for about 3 weeks, write about it on ChangeEverything.ca (and here, of course), then give it to someone else. I'm not sure if I know what I got myself into, but I've submitted a request and tomorrow I should be picking up a bike. My brief, just-under-100-words submission follows:

I haven't owned a bike in years, and never while in Vancouver. I'm a little nervous about the concept of biking to work, since I know how many hills, up and down, there are on the way. Thankfully, the bike path starts just outside my apartment, and maybe I can get some experience with the bus bike rack if it comes to it. Time for some daily low-impact exercise to add to my high-impact twice-weekly workouts. If the bikes are identifiably bike sharing bikes, then I'm not afraid of making it a conversation piece either!

Tomorrow is the launch and pancake breakfast, not necessarily in that order. I'm planning to attend, with my camera, of course.

On Thursday night, Karen and I attended City Making in Paradise, a panel session at Simon Fraser University's Harbour Centre, which featured an introduction of the book of the same name by former British Columbia premier Mike Harcourt and former GVRD planner Ken Cameron. Subtitled "Nine Decisions That Saved Greater Vancouver's Livability", the book, due in September, lays out the case that Vancouver and surrounding area since 1948 could have gone in many directions but instead chose a relatively enlightened one. Stephen Rees has the definitive notes, and I took a few <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/sets/72157600369864728/"">my photos of Harcourt, Cameron, and the other panelists.

Stephen's notes reflect the amount of discussion paid to the Olympics, a decision that no doubt shapes the next 30 years for the city. Only at the end were the Games and their effect on British Columbia and its major cities. For the record, I opposed the Olympics, but not on economic or environmental grounds, but rather moral grounds. It's a done deal—a phrase to describe both the proposed freeway through Strathcona, the opposition to which is fairly mythologized in this city, and the Gateway Project (the subject of some inspired blogging at Urban Vancouver), which Harcourt argues should go ahead, but done right.

The night featured a heckle from the back, the heckler's wife Adriane Carr (yes, the Adriane Carr) writing about it at some length, David Eaves has a recap and thoughts of the evening.

Readers of Urban Vancouver know that I've been playing floorball, a type of floor hockey with modifications like shorter sticks with golf club-like grips, a whiffle ball, with rules that emphasize stickhandling and playmaking over physical toughness. I'd only heard about the sport a few months ago, but the people are really friendly and encouraging, and though play is a little more 'lower-body' than I anticipated, it's a nice compliment to the primarily 'upper-body' sport of dragon boating.

After the BC Federation Floorball challenge a few weeks ago, I was getting a little discouraged with goal-scoring, but after last night's play, scoring on the final play of the final game, and feeling a lot better about my defensive play, I've gotten over any doubts I might have had about enjoying floorball. One of the organizers noticed an increase in velocity on my shot—though we'll see how accurate I am under pressure—and going the almost the whole night without water makes me wonder if my fluid intake is way more than it needs to be.

British Columbians who want to check out the sport can contact the BC Floorball Federation, and Vancouverites (and allied visitors) can play at the Yaletown Roundhouse on Monday evenings from 6:00 PM to 7:45 PM, and in either North or West Vancouver on Thursdays at 7:00 PM. I understand the current location for Thursdays is yet to be determined.

The 1st annual BC Floorball Federation Challenge this past Saturday was a major success! I was placed on Team Sweden, and despite claims of coincidence, I suspect conspiracy—I started participating in order to counter Swedish dominance with a surging Icelandic wave, and this is how they repay me?! Team Czech won the championship, which lasted all day at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver. Separate from the challenge, Swiss all-stars continued their dominance over the Canadian team in the middle of the day, and kids entertained the adults who deservedly rested after some pretty intense action. Each team had only one or two substitutes, making for some tired legs at the end of each game, but I scored twice and assisted once, so I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. Team Sweden lost twice, tied once, and won their final game.

I bought a stick at the tournament, a Salming with a hammer grip, and ball to practice at home, personalizing the stick with an sticker of the Icelandic national flag. (I fully expect to lose the ball at some point, which should be easier to replenish.) Other than the start time, having gotten up at 5:30 AM to catch a 6:00 AM bus to catch a 6:45 AM SeaBus to catch a 7:00 ride to have enough time to warm up for an 8:00 AM game time, there's not much I would change.

Photos to come, and today I recover from the weekend of physical activity (Sunday was dragon boat practice). I saw the Swiss contingent downtown today, where I bragged about my awesome Iceland hockey team jersey. For now, marvel at Roland's floorball photos, especially the Fossil in net and Frederik's penalty shot, as well as from the official BC Floorball Federation photo gallery, the championship team, featuring Urban Vancouverite Boris Mann.

As promised, some video of floorball in action. Izzard's video gives you a sense of what it's like to play pickup floorball in a gym, except we don't play to a Chemical Brothers soundtrack. For tricks (which floorballers seem to prefer to call skills), go no further than video showing the "Zorro" performed during games. I'm not so fond of the tricks, they intimidate me as a beginner, and besides, I won the award for best fundamentals on my basketball team (that's also why Tim Duncan has long been a favourite player of mine). For a good introduction to some of the rules, GlobalTV Quebec's This Morning Live did a short series one day on the sport, calling it "Floorball Fun With Richard" (hey I should have thought of that!): part 1; part 2; and part 3.

You might need to pump up the volume a bit on those.

There's video of floorball played in a small gym, and tricks dominate the list in YouTube, but in the end, I enjoyed the longer shots that showed match play, like Finland vs. Sweden, Finland vs. Czech Republic, and more from unihockeyportal's videos. The second one answered the question for me "do floorball players change on the fly in real games?" (correct answer: yes). The fine folks at BC Floorball no doubt can add to my list of must-see videos, including more about the tricks and skill play, not to mention penalty shots.