2025 Toronto

The view from Canoe, book and cocktail to hand

In Canoe, on the 54th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Bank tower (a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe project, apparently).  Stunning views south – to the small landing strip on the nearby island, and west.  Air wonderfully clear today.  Earlier, lunch in St Lawrence Market.  Not quite as I remember it, but a good atmosphere, spoilt somewhat by the live lobsters in tanks, waiting to be killed, probably slowly and horribly…  Then to here, for the view, not the booze and expensive foods in this upmarket business lunch/dinner spot.  Small prop planes landing every few minutes at the airport.  Not many A380s so far, alas…

Returning to Toronto, 35 years later.  Some things the same, some different.  The good news: the Art Gallery of Ontario has many more paintings by the Group of Seven.  Wonderful stuff.

Towards the Instant PC

Here's an interesting straw in the wind:

I just got a chance to try out a Webware PC: a computer built around the new P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard from Asus. What makes this motherboard be hardware for Webware is that it has a Firefox Web browser (running on an embedded Linux operating system) burned into ROM. It also has Skype. You turn it on, and in fifteen seconds (I timed it), you can be in Firefox and surfing the Web.

The logical conclusion of this would be to have thousands of free apps running on an embedded GNU/Linux operating system, all burned into ROM, ready to run almost instantly. As the cost of storage - both disc-based and flash - comes down, this kind of thing is going to be more and more feasible.