{"id":1649,"date":"2008-06-03T15:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/06\/03\/the_glass_is_half_empty\/"},"modified":"2008-06-03T15:00:16","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T15:00:16","slug":"the_glass_is_half_empty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/06\/03\/the_glass_is_half_empty\/","title":{"rendered":"The glass is half empty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or rather, the room<\/em> is half empty.
\nI am lucky enough to work in an award-winning, eco-friendly, purpose-built research centre<\/a>. It’s a huge step up from the converted bakery that the centre lived in when I first arrived in Vancouver (baker’s yeast spores in the wall of your tissue culture lab, anyone?) and is a pure pleasure to work in. The 15th floor roof-top patio with a view of the harbour, mountains, and the local bald eagles is a particular highlight.
\nOn top of all this, the building is on one of Vancouver’s many designated bike routes. These are side streets with bike-activated lights at major junctions, and other favourable traffic calming measures. My door-to-door cycle to work is around 6 km, of which only 4 blocks are not<\/em> on a bike route.
\nAnd there’s a bike storage room in the basement! Right next to the showers! Hooray for biking to work!
\nBut…<\/p>\n


\n…at this time of year the fair weather cyclists start to come out of the woodwork. This is great for my daily racing scores<\/a>, but not good for getting a spot in the bike room.
\nThe building’s designers really missed an opportunity here. The design of the bike racks they used creates a huge amount of wasted space in the storage room:
\n\"\"
\nThe V-shaped racks are useless. You can get one bike on the outer side of each ring, but only one bike in the middle. Look at all that wasted floor space!<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nThe central third of the room fits only 8 bikes max – if you lock one bike to each of the high racks.<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nThe far wall is the biggest waste of space of all.<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nHere are the outside racks that I have to resort to if the storage room is full. A much better use of space, but bikes last way longer if stored inside, as I found to my cost in Glasgow (I went through two bikes in three years, whereas I’m only on my second bike after six years in Vancouver and the original one is still in service as a back-up)<\/em>.
\nPerhaps this problem is a fitting contender for Brian Clegg’s IgNobel challenge<\/a>: design a bike storage room that makes the best use of available space and inspires the fewest online rants from its users.
\nAny mathematicians out there?
\nWhile you’re at it, you can calculate the odds that my images will display properly given that the preview function isn’t working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or rather, the room is half empty. I am lucky enough to work in an award-winning, eco-friendly, purpose-built research centre. It’s a huge step up from the converted bakery that the centre lived in when I first arrived in Vancouver … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}