Time Immortal

Yes, I think it would be safe to say that the Lensbaby has become my walkaround lens. And why not, really? It’s a decent optic, with a normal prime focal length (30 mm naturally, which equates to the equivalent of 48 mm on my EOS 350D)…and it’s just really fun to work with.

This is a picture of a fountain full of coins that I took at the Edmonton International Airport (YEG for those who know airport codes) while Grace and I were there to drop her sister off so she could catch her flight home. Grace’s sisters went off to Tim Hortons to grab coffees while I sat with my wife at this fountain…which, of course, I just had to take a picture of.

It’s kind of neat how the flared blurring of the Lensbaby looks when applied to hundreds of small coins. Of course, this was a high ISO shot, so I had to do a fair bit of noise reduction in Lightroom, but with a touch of sharpening and some downscaling, the image turned out really nicely, I think. The Lensbaby really makes almost every shot I take with it interesting — what a great gift (from a great girl!).

Dude thinks Edmonton ought to hold on to YXD, the outdated and too-small-for-modern-aircraft Edmonton Municipal Airport that is situated just north of the downtown core.

Risking Lives on Dangerous Highways

Councillor Caterina draws on the article “QE2 Highway Badly Needs Upgrade” in the December 28th, 2007, edition of The Edmonton Sun, as further evidence that service at the City Centre Airport needs to be restored:

“The [Ed Stelmach] government may consider knocking some sense into the complacent Edmonton Airports Authority. To hopefully relieve some of the pressure on the QE2, it should move to restore full, Airbus service out of the City Centre Airport. Otherwise, the Queen’s highway will continue being another of Alberta’s death freeways -a situation that is not acceptable to anyone.”

Caterina says, “We need to look at revisiting this issue before more deaths occur on the QE2, Hwy 63 to Fort McMurray and Hwy 43 to Grand Prairie“

“If we compare the Bullet-Train idea at a cost of 5 to 6 Billion or the cost of upgrading the QE2 highway each way, there’s no comparison.”

“Only a fraction of the cost would be needed to restore the City Centre Airport to full service.” Says Councillor Caterina

“Combing rail and bus service would aid as well” advises Caterina “Imagine a “Hub” that could be created at the Muni. Air linked with Via Rail next door, Bus terminal on site, and LRT servicing both the City Centre Airport and NAIT.”

How nice that the good city councillor seeks to capitalize on the highway death toll in Alberta by lobbying for costly upgrades to an airport that a) has no real room to expand beyond its current land footprint, and b) is too small, within that current land footprint, to accommodate modern aircraft takeoff and landing distances, except when said aircraft are minimally loaded with both passengers and fuel:

Now for the not so funny joke. Create a hub, for what, Calgary?

What Tony forgets is that we also would have to do runway work to get anything larger in there. Plus, if I recall correctly, the [Maximum Take Off Weight] for the next gen 737 is greater than the runways [at YXD] can support, both in capacity as well as length. Add a warmer day and our ~2300-2300 ASL altitude, and you aren’t getting off with much fuel (aka range). So, hello Calgary and Vancouver.

So, RJ’s and Dash 8’s. All day, all the time. Hello, business person. Welcome to Edmonton. You had to connect in Calgary anyway, endure another deplane/enplane PITA, so next time, just get off the plane in Calgary and do business here.

A bit more detail:

While his ward lost with the Muni being closed, he should try to close the muni and have new developments on it creating new tax dollars/jobs/people instead of small Dash 8’s buzzing around Kingsway/Royal Alex. Does anyone remember the old generation 737’s landing there? Came awefully close to Kingsway and the new gen 737’s are just too big.

FYI:

YXD runway 12/30 5868 ft (1789 m)
YXD runway 16/34 5700 ft (1737 m).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YXD

Boeing 737’s take off distance at MTOW ranges from 1990 m to 2540 m depending on the model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications

The only way the 737 — arguably one of the most commonly-used passenger airplanes in Canada — could get off the ground at Edmonton’s Municipal Airport is with a decent tailwind, minimal fuel, and only a fraction of its total capacity worth of passengers. Turning ‘the Muni’ into a transport hub would result in a net benefit not for Edmonton, but for Calgary — planes out of the Muni bound for any destination farther away than Grand Prairie or Calgary wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach where they were headed for.

A decade ago, the Municipal Airport was reduced to charter and private flight service, and realistically should just be closed outright; no city Edmonton’s size has successfully supported two airports, and Edmonton’s larger International Airport (YEG) is more than large enough to not only see an expansion in domestic and international service, but to do so while simultaneously absorbing charter traffic out of YXD.

And then all that prime land space just north of Edmonton’s downtown core could be put to better use — for example, as a residential area. It would be almost ideal for that, close as it is to a major hospital, a major shopping center, NAIT, and Grant MacEwan College.

Whatever — I’m just glad that Tony Caterina isn’t my councillor.

That said, O Reader, it might not hurt to drop him a line and tell him what you think of his absurd proposal:

Councillor Tony Caterina
2nd Floor, City Hall
1 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 2R7
Phone: (780) 496-8333
Fax: (780) 496-8113