ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • My Top 3 Winnipeg Mayoral Election Issues

    My Top 3 Winnipeg Mayoral Election Issues

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    I spent more of my long weekend than intended summarizing Winnipeg’s Mayoral candidates’ platforms for an epic tweet thread.

    This got me thinking about what the most important issues to me personally.

    Fund Winter

    This city is very bad at winter!

    Last year especially was an epic disaster of unplowed sidewalks and streets. Forget winter biking, winter walking is often impossible.

    We’ve been at this for nearly 150years we should be better at this.

    Some ideas:

    • For starters dump as much money as physically possible into the snow clearing/winter maintenance budget!
    • Plow sidewalks and bike lanes at the same time as the streets that border them. If not sooner.
    • Investigate grooming bike paths instead of plowing them (like the do in Finland).
    • Mandate Edmonton’s Winter City Design guidelines.
    • Fine contractors who use active transport to dump snow. Set aggressive timelines in their contracts and fine them when they fail to meet them.

    Defund Cars

    Cars have their place in modern cities, I am probably more pro-car than the average subscriber to Not Just Bikes.

    But it’s becoming exceedingly clear that North American car-centric urban design was a giant mistake! We need to reverse course before it’s too late.

    Some ideas:

    • Make it more expensive and inconvenient to drive: eliminate free parking, slow streets to a reasonable level, implement traffic calming measure.
    • Eliminate parking minimums.
    • Disincentivize surface parking lots.
    • Make public transit free.
    • Invest heavily in bike infrastructure.

    Defund The Police

    It’s becoming incredibly obvious that the current incarnation of the police are not very good at stopping or solving crime. And they just seem to eat up massive amounts of city budgets (with helicopters and robot dogs) for no apparent reason.

    I don’t have specific ideas on this one, it’s a difficult problem and the city governments have limited ability to make changes without provincial help.

    BTW if you think defunding the police is wacky left-wing idea, just remember that we wouldn’t have paramedics if City of Pittsburgh hasn’t allowed their police to be defunded.

  • WordPress Websites Now Only $499

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    Early this week Automattic launched “Built by WordPress.com Express,” an awkwardly named “webdesign” service.

    Here’s the sales video:

    The tagline “Real sites, built by real people.” is a good one. It acknowledges that most people who need a website are not web designers. It positions their service as an alternative the steep learning curve to doing-it-yourself (with WordPress or elsewhere).

    It feels a little like WordPress VIP lite (very lite!). In fact, I’m fairly certain some of the screenshots in the video are from VIP clients.

    Reading between the lines, the service seems to be a layout service. You pick a pre-existing theme, provide the content and US$500 and then they’ll “do it for you.”

    This is bad on so many levels! (well at least 4 I can think of off the top of my head)

    Easy To Replicate

    Some are speculating that this service is a desperate attempt to increase profitability for an upcoming IPO. I find this plausible.

    Unfortunately, if this service proves to be a hit, is incredibly easy for Elementor, Wix, Squaresquares, etc to replicate. Set up a network of “experts” poached from fivrr and some minimal organization to manage the workflow.

    Whether A8C’s competitors could pull it off as well with good templates, solutions that work and great support is almost besides the point. This segment of the market is just looking for a solution to the basic problem of “I need a website.”

    Hard to Support

    A $500 WP Express customer is going to expect the same level of support as a $500,000 WP VIP customer. Period. If the goal is raising profit, the support costs are sure to challenge that goal.

    Solves Half The Problem

    The design — as in the visual appearance — is only half the problem you need to solve when building a website. Maybe even less than half in many cause.

    A beautiful website is useless without a cohesive content strategy. Professionally written, thoughtful content will always give you a leg up on the competition… the competition who whipped together a website for $500 without a second thought.

    The marketing copy on the sales page strongly implies that your content is unimportant. Providing content is simply the 3rd item on a 5-item list, equal weight to providing your business address and sitting back and relaxing.

    oof.

    Devaules WordPress

    This is the biggest problem.

    The popularity of WordPress is built on the hard work and goodwill of freelancers. Passionate people who’ve spent the past 2 decades spreading the Gospel of Matt.

    Any of these freelancers will tell how hard it can be to convince a potential client that their website is worth more than approximately $500. Imagine how much harder this becomes when wordpress.com is setting the going rate at $500! Why would they ever hire you?

    To quote @briancoords on twitter “a massive private company and also the sole entity allowed to commercially profit off the WordPress trademark devaluing WordPress could be harmful for anyone trying to earn a living anywhere at any price point.”

    Not to mention that the templates themselves are kind of ugly.

    This feels like a gut punch.

    I’m always rooting for Automattic. But I hope this goes nowhere fast and we never hear about it every again.

  • Visiting A Superpower that is also a Failed State

    Visiting A Superpower that is also a Failed State

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    Last week I took an extended weekend off to drive down to the Twin Cities with my family, for the first time in almost exactly 3 years. Ever since we started going down there for punk shows (long before Odessa and I were married) we have made it a habit to trek down at least once per year.

    The title of this post is a reference to Chuck Klosterman’s latest book “The Nineties” which we listened on the way there and back. Klosterman audiobooks have become as much of a tradition as the trip itself. Something about the combination of his comic-book-guy-from-the-simpsons delivery plus the fact that we are literally driving through the setting of some of his anecdotes is just so perfect.

    In all seriousness though, between the events of January 6th, the presidency preceding it, and the George Floyd protests in the Twin Cities I was bracing for the worst. I expected to arrive in a country where my affiliations would be questioned every time I wanted to use a restroom, a political zealot yelling on every street corner and just general chaos.

    But for the most part, everything was normal, like it had been previous years.

    So Many Flavours of Mountain Dew

    For many Canadians, trips across the border are a bit like visiting a giant Theme Park of Capitalism or maybe walking into r/latestagecapitalism. We simultaneous gawk at the sheer audacity of all the different things we can buy while buying as many of the things as we can possibly buy.

    The varieties of Mountain Dew are a prime example a running joke even. [Up in these parts we typically have 3 flavours of Mountain Dew: regular, diet and a rotating cast of alternates (code red, blue shock, that new black one, etc)]

    Well I’m happy(?) to report that the state of the world has not affected the junk food shelf. Not only that but the US consumerist machine has managed to find dozens of flavours of everything! Doritos, caned coffee, beef jerky, beyond meat jerky, skittles… you get the picture.

    On Apple Pay and Tap

    A quick note on Apple Pay.

    I was pleasantly surprised that tap payment was available literally everywhere. This was not at all the case 3 years ago — chip&PIN was not even readily available.

    That said most cashiers acted like I was one of the first people they’d ever seen actually using my phone to pay.

    Economic Indicators

    A Walmart sandwichboard style sign advertising service jobs starting at $16/hr and stocking jobs starting at $18/hr. It's located inside a Walmart store.

    In the face of a mostly normal visit, the effects of inflation seemed a lot more real down there. Even though the inflation rate is only about 1% higher.

    For one, nothing is cheap anymore, especially food. Even though the relatively exchange rates have remain roughly the same (30%, ±5%) for the 20 odd years I’ve been visiting The States you could always count on cheap fast food. Even after currency exchange.

    And I’m not really sure any of the clothes and other stuff we bought is significantly cheaper like it used to be. Ohdessa did some on-the-fly comparison shopping vs the Canadian websites and often found similar to cheaper pricing on the .ca.

    I bought new shoes out of compulsion.

    Actually, gas is still cheap. About CA$0.30/L less (US$0.92/gal).

    The most striking economic indicator was the WE’RE HIRING signs literally everywhere! The sign to the left is from a Walmart in Fergus Falls, North Dakota — a state with a $7.25 minimum wage. A Taco Bell in Fargo, ND was advertising a $500 signing bonus! $1500 bonus to start on as a mall cop at the Mall of America (salary not listed).

    Not coincidentally, the McDonalds we visited that was not boasting of above minimum wage was so short staffed that the shift manager apologized about the wait to every single customer.

    [N.B. Some of these posting might be total compensation (including things like healthcare) but are likely to still be multiples of the minimum wage.]

    Art

    Two teenagers and their mother surrounding a table, listening to audio recording on headphones. They are in an art gallery with art pieces on the walls behind them.

    To counter-balance the kind of icky consumer tourism aspect of these trips, we always try to hit up some art galleries. The Twin Cities have a great art scene!

    We were able to check out Piotr Szyhalski’s COVID-19: Labor Camp Report. I am not good at describing art so I will just say that this is the most incredible art exhibit I have ever seen. The dystopian posters, the performance, the orchestra. Such amaze!

    PS

    The Fairfield Inn by Marriott in Mendota Heights, Minnesota kinda sucks.