Toronto airport update

New terminal for Toronto City Centre Airport.

Daytona update

Saturday morning in the press office at the track. You can follow the progress of the Rolex 24 Hours here.

Evening at the Speedway

Now in the Ramada Inn at the Daytona Speedway warming up for the race on saturday.

Eye candy for train buffs

Digital train pictures here and here.

Heading for Daytona

Tomorrow I'm leaving a snowy Toronto behind and flying down to Florida for the Daytona sportcar race this weekend. Following his successful debut in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2007, Matthew Marsh will drive a Ferrari F430 in the Rolex Daytona 24 Hours at Daytona Beach, Florida on January 26/27, 2008.
He will be sharing car #56, a Ferrari 430, with reigning FIA GT champion Thomas Biagi, Christian Montanari from Italy and Spaniard Luis Monzon. The car will be run by the Italian Mastercar team.
Matthew will share the track with NASCAR stars Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and AJ Allmendinger. Last year's Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti is also in the field, along with Dan Wheldon and Alex Lloyd. Helio Castroneves, a two-time Indy 500 champion and winner of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" in November is also entered. Watch out also for Andy Wallace and Milka Duno – both stars of my smart car to Le Mans film.
The race will start on Saturday January 26th at 1:30 pm with qualifying held on Thursday January 24th. Matthew drove car #83 at the 2007 Le Mans, a Ferrari 430 GT of the GPC team, which retired after 21 hours.

You can follow the progress of the event here: http://www.matthewmarsh.net/
I will be blogging live from the circuit.

Greetings from Toronto Reference Library

Blogging from TRL via free wireless connection on ancient Dell Latitude laptop. Windows '98 lives! D-link wireless card cost $28 incl tax. Exploit low-cost technology.

Not quite $100 laptop roadtested

We had a real live version of the kiddies laptop in the Thomas household this week for evaluation purposes. There is a whole trend emerging for low-cost, solid-state, linux-driven personal portable computers, no hard-drive required. We got our hands on the rugged XO laptop this week which is aimed at 6-12 year olds. The keyboard is kiddie sized and not suitable for touch typing by adults, but quite adequate for the hunt-and-peck school of geeks. At about $188 the machine is remarkably capable with WiFi, net browsing and a whole suite of software including games. We were not sure whether we were looking at a production version but the user interface needed some polishing on 'our' machine.

You can read all about it here.

Some news is just too big to hide

Porter Airlines who fly out of the splendid Toronto City Centre Airport are running teaser advertisements under the above headline saying "A new destination coming soon." My money is on New York, with Chicago to follow.

New GO engines in TO

GO Transit launches new engines.

You've Got Your Troubles

Rod Allen, lead singer with The Fortunes, is gone.

Olympics £1 billion black hole

The boondoggle goes on.

HNY but not on Britain's railways

Jeff Randall in the The Times has the story.

Update: Pete Waterman is undismayed.

Happy New Year

Pic by Owen Shaw.
We were out in High Park yesterday here in Toronto and Owen took this picture.

Wind power

Sailing ships make a comeback.