http://www.andrewturnbull.net/rss.xml http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#9922 The world is burning, but this website will continue to be updated for as long as I'm able. This week, I added two new features to the Licence Plate Gallery: Unsolved Mysteries. Letter codes of unknown significance, plates that no longer exist, designs that make no sense, sequencing that no one fully understands... The Link Directory. Searching for surviving vestiges of the old hobbyist web. I also added some updated infodumps on Mexico and validation sticker serials. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#9501 The Highways of Hamilton has been expanded with a comprehensive guide to former County & Regional Roads (179 of them altogether, although many were internal designations or renumberings), and a scattering of new pictures. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#9412 New feature! The Highways of Hamilton. Enjoy. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#9224 Microsoft Windows 95 was released 30 years ago today! Windows 95 was irrefutably the high-water mark of software design. Microsoft engaged in actual usability research in the lead-up to release (the kind that never happens today!), testing the effectiveness of different UI paradigms before settling on something that was both powerful and intuitive. Windows 95's 32-bit API was robust, and compatible web browsers were still being developed for it into the 2010s. There was no IE integration, no product activation, no DRM, no unremovable components, no ribbons; nothing that "phones home" or connected online without consent! Menus and command buttons looked consistent (and looked like menus and command buttons, with clearly underlined keyboard shortcuts) no matter what application they were in! The UI was quick, snappy, respectful, and never, ever talked down to the user. Moreover, Windows 95 was an OS for personal computers, with the user in full and complete control. Yet, I also remember Win95 as the beginning of the end for the PC as an open, OS-agnostic platform. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8625 110 years ago today, my great-grandfather Clifford Turnbull immigrated to the United States from Canada. To gain the right to live on the other side of the border, all Clifford had to do was show up at the bridge and fill out a form. The United States had open borders in 1915, and economically thrived as a country on account of the people immigrating there. With one catch. See the field on the form, seven lines down? "Race." Racism loomed large in immigration, and was interpreted as being linked to a country of ancestry. As long as open borders were seen as furthering the cause of white supremacy (and white northern European supremacy at that), Americans were for them. But as soon as immigrants started trickling in from "inferior" locales (then, in eastern and southern Europe)...they freaked out and started lobbing hurdles against the wall. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8304 Every four years, I go through an utter nightmare. The United States goes through a presidential election...throwing ballots before the hands of racist voters in overrepresented rural states, then filtering them through the undemocratic Electoral College, practically inviting the Republican Nazi Party to seize power and destroy everyone I care about and everything I hold dear. And every single time, the stakes get even higher than they were before. Always! NO exceptions. And I can barely function [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8229 ...that would have meant everything in the world to me if they had said them, out of their own volition, before 2017: [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8224 The farther away I am from West Virginia, the more I want to write about it. No, I don't totally understand it either... With the railways done, the time seemed ripe to reinvigorate the other half of that project from 2019. What did I do? Well, I think I outdid myself... 38 new pages (yes, thirty-eight pages!) devoted to explaining every known County Highway and Delta Road. Vector maps drawn or updated for every single "road tree" in the county. (48 in all...) All primary highway pages updated, with known errors corrected and road names for fractional spurs verified from Google Street View. Many pictures added. (Thanks, Krystle!) New primary highway page added for WV 108. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8205 Back in 2019, I debuted a project called The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, West Virginia. I never finished it. After a monthlong burst of productivity in which I explored the history of the county's twelve major highways, I was burnt out. So I let Part 1 stand by itself, and resolved to tackle Part 2 whenever the time was right. In September 2024, the time was finally right. So I started digging through old maps and timetables, and pieced together the story of the railways that were built through Mercer County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The story of the people who lived there, worked there, and rode the rails through now-bygone towns and camps with names like "Ada," "McComas," "Hiawatha," "Beeson," and "Dott." [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8124 Rando xenophobe: "Damn illegals coming into our country! Stop illegal immigration!" Me: "You must definitely support the abolition of immigration controls, then. Making all immigration legal by definition, thus solving the problem!" R.X.: "NO! Not like that!!" http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8111 These are graphical re-creations of West Virginia vehicle inspection stickers from the four decades leading up to my departure from the state. If you're feeling uncharitable, you might call it "forging official governmental seals"...though after this long (and at this low a resolution), it's doubtful that anyone would care! [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8031 I had no shortage of strange experiences growing up in West Virginia in the 1990s. How about Learning Day Camp? 'Twas a thing I remember from my younger years...sometimes with a grimace. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#8022 As it happens, I fell into a rabbit hole early this month researching the licence plates of Mexico. Here are the results, for your collecting enjoyment [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7922 How do I get home to Canada without a car? If there's a will, there's a way. First objective of the day: Travel to Northville, and return a borrowed vehicle to its rightful owner. So I turned onto Seven Mile Road, and cautiously coasted towards town. What can go wrong? Nothing, that's what. There were no breakdowns, no sirens, no catastrophes, and no surprises at all...other than seeing a generic McMansion on the site where my grandfather's quaint house once stood. I cringed. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7919 Way back in the summer of 1991, I remember visiting Lansing. My family and I piled into a car, drove down Michigan Avenue (the fact that the street shared a name with the state it was in interested me more than it should have), and found ourselves at an interactive museum where I had an incredible time. Snuggled between R. E. Olds and the Lansing Centre on the riverbank was a science centre called Impression 5. Could this be the place? Nervously, I stepped inside...and a world opened up. The museum featured two levels of captivating exhibits exploring the nature of waterways, molecule structures, lasers, ferrofluids, and more. The ground floor even contained a somewhat-nauseating setup where you could walk inside mock-ups of internal organs! Fascinating stuff. And even though the exhibits were designed primarily for a children's audience, I didn't feel unwelcome being there. Then, I saw it... [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7916 The last night in Lansing was uncomfortably humid...and at the crack of dawn, I checked out. The DoubleTree Hotel was OK on the balance...but I have a hankering suspicion I would have been more comfortable at a Motel 6. Next point of order: The ALPCA Annual Meeting. "If you're visiting from outside the United States, stand!" I stood...and so did fewer than a dozen people out of a room of hundreds. The club's leadership tries to play up its annual convention as an "international" event, but this is a hobby in which a lot of stateside tunnel vision occurs. The numbers came in. Attendance for the week? 453 (later finalized at 461). Membership tally? 3,394 members, up 74 over the previous year (but still down from the club's 1996 all-time high). Funds raised in the previous night's donation auction? Over $18,000. Winner of the coveted "Best of Show" display trophy? Jim Carden, for his 1938 Michigan type set. *Yawn.* [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7913 Day V was a watershed: The moment of the ALPCA convention when I could finally catch my breath after two days of frantic action, relax, take some photos, chat with friends, and enjoy my fleeting moments in Lansing before the week was finally through. But there was something else to attend to that day. I had a close relative from Northville to meet at the hotel, and I didn't want to keep him waiting. I took a seat in the DoubleTree lobby. Minutes later, my uncle dashed through the door. "Mr. Turnbull!! It's my pleasure to see you here in Lansing! How are you doing today? I'd love to treat you to lunch! But first, tell me: What's this I hear about your car? You're trying to sell it? Maybe I can help..." [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7911 I pulled myself out of bed, pulled on some shoes, then pulled myself outside. Surely there ought to be a good coffee shop or restaurant in downtown Lansing serving better breakfast fare than the host hotel? Turns out the capitol square is a ghost town at 8:17 am. Half an hour later I returned...just as empty as I was before. On Day III, I managed to wind myself halfway around the convention hall before running out of time. On Day IV, I picked up the search where I left off...and before long, I was digging my way through bins and boxes yet again. One conventioneer had containers on the floor filled with hundreds of Tennessee plates from the late 1980s and 1990s...squarely within my era of interest. Strangely, there were no prices posted except for whole-box bulk lots...so I asked the seller what price an individual plate was. "I won't sell individual plates," said the seller in a southern-accented breath of passive aggression. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7909 Typically, hotel breakfasts work in one of two ways. They'll host a continental breakfast, where a wide variety of mediocre foods are spread out in the lobby for the taking. Or they'll have a "real" restaurant serving scrumptious, tasty fare...for a price. Somehow, breakfast at the DoubleTree combined the worst of both worlds. The hotel restaurant was closed, yet its space was commandeered to present what outwardly looked like a continental breakfast...only there was nothing edible on the table apart from a few sausage links and horrid pancakes that tasted like industrial chemicals. There was no ordering, no serving...yet a harried staff member was there to frantically present every diner with a $15.90 bill. No thanks, learned my lesson: I'll just have coffee from now on. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7907 Day two was destined to be the slowest, most sluggish leg of my journey. I was in no hurry this day: Ann Arbor and Lansing were just 120 kilometres apart on the map, close enough that I could have biked between them if I really wanted to. After living in Thunder Bay where any travel time of 8 hours or less was considered "short," it was a trifle! [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7906 Long-gone are the days when I habitually made stateside trips for fun. Since the world changed in 2020, I've crossed the border for only two reasons [...] But this summer, I had a third: To attend an ALPCA convention. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7822 Greetings from the Hammer! Where there are streets that share names with cities in West Virginia, for some reason. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7815 Apparently my high school reunion in West Virginia is being organized by the racist clod who used to dress in Confederate flags from head to toe, giving proclamations that "the South would rise again" and describing gay men in terms comparable to Fred Phelps...and a friend of his invited me to come...ROFL, PMP, NO, I'm not going, and I'll NEVER associate with the white-supremacist Christofascist garbage of the far right who are the reason I got the fuck away from that place. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7409 Many thanks to Steph Duchesne for her amazing work. http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7328 Dedicated to Andrew Filer, who I think would have gotten a kick out of this. On cold winter weekends, there's nothing I like better than browsing the Lakehead University Library...and looking for the unexpected. Take the periodical above. Despite being in a Canadian library, it unexpectedly bears a mailing label addressed to Nashville, Tennessee. And that bright orange sticker with the letter "S?" That's an unexpected artifact from the U.S. Mail. In the late 1960s, the U.S. Post Office used paper facing slips to identify bundles of presorted mail destined for specific locations. In the 1970s, these were replaced by adhesive labels bearing cryptic letter and number codes. [...] http://www.andrewturnbull.net/#7313 This was Andrew Filer. He was a friend of mine. He died two years ago. He was only 40. I only found this out this week, and now I feel like shit. :'-( [...]