It’s tough to take a good photo in Fort Nelson. Picturesque is hardly a good description of anything within walking distance and one does need to get creative with angles to remove the ever present beer/pop cans that live on the sides of the road. Or, in the case of the two below photographs, actually […]
Just about ready to blast out to the hill for the last couple days of the 2012 season! The slush cup awaits, as does my first BCIT examination on Monday…soils…booo. Going to try out Pilsner Urquell this weekend. Apparently it is the original pilsner beer and thankfully isn’t spelt the same way as Steve Urkel. […]
Pineapple season (missing photo) was always something I looked forward to during the Nanjing days (most the few posts have been referencing times past…must be feeling nostalgic). Arriving by the dump-truck load, the pineapples would be piled into every nook and cranny of your local street fruit/vegetable merchant. A whole pineapple would set one back […]
Despite running a tough-on-crime agenda, tabling the obnoxious omnibus punishment legislation, scaring votes out of the public and promising to BUILD sixteen billion dollars worth of new prisons across the country, our wonderful Conservative Government of Canada (note how I use their descriptive terminology of choice…because I sure do not feel they deserve the title […]
Just when you thought I couldn’t become any more of a map geek, I go pull something like this. Openpistemap.org is another open source, wiki style mapping project out to usher the world of skiing into convenient online map format. It operates using OSM data, but adds a few more rendering options in the side […]
A revised entry, with much appreciated input from my SURP friends. Modified slightly from what will be sent to the relevant planning associations. I spent much of November 2010 discussing with a number of my planning school colleagues the miserable job situation many of us have been dealing with for most of 2010. The discussions […]
I’ve been having discussions with a number of my colleagues from planning school regarding the shitty job situation the majority of us seem to find ourselves in. The discussions range from job search strategies, to networking to water-cooler tips to life as an unskilled worker to “wtf am I going to do when my loans […]
Moose family on Gantahaz Road. Morfee Mountain Summit looking East toward the Pine Pass and Powder King. One positive of the recent recession was the make-work-project initiated to clear trash off the mountain and old vehicles from the bottom of the bowl. People still feel the need to litter as evident by the numerous empty […]
My job stalking landed me at the City of Surrey website tonight where I noticed an open Planner I position. Surrey, like most larger communities, operates a rather silly and confusing online application system. One doesn’t need to create an account to view available positions, but I thought it might be a good idea in […]
Either love or hate the ideologies behind big box book stores such as Chapters-Indigo, but one cannot deny that they have some fairly killer book deals when Ms. Reisman is looking to drop some of her older stock. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not the public library or fake book shop prices, but hey, 50% […]
Some bizarre scenes from the pre-shows running up to the opening ceremonies included MuchMusic making its first and probably last appearance in a supporting role to CTV’s Olympic media juggernaut. VJ’s, hot tubs and bikinis? Body shots? As a TV segment just before the Opening Ceremonies? Oh my… Showing the luge crash??? Bad taste. Off […]
I spent the last two days bombing around Quebec’s Mont Tremblant ski resort. I wanted to get the Eastern Canadian ski experience while I’m still out east and get a coffee mug to prove it. Tremblant is an IntraWest instant resort-in-a-can, with the standard pedestrian village, hot spring spa, tubing, skating and over-priced food stuffs. […]
I had a great opportunity to hear Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance speak yesterday via the School of Policy Studies (the folks who inhabit the bottom four floors of Robert Sutherland). Given the nature of campus activism among under-graduates and media flamers in regards to the often touchy topic of Afghanistan and Canada, the talk was advertised […]
Map and raster geek alert. The Province of BC has posted a bunch of their geo data online @ http://geobc.bc.ca Distributed in kind of a webGIS format, the webpage presently incorporates parcel data, forest covers, health services into Microsoft Bing Maps. Fairly basic data set at the moment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it […]
This will be my second Olympic Torch experience and I find that rather odd given that I’m can be indifferent regarding Torch relays. Yet the flame keeps stalking me… First, it was Nanjing, city of 6 million….right past my apartment accompanied by 500,000 screaming well-wishers. Now it’s tiny Kingston…this time it is on a boat, […]
Canada Line – Vancouver Romaine Hydroelectric Complex Project $6.5 Billion Hydro Quebec’s monster generating project in North-eastern Quebec. 1550 MW with a completion date of 2020. Bruce A Nuclear Generating Station Restart $5.25 Billion Refurbishing of two CANDU reactors 250km north of Toronto on Lake Huron and construction of two additional reactors to be completed […]
The placement of munitions factories popped up in a lecture today regarding an old Second World War arms factory in Ajax, Ontario. For obvious reason, war-time munition factories required a clear 5km buffer radius around the site. A five kilometer radius is a considerable amount of idle land surrounding an industrial land-use and I was […]
Arriving home last night at around 11:30 I flip on the radio… “Why is Randy on”? It’s Friday already?….shit…it is Friday. So here I am on a chilly Friday night listening to Randy Bachman (yup, the BTO guy) strum away on his guitar while dishing out random factoids about about obscure music (I never would […]
I don’t have internet or television in my flat, but I do have CBC radio which has the nasty habit of broadcasting news updates every half-hour. So, for the past several days I’ve been receiving great chunks of comedy every thirty minutes in the form of sound bites from Question Period at the Canadian Parliment. […]
“Planning in Ontario 1966-1975: A Review of Activities” – according to the library record, the last person to sign out this beast was in 1986. Given the huge popularity of this masterpiece I am only provided a measely one week loan – the rationale being that this is a government document and that Canadians around […]
That was one of the wrapping ideas of architect Donald Chong pushed through during his guest presentation this morning, the notion being that an essential component to improving cities actually begins inside the home embracing the ideas of seasonality and local food markets instead of hoarding food stuffs in giant freezers, pantries and fridges. I […]
With a pseudo “Asian” theme interior design complete with required bamboo pieces (not sure if they are real or of the plastic variety) and hip wood tables with aluminum seating, easily takes the tea/beverage experience up from the grimy couches of the CoGro. The wide selection of interesting magazines I noticed on my last visit […]
59.1% voter turnout. Congratulations Canada, you are what makes western liberal democracy what it is today! You sure make the veterans proud! Like most recent elections (or possibly all – at least the ones I can remember) there was a BIG push among party leaders and other activists to get the ‘youth’ to vote and […]