Top ten New Year's revolutions for 2014

[caption id="attachment_10401" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Jack and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre at VGH.[/caption]

1. Follow my own advice and sometimes help people I do not like.


2. Try to be nicer to people who are not nice.


3. Be nicer to everyone by finding a shower at least once every three days.


4. Check out the UBC dental clinic at the VGH Gordon and Leslie Diamond Centre.


5. Do not be rude to elderly people collecting bottles (except that one guy).


6. Find some better alternate sleeping spots -- and one with a plug-in.


7. Improve my math skills. Really! They embarrass me.


8. Do one thing a month towards getting myself off the street.


9. Challenge my assumptions and admit my weaknesses (see #7).


10. Do a better job of proofreading my posts.

2013 works. Why do I have to upgrade?

[caption id="attachment_9051" align="alignnone" width="497"] Waves Coffee House barista Eun-Hye offers this tasteful New Year's greeting.[/caption]

Wow. This happens every year. I'm finally getting up to speed on all things 2013 and there's an automatic upgrade coming in just a few hours.

What if it's not as good? What if it's missing features I've come to rely one? What if it takes too much of my memory? And if it's a total dog will I be able to downgrade? Ha! Not likely.

Bottom line -- same as every other year -- I'll just have to learn to like it. At least the calendar only has one upgrade a year. It could be worse -- it could be Firefox!

Hopefully this 2014 version will finally give me the ability to properly multitask, but I'm not holding my breath. Click the image to enlarge.

"Seniors moment" increases 20% at Mickey D's

There are signs of another price increase coming to the McDonald's Canada menu. In fact one such sign is sitting on the counter of the location I frequent on Broadway Avenue around the corner from South Granville Street.

From what McDonald's staff have told me, the price of all drip coffee sizes: small, medium and large, will be increasing by 20 cents early in the new year.

Das blinkenlights!

[caption id="attachment_9014" align="alignnone" width="497"] And the winner of Fairview's best Christmas light display is...[/caption]

Brunno the building manager bear says:

[caption id="attachment_9009" align="alignnone" width="497"] Brunno can't bear to see a mess![/caption]

Multi-unit dwellers in Vancouver are supposed to sort their recyclable garbage into the appropriate city-supplied blue bins: "Containers," "Paper" or "Newsprint."

The city scales the number of each bin type supplied to buildings according to ongoing feedback built into the collection system. It all works well for the most part.

However, the system is not a good fit for cardboard which is mostly in the form of boxes, which mostly are too large for the bins. Even when the boxes are broken down, or flattened, most times they are still too large to fit in the bins. And if they fit it doesn't take many of them to fill up the blue bin.

At best, large flattened boxes get stuck between two of the bins like books between bookends. At worst unflattened boxes just pile up; sometimes on and around the blue bins, and not infrequently in the garbage dumpsters, which is exactly where they're not supposed to end up.

Speaking as a binner, I personally think each block should have a city-supplied dumpster for cardboard and paper. Statistical analysis could be used to determine the appropriate dumpster size just as it currently determines the number of paper bins supplied to buildings.

The only apartments in Fairview which do not regularly suffer the godawful mess of piled up cardboard boxes are the ones who either pay for private cardboard dumpsters or have conscientious building managers who not only flatten the boxes but slice them up so they fit in the blue bins. In the latter case, they still have to resort to "bookending" the cardboard.

The city could definitely do with improving this part of their recycling system. Click the image to enlarge it.

Some face time with the head guy in this alley

I'm no good with guessing ethnicity. I mean, my mother was Chinese and I can't even tell when I look at myself in the mirror! So I probably shouldn't even try with this fellow, but here goes: Arab maybe? Something of China to be sure, and do I detect a bit of Pole in his background?

Kicking myself for wasting the descriptive "street Arab" a few posts ago. So before I accidentally use up the headline for the next post, I'll just give up and go back to Bedouin. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_9002" align="alignnone" width="497"] Why did someone nail this to a utility pole? Why were these even made in the first place![/caption]

Look, a garage still life -- but don't touch

To you this may be just an unattached garage in Kitsilano that happens to be open. To me it's also raw narrative; a kind of unfinished story, full of details about people's lives -- at least the parts of those lives spent in garages.

The more you look at a garage like this the more it can come to look like a deliberate act of art -- a very detailed diorama. And there are always interesting things to catch your eye.

There's gold in them thar clouds

The edge of this cloud bank brings to mind -- mine at least -- a rainbow, but I don't think "cloudbow" has a linguistic future. Click the images to enlarge them.

UK gives Alan Turing a royal pardon -- Pbbth!

[caption id="attachment_8960" align="alignnone" width="497"] Now they can put him on a tenner? From Polari Magazine. Click the image to go to the original article.[/caption]

On Christmas Eve Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous royal pardon to British computer pioneer Alan Turing -- big deal!

The pardon comes 61 years after Turing was convicted for homosexual activity in 1952, and 59 years after he killed himself as a result. And it comes 68 years after the end of the Second World War.

Turing not only helped win that war for Britain and the Allied powers, his contribution as a codebreaker was so great, that it is agreed he personally shortened that war by at least two years.

In the process he helped invent modern computer science, and is acknowledged as one of the principal inventors of the computer as we know it, and thus the world we live in today.

Pretty in pink?

Joe the panhandler is seen here straight from the sidewalks of West Broadway modelling his particular brand of street chic.

This timeless look, once known by the now-deprecated term "street Arab," is currently referred to as the "crescent roll."

His cartoon nasal voice can be heard imploring people in the South Granville area and. I'm told, in parts unknown in the Kitsilano neighbourhood. Click the image to enlarge it.

Is it Boxing Day or "Throw away the box Day?"

[caption id="attachment_8937" align="alignnone" width="497"] Lift with your back kid! One of the best photos in the history of garbage photography.[/caption]

The magic of Christmas isn't really visible from the alleys. It's pretty much buried under the mountains of holiday-related garbage.

It would be bad enough without the horde of dumpster divers who have galloped into Fairview -- mostly from the steppes of the Downtown Eastside -- to sift the trash with a fine tooth comb to find all the imagined treasure the "day after."

I encountered a few in the evening preparing to work the "night shift."

Where some night shift workers will fortify themselves with coffee, all three of the intrepid lads I saw were sped up like a recording by Alvin and the Chipmunks -- all the better to be able to spend three hours getting to the bottom of whatever might be in a big old dumpster.

Normally this could be chalked up to the fact that Fairview's dumpsters mostly stay unlocked while downtown they are kept locked by law. But today? I can't believe the dumpsters in the downtown West End neighbourhood would be any less full than in Fairview, where they couldn't lock them if they wanted to.

So anyway, all the dumpsters I saw on Boxing Day were either overflowing with garbage or they looked like they erupted, spraying their contents far and wide.

Oh the crows will have a field day tomorrow morning! As will the garbage pickup trucks. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_8938" align="alignnone" width="497"] Disappointing scene. Mostly because it doesn't photograph as badly as it looks in person.[/caption]

Don't jump buddy! Christmas will be back

I don't know what would bother this fellow more; the fact that Christmas is over for another year, or that he has to spend the next 11 months in a cardboard box. Click the image to enlarge.

Usually this stuff goes in the other direction

[caption id="attachment_8923" align="alignnone" width="497"] Kind of dopey "piggy in a blanket."
[/caption]

Speaking of odd Christmas gifts, Look what a friend of mine received in the mail from a relative in the United States: A pair of Disney-brand ear-buds, and some other bud:  a joint, "thoughtfully" wrapped in a sort of splint to protect it from being folded, spindled, or mutilated as it made its journey through the snail mail system.

I write "thoughtfully" parenthetically only because I'm told, the relative in question is both a heavy drinker and suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The relative keeps sending the joints even though my friend doesn't smoke the stuff. The ear-buds, though, might come in handy, they thought, and the splinted joint will become a kind of family keepsake. Click the image to enlarge it.

Bandaging a boo-boo on the bike trailer

[caption id="attachment_8909" align="alignnone" width="497"] Close but no cigar. In fact I needed something the diameter of a cigar![/caption]

Christmas night at about 9 p.m. I was running my bike and trailer rig through the alleys of Fairview hunting returnable containers. I heard a loud, sharp sound, like a starter's pistol, and something between very fine rain and snow began to fall (Inuit mist?).

Coincidence right? I recognized the sound. I even knew which of three hose clamps on the hitch arm of my bicycle trailer had just snapped under pressure. It wasn't a life or death situation -- for me, but it was a suicide mission for the hose clamps -- that was the sixth clamp to break.

Silent night, cartless night

[caption id="attachment_8896" align="alignnone" width="497"] My "sleigh" on Christmas Day.[/caption]

Christmas Eve is a magical time -- it gets sooo quiet.

I imagine you could hear the beat of tiny hoofs and sleigh bells but there were none of those last night. More importantly there were no shopping carts clattering through the alleys -- not just the alley off my parkade -- any alley in the vicinity.

Usually one or two intrepid binners come through in the early morning hours between 2 and 4 a.m. They move rather slowly and haltingly but they still manage to generate their own kind of sonic boom.

This is partly the result of a known physical law: a shopping cart's audibility is inversely proportional to how full it is.

Three wine bottles bouncing around in an otherwise empty steel-wire shopping cart can make a helluva racket. And only some binners take the trouble to put a piece of cardboard in the bottom of their cart basket.

In the dead quiet of the night, with the sound bouncing back and forth off the buildings lining an alley... oh my!

Fully-loaded carts have much quieter, monolithic loads and the weight reduces wheel noise considerably, but they are never quiet.

No pony, but I did get a giraffe

[caption id="attachment_8891" align="alignnone" width="497"] This fills me with Christmas cheer! Thanks for being open Waves.[/caption]

I woke up this Christmas morning refreshed but a bit disappointed. I slept like a lamb but, sadly, still no pony from Santa. Oh well, perhaps he can't deliver to parkades. And Santa would be pretty law-abiding -- I bet Vancouver has rules about that sort of thing: chickens yes; ponies no.

The Waves Coffee House on Broadway Avenue at Spruce Street was open -- the Blenz at Broadway and Granville Street was open also, but I'm monogamous by nature when it comes to my love affair with coffee.

Not only did Waves barista Eun-Hye deliver up a real "White Christmas" dark mocha but her counter mate, who declines the stardom which comes from being named on this blog, gave me both a big heart-fluttering smile and a cute little bobble-headed giraffe from her native Mexico.

I wasn't aware they had giraffes in Mexico, but I know they have one less now.

Does anyone remember the flocked bobble-head or "nodder" dogs that were a popular fixture on the "dash" of car back windows some some 40-years-ago?

Those were only slightly less surreal than the 1980s Christmas duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie playing over the sound system as I polish off my dark mocha and this post. Click the top image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_8890" align="alignnone" width="497"] Are you hungry? No? Do you need to go potty? No? What is it then?[/caption]

Finally got around to putting up the tree

All the really big trees were gone; I was lucky to get this one. At least it'll be easy to recycle. Click the image to enlarge.

Where's a bike thief when we need one?

I came out of McDonald's this morning to find that a another homeless binner had locked their bicycle to my bicycle.

Saw the fellow when he did it but figured he was just locking his bike to the same pole my bike was locked to  -- it's easy to lock two bikes to one pole; one on each side. Cyclists do it all the time with the pole by this McDonalds. This bike binner used to do the same -- months and months ago. But not today.

He had gotten a coffee in McDonalds but then wandered off. I checked in the alley and the immediate area; he was nowhere to be seen.

I could wait for him. I certainly couldn't break the U-lock. Anything else I might do to free my bike would irreparably damage his bike, and though he was an idiot, he was an idiot who needed a bike to collect bottles, and haul his trailer full of his earthly possessions -- I didn't want to damage the bike.

The police were never an option; they don't care about stuff like this, and they don't have the equipment for dealing with a bike lock.

Either the fellow with the key showed up or I found someone with a circular grinder; I didn't believe anything else would do.

I had no money for a locksmith so that left either someone from the City of Vancouver Engineering department, or the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Service. Fortunately there was a Fire Hall just on the other side of the alley on 10th Avenue.

I explained my situation in detail to two of the firefighters on shift at Fire Hall No. 4. They agreed to come and have a look. They brought with them the longest, biggest pair of bolt cutters I had ever seen.

After I proved to their satisfaction that I was the owner of my bike they had a go with the cutters.

Bolt cutters use the leverage of the long arms together with special compound hinges to take the force you apply on the handles and multiply it many times at the point of cutting contact; the longer the arms the more force they can apply.

Big though they were, they could only cut the vinyl shrink-wrap; they couldn't so much as scratch the shackle of the U-lock. The firefighters tried twice and gave up. Bolt cutters can make short work of the most imposing-looking padlocks, but U-locks have much thicker shackles. U-locks can damage bolt cutters not the other way around.

I'd like to figure this out -- but no pressure

[caption id="attachment_8852" align="alignnone" width="497"] Cars have tire pressure sensors. So do bicycles; they're called potholes[/caption]

The last two spells of cold weather weren't very demanding or difficult to cope with, but they did have their curious moments.

For instance, take the micro-leak I had in in one of my bicycle tires -- please (Ba-dum!).

At 9° C -- this morning's temperature -- I could expect the tire to leak out in about seven hours. But, at -6° C it didn't appreciably leak at all. Even at 0° C it only lost about 10 pounds of pressure in about three days.

I realize there is an interrelationship between air pressure, temperature and density; there's a higher density of air at the bottom of the gravity well, and higher temperatures mean more energetic molecular movement which means higher air pressure.

So I understand that as the temperature drops so does tire pressure. But what I clearly don't understand is the mechanics of the differential between the air temperature and pressure in a tire versus the ambient outside air.

If I have a slow-leaking tire -- fully inflated -- in sub-zero weather, I would think the pressure and temperature is higher inside the tire than outside. I would expect the tire to leak faster to equalize with the outside lower pressure until an equilibrium is achieved.

I must have everything backwards; if the ambient outside air pressure was higher than inside the tire then I would not expect the tire to leak, but I don't see how that could be in in minus degree weather.

Unless the point is that all air pressure is lower in sub-zero temperatures and less energy means less leaking, period.

Ah well, another thing I don't understand. So deflating, ego-wise.

Santa needs no translation

Santa wasn't saying why he was inside a container blue bin -- perhaps some very lucky children will be getting bottles and cans for Christmas this year!

But since he's present, It gives me a perfect opportunity to join him (and Google Translate) in wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Joyeux Noël et une heureuse nouvelle année!
메리 크리스마스, 해피 뉴 이어!
Feliz Navidad y un feliz Año Nuevo!
Geseënde Kersfees en 'n gelukkige nuwe jaar!
圣诞快乐，新年快乐！
Feliĉan Kristnaskon kaj Bonan Novjaron!
Maligayang Pasko at isang masaya Bagong Taon!
Καλά Χριστούγεννα και ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος!
मेरी क्रिसमस और एक नया साल मुबारक!
Buon Natale e un felice Anno Nuovo!
メリークリスマスそして新年おめでとう！
Giáng sinh vui vẻ và một năm mới hạnh phúc!
ਦਾਵਤ ਕ੍ਰਿਸਮਸ ਅਤੇ ਇੱਕ ਖੁਸ਼ ਨਿਊ ਸਾਲ!

More holiday night lights

There will be some neighbourhoods in Greater Vancouver where whole streets of homes are lit up like... like... Christmas trees, with the spinning and the blinking. and the flying reindeer (how BC Hydro must love these home owners).

Fairview condo owner and apartment dwellers eschew garish Christmas displays. They know that a simple strand of pearls trumps loud costume jewelery any day.

However, the "wrapped present" in this one condo's multi-level display is dangerously close to being "blingy." Neighbours may complain. Click the images to enlarge.

Who moved the mountains?

[caption id="attachment_8833" align="alignnone" width="497"] Up in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood looking northeast.[/caption]

From a day much earlier in the week; the clouds seemed to descend and ring the city like a wall of fluffy mountains. All day they were around me wherever I went. I was too impressed to be freaked out. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_8834" align="alignnone" width="497"] Down in Fairview at Broadway Avenue and Oak Street, looking southeast.[/caption]

Judge Dredd remake is a guilty pleasure

[caption id="attachment_6027" align="alignnone" width="497"] Justice delayed is justice denied? Karl Urban as Judge Dredd, handing out the sentence.[/caption]

Dredd is an excellent 2012 film adaptation of the long-running British science fiction comic strip Judge Dredd. It's the second try; the first adaptation, Judge Dredd, made in 1995, sank without a trace, under the weight of Sylvester Stallone's ego.

For the 2012 remake, Karl Urban (Star Trek, Almost Human) leaves his ego in the trailer and unleashes his inner Dirty Harry to give a remarkably nuanced performance as an honourable police officer shaped into a relentless killing machine by a brutal future.

The Broadway rush: to be or not to be towed

[caption id="attachment_8801" align="alignnone" width="497"] Honk-honk-honk...Two weeks ago, a car making way for rush hour.[/caption]

Tow trucks fascinate me; in the artificial construct of urban traffic they resemble an evolutionary adaptation. They're trucks that displayed a sudden mutation allowing them to profitably exploit a niche in the ecosystem, like barber fish or taxis.

Mostly it's  because I use West Broadway Avenue to get back to the Fairview neighbourhood -- like clockwork -- at around 3 p.m. every weekday -- the Towing Hour.

Up until 3 p.m. cars may park on the north side of Broadway; as of 3 pm-sharp they can't. At that moment -- until 6 p.m. -- the parking lane becomes the High Occupancy Vehicle lane -- exclusively for buses, cars with more than one occupant, buses, me on my bike, articulated Number 99 B-line buses, and more buses.

Catch and release

[caption id="attachment_8803" align="alignnone" width="497"] It was the blue car not my bike and trailer -- whew![/caption]

Tow trucks don't work alone on West Broadway. Each appears to be "on the leash" of a traffic enforcement officer and their black and white jelly bean Smart Fourtwo car. When an officer catches a car overstaying its welcome, details are recorded, photos are taken and a ticket is written. Then the officer unleashes the tow truck -- "sic ’em Buster!" 

Fairview lions in winter

This is the display atop a Fairview apartment building on Oak between 13th and 14th Avenue. I don't know about the beaver-like thing and satellite dish on the south corner, but the centerpiece has been there a long time.

A British Union Jack flag flanked by two Chinese-style ceramic lions -- who knows why: a far-flung outpost of Hong Kong that didn't revert back to China in 1999?

In the city, nighttime is winter’s time

[caption id="attachment_8776" align="alignnone" width="497"] A slippery slope. Alder Street at 8th Avenue, looking north.[/caption]

No matter how impressively a Vancouver snowstorm begins, it always ends badly.

The day after can be something of a letdown; reality kick in -- grimy, dirty, slippery, slushy reality. The truth is snow has no business in a city; it just gets in the way.

The calm after the storm

It was a winter storm only by Vancouver standards. If I recall correctly, on the Prairies, it would have been called "spring." Click the image to enlarge it.

Wordpress.com: Add a tooltip without a link

Note: This trick only applies to blogs hosted on wordpress.com. It doesn't apply to self-hosted blogs using the wordpress.org application.

When you create or edit a post on your wordpress.com blog, you can select a word range or an image and use the "Insert/edit link" tool to create a clickable Hyperlink to an external Web site, or another post on your blog.



In the "Insert/edit link" window there are two fields: "URL" -- where you enter the address of the Web site or post, and "Title" -- anything you type in this field appears as a floating "tooltip" when the the mouse cursor hovers over the link.

You can use the Link feature to add just a tooltip -- if you want. It's very simple.

• Add a link as normal. use any proper Web site address, and enter your tooltip.


• Ignore the "Open link in a new window/tab" checkbox.


• Click "Add link."


• Switch the editing view tab (top right corner) from "Visual" to "Text"


• Find your link and title in the HTML text.

If one lump turns out to be a <a title="Not a word but it 
should be!" href="https://www.sqwabb.wordpress.com/">hypothermic
</a> panhandler...

• Carefully delete just the Web site URL (in red):

If one lump turns out to be a <a title="Not a word but it 
should be!">hypothermic</a> panhandler...

Switch the editing view back to "Visual."

Now in Preview mode, when you hover your mouse over your "neutered" link word it will turn red and display the tooltip title, but that's all. In the actual post where I made a title link I used the "Select text colour" tool to colour the word similar to a Hyperlink to hint that that it might be worth mousing over.

That's it. I didn't say it was a really good trick.

Where did I park my damn bike and trailer?

[caption id="attachment_8739" align="alignnone" width="497"] Maybe I took too long to eat breakfast.[/caption]

The trick is to kick the larger piles of snow until I find it. If one of them turns out to be a hypothermic panhandler, I just hope my childhood St. John Ambulance training kicks in.

I'd say that binning through the back alleys of Fairview was "tough sledding" but frankly a sled would have been perfect. My rig was actually fine on straightaways and downhill; uphill was the only problem.

It's after 4:30 p.m. The temperature is 2° C. The snow has turned to a faint freezing drizzle. The main streets are glistening wet. I don't believe we reached our forecast high of 5° C. If we're too far on the wrong side of our forecast low of 3° C then the morning streets could be icy.

Maybe I'll sleep in. Oh, tomorrow is Saturday? Definitely I'll sleep in. Click the image to enlarge it.

Some text

Snowbound!

[caption id="attachment_8731" align="alignnone" width="497"] Some snow flakes, some water drops on the lens. All pretty as a picture![/caption]

Snow overnight! I won't recount my heroic journey from the parkade where I sleep up to West Broadway -- how  I had to literally pull my bicycle and its loaded trailer up the hill -- how the centerline tread on my front tire has side-to-side issues when it's not under load. It was really only the first 100 metres that caused me any trouble.

It could have been a lot worse.

Not Andromeda Strain?

[caption id="attachment_8725" align="alignnone" width="497"] Don't need dangerous spores from space, we've got plenty from Quebec.[/caption]

A friend of mine insists not -- "It's probably just asbestos," he says.

The building in question, on the corner of Alder and West Broadway, he explained, was old -- from the ’60s.

The ceiling tiles were off and the two workers I saw through the window at 11:30 p.m. last night were wearing those suits because they were most likely removing original asbestos insulation wrapping the water pipes, or it could have been the ceiling tiles themselves which contained asbestos.

Canada's asbestos mines -- all located in Quebec -- have been preeminent world suppliers of the amazingly useful and dangerous mineral fibre for well over a century. That trade has radically diminished as asbestos fibre has been clearly linked to lung diseases and cancers such as mesothelioma.

One problem with asbestos products is how "friable" or crumbly they can be. This means they can release asbestos fibres into the air if they are damaged or disturbed. The other problem is the common use of the stuff as a fireproof insulator in countless manufactured building materials well into the 1990s. This makes it one of the more common hazardous materials people can come into contact with every day.

Close the door you're letting out the cold!

[caption id="attachment_8716" align="alignnone" width="497"] The kindness of strangers. A warm feeling on a cold day.[/caption]

When I finally finished my breakfast and got off my butt to make some binning rounds, I couldn't help but notice that some thoughtful person(s) had given me the gift of food.

First I saw the package of salami tucked in the the back of my bike trailer. It was in a clear-plastic store bag. In the front of the trailer was another store bag containing more luncheon meat and a block of cheddar cheese. And beside the bag, bold as brass, a plastic jar of peanut butter. Thank you kind person(s). These are all excellent choices for a homeless person on the go.

All of this provender is brand new, near as I can tell -- I've yet to eat any of it -- I just put it in the fridge for later.

Meaning I just left it neatly on my bike trailer. I'm living in the fridge right now.

That's not a complaint; it's a handy fact. The food on my trailer is not in any danger of spoiling -- if peanut butter and salami can spoil. That means I can eat it when I'm hungry, and I don't have to eat it all at once. More importantly, I can hold off on the luncheon meat until I find some mustard.

Once I crack the seal on the peanut butter, I give it half-a-day -- one day tops

A modest proposal for Christmas in Abbotsford

[caption id="attachment_8693" align="alignnone" width="497"] A living homeless Nativity display. Unfortunately the Chihuahua ran away.[/caption]

Last night it was a bit colder for homeless people in Vancouver than in Abbotsford, but I'm only referring to the temperature -- Abbotsford is being plenty cold to it's homeless people -- and at Christmas time to boot. For shame!

Tomorrow morning a B.C. Supreme Court judge is expected to rule whether to grant an injunction ordering a group of 20-or-so homeless people to clear out of Jubilee Park and an adjacent parking lot in downtown Abbotsford.

The City argued in a New Westminster court on Tuesday for a sweeping injunction not only to clear out the camp but also to keep homeless people out of parks and other city-owned spaces across Abbotsford.

The "Shitty City in the Country" is trying to solve its homeless problem by forcing all its estimated 117 street people to simply leave town.

Getting up with the sun

I was up in time to see the town being painted red but not as "up" as my feathered friend atop the pole. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_8681" align="alignnone" width="497"] Early bird get the high ground.[/caption]

Falling down on the job?

After my post yesterday about this crew loitering atop a Fairview apartment building I was reliably informed that they had no criminal intentions. They were apparently put up to it by the building management with the purpose of putting on a show over Christmas.

What's a desktop accessory doing on the road?

I'm not a boomer, but I grew up with pocket calculators -- used them in school. I was also exposed to computers in high school -- writing and running programs written in BASIC. I don't remember much except I didn't demonstrate an aptitude for programming.

[caption id="attachment_8651" align="alignright" width="106"] The classic 1984 Mac calculator DA stayed virtually unchanged until 2002.[/caption]

By the time I picked up the thread of computers again in the 1980s, every desktop system I saw was graphical. By the late 1980s all desktop operating system had a calculator desk accessory -- it was like the one-celled organism of computer programs. It's fair to say the Mac's calculator desk accessory set the bar for everyone else.

[caption id="attachment_8657" align="alignleft" width="118"] Palm Treo 680 smart phone from the Late Pleistocene -- 2004.[/caption]

If the personal computers of the mid-1980s were the writing on the wall for pocket calculators then the cell phones of the late-1990s were "The End." PDAs like the Palm Pilot telegraphed the ending by the mid-1990s. Ironically they were also killed by cell phones.

Pocket calculators still barely survive because, a) boomers who grew up with them still survive, and, b) they can do math but they can't do Facebook -- many teachers bar cell phones with their built in calculators because they can, at the very least, distract students. Click the photos to enlarge them.

Spirit cub sighted in Fairview

[caption id="attachment_8642" align="alignnone" width="497"] The paws that refreshes![/caption]

The Kermode bear is best known as a "spirit bear" for it's white or cream-coloured coat. This rare subspecies of the North American Black Bear is found in the central and north coast of British Columbia -- if you can find it at all. You shouldn't expect to see it very often in Fairview coffee houses.

Look, a flatscreen... never mind

Ha! When I saw this in the distance, my brain did the math on "frame, glass and electrical cord" and added it up as "flat screen TV." Of course, by the time I was this close I knew it was a cabinet door.

Silly brains! Always trying to make order out of chaos. Click the images to enlarge.