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Here's a rather large, thick painting someone tried to toss in a Fairview dumpster yesterday. I'm at a bit of a loss to decide whether this is an abstract painting, a landscape painting, or a landscape made with paint. I'm leaning towards the latter. I think it would be more interesting to live in it, than live with it on a wall.

I heard a strange, new, sound today, I was in a back alley, collecting my bottle- and can-shaped nuts and berries, on my way eastward to cash in at a bottle depot. The sound stopped me in my tracks. Kind of a click, click, click -- screech! I thought it was a bird, but it wasn't. It was a squirrel on an overhead transmission wire. Both an unusual sight, and sound. I stalked the squirrel with my new Nikon camera, and considered what might be up with this little shrieking rodent.

According to media reports, Toronto police today revealed they have acquired a digital video file containing images of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair explained the file was forensically recovered from a computer hard drive seized in connection with extortion charges laid against the mayor's friend, Alexander Lisi.

At a press conference today, in Toronto, Chief Blair said the video file was one of several deleted files which the Toronto Police Service intelligence unit computer technology section were able to identify, and recover.

"That file contains video images which appear to be those images which were previously reported in the press with respect to events that took place, we believe at a house on Windsor Road in Etobicoke."

Chief Blair appeared to all but confirm police had possession of the cell phone video alleged, back in May by gawker.com, to show Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. While he did not actually describe the contents of the video. He was willing to describe his reaction. According to this CTV report, he told reporters:

"As a citizen of Toronto I'm disappointed. This is a traumatic issue for the citizens of this city and for the reputation of this city and that concerns me."

You think? Mayor Rob Ford apparently doesn't. He's repeatedly stated no video exists showing him smoking crack, and he has no plans to resign. His council has no legal power to force him to step down, and Toronto Police Chief Blair pointedly stated in his press conference that the recovered video does not support criminal charges against the mayor -- stupidity is definitely not illegal in Canada. If it was there's no telling how many of us would be in jail.

And by "style," I don't mean gasoline, though I bet it burns a lot of that also. No, this is a Pontiac Parisienne from the age of chrome. And by "chrome," I don't mean Google Chrome -- just try picking up women using a Web browser... OK, fine. But it's not the same thing -- I'm talking about real women.

Banksy, the famous street artist, may be British, but I understand, from reading media reports like this one, that he just paid Canada a giant compliment by saying on his blog -- of the magnificent, new, World Trade Center in New York City -- and I quote:

“it looks like something they would build in Canada.”

I couldn't be prouder. I almost don't want to quibble, but honestly, I think the new World Trade Center is a little too "out there" for Canada -- too flashy, and, at a height of 541 metres, far too tall for comfort! There's a reason the tallest building in Canada, First Canadian Place, in Toronto, Ontario, is only 298.1 metres -- better safe than sorry!

Banksy's glowing praise of the new landmark tower was not unequivocal. For one thing, he felt that two towers would have been even better. Displaying a surprisingly intemperate tongue, Banksy inexplicably declared that the terrorists had [somehow] won.

It's interesting that Banksy should bring up the terrorists. He may be a bit jealous -- al-Qaeda is still better at getting itself in the news than Banksy, but he sure is trying to catch up.

The media-savvy artist is still doing his New York City residence, creating an artwork each day somewhere in the Big Apple.

I'm not surprised by Banksy's display of respect for Canada. I think it's safe to say most British subjects have a warm spot in their hearts for my country (Canada). We're really kindred spirits, with many shared values, and both our countries spell the word "colour" the same way.

Even in a place like Vancouver, British Columbia, people have problems to solve. For instance, you're moving something into an apartment building, and you need to prop the gate open -- damned if you can't find a door-stop, or a brick, or even a stick. Luckily, you live in Canada, a first-world country; if nothing else, there's always food. I know what you're thinking: Use it to prop the gate open then you can still eat it, right? Wrong! Not after it's touched the ground. Remember, there's plenty more where that came from.

Keep in mind that one-litre Tetra-packs of soup, like the one shown, are inexpensive, dimensionally stable, weather-proof, and have a nice heft to them, so they're good for all sorts of projects that require bricks -- but don't involve nails. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_7053" align="alignnone" width="497"] Tried taking this picture with the new camera but I don't understand it well enough yet.[/caption]

My dumpster-derived, point-and-shoot, digital camera, the Samsung S860, has very nearly sung for the last time, and it's cause for celebration.

A regular local reader of my blog became so annoyed by the low quality of my photos that they took matters into their own hands. Obviously, they realized, it's too late for me to learn how to take good photographs, so they bought me a new point-and-shoot camera, so at least I'd no longer be able to blame my ineptitude on the faulty, unfocussed, afraid-of-the-dark, Samsung.

The new camera is a slim, black, Nikon Coolpix S3500. It's light, fits nicely in the pocket, and the battery charges in the camera via the USB data cable and a wall adapter. Perfect for an on-the-go homeless blogger. It has mega-pixels out the wah-zoo, and a bit of a learning curve. The manual will be required bedtime reading, and I'll continue using "Sammy" until I understand the Nikon's intricacies -- it does use the same icons for the flash, and close-up controls, as the Samsung, so that's a nice head start.

I was both embarrassed, and thrilled when the nice person presented me the boxed camera, so much so that I kind of gushed my thanks, until they told me, politely, but firmly: "Go away Stanley." And wasn't that was just the nicest thing anyone said to me all morning! Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_6859" align="alignnone" width="497"] The building block of a new wireless future is the size of a box of Fererro Rocher chocolates.[/caption]

Alcatel-Lucent may have the answer to one of the wireless broadband industry's biggest problems -- their cumbersome, expensive-to-expand, network infrastructure. Over a year ago, the former Bell Labs unveiled a radically new system for broadcasting a wireless network. It's called LightRadio, and it can put much of a giant cell tower in the palm of your hand. It promises to be everything the current wireless networks aren't: Easily scaleable, low on power consumption, and high on performance.

When Toto isn't at work, standing, sitting, laying, or sleeping guard at Guardian Storage, he's at home chewing on rocks, and carrying bricks with his mouth. A few weeks ago, he was chawing on a nice rock, bit down, and cracked one of his canine teeth. While some breeds of dog are all canine teeth, Toto only has two, so specialists were consulted, tests were run, and a dentist's appointment was scheduled. In the meantime, Toto was hurting. His whole demeanor changed. He definitely wasn't himself. Well, last Thursday he went in for a root canal, and filling, and this blog is happy to report the operation was a complete success. As you can see by the above security footage, he's as good as new, sleeping on the job with his usual vigor.

A special prosecutor with the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has reiterated that no criminal charges will be laid in connection with the 2007 shooting death of animator Paul Boyd by Vancouver police.

Paul Boyd was a 39-year-old animator who suffered from bipolar disorder. He was described as not having taken his medication when he was shot, and killed during a confrontation with police on South Granville Street, near the intersection of 15th Avenue, on August 13, 2007. He was hit by eight of nine bullets fired by Vancouver police Constable Lee Chipperfield. Boyd, a large man, had a bike chain when police confronted him. It is now reported that he was "armed," or, as this Province item puts it, "brandishing" the bike chain. At the time of the incident, he was reported to have been swinging the chain, and that he had hit an officer with the chain, as this CTV News item reports.

At the time there was speculation -- un-proveable -- that responding police officers may have believed they were dealing with a homeless drug addict, and that may have influenced how they handled the confrontation.

The B,C. Criminal Justice Branch, and several earlier investigations had previously cleared Constable Chipperfield of any wrongdoing, but in 2012 a 49-second cell phone video of the 2007 incident surfaced showing an unarmed Boyd on his hands and knees. The B.C. government had the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) re-investigate the case.

ASIRT executive director Clifton Purvis saw "reasonable and probable grounds" to believe Chipperfield committed homicide, and submitted a report to the Crown for charge assessment in June.

In a statement issued yesterday, Special Prosecutor Mark Jette concluded there is no reasonable likelihood of conviction because the Crown wouldn't be able to disprove self defence beyond a reasonable doubt.

"there is no substantial likelihood of conviction on a criminal charge. (It) is his assessment that the evidence is not sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting of Mr. Boyd constitutes a culpable homicide within the meaning of the Criminal Code of Canada."

Video of the Boyd incident by Andreas Bergen. released in 2012 by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=207_FGF3wZk

Star Trek Continues is an ambitious, Web-based effort by fans, to painstakingly recreate the original Star Trek series which ran on NBC for three seasons, between 1966 to 1969. The ultimate goal is to create two seasons-worth of episodes to complete the original "five year mission." Everything's being done with the full approval of CBS, the current copyright holders. One full episode has been completed, called Pilgrim of Eternity.

How ironic. This warning to would-be thieves actually describes the lives of a lot of the people who might hope to steal something out of the truck to sell for drugs. Click the image to enlarge it.

I think this is a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, which was the Rolls from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, unfortunately I can't be sure because the photo is so blurry. In this case, though, I really can't blame the crappy camera. It's a well-known feature of the Rolls-Royce that it can't be properly photographed by the kind of cheap camera a commoner would have. I read that on the Internet. Click the image to enlarge the image.

[caption id="attachment_6936" align="alignnone" width="497"] This is the back end which conveys the asphalt debris into a dump truck.[/caption]

This beast is a CMI PR-800-7/12 pavement profiler. Basically its used to plane the asphalt or concrete layer off of roadways, and parking lots -- like the one it's parked in, just across 15th Avenue from the demolition site that was the Ridge Centre. This lot was parking for the Ridge Centre. It's now been sold for development. Across Arbutus, is another Ridge parking lot. This one's the length of the block, straddling the alley. It has a development coming also. A slapped-together, temporary, sales centre, takes up half the lot, pre-selling imaginary condos.

[caption id="attachment_6953" align="alignnone" width="497"] Robert Redford stars in All is Lost, the "perfect storm" of a movie[/caption]

I read this review of the new survival-at-sea film All is Lost in The Vancouver Sun newspaper yesterday, and I found it pretty riveting. An almost wordless performance by the iconic American actor Robert Redford, in a movie that sounds like the rarest of birds -- pure cinematic storytelling, which couldn't be done in any other medium besides film. Sounds almost like something from the glory days of silent film, and look what's ruling the box office: Gravity  -- a survival-in-space drama, tightly focused on it's two leads, Sandra Bullock, and George Clooney. Wow. Storytelling, and gravitas, and Robert Redford. It's Autumn, when a young film producer's fancy turns to thoughts of Oscar.

Either two icons from my childhood, Colonel Harlan Sanders, and Mr Frosty, are in town on a bender, or it's Halloween -- or both.

[caption id="attachment_5599" align="alignnone" width="497"] Unlike the Vancouver Police Department, but exactly like plumbers, and pipe fitters, our transit police put "We're Hiring" signs on their vehicles. What's not to take seriously?[/caption]

They look like police, and they dress like police, and they even carry guns, but the eight-year-old SCBCTAPS, or TransLink Police Service, or simply, "the transit police," still seem more like jumped-up, over-paid, security guards. This incident from 2011, where a transit cop lost a bomb on a plane during a training exercise didn't help their image. This year, calls for their force to be disbanded have increased, as the transit police have proven to be quite ineffective at curbing fare evasion, and no one's exactly sure what else they do, besides costing taxpayers a lot of money.

[caption id="attachment_6900" align="alignnone" width="497"] Tinned tuna fresh from the dumpster. Mmmm.[/caption]

Is there gold in them thar garbage bins? Yes. Both figuratively, and literally, but yesterday it wasn't gold my prospecting came up with but tin, or rather tins -- a mother lode of tinned tuna. Some apartment dweller off Hemlock tossed a very large bag into their BFI dumpster, which I happen to have a key for. The plastic bag contained about 50 large cans, sans paper label, but stamped as "TUNA" on the lid. The cans weren't bulging, or dented, or rusted. The looked to be twice the volume of a basic 120 g can of tuna found in a supermarket -- at least $200 CDN worth of food. I took about 10 tins, and left the remainder in the bag, and put the bag beside a nearby set of recycling blue bins so binners could take their pick. Of course I locked the dumpster back up.

I haven't eaten any of the tuna yet, but I've handed out four of my tins -- with the caveat that it came out of a dumpster, and one person has already gotten back to me with a review. He explained it was really good tuna; better than the stuff in stores -- pink, and oily. I pointed out that white tuna was the better stuff, and the pinker it was, the closer it was to cat food. He said the white tuna was too dry for his taste. He preferred this stuff (meow!). A satisfied customer -- I gave him another tin. I'll let you know if eating it kills me. Click the image to enlarge it.

By "we," I mean binners in general. There's a perception among my "colleagues" that I never go into dumpsters; that I won't get my hands dirty. I encourage this perception: Whatever underestimates you is probably fodder for Nietzsche's "whatever didn't kill you." While I did, once, actually find gold in a residential garbage bin, and I've found small amounts of cash, that's the exception, rather than the rule, in my experience. Mostly I find bottles, and cans; useful trinkets like flash drives, and computer hardware; fresh, clean clothing, and even fresher, edible, wholesome food. And keep in mind, I barely scratch the surface when it come to dumpsters. I just don't have the patience, and I won't consume the required chemical additives to give me that patience.

[caption id="attachment_6885" align="alignnone" width="497"] Lookit the funny goober I took a picture of.[/caption]

I think this is a make up mirror, but how can I be sure. It also has an electrical cord. It could be an old all-in-one desktop computer for all I know. Maybe it's both, a sort of "iMakeup. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_6886" align="alignnone" width="497"] This neighbourhood is nuts for cedar fences. That one in the background is brand spanking new.[/caption]

Just today, I found these two name tag labels in a paper recycling bin. You are not going to believe this but I'm almost certain I've met both of these women at several different parties over the years. What are the chances?! Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_6870" align="alignnone" width="497"] There is a spider web there. Take my word for it.[/caption]

The fog-shrouded spider's web from the other night, wasn't there today. But the owner was: A big orange spider with black stripes on it's legs -- a European garden spider. "very commonly found throughout Europe and North America,"according to Wikipedia's entry. The same kind of spider as in this post, which has better photos, frankly.


This spider, was patiently "coding" a new website. It was interesting to see that the spider was deliberately building the web in front of the sign, not below it. Perhaps the strategy is to catch whatever small flying insects try to land on the sign? That's definitely a spider, and not a dumb bunny. Click the images to enlarge them.

A shiny little oil slick in a back alley on the west side of Arbutus. Oil spills like this may be bad for the environment, but they're good for my imagination; I've always been fascinated by visual effects such as iridescence -- where the colours changes with the viewing angle. I remember seeing this fairly often 30-plus-years-ago, but these days, it's an uncommon sight. Does that mean, cars are just that much better, or that B.C.'s maligned, and soon-to-end, AirCare car emissions-testing program made the sort of difference supporters said it would? Dunno, The colours are sure purdy! Click the image to enlarge it.

Another curious beverage container someone's tossed out. Of course it will have it's own story. I'm picturing a secret, underground, R&D facility somewhere in South Carolina. After months of trial-and-error, researchers are on the cusp of a breakthrough. Using special, pork-specific calipers, a lab-coated egghead nudges a group pigs ever-so-slightly closer to one another. Needle gauges begin to flutter into the red. One last pig is precisely pushed, and... Zam! They achieve critical porcine mass. Then the shout: "We have achieved fizzin'!"

While I was up on the MEC rooftop parking lot, photographing the fog bank downtown, I prowled the edges, just to see what I could see. On the East side of the lot, I could look down on the bland roof of the building next door -- ventilators, flat, painted tin -- dull, but surrounded by a quite ferocious amount of concertina razor wire. There were even some vestiges of an older barrier of regular barbed wire. The roof gave no access to the building, so what was the prize being protected? Was it really all just to keep graffiti taggers from getting at an abutting wall on the East side of that roof? If so, they could've saved their money -- welcome mats are cheaper. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_6820" align="alignnone" width="497"] Fog in downtown Vancouver, seen from MEC rooftop parking on West Broadway.[/caption]

The weather in Vancouver can be so fickle. If our fog wants to see other people, we're fine with that; really we are. If you love a thing, let it go, and all that. We're good. ... Really..

Whaaaaa! Why did it leave. What's it see in the Downtown Core anyways (not much, the visibility'll be terrible -- ba-dump!)? What does downtown Vancouver have that we don't have in Fairview? Is it the nightclub district on North Granville? We have nightclubs too, but fine! let it have it's little fling. Just wait and see, it'll be back -- probably by about 9:00 pm. Click the image to see a larger, wider version.

[caption id="attachment_6800" align="alignnone" width="427"] During Banksy's NYC residence, the media covered how works like his Allen Street stencil, were quickly vandalized, and painted over.[/caption]

Banksy, the never-seen, but always visible British street artist is, if I can be blunt, a frikkin' genius. And I'm not talking about his stencil art, which is clever indeed. No, I'm talking about his business model. A graffiti artist's work is never done -- others will inevitable tag and embellish it over time. Street art is always at risk of being defaced, and erased. Banksy has clearly turned this to his advantage, and harnessed it to help drive the value of his original stencils.

His recent, month-long, residence in New York City saw him painting the town red, as it were, and waiting -- often not very long -- for the city to paint over many of his celebrated stencil pieces. Far from being annoyed when a building manager, or the city's ant-graffiti squad, painted over one of his stencils, he was probably laughing -- all the way to the bank. Scarcity drives up the value of a popular artist's work, and Banksy is not only popular, but he controls the perception of his works' scarcity, and the way he does it, using the street, and the media, is a work of art in itself.

[caption id="attachment_6804" align="alignnone" width="497"] Another Banksy NYC piece covered in the media after being... covered.[/caption]

Banksy takes Manhattan ►

Started watching The Internship, a comedy released this summer about two over-the-hill sales guys landing internships with Google. After 20 minutes, I considered gnawing my leg off to escape, before realizing I wasn't chained down, and could just turn it off. I even had a bad dream about Google. Oh well, I know I should avoid cheese before going to bed.

Carefully, wearing visible clothing? Seriously, last night in the heavy fog, I thought my binning for bottles sounded much louder than usual, and this morning a Fairview resident at McDonalds mentioned that he'd been surprised last night to hear the Nine O'Clock Gun, located in Stanley Park, a little over 4 km from Broadway, and Granville, where the sound of it's nightly report is never heard. But my friend heard it loud, and clear. Does sound travel better through fog? According to the Internet, the answer is yes it does, no it doesn't, and after a fashion.

Light takes on physical form in the fog. For this shot, the bike is the camera platform. I'm using a Joby Gorillapod Original tripod -- the goofy, flexi one, except mine's out of a dumpster, and missing a leg, so it's a "bipod." After this comment from Bill Chance, on one of my night photo posts, about a camera mount for a bike, I experimented with wrapping the Joby around the handlebar headset -- works in a pinch. The, um, blob would be the Incrdibell. Click the image to enlarge it.

One more document of the fog up at 16th and Arbutus. Thanks to the higher elevation, I guess, the fog was much thicker than down at Broadway, and Granville. Click the image above to enlarge it.

At the mouth of the alley on the northeast side of 16th Avenue, and Arbutus Street. Looking west, across Arbutus at the slumbering front end loader on the, now leveled, former site of the Ridge Centre. It needs it's rest, there are still days of demolition debris to load and cart away. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_6724" align="alignnone" width="497"] Blurry, but you can make out the tiny beads of water which collect light, a little like the glass beads in 3M's Scotchlite.[/caption]

Fog strings spider webs with innumerable beads of water so they seem to glow, but they're not that much easier to photograph. Unlike the spider web on a cloudy day, using a flash on a spider web at night, in the fog, seemed to just cancel out the web's watery luminosity. So they're not actually retroreflective like Scotchlite -- they need a backlight.

Night-after-night, this month, we've been treated to fog -- a little, or a lot. It's cool. Really, it is. Clammy, and cool, but it's not raining. We appear to be getting off on a technicality -- the fog, which is made of water, appears to be satisfying nature's requirement for October precipitation -- but it's still not rain! Hasn't rained for most of the month, which is very unusual. Average October rainfall is 113 millimetres. With only 25.4 millimetres of rain this month, Vancouver is on pace to have the driest October since 1991, according to this Province newspaper report.

Area residents refer to the central feature of this micro-park at Ontario Street, and 18th Avenue as the "Big Chessboard," and they love it. It's been there for as long as I've been in the area -- the sundial, the curb-stones, for spectators, the single bench, and the chess board made of paving bricks. The chess pieces have always been flat wooden disks, or octagons... until now.

[caption id="attachment_6691" align="alignnone" width="497"] Home schooling.This shack is piece of Vancouver's heritage: "School 472." Who knew they had skylights like that in 1908?[/caption]

This little structure in the lane behind the home at 19th Avenue, and Laurel Street, is odd. It's not a garage. It's too big to be a playhouse, and it just doesn't accessorize well with the house, what is it? Well, It's a piece of Vancouver's history -- one of the area's early woodframe structures, built way back in 1901, which briefly served as a schoolhouse. And why do these people have it in their yard... because they want to home-school their children? (drumroll). It's sitting there for safe-keeping. The plaque designating it a heritage building tells the basic story.

"Built circa 1901 as a private house at the northeast corner of 19th and Ash, this tiny, side-gabled, woodframe structure is a good example of the pioneer Cottage style. In 1908, it opened, under the direction of Miss H. Messon, as the second school in what was the Municipality of Point Grey. After the opening of Shaughnessy (later Edith Cavell) School, it reverted to a private residence. Few people were aware of its history until the Fall of 1995, when it was threatened by demolition. The school was saved by the efforts of Douglas Park neighbourhood supporters, and by Allen and Bronna Fenichel, who offered to move the building to its present location on their property at 19th and Laurel."

There's a really well-done mural on a building on the southeast corner of Broadway Avenue, and Yukon Street. It has nothing to do with the current retail tenant: A "dollar store," or even the previous tenant -- a bank, I think. No, it has to do with a store called Polson's, which sat on that corner for some decades, but now hasn't sat there for about a decade.

[caption id="attachment_6678" align="alignnone" width="497"] It's a vanity plate, so, they paid for the privilege. Click the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

isoHunt is closing down in three days -- October 23 -- forever., The very popular BitTorrent index Web site has agreed in an out-of-court settlement to shut itself down, avoiding an upcoming court battle with the major Hollywood studios -- including Disney, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox -- which it was expected to lose. As part of the settlement, isoHunt has also agreed to pay the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) $110 million USD. The MPAA has been trying to shut isohunt down since February 2006, when it issued a press release saying it would sue the site for copyright infringement. The settlement was reached on Thursday, October 17. The MPAA's statement declares the settlement a win for the entertainment industry, and legal content download services, according to this Register post. The parent company of isoHunt is expected to be able to pay, at most, between $2m and $4m, according to this BBC item.

Last night's fog was thick, and suitably clammy -- why do we say "pea soup fog," when proper fog is clammy? Anyway, about the photo -- I used my stubby, little. toy tripod. I poked the "take-a-picture" button with suitable authority, and I tapped on the camera to make it hurry it's plastic butt, and take the picture. Even with all that, it's out of focus! Click the image to enlarge it.

This double tanker truck, and many more just like it, are always somewhere in Vancouver -- burning gas, to deliver gas.In the case of this particular rig, it's offloading 37,000 litres (10,000 U.S. Gallons) of gasoline. The driver explained this was his weight limit, not the total capacity. He said he delivers gas twice-a-week to this Esso gas station, at the corner of Hemlock Street, and Broadway Avenue, but that the delivery frequency varies by gas station.