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Today's front page story in The Vancouver Sun is on how bike theft is one of the few crimes on the rise in Vancouver. This suggests at least two things to me: Most bike locks are a joke to most bike thieves, and there's a big demand for bicycles somewhere. Maybe the thieves are selling the bikes they steal back to the people they're stealing them from. But that doesn't explain why bikes seem so easy to steal.

[caption id="attachment_8105" align="alignnone" width="497"] Abbotsford religiously moving their homeless people from one camp site to another.[/caption]

What is it about Abbotsford and homeless people? They just go together, like... fish and chips, Tex and Mex, Israelis and Palestinians. Ohh my! scratch that! Where did that come from? Maybe it's my knee-jerk reaction to the so-called "Dignity Camp" for Abbotsford homeless, which a well-known Christian minister has been working hard to set up.

[caption id="attachment_8071" align="alignnone" width="497"] Suitably shitty photo of the fence a building manager has put up to stop homeless incursions.[/caption]

Near the southwest corner of West Broadway Avenue and Hemlock Street an apartment building manager has spent months shoring up the defensive fortifications of one corner of his property.

First he tacked up a "no trespassing" sign; then he added three orange traffic cones in front of the sign. Finally he replaced the cones with a new section of fence to entirely block access from the lane. All to stop an unseen person from pooping on his property. The safe assumption is it's a homeless person -- the building manager is positive he knows which homeless person. Unfortunately he's wrong.

[caption id="attachment_8045" align="alignnone" width="497"] No contest. For looks and durability, paving blocks are the long-term winner.[/caption]

If I was having a house built, based on what I've seen over the last nine years, I would want my driveway to be made from paving blocks.

Oh don't scoff. Who sees more homes than a homeless binner? In the course of binning for returnable beverage containers in several Vancouver neighbourhhoods, I have not only seen a lot of different homes but I've had the opportunity to see many of them for nine years. And I've noticed how they've held up over that time.

Mind you, I have no experience building anything more complex than a sandwich. So consider what follows accordingly.

Just off Cambie Street there's a sight to warm a Prairie boy's heart – the traditional Christmas lights on the tractor.

Why, I can still remember the Christmas when Uncle Elmer got all liquored-up and decided to put the lights on the the Massey Ferguson on a particularly moonless night during a snowstorm. Turned out, not only was corn whiskey a good conductor of electricity but it's effects could render a person insensible to electrocution. That was our "Christmas by candlelight."

You may think there's not a word of truth in that story but remember, Prairie folks do not lie, at least not about the weather – it really was snowing. Click the image to enlarge it.

We've seen this tractor before ►

Haven't much time for cars, and the exhaust from this one smells funny! Click the image to enlarge.

Who knew trees could get chapped skin? This one is on the lane-side property of an apartment building in Fairview, just west of Heather Street. It may be a paperbark maple, originally brought to the West from central China by the British at the beginning of the 20th Century. Or it may be some other sort of tree with similarly exfoliating bark. A tree like this is apparently popular as an ornamental plant, because people think it looks so darn pretty. I think it looks pretty darn painful. Click the image to enlarge it.

It's curious that this garbage bin is located at the address it purports to be stolen from. I guess it hasn't been stolen yet. If the bin will be stolen from this address and the owner actually has prior knowledge of the theft, I believe he should tell the police. Me? I just stole a glance at the contents. There was nothing worth taking. Click on the image to enlarge.

[caption id="attachment_7999" align="alignnone" width="497"] Home ownership is becoming a bit of a bad dream in Vancouver.[/caption]

Above is a photo of what could be a factory module dropped from low Earth orbit onto a lot off the south side of King Edward Avenue on Yukon Street. It doesn't look like it but this is actually a brand new home. At first, I thought it was a so-called "lane home," a small detached rental unit that Vancouver home owners have been allowed to put on their properties since 2009. But it's on it's own little lot, and not a lot of lot at that.

Ten minutes after Noon today I was up at Cambie Street and King Edward Avenue. King Ed is a major east-west traffic aterial. I don't know how far it goes eastward, but in the west it ends at the far edge of the Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood, at a cross street called Crown (oh... now I get it). On the west side of Crown is the dark, impenetrable forest of the University Endownment Lands -- I've heard terrible stories of what goes on there. Where was I?

Oh. I was in the alley on the east side of Cambie, making the turn into the north lane of King Ed. A cyclist coming out of that lane had told me to expect two big garbage bags of bottles. I found the bags: construction waste -- but it's the the thought that counts.

Here is a salad spinner I found today. There was a time, back in 2005-2007, when I found at least one of these charmingly useless things in the garbage every week. Really! I became a bit obsessed with finding them.

They became -- for me -- symbols of conspicuous consumption; emblems of my adopted neighbourhood's fondness for disposing of it's disposable income in the silliest ways possible. I mean, a salad spinner is a luxury by definition: "inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort." But it is, without a doubt, one of the least luxurious luxuries ever!

These days, trashed salad spinners are, at best, a monthly find. I can't definitively say why, but I've given it some thought:

• Today's salad styles do not need as much spinning?


• Industry has perfected a durable salad spinner?


• The fashion of eating salads is waning?


• Salad spinner-related accidents prompted product recalls?

I think getting to the bottom of this mysterious change in people's habits could provide valuable social insights. The problem is a lack of data, and more to the point, lack of funding. I am slowly -- as free time allows -- preparing a grant proposal for a salad spinner alley longitudinal analytical database, or S.S.A.L.A.D. If I  find a level of government dumb enough willing to fund such a study, I'll let you know. Click the image to enlarge it.

Shiny! Metal has always been prized for it's perfection of form. Even better than glass and fire, metal combines otherworldly shine and smoothness with strength and durability. Gold is the most magical of all because it never rusts. It corrupts but is never corrupted. And yet, someone threw this away!

You can help a homeless person this Christmas season by giving them something that shows you personally care, or I suggest you can help by giving them something completely impersonal. Or you can just wish each of them a "Happy Holiday" -- that never hurts.

There are a lot of blog posts and Web pages devoted to preparing Christmas care packages for homeless people. Every page includes a list of items, wrapping in warm sentiments. After asking a handful of homeless, and formerly homeless individuals for their opinions, I see they mostly agree with the online lists:

• white socks


• underwear


• deodorant stick


• disposable razor


• Medium, or Large T-shirt


• Chocolate bar


• mini Flashlight with batteries


• disposable rain ponch


• Something called "Weed"


• Rolling papers (Zig Zag white)


• Disposable lighter


• Zipper-lock bag


• Gift card

I know of four homeless, or formerly homeless women, but was unable to get their input for this post. Several guys agreed everything should be in a small backpack. That's sensible. The papers, lighter, and chocolate bar could be in the zipper-lock bag -- any herb should probably be in it's own zipper-lock bag. Food choices should be made on the basis of non-perishability, and two plain facts: homeless people, by-and-large are not adventurous eaters, and a lot of homeless folk -- myself included -- have lousy teeth, and many have no teeth at all.

[caption id="attachment_7959" align="alignnone" width="497"] A Generation Y apple?[/caption]

Imagine! It's near the end of November already. It's just possible we could be looking at the last apple still hanging on a tree, above the entire 49th parallel north. Well... we could be looking at a photograph of it from this morning.

As I was taking the photo, the super' for that building off Cambie Street was hacking away at the apple tree with pole-length branch trimmers. Cross our fingers. Click on the image to enlarge it.

I watched this squirrel scoot up the utility pole and stop on the lines to have a bite.



Before I could say "secret rendezvous," dessert appeared in the form of a second squirrel -- shameless little rodents! They'll get up to most anything in plain sight, just like, I dunno... raccoons, or something.



After a bit of canoodling, the two squirrels went their separate ways. The first one went back down to ground level the same way it had gone up. Back to work maybe?

Squirrels seem to live by the motto: "out of line-of-sight, out of mind." Maybe they believe they can't be seen by whatever they don't look at? But this squirrel gave me a look that told me it knew it was busted. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_7912" align="alignnone" width="497"] Marco poses beside the poster for Rob's "Last Toast." The two were inseparable friends.[/caption]

Early Saturday morning the Go Green bottle depot hosted a memorial for Rockin' Rob, the long-time binner who passed away at the beginning of November. He was as well-liked as he was well-known. Word of the farewell get-together spread through the binning community for over a week after it was set for the first Saturday after welfare cheque day.

I often sleep in on Saturdays, though this Saturday I would have liked to have been up by 6 a.m. -- I wanted to have an early cup of coffee before attending the memorial for Rockin' Rob, scheduled for 8 a.m. Saturday morning at the Go Green bottle depot.

Didn't make it -- didn't get up until the early afternoon. I skipped stopping for coffee and got right to binning. In less than an hour I was rounding a corner into what was my fourth lane of the afternoon, and, at the rate thing were going, possibly my last before cashing in. Right at the first building beside the dumpster, a fat black garbage bag of bottles. The first three blocks of that lane were blockbuster binning. Two more blocks remained before I would basically be done and on my way to the bottle depot.

[caption id="attachment_7922" align="alignnone" width="497"] Pete admires the green guy's soap art on McDonald's front window.[/caption]

Many homeless, and formerly homeless people call this part of the month "Mardi Gras" because it's when they receive their welfare or disability cheques, which were duly issued this last Wednesday. The party will have already run out of steam for many, but not for all. For some, Mardi Gras is more a state of mind than the state of their wallets.

This evening I came upon two of my homeless friends "frolicking" in the alley just around the corner from the McDonald's at Broadway and Granville. They had the entire brightly-lit loading area behind the Bombay store on Granville entirely to themselves. One of the mildest homeless fellows I know, the "green guy," was aggressively pacing, tracing the letter Z, "zed" -- he declared emphatically -- in the air -- for "Zorro." His most recent dumpster mp3 player was attached to the sort of cheap portable powered speaker we all see in the garbage. The combined low-fidelity ensemble was pumping out Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On." He was wide-eyed, and talking a lot like someone on jib, a kind of street speed: "Don't blink. Don't you dare blink!" The other homeless guy was Florida Pete.

I awoke to frost, breakfasted in a restaurant's idea of hot, dry comfort, and binned through the alleys of Fairview long enough to feel the warmth of the sun overtake the earlier chill; I felt positively over-dressed by the time I cashed in at the bottle depot at Ontario Street and 7th Avenue. Later, when I was locking up my bike two kilometres or so west, at Broadway Avenue and Spruce Street, it was raining -- coming down buckets actually, but just on me -- the Waves coffee house was having a power-washing crew over to hose down their awnings, windows, and sidewalk furniture.

That's over and done with now. All of us are sitting in Waves drinking our coffees and playing on our laptops. The sun just glares at us hotly through the windows, as if to admonish us for not being outside on such a nice, sunny day. Click the images to enlarge.

[caption id="attachment_7881" align="alignnone" width="497"] Oh don't mind the bike and trailer guys; they're both used to getting wet.[/caption]

I like my winter the way some people like their beer: cold, crisp, and dry. Don't ask me how beer can be dry; apparently it has to do with the finish. I like that Vancouver's winter is starting out that way. Consider that it could be a lot worse, given the temperature range we're "enjoying" on either side of 0° C. Add a bit of precipitation, and we could have ice rain overnight, wake up to black ice in the morning, and be gritting our teeth through days of biting, penetrating, ice-cold, rain. As it is now, it's just a good excuse to wear a scarf, toque, and mittens, and -- bonus! We actually look Canadian for a change. And the roads aren't hazardous, only the drivers -- as usual.

I just wonder how long nature can keep this up for. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_7869" align="alignnone" width="497"] They look so peaceful when they're sleeping.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_7861" align="alignnone" width="497"] Jonathan is homeless and avoids computers but will happily talk to birds.[/caption]

As I'm typing this, it's evening here in Vancouver, and our temperature is reported to be 6° C with an expected low of 2° C. There's no chance of an extreme weather alert for tonight, is there? How do I, as a quote-unquote homeless person, find out for sure?

The Extreme Weather Response program is run by BC Housing, an agency of the British Columbia provincial government. BC Housing issues the alerts to various branches of government, media outlets, and stakeholders in the extreme weather response program, including participating shelters. BC Housing will help cover the cost incurred by participating shelters which open their doors during extreme weather alerts.

If you don't watch TV, or listen to the radio, another way to find out about the alerts is via Twitter; BC Housing tweets the alerts. Scrolling through BC Housing's Twitter account, the most recent alert appears to have been yesterday. BC Housing has a few Web pages on the Extreme Weather Program, but none of them are designed to be a destination for people wanting to see the current extreme weather alert status for their community. The Weather Channel might mention them on their Alerts Web page; they don't list one today.

So besides Twitter and local media, Homeless people have to count on commonly accessed support services to notify them. I'm sure this works well on the north side of False Creek, in downtown Vancouver, and particularly on the Downtown Eastside, where the largest homeless population has access to the largest array of homeless support services.

On the south side of False Creek -- my side -- there are comparatively fewer of us homeless folk and not a lot of services. There is the bottle depot I go to every day though. Yesterday they had a nice big sign by the cash register announcing that an extreme weather shelter in a church was open on Larch Street. Wonderful, except the sign was still sitting there today. But I don't think that shelter is open tonight. Oh well, no system is perfect. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_7847" align="alignnone" width="497"] Rough visualization of an "instant" bottled depot.[/caption]

Every neighbourhood in Vancouver plays host to a variety of binners who fish the neighbourhood's stream of returnable beverage containers. Unfortunately not every neighbourhood can have a permanent bottle depot; because... there are no suitable locations, leases are too expensive, resident will allow it when you-know-where freezes over.

But every neighbourhood has an empty lot, or an empty storefront. I'd like to see single-day, pop-up bottle depots, which, with suitable advance advertising, could partially meet the need for a depot in any neighbourhood, rich or poor. Like, say... Kitsilano, which is still without a new bottle depot.

[caption id="attachment_7831" align="alignnone" width="497"] Ice ice baby. At 2 p.m. this puddle was frozen over in the shade.[/caption]

To rip-off Charles Dickens, today it was autumn in the sunshine, and winter in the shade. Definitely a day to add another layer of wicking outerwear. Personally I was dealing with a cold, which sucked. I didn't go to all the trouble to quit smoking so I could cough myself silly till two in the morning; so topping it off, I was tired all day.

But I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself.  A cold snap like we're having should remind us all of the sad plight of Vancouver's most disadvantaged -- all the awesome women who only have yoga pants in their repertoire of bottom-wear. The wind and cold must just go right through that fabric. Maybe that explains the brisk strides I see them taking.

This morning in Vancouver, clouds marched grandly across an ice-blue sky. The autumn leaves crackled like freeze-dried things as they swirled along the ground and blew up against my face. I could feel winter breathing down my neck. Soon enough. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_7818" align="alignnone" width="497"] The lights on your router blink Morse Code messages... Okay, that's a lie.[/caption]

After a thief stole my friend's iPad last Friday. Apple made sure that the new one she bought had the content and settings of the old one. There was only one glitch: she couldn't connect to her Wi-Fi at home.

Her home network was visible in the iPad's list of available networks, It's entry showed a locked icon denoting it was encrypted and required a password. When she clicked on he home network it just failed to connect, except occasionally for a moment. It never asked for a password.

She spoke on the phone with two tech support people and one technician from Shaw Communications, her Internet provider. She also made one or two trips to her Apple reseller. The technician suggested her wireless router wasn't broadcasting a strong enough signal, but no one she spoke to could give her a solution. A service visit was scheduled for Thursday.

[caption id="attachment_7801" align="alignnone" width="497"] Artist's sketchy reconstruction of the theft of my friend's iPad at McDonald's.[/caption]

Over the last six years Apple has done a remarkable job of making their iPhones and iPads very desirable items. Recently Apple has actually been adding features to their iOS to make the devices less desirable -- to thieves.

[caption id="attachment_7778" align="alignnone" width="497"] Nature is awesome. Soon as natural coffee shop formations are discovered, I'm there.[/caption]

It took nature much longer to create Routeburn Creek in New Zealand than it's taking my friend Kent to paint it, but then nature was probably being paid by the hour. All Kent is being paid is a visit -- by me, but that's priceless right?

It's been about a month-and-a-half since I last visited the painting, and it's painter. Now he seems to be laying in the devilishly fine detail which I find so interesting about his style. Click the image to enlarge it.

It's been

[caption id="attachment_7771" align="alignnone" width="497"] Two sides of someone who may be going to pieces.[/caption]



On the street most love is tough love so I feel for the person who made this sign, but I'm also wondering if they're taking their meds.

This ratty piece of ripped cardboard was in a business' doorway just on the southwest side of Broadway and Granville. It may or may not have featured in someone's attempt to panhandle. Another homeless person pointed it out to me. Yet another homie who saw it declared, "They're losing it!"

Maybe, but it does at least seem to me that this person is trying to work through some anger management-type issues. The important thing is that they're trying.

[caption id="attachment_7754" align="alignnone" width="497"] These new container bins are not off to a promising start.[/caption]

Since their introduction along West Broadway, I've seen very, very, few returnable containers in Encorp's new Return-It container bins; just lots of trash. Despite the blue paint job, and the blaring signage -- not to mention there being a grey garbage bin beside each one of them -- supposedly recycling-savvy Vancouverites are taking them for just one more place to throw their food wrappers, and drink cups, and dog poop.

To be fair, I've only sampled the bins along the stretch between Cambie Street in the east to Blenheim Street in the west. That's just under 5 km. A much shorter distance than Google first thought it was.

[caption id="attachment_7738" align="alignnone" width="497"] How's it snowing at 12th and Hemlock if it's not snowing at Broadway and Granville?[/caption]

Pusher, a digital creative agency in Australia, created an online Christmas card back in 2011 which is still impressing people two years later. The revised Pusher Christmas 2012 uses your address to show a scene of it snowing where you live. Neat trick.

A friend of mine received a link to the card from a friend of hers; both of them were amazed. My friend showed it to me, and I was also suitably impressed, but I could see how they did it. It was a clever use of the Google Maps Street View API.

Pusher is using a Google API (Application Programming Interface) to pipe the search results from Google Maps Street View onto their own page result and overlaying it with a transparent looping animation made using Adobe Flash.

[caption id="attachment_7624" align="alignnone" width="497"] It's unsightly, but the building did it on purpose.[/caption]

The job a building in Fairview recently did labeling their brand new Vancouver grey garbage bins brought to mind Lululemon founder Chip Wilson paying taggers to tag, oops, paint a mural on the seawall of his Kitsilano property.

I agree there are times when it makes sense to hire a real graffiti tagger. This building would have been better off hiring one to label their building's bins. A tagger would've known when and how to to use a a spray can, or a metallic marker. The result would be as clean and legible as they wanted it to be, unlike the uncontrolled mess the building made.

[caption id="attachment_7705" align="alignnone" width="497"] There are computer viruses, malware, spyware, and the variously named Conduit Toolbars.[/caption]

Today I got to once again eXPerience Microsoft's most venerable, and vulnerable, operating system as I cleaned up the doo-doo after a friend's update of Adobe's desktop Flash.

Adobe thinks nothing of letting out-and-out spyware piggyback on it's Flash installers and updaters; it's called a "bundled download." Adobe give you the chance to disallow the third-party ware to install along with Flash,but you have to be paying attention. Lots of people trust Adobe, like my friend did. These days, trusting in Adobe updaters gets you not just Flash, but new Web browser features in the form of the Conduit Search spyware.

Just off Cambie Street this afternoon, I think I may have seen the future -- at least of home construction: ICFs, or Insulating Concrete Forms -- Lego-like concrete forms made out of Styrofoam that becomes the insulation of the finished wall. ICF's are a 60-year-old technology gaining new popularity in earthquake-prone areas because the concrete walls produced by ICFs can be as much as 10-times stronger than traditional concrete walls formed with wood sheets.

[caption id="attachment_7679" align="alignnone" width="497"] Venting his frustration or frustrating that vent?[/caption]

This fellow has cocooned himself in his sleeping bag in front of the Michaels arts and crafts store on West Broadway Avenue. He's done this a few times, and each time he's had a slip of paper pinned to his sleeping bag inscribed with the word "invisible." That was actually the theme of this year's Homeless Action Week -- the invisible homeless. But that ended weeks ago, and it was only five days long anyways (we homeless people have a shorter week than the rest of you).

He might actually know his stuff, because every pedestrian I saw walked right by him as if he wasn't there. But he was there -- I could see him. But that might be because I'm homeless, and I too have been invisible on occasion.

In my neighbourhood the plastic poppies blow,
between the buildings, row on row...

Remembrance Day is three days past and it's nearly the middle of November. Some people will wear their plastic poppies at least through the week. Some who've stopped wearing them have put them safely aside until next year. Many people will throw them away, but, thanks to the low-tech way they're put together, many more people have been losing them since they became available over a week ago. However it happens, every November the streets, sidewalks, and alleys end up dotted, here and there, with discarded plastic poppies.

I'm a little late in my reporting, but this year, in May, the International Space Station (ISS) dumped the last of it's laptop installations of the Windows XP operating system to go all Linux, and furthermore dropped Red Hat Linux in favour of Debian 6. According to the Linux Foundation, which provided two training courses geared specifically for the USA/NASA team’s needs.

Never mind second-hand cigarette smoke, Vancouver's poorest smokers care about finding second-hand tobacco, in the form of cigarette butts. Now those poor nic-heads doing their butt runs downtown have a potentially new obstacle or opportunity, depending, thanks to the City of Vancouver's pilot program to recycle cigarette butts.

Yesterday, The Cigarette Waste Brigade pilot project began with the installation of 110 recycling receptacles in four areas of the downtown business district. These will naturally be the areas identified as being commonly littered with the most butts -- and, they will, just as naturally, be well-known hot spots for people looking for butts for the tobacco. Now some or all of that potential bounty will be in locked, steel receptacles -- bad for the casual seeker, but good for the hardcore picker who's "handy" with locked boxes -- "Thanks for keeping our butts dry, suckas!"

This grand old apartment building is on the east side of Cambie Street at 13th Avenue. I'm guessing The Cumberland apartment building dates back to the 1920s. I wonder how many coats of paint it's had. This latest one, completed a few months ago is nice; kind of a mustard and dark rye vibe. The lettering of the name is original gold leaf wonderfulness. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_7585" align="alignnone" width="497"] Oh, look on the steps -- pumpkins -- they are so October. Click the image to enlarge.[/caption]

I took a photo of these pumpkins the day after Halloween. They were still vibrant, and full of life. The days have not been kind to them. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_7569" align="alignnone" width="497"] It took this quartet of transit personnel to stop one fare evader, who's around the corner.[/caption]

Yesterday morning I watched the well-oiled, and financed, TransLink machine stop fare evasion in it's tracks. It took one bus driver, two transit supervisors, two transit security guards, and over one hour, but they stopped one half-drunk First Nations guy from getting on a bus for free so he could get home before he passed out. It was awesome, let me tell you.

Dave isn't really a bad guy. Some would say he has a mischievous sense of humour, and it's fair to say he has poor impulse control. There's a reason his nickname is Dave "Warrant." Monday morning, when I saw that skinny, obviously half-in-the-bag, aboriginal guy making his wobbly way up Broadway towards the McDonald's, I said to myself: "Here comes trouble."

Even homeless binners... I'm sorry. Especially homeless binners, need their coffee in the morning, as Henry so eloquently points out. Click the image to enlarge.