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No snow on her. Waiting for the bus on West Broadway -- with her umbrella, under a store awning.

 It's still snowing in Vancouver and my WordPress blog is still suspended.

Unfortunately the snow isn't enough to cheer me up. Still, I should just buck up and get on with it right? Life goes on around me, demanding my attention.

Bloody hell!

While I've been typing this post in McDonald's a woman has appeared at the counter. It's free coffee week at the Golden Arches but they weren't giving her one. I turned to see the woman, she was squat with a stolid expression and she was carrying a jacket and a plastic shopping bag. She had cross-cut slashes all down both forearms which were consequently covered in blood.

What the...?

See what I mean about not paying attention?

I jumped to the counter. There seemed to be an abundance of coffee denial and a shortage of 9-1-1-ing. I was a bit loud about that. A woman did finally call for an ambulance.

The woman with the cut up arms left. A customer at the counter actually declared the cuts were superficial -- self-inflicted -- and couldn't have hurt. Aarrgg!

The staff justified not calling an ambulance immediately because the woman had come in one time before in the same condition and that she left before an ambulance arrived.

In fact the woman left the restaurant. I couldn't convince her to wait. She didn't say a word, she just left. She immediately tried to get on a westbound bus but I watched as the driver took one look at the blood covering her forearms and hands and ordered her off the bus.

She trudged off down West Broadway. The woman who had called 9-1-1 was trailing after her trying to talk to her. I didn't go out and help. At no point did I consider trying to "detain" the woman with the cuts.

When I looked up a few minutes later the woman with the cuts was back; she was again trying to board a bus but now she had her jacket on with the sleeves over the cuts. A different driver still ordered her off the bus. As she walked  walked west up Broadway I could see bus passengers pointing at and complaining about something to the driver. Not a minute later I heard sirens and watched an ambulance and police car speeding west. Then there was the woman who'd made the original 9-1-1 call; she was walking east.

So a potentially mentally-ill woman, covering in blood up to her elbows, was, and may still be, wandering around Fairview in the snow and cold. She appeared to be willfully dodging help, which didn't seem too hard to do as most people just wanted to ignore her.

Vancouver is a wonderful city full of people who care. They just don't always care about other people. But then neither do I.

Did I mention my WordPress blog is still suspended?

 By now, most WordPress.com bloggers will have found they now have the ability to flag a referrer link as spam.

WordPress.com, the free service that hosts WordPress blogs, quietly rolled out the new feature on Friday in response to a two-month deluge of referrer spam, all generated by one Website.

The Website, semalt.com, was raining spam disguised as post views down on thousands of blogs, not just those powered by the WordPress content management system (CMS).

It wasn't exactly a rain of terror but it still left bloggers curious, worried, and ultimately pissed off -- the spam hits were skewing everyone's traffic stats!

Overlooking Arbutus Ridge and beyond from King Edward Ave. and Arbutus St.

Homes, home, homes and more homes, That's one strong impression you get looking over the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood. The other impression is that it all appears to be comfortably well off if not flat-out wealthy.

This impression of comfortable hominess continues for several kilometres in three directions beyond the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood, south into Kerrisdale, west into Dunbar-Southlands and north into Kitsilano.

[caption id="attachment_10555" align="alignnone" width="497"] How he rolls. Looks like Hansen's statue is about to run the barricade.[/caption]

As I rode west along 10th Avenue I happened to spy a big hunk of something behind barricades and yellow caution tape in the little parking lot beside the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre. It was a very impressive statue of the famous wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen.

This was not a new statue; it had previously been featured on the grounds of Rogers Arena in downtown Vancouver. I had no idea why it was parked here, but here it was in stall 2524.

The larger-than-life size granite sculpture was carved by sculptor Bill Koochin in 1997 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the completion of Rick Hansen's Man in Motion World Tour.

[caption id="attachment_10540" align="alignnone" width="497"] The scene as I was getting up: unusual snow and the typical snarl of poorly-driven SUVs.[/caption]

Thick fluffy snow has been falling steadily at least since I got up early this afternoon. Because the temperature has stayed above zero the snow has only been finding a foothold on lawns, parked cars and garbage bin lids; it hasn't stuck to roads or sidewalks.

[caption id="attachment_10541" align="alignnone" width="497"] This bottle depot has spare shopping carts for binners. Why aren't the boys taking this one?[/caption]

I skipped my usual weekday morning coffee because it was Saturday and I'd slept right through the morning. Instead I made my way through the snow to the bottle depot. The trip was uneventful; the snow was no more inconvenient than a light chunky fog.

The bottle depot wasn't very eventful either. When I arrived at Go Green there were only six other binners there -- at 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon! The staff watched the big open entrance of the bottle depot and complained about the snow.

How many people driving by this construction site will have already forgotten what used to be here?

It's probably about time to stop calling the crest at Arbutus Street and 16th Avenue the former site of the Ridge shopping centre. It is now the future site of Cressey's Arbutus Ridge condominium development. I say that without caring for it to be true.

I'll always miss the Ridge Centre. Over the course of 30 years, I shopped there, did my laundry there. went there with friends and by myself to see a lot of movies, and I ate a lot of meals there. I regret never trying the bowling alley.

It was a big old shopping mall with character that was associated with some of my fond memories. Now it only exists in my memory -- all the physical details I remember, down to the date stamped into original sidewalk on the south side: "1950" --all gone.

Soon to be replaced by an uninteresting condo for rich people. In three to ten years when it starts leaking I'll try not to feel good about it. Click the image to enlarge it.

This was the first of several photos I took this morning looking straight up through the glass "awning" at the Canadian Western Bank building on the northwest corner of West Broadway Avenue and Birch Street.

Water from overnight precipitation was making pretty on the glass and I wasted effort capturing the effect. I say wasted because nothing nailed the surreal look like my first quick zoomed shot. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10480" align="alignnone" width="497"] A Cossack horsewhips one of the members of the band Pussy Riot. From the video.[/caption]

This morning The Province newspaper had a story straight out of the history books; apparently Cossack militia (also known as "thugs") attacked the anti-Putin agit-punk group Pussy Riot with horsewhips on Wednesday in Sochi, Russia, for trying to play their music in public under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.

Cossacks? Horsewhips? Wow! Russia really does still have one foot firmly planted in the 18th Century. But their other foot is on the gas pedal of a brand new Beemer and they also have the latest model iPhones and high-speed Internet.

So hours before I saw The Province I had already seen what I took to be smartphone footage of the attack in the music video Pussy Riot put out on the Internet this morning for their very excellent song "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland."

Singer Madonna, a vocal supporter of Pussy Riot, posted a still of a Cossack swinging his whip at one of the band members to accompany her amazed tweet this morning:

"Are you kidding me? Are the police in Russia actually whipping Pussy Riot for making music on the streets? Is this the dark ages? GOD bless P.R. They are fearless!" she wrote on Twitter.

Madonna also included a link to an International Olympic Committee spokesperson describing the pictures and the video as "very unsettling."

I agree with the IOC flack that the pictures are unsettling and with Madonna about Pussy Riot being fearless. And while I do not love the Motherland I do really like the song.

[caption id="attachment_10466" align="alignnone" width="497"] Late shipment of winter. Wet snow at 10 p.m. this evening.[/caption]

Don't you just hate it when one of your Christmas presents arrives late?

As I type this inside where it's warm and dry, the weather outside is trying frightfully hard -- to snow.

I know what it looks like from the photo; it looks like it's raining drinking straws -- it isn't. It's snowing, but only above street level, no lower than, let's say three storeys. All that's hitting the street is cold rain.

Found this toy and book on a Container blue bin last night where someone had left them for a binner to find. They were neatly in their own Ziploc freezer bag, helpfully labelled: "FREE TOY + BOOK."

The toy is part of the cheerfully creepy plastic sim that is the Playmobil System, product 4407, Child with Wheelchair -- a US$21 value on Amazon. Pairs well with Playmobil Pediatrician.

I was writing a post about Low Orbit Ion Cannons (really) but then this Kate Upton in zero gravity story broke.

At first blush I'm inclined to declare that it's the greatest event in aviation history -- I could be overreacting.

But probably not. Forget about putting a man on the moon! Putting a woman -- Kate Upton -- in a zero gravity plane along with a pile of photographers and stylists and then repeatedly looping-the-loop, all for the 2014 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. That's aerospace history in the making.

And they filmed it! Mesmerizing!

[caption id="attachment_10409" align="alignnone" width="497"] Not quite the cat's meow, but I respect the thought that goes into any stencil graffiti.[/caption]

Yesterday I saw another version of the stencil graffiti of the Cat on a Pedestal, this time in on the edge of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

I was making the first leg of my journey westwards from the bottle depot through the alley on the north side of West Broadway Avenue. It was in that lane, west of Columbia Street, that I saw the cat. I'm quite sure it wasn't there even a few days ago.

[caption id="attachment_10393" align="alignnone" width="497"] Not fit for man, woman, or duck -- maybe salmon or trout.[/caption]

The entire morning was bright and sunny. I guess Nature needed good light so it could perfect its evil plans for the rest of the day.

By 4 p.m.the heavy rain had washed away all thoughts of sunshine.

People are happy to say that the rain falls on the rich and poor alike. Aside from wanting to amuse the rich, I don't know why people say such silly stuff. They also say of an especially rainy day like today that it's a great day to be a duck, and I always want to know if anyone has bothered to actually ask ducks about this assumption.

The only ducks I have ever seen in Vancouver are from Anaheim, California and they only like water when it's frozen. I don't think ducks like a rainforest climate one little bit, whether they're the poor kind of ducks or the rich kind from Anaheim. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10394" align="alignnone" width="497"] Water cascading down the side of a building off South Granville Street on 10th Avenue.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10380" align="alignnone" width="497"] George Vancouver stands his ground in a torrential downpour. What a sea dog![/caption]

Two days ago I posted that I couldn't find the Pride flag that was supposed to be flying at Vancouver City Hall. Well I found it today in the pouring rain.

I was still thinking the rainbow flag would be conspicuously flying amongst the gaggle of flags on the southwest corner of city hall where it would have maximum visibility but no, it still wasn't there. This time I walked all the way around the building. And when I got to the north-side entrance, where I was positive it wouldn't be, Captain George Vancouver was kind enough to point it out to me.

[caption id="attachment_10361" align="alignnone" width="497"] Totally bodged blue Toter-brand recycling wheelie bin.[/caption]

Most people in my little corner of the world call this crumpled little thing a "blue bin." Some, if they work in the local waste-hauling business, likely call it a "Toter" after the company that made the bin. Beginning in the late 1990s Vancouver invested in hundreds of thousands of Toter-brand blue bins for recycling and grey bins for residential garbage.

But in the UK -- the cradle of the English language -- people would almost certainly call it a "wheelie bin."

Apparently all the real heavy lifting, language-wise, was taken care of ages ago by their ancestors. These days the British people just have fun with their language.

And not just people in the UK but also people in Australia and New Zealand. Together they share a subset of English I call Ukanzish.

Outdoor tennis courts in Vancouver's Fairview neighbourhood -- the three courts I saw -- were empty of people.  It must have been the rain.

Apparently tennis player don't like to get their balls wet. Well their tennis balls, I mean -- they seem to absorb water which naturally makes them heavier and affects their bounce but it doesn't sound like they recover their performance even after they dry out. But I also read that tennis balls have an active tennis life measured in hours. Their afterlife as dog chew-toys is at least measured in days. Click the animated GIF to see a less annoying large static image.

[caption id="attachment_10350" align="alignnone" width="497"] Bad panorama of the rainbow at 4 p.m.. I was jostled by disembarking 99 B-Line bus riders![/caption]

On my way in the to bottle depot at Ontario Street and 7th Avenue I deliberately ended up at 12th Avenue and Cambie Street -- on the south side of Vancouver City Hall.

Previously I snapped a photo of the giant Canadian flag on the north side of the hall. Today I wanted to photograph the Pride flag flying in front, as reported in yesterday's item in The Province newspaper on a grumbling B.C. Pavilion Corporation agreeing to occasionally light Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia:

"At Vancouver City Hall, a large Canadian flag is displayed on the north side of the building, while a Pride flag is flying in front of city hall to support LGBTQ rights in the face of Russia’s anti-gay laws."

I saw several Canadian flags and two provincial flags but I didn't see a Pride flag. I was looking on the south side of city hall, specifically for a rainbow flag. I might've just missed it. I'll look again tomorrow, Saturday, February 15 -- National Flag of Canada Day. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_10335" align="alignnone" width="497"] Used cigarette butts don't taste any worse and they might even be healthier![/caption]

This evening my friend Florida Pete showed me the latest thing in "safe smoking" apparatus for street people: a short length of clear plastic tube.

Pete was wearing at least two too many jackets to be comfortable when he came to visit me this evening in McDonald's. It wasn't long before he was so dozy he had to go back outside -- to look for a place to crash. But first he put on a bit of show and tell.

He started with a nifty little LED flashlight some one had dropped. It also doubled as a red laser pointer. Neat!

Then he showed me what he said a community health nurse had given him earlier in the day outside the Kingsgate Mall at East Broadway and Main Street. At first glance it looked like the sort of glass tube used for a crack pipe but no, it was about two-and-a-half inches of flexible plastic tubing. It was the simplest of devices for "safely" smoking used cigarette butts.

[caption id="attachment_10325" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Plaza's golden facade at about 1 p.m. this afternoon.[/caption]

The Broadway Plaza has been a striking visual landmark on West Broadway Avenue since it was completed in 1980. Not only is it 51 metres tall but the tower is dramatically planted at 45° to the street grid on the northwest corner of West Broadway Avenue and Ash Street.

That means both its southwest and southeast-facing facades -- gold-tinted, glass curtain walls -- are very visible to east- and west-bound traffic on West Broadway, presenting motorists and pedestrians with a constantly changing golden reflection of the sky and the surrounding skyline. It's still impressive after 34 years.

The "Plaza" part is ground-level retail and is topped by a 14-storey tower of prime office space, something Vancouver routinely runs short of. According to Wikimapia tenants include the Consulate of Slovenia on the fourth floor.

The plaza features a fountain -- very nice -- but I can't remember the last time there was water in it.

In the above photo we can see more clouds than cars but this is 4 p.m, the start of rush hour -- I've just caught it during a lull.

Above the east- and west-bound traffic on West Broadway Avenue -- way above -- we can see a north-bound cloud bank steaming through at a fair clip.

What we can't see are the passenger jets.

Day and night commercial airline pilots flying into and out of Vancouver use West Broadway Avenue as a sight line. If you're situated on West Broadway at Granville Street and you follow their flight westward you'll see the big jets eventually peel off south, probably following Alma/Dunbar Street straight to the Vancouver International Airport located on Sea Island in Richmond.

Two large panorama photos from this morning at about 8 a.m.

It looked like the start of a beautiful day and it was, I guess, until about 2.pm. That's when the dark clouds were rolling in from the south. No surprise it's raining this evening.

This morning, as you can see, it was an altogether different picture. The top photo is another shot north over Alder Street with me looking towards downtown Vancouver. The bottom photo is in an alley on the east side of South Granville with me looking forward to my first coffee of the day. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10300" align="alignnone" width="497"] Panoramas stitched from many photos (this one uses 24) can have odd perspective shifts.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10294" align="alignnone" width="497"] Couldn't tell you which was which on a bet. Click the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10282" align="alignnone" width="497"] Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron looks a lot like this arrangement of drinking straws.[/caption]

Apparently the big story today is how the Calgary Flames beat Vancouver. But this isn't a story about ice hockey it's a story about Olympic legacies and keeping them alive.

Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron is so far not being lit during the current Sochi Winter Olympics. That was the lead story in The Province newspaper this morning.

In contrast, the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta, which hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, has lit their Olympic Cauldron. And on February 1, Lake Placid, New York, relighted the Olympic Cauldron from their 1980 Winter Olympics, to celebrate both the current Olympic Games in Sochi as well as their own Olympic legacy.

Vancouver hosted the previous Winter Olympics in 2010. Its Olympic Cauldron is located downtown on the waterfront at Jack Poole Plaza, adjacent to the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Monday, February 10, hackers are reported to have exploited a fundamental weakness in the Internet itself to stage a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against unidentified computer servers in Europe.

Rather than exploiting flaws in a computer operating system, Monday's attack instead used known weaknesses in the Network Time Protocol (NTP), a nearly 30-year-old Internet system used to synchronize computer clocks around the world.

The attack was against a client of the online security firm Cloudflare,

Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince tweeted word of the attack on one of his clients, describing it as "very big" -- about 400 gigabits per second (Gbps) -- the "biggest" of its kind. 100Gbps larger than an attack on anti-spam service Spamhaus last year. He also said his company was mitigating the effects of the attack.

What's weirder? The "deer in headlights" look, the un-deer-like posture or the fact it's wired for electricity? Maybe all of the above. Click the image to enlarge it.

Now the rain is back our environmentally-minded City Hall might be catching up on some laundry but more likely this display has to do with Canada's Olympic team at Sochi. If so, shouldn't one of them be a rainbow flag? Click the image to see a larger static image.

[caption id="attachment_10201" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Lovers II by Gerhard Juchum, a 1973 sculpture in concrete on the grounds of City Hall.[/caption]

As I was passing City Hall on Friday, on the Cambie Street side, I glanced eastwards over the grounds and spied these two naked guys in close embrace. My first thought naturally was that they must have been freezing their, ba... um, tuckuses off.

On closer inspection the duo turned out to be a sculpture. According to a plaque affixed to the base, it's called "The Lovers" by Gerhard Juchum. And the pair wasn't entirely naked; they were partially covered by dirt and moss.

[caption id="attachment_10233" align="alignnone" width="497"] This pinko Commie bear has nothing to do with the Capitalist Olympic Games in Sochi.[/caption]

Unlike the dog-eared and bedraggled pink teddy above, the Russian bear has cleaned itself up and is fairly resplendent in full rainbow colours -- all the better to wow the rest of the world and steal the thunder from any pesky gay rights advocates.

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics are in full swing and by all accounts the tribute to Vladimir Putin's one man rule is packing them in. Someone even hijacked a plane to get there; unfortunately they ended up in Istanbul and completely missed the opening ceremonies.

The superficial aspects of venues and spectacle change every two years but the underlying mechanism of the Olympic machine seems to runs like a turn-key operation from one country and one season to another. So it's interesting to note that Russia does bring something unique to the Olympic mix: an unparalleled expertise in, among other things, counter-propaganda.

Neat how the design on my mocha is similar to the sidewalk tables, but frustrating how second cup of coffee is always out of reach. Click the image to enlarge it.

Notice how outside the picture frame it's just a photo of a back alley but inside the picture frame it's a Photo of a Back Alley! Definitely should've kept the frame.

[caption id="attachment_10206" align="alignnone" width="497"] Looking north over West Broadway Avenue, between the streets Alder and Spruce.[/caption]

The above photo was taken from the lofty height of about two storeys, looking north from the rooftop parking atop the Toys “Я” Us on West Broadway. I've taken several photos from here -- it's accessible 24-hours-a-day.

Naturally I take most of my photos where I spend the majority of my time: at street level. I've managed to take a few photos from the slightly higher vantage point of two floors above ground level. And at least one shot was taken from a third storey balcony.

There was no raging fire in the historic Pitman Building this morning -- it was a false alarm. Had there actually been a raging fire in the historic Pitman Building neither I nor my breakfast would've gotten quite so cold.

Such were my grumpy thoughts this morning, cold and caffeine-deprived as I was.

[caption id="attachment_10174" align="alignnone" width="497"] Pretty... cold. The sun blazed as a light through a block of ice today.[/caption]

As office workers in Fairview picked up their morning take-away they could be assured their steaming hot double-doubles would be closer to iced coffees by the time they sat down in their cubicles.

Vancouver is experiencing a novel patch of cold, dry, winter and Vacouverites appear to be enjoying it. They've certainly taken to wind chill like ducks to ice water.

This architectural detail -- three rings and a cube on a stick -- crowns a little shopping plaza on the south side of West Broadway Avenue just a block east of Oak Street.

These kinds of decorative doo-dads appeared on a few 1990s-era buildings -- not all of them, just a select few. They look pointless now but just wait until the alien invasion  Click the images to enlarge them.

This is my new feathered friend and constant biking companion. Since being rescued from a dumpster a few days ago he or she has been keeping a watchful eye on traffic for me -- my rear view bird, if you will.

It doesn't talk to me of course (that would be crazy), but it does speak to me if you know what I mean.

This is a worldly bird with a unique way of looking at things -- both direct and a little unnerving. I pity the poor driver who tries to stare it down. Click the images to enlarge them.

Yesterday afternoon I was stopped with the rest of the traffic at the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Cambie Street and watched as a fellow triumphantly strode down the middle of the northbound lane of Cambie. He was preceded by a phalanx of Vancouver police on motorcycles and trailed by a gaggle of happy hangers-on, apparently celebrating his achievement.

If you were S.H.I.E.L.D., a supranational, super-secret organization with flying cars and stuff an a brief to contain and neutralize alien threats

[caption id="attachment_10122" align="alignnone" width="497"] Charlie Chaplin making his film debut as a ladies man who should be in cuffs.[/caption]

A hundred years ago it was a good time to go to the movies.

Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's first appearance in a film -- a one-reel silent film called Making A Living, released on February 2, 1914.

When the 24-year-old, London-born, Chaplin signed on with American film producer Mack Sennett and the Keystone Film Company in 1913, movies were a burgeoning phenomenon. Chaplin was already an established vaudeville star with the Fred Karno panto troupe in both England and the United States.

In that first movie, Making A Living -- a "farce comedy," Chaplin's famous tramp was nowhere to to be seen. The 13 minute film had him playing a mustachioed, swindling Lothario with a monocle and a top hat, who runs afoul of the Keystone Kops.

[caption id="attachment_10099" align="alignnone" width="497"] Be vewy, vewy, quiet. Hunting the wascally Windows XP -- and penguins.[/caption]

Microsoft has a habit of using fear marketing to keep Windows customers from leaving the fold; for nearly 20 years they've tried to hold back the threat of open source software by sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the Linux operating system; belittling it, calling it a cancer and ultimately claiming it infringes Microsoft's patents.

Lately, Microsoft has taken to throwing mud, or "FUD" as the technique is known, at its own popular operating system: Windows XP.

XP is still, after 13 years, the second most popular operating system, used on an estimated half billion computers.

But, except for a small percentage of enterprise customers using embedded XP under long-term service contracts, XP is dead to Microsoft. Both they and PC makers can only see a lot of potential new computer sales.

What are we disposed to think this might be? Creative personal expression; grade school assignment worth a C-plus, or perhaps a kind of memento mori? I can't decide. The only thing I can say for sure is... it's a piece of garbage, and I mean that literally. Click the image to enlarge it.