Apparently Keira-Anne lives in Austin Texas, she has a friend in Vancouver named “Bridg” that loves the Canucks and what looks like Spanish Banks, is actually someplace called “Tribune Bay”. Either that or there’s someone out there using over 50 photos of Keira, me, John, Duane and even Tony Pierce, posing as Keira on MySpace… using Duane’s last name.

This person on MySpace has assumed the role of “Keira-Anne” in a skewed form of flattery and apparently I am “Bridg” and sometimes “Becky” in photos. I suppose it happens all the time, but ya know I didn’t think it would happen to someone I knew. I always think about this especially with all the content everyday people put on the internet (thanks Facebook!)

He/she (MySpace/kastorey) is receiving messages, comments and I assume replying to them all as someone that he/she is not. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t there some kind of policy on MySpace against this stuff? I do know there’s a license on Flickr about using and redistributing photos without permission. Oh, so many legal violations, so little time.

Hopefully this complete impostor gets caught. Now if you’ll excuse me, Keira-Anne and I are going to walk around Hay Park and look out into Georgia Straights on our way to Helliwell Bluffs to hang out in her Balcony Room.

Coming back from a long weekend and moving sluggishly due to turkey hangovers I’ve decided to bundle up a nice little packet of news for your Tuesday (that feels like a Monday) morning reading. But first, some hockey.

I know I’ve been obsessed with the Vancouver Giants lately but after attending two games in the last three days, I’m pretty much hooked. I got to meet Joey Kenward and witness yesterday’s defeat (the Giant’s first regular time loss this season) from the comforts of the press box at the Pacific Coliseum. Three seconds into the game a fight broke out and that dictated the pace for the rest of the period. In the third the ref’s bad calls caught up with the Giants and the Kelowna Rockets came out victorious. I personally find the following a bit odd: Giants player has the puck at the back of the net. Rockets player causes a penalty on the Giants player who wraps around and puts the puck in the net. Ref waives off the goal so he can give the Rockets player the penalty. So instead of a goal… the Giants got a 2 minute power play. In what universe does that make sense? I’m just saying…

Okay now onto the news:

A community has taken action to bring awareness to the issue surrounding Pacific Spirit Park.

“Leaflet campaign started to save Pacific Spirit Park from being developed”: A community group has undertaken a leaflet campaign to save Pacific Spirit Park from being developed if it’s dealt to the Musqueam band as a part of a land claim treaty.[CKNW]

Nothing against the issue itself but this story (especially the title) instantly made me giggle and think of Red Dwarf (yes, I’m that much of a nerd).

The time for talking is over. Now call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard, and we hit it fast, with a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign. [Red Dwarf - Polymorph]

And if that doesn’t work… a car boot sale.

The Greater Vancouver Food Bank is celebrating 25 years of helping the community by not having a charity dinner. The unvitations can be downloaded from their website, filled out, and completed with your donation for the non-dinner. Remember, one dollar equals three dollars that can be used for food at area Food Banks.

The civic strike will continue as CUPE 391 members are urged to reject mediators’ recommendations.

Only CUPE Local 15, which represents 3,500 inside workers, has urged its members to vote in favour of recommendations released Friday by mediator Brian Foley. [Metro News]

On the blogs, my pal Duane has taken on a different kind of photography. Check out his work in his recap blog post after shooting his first ever wedding.

Today I have to give back my Nokia n95. It was super fun while it lasted (check out the video or photos). The others who participated may have used a few more features than I did but I think I tested it out pretty well and will have some feedback on the topic later on.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in NetChick’s win-a-Wii contest. I think I came in fourth but the effort was very much appreciated. Tanya officially celebrated her 10 year blogaversary one week ago.

Did you know Tourism Vancouver has a blog? Well… they do.

Mel’s got some pretty geeky costume ideas for Halloween posted and expresses interest in being a cabbage patch kid – wonder if she’s seen this Geico commercial:

And finally, after you read this next post by Matt, I promise you’ll get a song stuck in your head, and you’ll probably be cursing me (or him) for the rest of the day.

You know me, I love my parks. This weekend I visited one that I haven’t been to since around 1998.

Named after the Kwantlen First Nation, Kwantlen Park stretches from 132nd street to Old Yale Road [Google Map]. It contains KB Woodward Elementary, Kwantlen Park Secondary (formerly West Whalley Jr. High), tennis courts, a skate park, a pool, numerous baseball diamonds, all weather soccer fields, basketball/street hockey court, lacrosse box, playgrounds and forest trails.

There used to be a wooden playground with a tire swing at one side where at one time I bumped so hard into the side of one of the pillars I got a bloody nose. In the parking lot at the South end we all met David Duchovny when they were filming part of an X-Files episode in the woods. And when the new playground was first installed Anne and I (being 16 years old and silly) ran up to it before the ground could settle and ended up getting our shoes sucked off in the new installations’ quicksand-like pea gravel.

I used to walk through the park every day on my way to school, although it has changed a lot since I last made that trip. The fitness circuit, complete with monkeys bars and hurdles is gone, but that’s probably for the best as I’m sure it invokes many unpleasant memories of PE 10 for some. From the little bunny rabbits you’d see passing through the blackberry thickets to the bush parties with teens sporting brown paper-bagged bottles of OE, Kwantlen is definitely a part of growing up in Surrey.

All those years ago you couldn’t see through it due to its density, however it has become considerably less green over the last ten years. Regardless, it is still filled with plenty of winding foots paths and streams.

The City of Surrey currently has a program that involves community participation in the planting of greenspaces around town and although Kwantlen has been left out of the planning, it still seems like a pretty good initiative to me.

The City of Surrey is committed to the enhancement and preservation of our urban forests. Since 1991, tens of thousands of trees have been planted throughout the City by thousands of volunteers – community groups, schools, local businesses and individuals who care about their environment. [Surrey.ca]

These free events are an opportunity for communities to get together and plant native shrubs and trees, to help keep their parks and boulevards green. The next few events are listed below:

If you have the chance, get out and enjoy a community park especially at this time of year. It’s warm enough to walk outside wearing one coat layer and a scarf, and still enjoy the multi-coloured kaleidescope of leaves and moss that canopy the trails.

I’m not talking about the Chilliwack Bruins (sorry Duane). Every hockey fan can have their alternate team they cheer for can’t they? I mean the best part about my duo is that they’re in different conferences. However don’t think for a second that if my two teams meet up in the Stanley Cup finals that I’ll hesitate to toss on my stick in rink and wear it with pride.

When I was little I remember sitting on our couch in Newton, next to the pillow that had such intricate embroidery I swear I always saw a face whenever I looked at it, and watching hockey games. I don’t remember the scores, the action or much about the games themselves as I was about 6 years old at the time. I just recall that there was one team out there with a big “B” on the front of their sweater and that made them cool, cause “B” is also for “Becky”.

Since then, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Bruins and in 2002 when I moved to their hometown they soon became my team. Whenever I was jonesing for some hockey action I’d either gather ’round with other ex-pat Canadians to watch games, catch them on NESN or attend a handful at the Fleet Center.

I still followed the Canucks though, I would tune into CKNW‘s webcast feed to listen to Shorty give the play-by-play late at night. When the Canucks came to town I switched gears and cheered for Vancouver, who won 6-4, which was pretty awesome. At that time they still had Thornton, who was a powerhouse alongside Murray, and I knew the guy who did the music in the Fleet Center for games. I could always tell when he was working when some Tragically Hip would come on before a faceoff.

At one game when everyone stood up to sing the national anthem a girl behind me (who had already had too many beers at this point) proceeded to tip and spill her entire beverage down my back. My shirt was completely soaked so I decided I would just go buy something to wear for the rest of the game. I found a cute little jersey, changed into it, and went back to my seat – reeking of booze.

I haven’t had many opportunities to wear the jersey since then, until recently. The local Vancouver teen who lead the Vancouver Giants to the Memorial Cup as tournament MVP, Milan Lucic is currently playing for the Bruins.

[He] has done everything asked of him so far – skating well, playing two-way hockey, finishing his checks, dropping the gloves…

…If Lucic plays in more than nine games with the Bruins this season, his service time will count toward his three-year entry-level contract, which is worth an annual $850,000.

With some ice time, Lucic, who’s projected as a grinder with some offensive touch, could provide depth at left wing, perhaps allowing the club to make a veteran available for a trade to beef up the back end. [Boston Globe]

Side Note: If you still haven’t heard DaveO’s “Vancouver Giants Day” coverage at City Hall last spring with Pat Quinn, Brent Festerling, Don Hay, Kendal McCardle, and Milan Lucic, I suggest you go listen/download over at HockeyNW.

Best of luck to Milan in the big leagues, and although we’ll miss him at the Pacific Coliseum, I hope he definitely gets his time to shine with the Bruins this year. If he needs any tips on some really cool places to hang out (that you won’t have to be 21 to enter), he should give me a buzz. I know of all sorts of wholesome activities in Boston, even though they mostly involve bowling.

For me, I know there was nothing like watching a Habs/Bruins game being thousands of miles away from home but still enjoying some exciting “original six” hockey action. With all the reasons why I hold the Bruins close to my heart, I really hope they’ll have a great season. They are such a dynasty of a hockey club with far more history that I can attempt to compound into a blog post.

Photo credit: Richard Eriksson on Flickr

I’ve been attending more Vancouver Giants games lately. More as in I used to go maybe once a season and now I’ve already been to two and will be going again on Monday.

I love my Vancouver Canucks, I am a born and raised Canucks fan (in case the blogs, photos and podcasts aren’t self-evident) but I also love the game of hockey.

Our Memorial Cup Champions play one heck of a game and going to the Pacific Coliseum to see them in action is always a treat. The beer is cheaper, the tickets are cheaper and the cheerleaders – well, they have lovely pompoms. The Giants also have Jack, their mascot.

When I was little we had a book of old fairytales and one was “Jack the Giant Killer“, which I always think of when I see him. I suppose in this case it’s short for “lumberjack”… but it still feels a little weird when I think about it.

Jack must have gone to school with Fin (the beloved mascot for the Canucks who used to have his own blog) cause he’s almost as ‘out there’ when it comes to running around the arena and getting in touch with the crowd. He doesn’t have a “steam trigger” and it’s a little weird that the mascot is not an animal of some kind, but I think he’s growing on me. The toque, those soft blue eyes… we’ll see.

I’m going to start a regular Vancouver Giants report and I promise it will actually discuss the players and hockey, not just off-ice personalities. I’d like to get more familiar with the team as I suspect I’ll be spending more time at games this season.

My Vancouver Giants wish list is as follows: get out to more games, be able to put players’ names to faces cause I feel pretty bad that I can’t do that right now, meet up with multi-tasking media guru and voice of the Giants Joey Kenward, convince Joey Kenward to let me do a live blog for him. I’ll keep you posted.

The Empire Landmark is the tallest building in downtown Vancouver’s West End and its view are beyond compare. 42 storeys up, Cloud 9 restaurant serves up delicious dinners while revolving 360 degrees, offering up sights this Vancouverite has never seen before.

First impressions threw me back to that lunch I once had at Toronto’s CN Tower, I suppose the concept and layout for most revolving restaurants is the similar. The decor was seriously lacking but with the restaurant making a full rotation over the course of an hour, I really wasn’t looking anywhere except out the windows.

My sister and I had the prix fixe 3 course menu for $35. The salad was a basic caesar came complete with croutons fresh out of the box and my pinot grigio was $10/glass. I had the stuffed chicken for dinner which was actually really tasty and the cheesecake for dessert was probably some of the best I’ve ever had.

If you can overlook the lack of decor, the cheesy black ceiling with tiny lightbulbs that look like stars, and the dent in your pocket book, it was a very pleasant dining experience. I recommend it for anyone to try, at least once, because of the breathtaking views.

Transit is a huge issue in Metro Vancouver. Commuting, bus times, delays, over crowding, and lack of routes really gets me down but it’s nice to sometimes find something good about being a bus rider in this region.

I made mention of the MyBus Facebook app in my DemoCamp post but I wanted to elaborate and share a few more helpful tidbits.

John first told me about MyBus a few months ago and I have to say, it’s my absolutely favourite Facebook. It’s helpful, practical, informative and being someone who relies solely on foot and transit to get around town, it’s an invaluable tool.

What does MyBus do?
It keeps track of your bus schedules right from your Facebook profile page. Choose the stops that matter to you and enjoy live updates of your bus schedules!
So everyone can see what buses I take?
NO! Only you can see your own schedules.

Basically you load it onto your Facebook profile, it’s totally private but since people nowadays are usually constantly checking their profiles, it’s a good place to keep it. You type in your “home” or “starting” bus stop and it instantly gives you the next 6 departure times. You can load in as many bus routes as you need and they have recently introduced “Quick Lookup”. This allows you to quickly look up any route, any stop, and get the information for the next bus, on the fly.

Unfortunately yesterday I walked out to a C23 (community shuttle) bus stop not knowing when it would arrive. I didn’t have any wifi access so I couldn’t log in and check MyBus from my Nokia N95. I did the next best thing and called my sister to see if she was near a computer and could look up the times for me. She said that if you call the phone number on the bus stop – (604) 953-3333 you’ll get an automated service. So I dialed the number, followed the prompts and entered my bus stop number (a five-digit number at the top of the sign on the side of the road) and it told me what time it was and when the next few buses were to arrive. It worked like a charm.

But, this was also before I found out about another MyBus feature…

I don’t have Facebook can I still use MyBus?
YOU BET! All of your schedules are accessible by RSS and text message, courtesy of our partners at Quick Mobile. It’s a free service, meaning it costs as much as any other text message you would send. Text 74636 with your Vancouver or Calgary stop number to get your schedule!

Fantastic. So with MyBus, a computer, Facebook, or my mobile phone I can always get the latest information about bus stop arrival and departure times. This doesn’t solve the problem of late buses, and infrequent scheduling but it does make commuting around the region a little more pleasant.

Tonight is the third installment of DemoCampVancouver over at Workspace starting at 5:30pm (400-21 Water Street in Gastown).

Idea people will be presenting innovations on all things ranging from business to charity, high-technology to high-art. The purpose is to encourage a cross-pollination of industries and individuals in hopes that people engaged in unrelated endeavors might provide an enlightening perspective on the presenters concept. [Wiki]

I’ll be setup here (by here, I mean on this post, at this url) with the live blog for anyone who cannot attend or anyone who wants to get links, photos and archives after the fact.

In case you missed DemoCampVancouver01 or DemoCampVancouver02, a rundown of the process can be found on the wiki.

If you plan on attending, sign up or add it to your upcoming events. The live blog will begin this evening (just below this text) and will be timestamped. Simply hit “refresh” every couple of minutes for updated content.

5:30pm – The group is gathering in the main (back) room of Workspace. Always a pleasure to see David Drucker and Phillip Jeffrey at these events.

Thanks to FreeTheNet.ca I don’t have to ask anyone for the wifi password – sweet!

5:36pm – Boris is giving the rundown (which can be found on the wiki) but ALSO we’re going to see the introduction of BATTLE DECKS. Basically two people will be given a slide deck for a presentation they’ve never seen before and they’ll have to go at it, kinda like “unconference improv”.

5:50pm – The 9 presenters who have put their ideas on the board are now giving their 30 second speeches as the field will be narrowed down to 4 for the actual presentations.

6:00pm – BATTLE DECKS are up, two people are going head to head before we take the vote on the presenters for this evening. Up first is Mike who is given “Googledogs”. This has become a true testament to his pitching abilities, and ability to take the unknown and turn it into something funny.

The next deck is “USP 2.0″…. “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s not a unicorn, it’s a horse with a sword.” This is the first ever installment of BATTLE DECKS in Vancouver. For the next DemoCamp Boris puts out the call for deck makers and contestants. The winner this time around? The USP 2.0 presentation. The prize? The unicorn.

6:10pm – Vote time: Which demos will we see tonight?

6:20pm – Presenting first will be Joe Solomon – RaytTheNet. Rayt uses a sidebar in your browser where you can leave a comment about a website for anyone else that visits that site – anyone that also uses that plugin. It helps to get a message across, start online petitions etc. Boris asks Joe what makes Rayt the plugin to use as we’ve seen models like this in the past. Joe says this is about social change, not about getting rich. It also curbs spam comments within the plugin. Joe also addresses copyright issues ie. Yahoo was upset with another similar program a while back basically saying they were defaming the site. With Rayt, you can also rate the comments and discuss websites in their web portal. How does it make money? They engage non-profits to encourage their supporters to comment on sites regarding causes, the payment to Rayt would come from these organizations.

6:30pm – Second presenter is Kyle Vucko – Indochino. This is a website where you can enter all of your measurements and receive custom made suits, shirts, trench coats and ties. These are made in Shanghai, hence the name of the company/play on words of Indochino. The business has partner tailors in the region and are very confident in their scalability. Question: women’s too? No, but they’re working on it and “women are more picky”. The biggest competition or threat would be if Land’s End or Zara if they decided to go with a model like this. The edge? Price. There are no middle men, and because of the system they have setup, they are confident that it would take a long time for anyone to catch up. Question: what’s the repeatability? Very high, “far more than half” that have bought their clothing have come back for a repeat sale. Question: how long will it take for my custom hot-pink suit to arrive? About 2 weeks, so if we order one now, we should have it for the next DemoCamp.

6:40pm – Third demo… “I’m 31% normal, does that mean I’m a bad person?” Are you Normal is a Facebook app that is also available outside of Facebook, presented by Kinzin. The concept is to collect this data for fun then to remove it and apply it in an amusing way, outside of the application. You can suggest survey topics, questions etc. Who uses the App? They’re currently at the rate of 1 new user every minute.

6:48pm – John Boxall and Igor Faletski – Handi Mobility – the fine folks who brought us MyBus (which I now cannot live without) present LiveVote.ca -”Free SMS/text message voting system. World’s first and homegrown. We all know the concept of voting with your cell phone ie. the whole “American Idol” phone vote system, but this is an innovation… as far as Igor knows, there is no ‘free’ system in the world that exists – usually users pay for text-to-vote. During the presentation they’ve actually initiated a LiveVote, which we call all see on the big screen. DemoCampers are currently voting, for no charge, and we’re seeing the results in real-time. Next time for BATTLE DECKS? We should use LiveVote, eh.

6:55pm – This brings DemoCampVancover03 to a close, with just a few announcements… upcoming events are: The Vancouver Blogger Meetup, FacebookCamp, MobileCamp, Nitobi Hack Day, Ruby/Rails Meetup and another Launch Party Vancouver. Links for all of those will be up shortly. Right now I need to log out, walk home before it gets too dark, and have some dinner with John (who wished he could be here but couldn’t). Thanks for tuning in!