I’m wondering, how likely is it that someone will find the bill – certainly if everyone in the city knew about the contest, someone would find it quick, but I’m betting there’s a very good chance this bill will just wander off.

Reasons;

1 – Banks pull notes all the time. This may only temporarily remove the bill from circulation, but it could freeze it indefinitely, or even move it to another city where The Peak isn’t heard. And the longer this bill is out there, the more likely the maximum audience will be reached and passed before it’s found.

2 – Even more likely is the bill leaves the city on a person, headed on a flight to Toronto, a car-ride to Prince George, or traded in for American South of the Border.

3 – Fire. OK, I admit this is very very unlikely. I just wanted more than two ways the contest could end in nothing (and while I understand the purpose is to get the name of the station out, not for someone to actually win the five grand, it’s more interesting is someone does win.)

Photo Courtesy of BC Hot House

One of my most favorite places to get local produce is the Two E’s Farm at 16411 Fraser Hwy in Surrey. They grow a lot of their own organic fruits and vegetables. More importantly, they try to keep all of their food local whenever possible.  They’re the only place that I know of that actually tells you where the food came from, which is a big plus. They have their own farm on site, so a lot of the staples people eat (broccoli, Green Onions, Lettuce) are grown there as well. Tried Kale from Two E’s for the first time last year… very sharp flavour.

Did I mention that they don’t charge you an arm and a leg for their food? Yes, even the organic stuff.

Great produce, and great value… but make sure you pack your paid for produce in their bags… otherwise they’ll think you didn’t pay for them when you go outside. Also, no Credit Cards Either.

If you know of any other places around Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley to get reasonably priced, high quality food, leave a comment. Currently, I’m looking for both an egg supplier, beef and milk source. Sometimes Safeway and the regular chain stores  can get quite expensive.

For some reason, I thought, “Hey why not see if good ol’ (or god-awful, depending on your point of view) Gordon Campbell is on Twitter.” Sure enough, he was. What about good ol’ (or god-awful, depending on your point of view) Carole James? She’s there too!

I added Gordon Campbell (@g_campbell) to my list… and within two hours he added me to his. Still waiting for Ms. James (@carolejames) to add me to hers. But considering that she’s not following anyone at the moment, I don’t think she’ll be inviting me to her list anytime soon. Granted, they’re both probably written by party staffers anyway.

Buzz Bishop (@buzzbishop) of 95.3 FM Virigin Radio fame tweets quite a bit, and I find his them to be a great source of what’s going on in Vancouver… and a great source for good eats! Local Vancouver Sun writer Gillian Shaw (@gilliamshaw) is a great read as well… She taught me a lot about how Twitter works on her recent Twitter article. For you Vancouver talk radio junkies, CKNW (@cknw) and News1130 (@news1130) are on it as well.

I’m sure that there are a more Vancouver twitter accounts out there. If you know of any good ones that we can follow, please leave a comment… Bonus points for you if you could find one that covers Vancouver’s food scene. I’m looking for more great places to eat!

Ponder this for awhile, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

[UPDATE] Did I say tomorrow? I meant… tomorrow after tomorrow.

As Ryan [MB] commented, those with a cellphone should take a look at Kaywa QR code reader – QR code is what you see above. There are in fact a number of different code formats, including ones that look like a beehive of hexagons or a series of circles. However, if you’ve ever looked at the labels or packaging for various foods and other sundries, you’ll most likely see a code much like above – a seemingly random collection of black and white pixels. Even the smallest of them can contain a lot more information than a best before date, including URLs. Some can even contain an image (there’s your Gibsonian cyberpunk moment of the day – escort ads that can “show” without getting into trouble. Or, fine. Kittens and puppies. The picture is of rainbows and ducklings.)

There are a handful of decoders for the iPhone, all of them capable of decoding more than just the QR code format, but they tend to be a little finicky. Currently, I’m getting the best results with BeeTagg.

And even if you don’t have a phone, you can still have a lot of fun making and decoding online. Here; go to this link, and then put the following URL in (it’s the address for the image above.)

http://img.metblogs.com/vancouver/files/2009/01/qrcode.png

Cool, right?

It’s possible that we don’t need this, but at the same time, I can’t help but think the uses are vast… up to and including pictures of dolphins covered in glitter. And really, they won’t take hold until people start thinking up some of those uses and acting on them. Got any good ideas?

There’s been quite a bit of activity on the Vancouver blog scene the last week or so, and since I’ve been busy the way I’m going to cover it is to throw it all online in a big’ol roundup of news. It’s like a Morning Brew [br] of slightly outdated Vancouver blog news.

- Morning Brew: the best MB title ever [br].

- Best of 604: we tried to do a best of Vancouver blogs thing here during the summer, but everything just sort of got overwhelming and I couldn’t hack it. Rebecca’s a professional blogger unlike me, so she’ll avoid making a complete hash of it [b604].

- Canadian Blog Awards: Apparently there’s a Canadian Blog Awards. I’m not sure if they’re any more reputable than the awards that were around in thet late ’90s when I won first place for design for my hidiously garish Matthew Good Band fansite that I made with Angelfire, but hey they’ve got a beaver logo. Lots of local blogs got nominated including the previously mentioned Rebecca and Raul who is always worth a vote [h604].

- Northern Voice 2009: I went to Northern Voice in 2006 and pulled a muscle from constantly having to roll my eyes [mbv]. I sort of fell between the target audiances of people who were super new to blogs and the internet and the type of people who wanted to spend an hour arguing about comment moderation software. Having said that it sounds like in recent years the conference has been stellar and I’m most likely going to be giving it another go this year. The conference is in late Febuary, and right now has an open call for speakers.

The Georgia Straight: I’ve been freelancing for the tech section of The Georgia Straight for the last few months, and now they’ve launched a dedicated tech blog [tgs]. On a related note if this roundup of local blogging news has gotten you freshly interested in blogs, it’s worth checking out my article on local bloggers that ran a few issues ago [tgs].

C-FATO, originally uploaded by jspitfire.

There’s a fascinating feature article online from a recent Wiredabout University of British Columbia graduate Chuck Fipke whose discovery of diamonds in the north basically kick started the Canadian diamond industry [wm]. It’s an interesting read.

I went to grade school with Fipke’s son, and played road hockey with him a number of times. That was before the diamonds were discovered and the Chuck and his wife went through Canada’s costliest divorce settlements [nns].

In way of a factual clarification Cheetahs, the strip club mentioned in the article, is better described as Kelowna’s least skeevy strip club as opposed to its classiest.

It’s hard living in Vancouver and not having an issue with Yaletown.  We’ve blogged about some of the great stuff there like Goldfish, The Hamilton Street Grill, Phat and Elfsar Comics, but parking is a bitch and at night the area turns into the sort of meat market that few people would feel beautiful enough feel as if they fit into.

Again though there’s still some great stuff, including a whole host of cool bakeries, coffee shops and of course the best comic book store in the city in Elfsar.  (Full disclosure of vested interests I work on a very part time basis at Elfsar.  They however are not paying me for the mention, and I was a regular customer for a year before being hired).  If you’ve not really checked Yaletown recently they’re having the latest in a series of summer block parties tomorrow (Friday August 8th) and the next day (Saturday August 9th) [ytbia].

The Yaletown Business Improvement Association’s website hasn’t yet really gone into detail about what’s going on, not having updated their site since June apparently, but a number of the store, banks and resturants will be having special sales.  I had to go from a Facebook posting from Elfsar for any information on what other business were doing and that’s below the jump.

According to Elfsar:

On Friday August 8th:
We will have DJ Leanne & ZUZU, with Hip Hop performances by Harbour Centre Squad between 5-7pm on our street.
(This is sponsored by Heineken)
http://www.ihnglobal.com/banner/Yaletown_video.html

Also at Elfsar, starting at 5pm on Friday meet artist Jordan Oliwa who will be signing his 2 new books (SINS OF GONZO NATION & STICK N PUCK THE RINK RAT CHRONICLES) available at Elfsar. Other Artists scheduled to appear are Robert Valley (MASSIVE SWERVE VOL 1 & VOL 2) and Robin Mitchell (ART OF ROBIN MITCHELL VOL 1 & 2)
Take part of our SALE as well (*details listed below)

On Saturday August 9th:
We will have a Fun in the Sun Block party, 12 noon – 4pm, with performances by DJ Joel West, games prizes and sidewalk specials all along our street.
This is in conjunction with the Femsport Street Party, 11am -6pm at Hamilton and Nelson, where elite woman athletes will be competing for the first time in Yaletown. (Think She-Hulk vs Wonder Woman)

The Toonie Store will be providing Balloons
DJ Joel is booked to play from noon to 4pm
A zodiac prize wheel will be available and you can winrandom gifts from all the different businesses on the 1000 block (Including Elfsar)
CIBC willofferinga caricature artist to do your portrait
Hamilton Street Grill will have an oyster shucking extravaganza
Elfsar will have a large 2 day sale and host a comic book artist signing on both Friday & Saturday
EQ3 will have a special sale
Van Pet will hand out treats (you may want to give these to your pet or small children)
TD will have a table, with pamphlets and other goodies (I’m guessing cookies)
BMO is going to hand out water bottles (Stay Hydrated)
Flesh is going to have a sale (They sell underwear folks so stop the jokes now)

*SALE DETAILS: Elfsar will have a sale all day long on both Friday (10:30-9pm) and Saturday (11:00-6pm). Buy 2 get 1 FREE on all Graphic Novels. 50% OFF on all Back Issues and Variant Incentive Covers, 20% OFF on all other merchandise (Toys, Models, Posters, T-Shirts…etc.)
Note some exceptions apply and sale does not include consignment items.

For my part, I remember that Sports Junkies had great, highly random sporting-goods deals. I especially loved their selection of bike junk, but their Boxing Day sales, in a world of overhyped sales, were the only ones I consistently attended, because if you wanted bike stuff, it was never going to cost any less. Over the years I bought bikes, frames, lights, tires…probably about 3 bikes worth of parts one transaction at a time.

Alas, the proprietor has moved out of town, and the owner of the Vancouver store doesn’t want to take on a new partner. So as of August 1st, and after one more blowout sale, they’re gone.

That’s probably not enough news to post here; I’m really posting it just for the photo of their closing-out sign.

Gastown was a zoo at the end of my work day, so I decided that today was theme post day.

Heavenly Shoes, the bringer of your life is John Fluevog. I love many of your delights, and the next time I have $250 just laying around doing nothing… well, you know.

Theme for Week 2: July 20 – July 26 – Breakfast

So you’re thinking that not only are you not eating enough fruit these days, you’re not spending enough on fruit either.  Well have no fear thanks to Japanese fruit growing methods you can now spend $99 on a watermelon.  Even better knews, you can make a house out of them because they’re stackable and square.

Surely Wikipedia can explain this [wp]:

In Japan, farmers of the Zentsuji region found a way to grow cubic watermelons, by growing the fruits in glass boxes and letting them naturally assume the shape of the receptacle. The square shape is designed to make the melons easier to stack and store, but the square watermelons are often more than double the price of normal ones. Pyramid shaped watermelons have also been developed.

These were spotted at Urban Fare in Coal Harbour, making me feel uneasy about doing my grocery shopping there.  I guess I should probably start comparison shopping, maybe $24 for a box of Corn Flakes isn’t the Item of the Week deal I thought it was.