A Blue Star

Here is a house that converted its backyard in to a corn maze and charge people to run the maze.
I seen this done many times with corn mazes where the maze its self makes more money then the actually corn could.

Goggle maps with satellite photo

Step up to the counter and check in with the cashier. You will see a posted time in which to get through the maze. Pick up your time card and punch in! Run through the maze to find the cheese and punch your card. Now you keep running through the maze until you find the finish. Once out of the maze you punch out at the counter. If you beat the posted time on your first try, you win a free t-shirt.

The problem with mazes like this is that you can always just use the right hand rule to find the end or cheese. If the maze was a disjoint mazes (circles with inside circles) then the right hand rule becomes useless, you would just go around in circles. You would have to use a Pledge_algorithm or something similar to find your way or randomly guess.

Found via Neatorama.com

There is not a kid in my elementary school that hadn’t heard of Mario by the time he was twelve, its ingrained in to our childhood. Mario and his friends will always have a special spot in our hearts.

Because there are so many fans of Mario and his friends after a while fan art, fan movies, fan flash animations start to pop up.

Here is a collection of a few of the better ones

• The Peoples Mario (flash animation of communists Mario)
• Six Sinister Things About Super Mario
• Communist-mario.com
• Burly Mario
• Evil Mario Grimly Surveys Dystopia

Most fans tend to make Mario out to be a bad buy, I wonder why?

If you have anther Mario contributed work feel free to comment with it and I will add it to the list.

Via GrowaBrain

Black to play and Black wins material
By: Shelby Lyman

Hint: Set up the skewer

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For the people that grew up with the Muppets, Mah Na Mah Na song is no stranger. I still find myself singing it as I walk down the street to the horror of my too cool friends with in ear shot.

The Muppets, Mah Na Mah Na song

Today with the help of Neatorama.com I found a few version featuring characters from WOW.

ROFLMAO (thats the name of the song)

Enjoy.
All my favorite Youtube videos can be found on my Youtube account.
Feel free to suggest any videos that you think I would enjoy.

PS: ROFLMAO = Rolling on Floor Laughing My Ass Off

Found with the help of the good people at thevancouverite.com

Two foot James bond

wank wank hes 2 foot 9, he will kick you in the nut sack from behind….

it doesn’t get much better then that.

Enjoy

I enjoyed them so much the first time I posted some riddles that I am going to do it again.

Answers after the cut…

1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms: The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven’t eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?
2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes. Finally, she hangs him. But 5 minutes later they both go out together and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?
3. A magician was boasting one day at how long he could hold his breath under water. His record was 6 minutes. A kid that was listening said, “that’s nothing, I can stay under water for 10 minutes using no type of equipment or air pockets!” The magician told the kid if he could do that, he’d give him $10,000. The kid did it and won the money. Can you figure out how?
4. There are two plastic jugs filled with water. How could you put all of this water into a barrel, without using the jugs or any dividers, and still tell which water came from which jug?
5. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and grey when you throw it away?
6. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?
7. This is an unusual paragraph. I’m curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it? It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it! In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out! Try to do so without any coaching!
8. You are participating in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?
9. If you overtake the last person, then you are…?
10.  (in your head!) Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now add 10. What is the total?
11. Mary’s father has five daughters: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, 3. Nini, 4. Nono. What is the name of the fifth daughter?

If you know any good riddles feel free to share them with me.

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bookmarks for funvill

• NOTCOT: Freebase Pancakes
  Every now and then, a series of images comes along and just blows your mind. I couldn’t stop laughing, and then just kind of staring amazement at the micro scale “cooking” going on here ~ my friend is calling them Freebase Pancakes. How one even com Tagged as: [tag]cooking, food, cool, drugs, photo, [/tag]
• HijackGL — Non-Invasive Extension of Graphics Applications
  HijackGL is a system in development by Alex Mohr and Christopher Herrman under the direction of Michael Gleicher at the University of Wisconsin. The goal of this work is to develop a system that allows us to explore what can be done by intercepting, inter Tagged as: [tag]quake, pencil, cool, [/tag]
• Paint.NET - Free Photo Editing Software for Windows
  Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development as an undergrad Tagged as: [tag]software, graphics, Freeware, photo, windows, Free, tools, [/tag]
• A Daily Dose of Architecture
  A blog on Architecture with images for every post Tagged as: [tag]architecture, design, blogs, [/tag]
• Riddles | ABlueStar
  Here are some riddles that I enjoyed enough to save just for you guys. Answers after the cut… 1. What goes round the house and in the house but never touches the house? Tagged as: [tag]riddles, [/tag]
• Stuff2Do Vancouver
  The first is stuff2do. It’s a pretty cool way to check out what’s going on around town. Everything from Theatre and music, to festival and attractions, stuff2do lets you know what’s going on via some pretty slick podcasts. Now I’m no expert on culture and Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, videoblog, [/tag]
• Fork Bending Video
  You can turn a kitchen fork into a work of art with just a pair of pliers and some imagination. Tagged as: [tag]for:jimic, art, video, [/tag]
• Use Post Excerpts Everywhere
  In order to make sure that you are not incurring any penalty for duplicated content you should make all those pages display only post excerpts instead of full posts. You could even display post excerpts on the Homepage, but make sure your readers would be Tagged as: [tag]blogging, SEO, webdev, [/tag]
• DIGG button
  The Digg button is a very simple beginner electronics that teaches how to solder and program microcontroller. Once made, this basic electronic project mimics the popular Digg.com website: each time you push the button, the button flashes “Dug” and increme Tagged as: [tag]doomsday, electronics, [/tag]
• Room Color and How it Affects your Mood at Home Inspiration, Products, Furniture, Gadgets and More for a Better House
  Color can influence our mood and our thoughts. Colors affect people in many ways, depending upon one’s age, gender, ethnic background or local climate. Certain colors or groups of colors tend to get a similar reaction from most people - the overall diff Tagged as: [tag]color, design, home, decorating, psychology, [/tag]
• What DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is about - Warren Ellis
  Suicide is the third biggest killer of teenagers in the United States. In 1999 more people in America died from suicide than from homicide. Do you think about this? Tagged as: [tag]interesting, warrenellis, future, [/tag]
• MANHUNT!!!
  Manhunt is a hide-and-seek variant. The game starts out with one person, known as the MANHUNTER, who is “it”. After the manhunter has been selected, the FUGITIVES have 120 seconds to hide. If a FUGITIVE is tagged by a MANHUNTER, she or he is BRAINWASH Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, games, [/tag]

VIVO Media arts is a not for profit video production, exhibition and distribution center. They rent equipment, and exhibition spaces with there pretty cheap Membership rate its a good resouce for anyone tring to get in to film or other media arts.

They also have a good variety of workshops on many different subjects.
Some of the upcoming workshops that have caught my eye;

Beginner electronics and circuit bending
Thu. April 26, 6-9 PM, Fri. April 27, 6-9 PM (Two sessions x 3 hours)

This course will cover some basic theory of electronic principals that is essential for beginning to work with this medium. From there we will look at some of the components that make up simple circuits and that create the building blocks for more complex circuits. Students will learn some of the basic skills needed for electronic work such as soldering, breadboarding, and reading a schematic. These skills will be used to build a simple audio amplifier (simlare to the cracker box amp that i made earlier) and experiment with different input options such as contact microphones. We will also have a look at how to get started with circuit bending and modifying existing circuits.

Reverse animation and compositing
Sat. April 28 2-6 PM

Reverse Animation is similar to Rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Reverse Animation is the process in which you ERASE elements of live action or other media, using Photoshop, creating transparent backgrounds or other effects. These frames can then be used in Final Cut Pro to create professional looking multi-layer compositions.

Digital photography
Thu. May 10, 6-9:30 PM, Fri. May 11, 6-9:30 PM (Two sessions x 3.5 hours)

The irony of digital photography is that it is now so easy and convenient to take good pictures, yet people are too overwhelmed by these advances to take advantage of them. In this workshop participants will learn how to manipulate ISO settings (sensitivity of “film”), when to use spot metering or regular metering, how to use aparture priority and shutter priority, how to set white balance, and how to do post processing. The workshop will be hands-on, with an extensive question and answer session.

VIVO Media arts has lots of other workshops available and new ones are added regularly, if you get a chance you should check them out.

The urban cactus building
Found via boingboing.net, Who found it on archidose.blogspot.com

Urban Cactus is a housing project in the Vuurplaat section of Rotterdam by UCX Architects / Ben Huygen and Jasper Jaegers and done for Vestia Rotterdam Feijenoord/Estrade Projecten.

Due to its siting at the end of harbor, the architects chose to conceptualize the project as belonging to the “green nerve” rather than the surrounding urban structure.

They placed the 98 residential units on 19 floors, using the pattern of outdoor spaces to determine the overall appearance of the project.

The slightly irregular pattern alternates these outdoor spaces to create what are in effect double-height spaces. Each unit then receives more sunlight than a typical stacked composition.

Also the terrace area might be equivalent to a constant depth extended around the perimeter (say two meters), but their configuration creates larger “rooms” for gardening and for enjoying the outdoors and the city views.

A little while ago i got assigned to do an audit of all the PCs in our network. I could have taken the time to check every one of the computes one by one and write down what hardware was on each one but that would have taken the whole day instead I used this nice utility that took 15min to audit 30 computers.One of the nicest features about this utility is that it can create full HTML reports of everything on your system. It also is a portable exe (no install required) so I was able to run it from a USB stick.

SIW gives detailed information about your computer properties and settings, detailed specs for:

• Software: Operating System, Installed Software and Hotfixes, Processes, Services, Users, Open Files, System Uptime, Installed Codecs, Licenses.
• Hardware: Motherboard, Sensors, BIOS, CPU, chipset, PCI/AGP, USB and ISA/PnP Devices, Memory, Video Card, Monitor, Disk Drives, CD/DVD Devices, SCSI Devices, S.M.A.R.T., Ports, Printers.
• Network: Network Cards, Network Shares, currently active Network Connections, Open Ports.
• Tools: Password Recovery, Reveal lost passwords hidden behind asterisks, Product Keys and Serial Numbers (CD Key), MAC Address Changer, Shutdown / Restart.
• Real-time monitors: CPU, Memory, Page File usage and Network Traffic.

It’s worth taking a look at, I was very impressed.

bookmarks for funvill

• DIGG button
  The Digg button is a very simple beginner electronics that teaches how to solder and program microcontroller. Once made, this basic electronic project mimics the popular Digg.com website: each time you push the button, the button flashes “Dug” and increme Tagged as: [tag]doomsday, electronics, [/tag]
• Room Color and How it Affects your Mood at Home Inspiration, Products, Furniture, Gadgets and More for a Better House
  Color can influence our mood and our thoughts. Colors affect people in many ways, depending upon one’s age, gender, ethnic background or local climate. Certain colors or groups of colors tend to get a similar reaction from most people - the overall diff Tagged as: [tag]color, design, home, decorating, psychology, [/tag]
• What DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is about - Warren Ellis
  Suicide is the third biggest killer of teenagers in the United States. In 1999 more people in America died from suicide than from homicide. Do you think about this? Tagged as: [tag]interesting, warrenellis, future, [/tag]
• MANHUNT!!!
  Manhunt is a hide-and-seek variant. The game starts out with one person, known as the MANHUNTER, who is “it”. After the manhunter has been selected, the FUGITIVES have 120 seconds to hide. If a FUGITIVE is tagged by a MANHUNTER, she or he is BRAINWASH Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, games, [/tag]
• Clean CSS - A Resource for Web Designers - Optmize and Format your CSS
  CSS Formatter and Optimiser - the same selectors and properties are automatically merged - your code should be well-formed. This is no validator which points out errors in your CSS code. To make sure that your code is valid, use the W3C Validator. Tagged as: [tag]CSS, tools, webdesign, optimizer, [/tag]

Happy 420 everyone.

Here are some riddles that I enjoyed enough to save just for you guys.
Answers after the cut…

1. What goes round the house and in the house but never touches the house?
2. What is it that you can keep after giving it to someone else?
3. What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?
4. The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?
5. What goes round and round the wood but never goes into the wood?
6. I have a little house in which I live all alone. It has no doors or windows, and if I want to go out I must break through the wall.
7. There are four brothers in this world that were all born together. The first runs and never wearies. The second eats and is never full. The third drinks and is always thirsty. The fourth sings a song that is never good.
8. It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s no more than a month old. What is it?
9. What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?
10. What fastens two people yet touches only one?
11. What is it the more you take away the larger it becomes?
12. I am the beginning of sorrow, and the end of sickness. You cannot express happiness without me, yet I am in the midst of crosses. I am always in risk, yet never in danger. You may find me in the sun, but I am never out of darkness.
13. What holds water yet is full of holes?
14. What goes into the water red and comes out black?
15. What goes into the water black and comes out red?
16. When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing.

If you know any good riddles feel free to share them with me.

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A few days ago I was asked to find out where or close to where a user of ours was coming from. so i created this GEO location script Where does this IP Address come from

When ever a ISP buys a block of IP address they are entered in to a database. When a client of the ISP requests a new IP address the ISP gives them one from the block of IP address they they bought. With your IP address and the addressing information from your ISP I can look up the address of your ISP’s local router to get a general idea of where you are coming from (with in a few blocks in populated areas)

This information can be useful when generating ads for people from specific locations.
For example: I would want to show a red state something different the a blue state in a election year.

Try it out and tell me how close I got
Where does this IP Address come from

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’

Thou shall not

bookmarks for funvill

• Clean CSS - A Resource for Web Designers - Optmize and Format your CSS
  CSS Formatter and Optimiser - the same selectors and properties are automatically merged - your code should be well-formed. This is no validator which points out errors in your CSS code. To make sure that your code is valid, use the W3C Validator. Tagged as: [tag]CSS, tools, webdesign, optimizer, [/tag]
• http://gvtv.ca/
  GVTV is a video series about the issues, people and ideas that have an impact on the Greater Vancouver region. Broadcast on the Web and on Shaw Cable 4, the series provides citizens of the Lower Mainland with information that gives context to the municipa Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, video, Canada, [/tag]
• A Different View of Vancouver | eric burke | BLOG
  How to make a grafitty style photo. Tagged as: [tag]photography, photoshop, vancouver, for:jimic, [/tag]
• Canada Post - Addressing Guidelines
  The postal code is an integral part of every postal address in Canada. The postal code was designed to aid in sorting mail by both mechanized and manual methods. It also enables the Customer to presort mail, thereby bypassing a number of sorting processes Tagged as: [tag]mail, kb, [/tag]
• Expired - But Not Gone » Daily Domainer
  That’s when ICANN stepped in and suggested that an additional 30-day grace period / hold time be put into effect. That suggestion became policy and all expiring domains go through a 30 day redemption period. During this hold time, the domain name ceases Tagged as: [tag]domain, webdev, [/tag]
• SIW - System Information for Windows
  SIW performs computer configuration analysis and diagnostics. it can create a report file (CSV, HTML, TXT or XML), and is able to run in batch mode (for Asset Management, PC Audit, Software Inventory and Hardware Inventory). Tagged as: [tag]windows, software, utilities, tools, system, Win32, [/tag]
• Gallery eyes new home
  The Vancouver Art Gallery faces an “urgent” need for a new home, says its director. Kathleen Bartels says space restrictions now allow the gallery to display only about three per cent of its 9,000-item collection. Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, art, [/tag]

Today I was told by a friend of mine of a game that recently started in Vancouver called Manhunt.

BASIC MANHUNT RULES:
Manhunt is a hide-and-seek variant. The game starts out with one person, known as the MANHUNTER, who is “it”. After the manhunter has been selected, the FUGITIVES have 120 seconds to hide.

If a FUGITIVE is tagged by a MANHUNTER, she or he is BRAINWASHED and forced to join the side of the MANHUNTERS. At the end of the designated time limit, all FUGITIVES who have not been arrested are declared the winners.

Play occurs within predetermined boundaries. If a FUGITIVE exits these boundaries for any reason, she/he joins the MANHUNTERS. Players are identified as being distinct from the general civilian population by means of a HIGHLY-VISIBLE ARMBAND.

Sounds like an interesting game.

The next match is WEDNESDAY April 25th 2007 @ 7:30 & 8:45 pm @ Waterfront Station. I’m going to see if i can convince a few of my friends to join me its always better with more people.
You can find out more about this game from the official Vancouver manhunt site.

A few months ago I found a Youtube video of Sachiko Kodama ferrofluid sculpture. There are more then a few of them running around on you tube just search for Ferrofluid. There is also the snake oil project that I posted earlier.

They looked amazing and pretty simple too do, an electric magnet and iron core and a bunch of [tag]Ferrofluid[/tag]. I Could make one of these easily, it can not be that hard I said to myself.

So me and my artist friend decided to make our own. We choose to start small first, a glass dish with a iron bar glued to the center, and a electric magnet placed under the plate. If everything went well we would move on to more complex projects like a reverse water fall, or the jumping frog project.

At first we tried to make our own Ferrofluid but that didn’t work out too well. It turned out to be more of a brown mud that sort reacted to magnets but it wasn’t very impressive nothing like the videos that we had seen. After a few attempts at creating home made Ferrofluid we decided to buy some of the good stuff online. It was pretty expensive I think it was $230 CAN for a 1 liter bottle. I don’t remember where we bought it from.

The stuff is messy very messy, it stained my skin for a good week and imposable to get out of anything fabric.

The first thing we did was to put about 20 ml in to a small glass jar and put a rare earth (Neodymium-Iron-Boron) magnet to it. It was fun to play around using 3 or 4 magnets and making it hop from one place to anther but spikes where small less then 5 mm tall and not very impressive. We spent the first few days just playing around with it trying to get the spikes taller and seeing what it could do.

We found out later that all the sculptures that Sachiki Kodama did where under huge magnification and there is no way to make 3 inch spikes no matter how much magnetic force you applied. This was very disappointing it would not make the grand center piece in my living room that I wanted it to be. We had already spent $230 of the Ferror fluid might as well complete the project.

The first step is to get a working electric magnet powerful enough to pull the fluid up and around the iron rod. This proved to be harder then expected. Again the first thing we tried was to build our own electric magnet. We used a speaker, a iron core with copper wire wrapped around it 1000s of times in many different configurations, a yoke from an old TV, a solenoid from a car door. Nothing was powerful enough to pull the Ferror fluid up the rod. Anther disappointment and i was getting pretty frustrated with the whole project.

I wasn’t about to say die yet, I started posting questions on hack forums like the MAKE forums for help with my project. The people on the forums where extremely helpful and informative. In the end I decided to buy a industrial grade electric magnet capable of holding 500LBs on 12 volts from ElectroMechanicsOnline.com. The magnet cost about $170 with shipping but I was determined to get this thing working no matter what. Now I had the power to force this Ferrofluid in any direction that I wanted or so I thought.

The electric magnet came in the mail and the magnet barely did anything more then the Neodymium magnets did. Disappointed I gave up.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Materials list

• Ferrofluid 1 liter $230
• Holding electric magnet 500 lb $170
• Set of 30 different sized rare earth (Neodymium-Iron-Boron) magnet $50

The Eden project was inspired by Jon McCormack’s time in the Litchfield National Park, in Australia. The artwork is a self-generating, artificial ecosystem complete with rocks, biomass and sonic animals populated. The creatures evolve, move about the environment, emit and listen to sounds, forage for food, encounter predators and mate with each other.

After reading about projects like Eden and other artificial ecosystem I started thinking about other artificial ecosystem and maybe creating my own.

Each creature has a few attributes,

• ID - A unique identifier for every creature
• Sex - Male or female of the species males can only mate with other females, ect.
• Age - Depending on there genetic material each creature will have a different max age, once this age is reached the creature dies. if the creature does not mate before that then they do not pass on there genetic history.
• Energy level - If the creature does not regularly eat it will die off, it can eat the fool found around the land or the dead bodies of the other creatures,
• X - Where it is located on the map in the X plane
• Y - Where the creature is located on the map in the Y plane
• Genetic material - A linked list history of every creature before it, all its parents and there attributes, this information is used to set up the creatures initial properties. if the creatures parents lived a long life then this creature has a better chance of living a longer life.

The land or world has a few things in it

• Walls or boarders that are no passable
• Natural Food that can be eaten and grows by its self once a every year.
• Poison food that will kill the creature if eaten. the creatures have a chance to detect that it is poison this chance will increase and decrease independently on there genetic material.
• Dead and Alive creatures

Base behaviored of the creatures

• Creature of the opposite sex who meet each other creatures will have the choice of having mating. The choice is random and depends on the Genetic material of the creatures. Mating does not guarantee procreation its a random chance based off of the Genetic material. Mating consumes energy. The creatures can mate as many times as you like with as many different partners as it finds.
• If no food can be found and the creature has less then 20% energy left it will attack other creatures, depending on its Genetic material and energy levels the creature will either die or kill the other creature. The creatures may eat other dead bodies.
• if a body of a creatures is dead, it may be eaten by other creatures. if a year has passed and the creatures body has not been eaten it disappears.
• Dead bodies of creatures that died because of poison are poisonousness
• Moving requires energy

It would make a pretty interesting project.

White to play and mate in three moves
H. Northcote, Toronto 1st Prize, Toronto Globe, 1872

(more…)

Last Saturday night around 9pm we where killing time at Broadway Skytrain station before heading downtown to see some show and we decided to in at The End Cafe for a bit.

The place was packed with people (20 something to mid 30s) there was a live Spanish band playing on a small stage that was pretty good good. People dancing laughing and generally having a good time, great first date atmosphere.

We ordered a Amaretto Sour ($4.50) but they couldn’t have done a worse job, first they didn’t use a shaker, pored one good size shot of Ameretto in to a glass of cube ice and added a shot of raspberry sour puss. I don’t know what they where thinking adding sour puss to a Ameretto sour but I wouldn’t pay for it. I complained for a bit and they gave me a free beer.

The bad drink tainted the entire night but the good music and atmosphere made up for it, I will go back to this place but I won’t be ordering any of there badly mixed drinks.

Name: The End Cafe
Address: 360 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC (map)
Ratting: 8/10
Last word: Good music, Good atmosphere, bad mixed drinks order a beer.

White to play and mate in three moves
M. J. Murphy, Quebec Dedicated to Mr. J. B. Halkett

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Its that time again Vancouver Public Library annual book sale, cheap books from $0.55- $2.25. Some of the books that they are selling off include; Adult and children’s novels, Children’s non-fiction books, Children’s picture books, Pocket-sized fiction paperbacks, Large print books, Audio cassettes, Multilingual books, Magazines, Encyclopedia sets.

Map to Vancouver public library

Hours
Thursday, April 12 10:00 am to 9:00 pm
Friday, April 13 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Saturday, April 14 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Sunday, April 15 10:00 am to 5:00 pm

White to play and mate in three moves
W. Atkinson, Montreal 1st Prize, Canadian Spectator Tourney, 1880

(more…)

In my never ending search for new and interesting restaurants in Vancouver, places like Stepho’s Greek Taverna and The Naam often get suggested. most of the time they comes with a warring ‘You will have to wait in line for at lest 20 mins but the food is good’.

I been to both places there good there is no denying that but not worth the wait there are lots of other superior Greek places in Vancouver that take reservations and aren’t so over crowed for the same price.

So why are these places so popular?

Some of the users on darrenbarefoot.com suggest that its the line its self that makes it so popular. When people walk by the see the long line and say to them selfs “that place must be good if its got such a long line”. It makes sense too, clubs and bars have know this for years(The Roxy comes to mind) . You see a long line in front of a club and you think to yourself that place must be popular, there has to be a pretty show in there, that place must be pretty exclusive I wonder if they would LET me in there.

Some people are starting to wise up thou the place right down the street is gets a pretty good run off of people from Stephos and the mongolain place across the stree and west a bit is pretty popular thanks to there artificial line.

Stephos is a place for people that want to feel privileged to be let in to a place that makes them wait, me I won’t be going back anytime soon.

Thanks to waqas for the photo of Stephos.

bookmarks for funvill

• Darren Waterston | About the Artist
  DARREN WATERSTON was born in California in 1965 and received his BFA at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. He continued his training in Germany studying painting at the Academie der Kunst in Berlin and the Fachhochschule fur Kunst in Munster. Today, W Tagged as: [tag]art, painting, [/tag]
• NOTCOT Inc.
  NOTCOT is dedicated to: DESIGN, IMAGERY, CURATION… DESIGN. A love and admiration of well designed things. There is no reason for something today not to be aesthetically stunning. IMAGERY. We organize our design and features around enticing, well compose Tagged as: [tag]design, fun, toys, [/tag]
• SEOmoz | Why You Should Blog
  I got tagged with a blog meme about why I blog by Andy, but rather than simply ennumerate my personal reasons, I decided to go bigger and describe all the reasons, personal and professional, that should encourage you to start a blog (or continue to update Tagged as: [tag]blog, [/tag]
• Micro transmitters.
  It’s pretty hard to believe that these generic micro transmitter (bug) circuits give such high quality reception on a standard FM radio. Fundamentally they are nothing more than high frequency oscillators with their frequency modulated by a microphone. Th Tagged as: [tag]diy, electronics, spy, [/tag]
• Boozhound Laboratories
  Vacuum tube Hi Fi, fullrange driver speakers, tube guitar amps, and general DIY-liciousness. Tagged as: [tag]diy, audio, electronics, guitar, tube, projects, [/tag]
• Riddles
  Forty Traditional Riddles Tagged as: [tag]Riddles, [/tag]
• Mobius Chess
  This chess board is on a Mobius strip. The length is infinite (and wraps) but the width is only four squares. There are no pieces on the hidden sides. Some of the pieces are hard to read: the White Queen is on top, the White King is on the left, and the B Tagged as: [tag]puzzles, games, chess, [/tag]
• Citizen Vancouver
  Victimized by vandals. Burglarized by one of Vancouver’s east enders. Report it online! Vancouver’s crime stopping goes web 2.0 - well it’s not NEW news cause it came out in 2004. But I never knew about till today: Tagged as: [tag]vancouver, crime, [/tag]
• Math Trek: Computing Photographic Forgeries, Science News Online, March 24, 2007
  Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College, is bringing mathematics to the rescue. He has created mathematical tools to determine whether a digital photograph was altered after being taken. His methods work so well that the Associated Press now Tagged as: [tag]photography, photoshop, photos, [/tag]
• Eden: an evolutionary sonic ecosystem
  eden is an interactive, self-generating, artificial ecosystem. A cellular world is populated by collections of evolving virtual creatures. Creatures move about the environment, making and listening to sounds, foraging for food, encountering predators and Tagged as: [tag]AI, ecosystem, artificial, [/tag]
• SENSITIVE.FLOOR
  A interative video floor that can display any image, and the user can interact with. Tagged as: [tag]interactive, design, [/tag]
• Listamatic: one list, many options - Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list options
  Can you take a simple list and use different Cascading Style Sheets to create radically different list options? The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list. Tagged as: [tag]css, lists, webdesign, [/tag]
• tv-scope
  Using TV to display audio signals. Tagged as: [tag]Electronics, DIY, audio, TV, projects, [/tag]
• PodcastAlley.com — The place to find Podcasts
  Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners. Tagged as: [tag]Podcast, podcasts, mp3, downloads, feeds, blogs, [/tag]
• filehippo.com Update Client - filehippo.com
  The Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to filehippo.com to see if there are any newer releases. These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download. Tagged as: [tag]software, freeware, tools, windows, utilities, free, [/tag]
• Hippo Update Checker (Windows) | ABlueStar
  I found this great program today on LifeHacker news feed called Hippo Update Checker. It scans your computer for your installed programs and checks there version against the version in Hippo’s database. if there is a newer releases to any of your progra Tagged as: [tag]utility, freeware, windows, [/tag]
• Let’s Be Brief - the six-word stories
  the Let’s Be Brief contest entries (sorry about the delay - when you work 40 hours a week, it’s tough to make everything else fit into the remaining 40 hours!) Up to now, visitors to the contest have only been able to view the six-word stories submitt Tagged as: [tag]writing, stories, [/tag]

White to play and mate in one move
W. Atkinson, Montreal 1st Prize, Canadian Spectator Tourney, 1880

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Vancouver now lets you to report crimes in Vancouver online. I have been broken in to twice, my bike stolen 3 times and ‘misplaced’ my digital camera 5 times. Every time I call Vancouver’s non emergency phone number 604-717-3321 wait on hold for what seems like hours and report it. I don’t ever expect it to be recovered but I feel an obligation to report it.

Vancouver police finnely upgraded there site to web 2.0 and let people report small crimes online as long as they fit in to one of the following categories.

• You have lost something that costs less than $5000.
• Someone has stolen something from you that costs less than $5000.
• Someone has vandalized your property or car.
• Someone has broken into your car.
• Someone has used your credit card, bank card, or cheques without your permission and you have lost less than $5000.

All other crimes will require a police officer, please call 604-717-3321 (non-emergency line) immediately.

its still a pain to get your stuff stolen but at lest its easier to report it now.

I was first told about this new service from the good people at citizenvancouver.com Thanks

White to play and mate in three moves
W. Atkinson, Montreal

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Vancouver has thousands of restaurant to choose from and each week me and a few friends try out a new one. Finding a new restaurants never hard with fantastic websites such as Dinehere.ca but its are missing a few nice to have features such as a map of all the restaurants in your area, and select a random restaurant.

Selecting a random Vancouver restaurant isn’t that hard just select a random number between 1 and 9999 and replace Restaurant ID www.dinehere.ca/restaurant.asp?r={restaurant id} in the address bar. I created a small utility that does this for you and also selects a random restaurant type

With out access to Dinehere.ca’s database it would be hard to generate a Google map of the local address. (With read DB access I could generate a script with in a day) I have requested the feature a few times but I have not gotten a response. Maybe if a few of my readers also request it they might implement it. Contact Dinehere.ca

Anyone know of a local Vancouver restaurant site that has a map of the local restaurants?

White to play and mate in two moves
Hint: Back Rank


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