Andrew Morrison's 50 Favourite Things to Eat & Drink in Vancouver on a Google Map
Summary
Rob pointed to Andrew Morrison's favourite things to eat & drink in Vancouver. After a few hours of programming and manual data manipulation, I was able to provide a Google Map of Andrew Morrison's 50 favourite things to eat in Vancouver that Rob requested.
Unabridged
Sitting around all week looking for a programming task to sink my teeth into, Rob Vanmega posted a link to Andrew Morrison's favourite things to eat & drink in Vancouver. Not knowing much about the food scene in Vancouver, and not identifying as anything resembling a foodie (is there a word for us?), I nevertheless took up Rob's challenge to make it into a Google Map. Seeing this as an opportunity to scrape off some of my programming skills' rust, I set about to parse the list into a format that Google My Maps could import. It was way harder than it needed to be.
View Andrew Morrison's 50 Favourite Things to Eat & Drink in Vancouver in a larger map
Thankfully, Andrew Morrison crafted his list in a consistent, structured format. Not semantic by any means, but he wrapped each restaurant name and food item in <strong> elements, and the address, phone and website were all inside parentheses. Using TextMate to inspect the HTML list (surrounded by paragraph tags), and futzing around with a couple of regular expressions, I removed the surrounding text and get to the heart of the data. A couple of passes later, the data went into a CSV file and, after some manual manipulation by both Rob and myself, I came out with a decent set of information. Unfortunately, Google Maps wouldn't work with just the address, but had to use longitude and latitude.
That's where Geocoder.ca came in. With a useful, not free (but very cheap) API, I could feed in all 50 requests and, after a couple of test runs, got the points on the map. After reformatting the CSV (yet again), I piped it through a CSV to KML converter (a cross-platform application that violates quite a few Mac OS X interface tenets) and imported the resulting file into a custom Google Map.
The result of all that work, about 3 hours worth of manual manipulation, programming and converting, we have a Google Map of Andrew Morrison's 50 favourite things to eat in Vancouver. I can't emphasize how much that this is a beta version of the map, since I haven't verified that every location is correctly situated. Feedback is welcome: send me a note if you notice something amiss, and I'll either correct it or add you as a collaborator.
Rob said in his link that “if someone lays this over a Google map, I’ll happily hit all 50 things by year’s end.” He has just over two and a half months.
Try To Fix
Doug Stowe: “I found just a bit more satisfaction as a fixer rather than consumer. To apply just a few moments of time in careful observation can save hours of time shopping, hours of time earning money to be wasted, and hours of time being frustrated by buying things you really don't even like in the first place. So before giving up on old stuff, be brave. Try to fix. You really can't make matters worse, so there are no risks.”
Brightkite Meetup Recap
Almost a month ago, I organized the first ever Vancouver Brightkite users meetup, and we got 5 people to come out, as well as some people who had Brightkite accounts but may not have known there was a meetup. My tentative attempts to lure people from the GeoWeb 2009 conference failed miserably. I was able to distribute some t-shirts and stickers, and still have quite a few left for those who are interested. If you're in Vancouver, email me your shirt size and I can hook you up. One person was out of town during the official meetup, though she and I did eventually have coffee (she resides in my hometown, so we had at least that in common). A few others expressed interest in a subsequent meetup, so that might be something we can do in the near future when it it starts getting dark earlier. If you're a Brightkite user and want to express interest in a future meetup, post a comment in the Brightkite meetup t-shirts and stickers and beer photo.
Vancouver Brightkite Meetup Tuesday July 28th, 2009 at The Irish Heather
Followers of @justagwailo, my automated ephemera Twitter account, know that I'm a frequent user of a service called Brightkite. Brightkite is a social web application that lets people check into physical locations with the intention of socially interacting online. With Twitter integration (you can have checkins, notes, and photos automatically post to Twitter with customizable text), it's an "where I'm at" application which also shows you who has checked in nearby. You can get SMS notification of nearby Brightkite users, and even set privacy settings so that only friends see your exact location and others see a more general city or municipality as your current location. The Brightkite iPhone app makes checkins easy, giving you the option to search for something if it isn't in the "pick a place" listing, using the built-in GPS to find out what's nearby.
On the heels of the successful Brightkite meetups in Berlin and Austin and the BayArea, the team at Brightkite wrote some helpful hints on organizing a Brightkite meetups, spurring me into action to organize one for the Vancouver area.
(I should note that I'm in no way affiliated with Brightkite. I'm just a frequent user.)
In a couple of weeks, Vancouver will host the Geoweb 2009 Conference, though I won't be attending. I would like to invite those who use Brightkite in the Lower Mainland, as well as people who are interested location-based online social interaction tools to join me at The Irish Heather at 7:00 PM on the 28th of July. (That date conveniently happens to be my birthday.) I'd be interested in doing a short introduction to Brightkite, and talk about the future of location-based online social interaction (one word: games).
I see Brightkite as an interesting way to explore a city and expand people's social network. I can also see roadblocks to the effectiveness Brightkite and its ilk, and would like those interested in discussing mapping, social activity online, and collaboratively mapping the world to join me in a week and a half to see where things are going.
Did I mention I'll have Brightkite t-shirts and stickers to give away? RSVP at the Yahoo! Upcoming event listing (understanding that the address is 212 Carrall, not 217 as listed there).
22nd Street Explorer
A couple of Sundays ago, I trekked out late in the afternoon to Columbia Station, entirely forgetting that my intended destination was 22nd Street Station in sunny New Westminster, British Columbia. The reason for the trip to Vancouver's suburb to the south: to explore the neighbourhood as I did for New Westminster Station portion of my SkyTrain Explorer heritage walks around the Greater Vancouver area. Limited at this time to Vancouver proper, Burnaby and New West, the book by John Atkin details the history of buildings and surroundings of SkyTrain stations in the Lower Mainland.
(SkyTrain is an elevated rapid transit system encircling the region. The book does not include walks around the stations located in Surrey, a shame since Surrey's history and current development is very interesting too!)
Park This! Inspirational and Effective Solutions for Bike Parking at the Vancouver Museum
Last night I had the opportunity to visit the Vancouver Museum (or, Museum of Vancouver) to attend a lecture featuring three presentations about bicycle parking. Titled "Park This! Inspirational and Effective Solutions for Bike Parking" short presentations first showed implementations worldwide, then the second more generally addressed bike parking as a public issue, and the third discussed Vancouver's experience specifically.
The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) took photos of the event and the subsequent Velo-City museum tour. As I sarcastically predicted, bike parking was inadequate for the event (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
