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Showing posts from 2012

6000 Kms of Glory

Leaving Beaver Creek behind, I set off on my journey back to Ontario. Along the way I would be stopping in Whitehorse , Edmonton , Winnipeg , Thunder Bay and Wawa . Joining me on my cross country journey was my buddy Ryan Johnny, a Beaver Creek local. Here he is at the start of the Alaska Highway, which winds through Beever C 1800 km later. Before setting off there was a little send off in town. We sang karaoke at a border guard's house. It was really ingenious: you just hook up a guitar amp to a mic and then look up on Youtube a karaoke version of a song and BAM, you have a karaoke machine! And customs officers are great to celebrate with with Youtube karaoke! The next day we set off, two hours late, just after Beaver Creek Coffee. The trip to Whitehorse was uneventful except it was gorgeous outside. Pulling into Whitehorse we ended up going to Walmart and RJ ended up meeting a couple friends and he went his way. I met up with Tanis and her room-mate Deaner. Tanis an

Yukon Gold, pt. 2

So, for 90% of my time in the Yukon is found in a place called Beaver Creek I talked about in my last post . The town has about 100 people in it and is waaay at the north west end of the country - the westernmost community in Canada in fact. Like I said I worked at the hotel here doing maintenance on top of other voluntary duties for extra money - things like baggage and bus washing. Since coming back here that is mostly what I have done - work, usually 10 to 14 hour days. But its had its fun times too. Some of the activities that have happened day to day, like campfires or just hanging out a bit and seeing something local like Sid's oldtime-y museum or going to the pool.. There were the Beaver Creek Olympics. I won the hoola-hoop contest and the balloon toss with my bro RJ. Events such as the Talent Show, I got up and sang Bedu Manu Lielu Bedu, but I only remembered the first two verses and so I just repeated the second one. There was Beat's 80the birthday (more on that

Yukon Gold, pt. 1

So its a dream of many adventurous Canadians (and others) to visit the 'true' north of the Canadian Territories. Dreams of wide open spaces, opportunity, freedom and, yes, adventure fill the mind. Yet at the same time there is respect for coming to a place like the Yukon. The distance to get here. The distances and isolation here. The weather . The short and long days. The mosquitoes, expenses, bears and cabin fever! "Oh," say many of those inclined to travel "I'll just hop on a flight to BC/Thailand/Cuba". So it comes that I finally made one of my dreams come true and take up a unique opportunity to visit the far north, the experience the 24 hours of daylight, opportunity and dreams of gold in the rivers. I had a couple friends who found themselves already spending their summers up here. Steve is working as a gardener at the Westmark hotel in Beaver Creek, and Tanis is working with Women's rights and advocacy organizations in Whitehorse. So fre

GIS Course Complete, Time for Plan B

So since reading in March most of my time has mostly been devoted to GIS but also some more outdoor recreation and travel. On the GIS side I started and completed the "third" and final semester in the Advance Diploma in GIS. Final marks are in and the are not bad! This is probably due to the fact that I am actually interested it GIS in general, though the program was quite challenging at times. Topics covered in the final semester were limited to Management Issues in GIS, Technical Issues in GIS (in which students in groups cover different current topics in technical detail in GIS - My group did ours on Error in GIS), and GIS Database Systems 2 (we primarily covered ArcSDE multi-user database use and administration). There were only three courses as most of the Advanced Diploma in GIS students were tasked with either doing a Practicum (similar to a 2-month internship) or a project. Me and my partner did a project building an open source web map application for the Hul'

GIS like a Rubik's Cube

Hello all, so for the past 6 months or so I have immersed myself in something called GIS (Geographic Information Systems). It is like an extension of many things I have done in the past. Things like GPS and topo-maps and navigation and using simple mapping software and CAD. So I figured I'll try it. The program also dealt with programming, which I had begun to be interested in. What I knew about GIS then is like merely turning a Rubik's cube a few turns, but not really attempting it. But, here we are, the class of 2012, Advanced Diploma in GIS from BCIT, 6 months later. Lo and behold we're building, android apps, map documents, TIN 's, Map Documents, doing spatial analysis , building run-length-encoding and decompression programs, and the list goes on. And BCIT has a funny way of doing things. You see, the professor's will take you only half way to teach you many of these things - things like spatial analysis and string parsing programs. It seems a little sadistic,

GIS part 1

So at the End of August I moved to Vancouver. Well, actually a big suburb of it called Burnaby, in a place called Capitol Hill on Pandora Avenue (that is, Pandora - the first woman, created by Greek gods, who opened a box that released all the evils into the world). At the end of Pandora, about 100 feet from my house, is the Trans Canada Trail, and there is a nice view of the Burrard Inlet behind a barb wire fence, and behind the fence is a great big field where there is the remains of an oil refinery. Where I live is sort of out of the way, near the city, by the woods and in the suburbs, industrial infrastructure but no factories and neighbors with broken-down cars in their yards... sort of like where I grew up! In September Maby came up to visit. It was amazing seeing her again (and I can't wait until she comes up again!). We did many things together while here: went to Victoria to visit Carolyn and Carolyn, checked out Stanley and Pacific Rim parks in Vancouver, looked around Do