My Wet Coast Life

A typical wet coast rainy Sunday morning and up early waiting for Canada to take gold in Olympic hockey later today. With sometime on my hands, onto the net I go. Now if you use B2Evolution's blog, you most likely have LiveHits plugin installed. Recently i noticed my Google Maps API was putting all the markers to the left of International Date line and stacking them vertically, what the deuce???.....hmmmm...now that's odd. Now i guess i am being a bit of a stat junkie curious where my readers are coming from and this plugin is a nice graphic way of showing me where, in near real time, my visitors are coming from on this great planet. And now it is broken and been that way for a couple weeks now. With some spare idle time on my hands while i wait for the liquid wake up juice, aka coffee, to kick in, i decided to look into the issue.

So whenever you have an issue with software, troubleshooting 101 says it is always best to start out with the creator's site to see if it is a known issue and has been reported or if a possible fix, patch and/or update is available. So off to the LiveHits site but alas, no recent updates to the plugin and only 1 comment about the issue but no solution. At the time of this post, there are 4 comments awaiting moderation, what those are and if they have the fix?, no clue. Well, i guess i'm going to have to fix it if i want to continue using it.

So after some reading on Google Maps API's and how they work, i did some tests to validate functionality. Next step was to see how the code passed the Latitude and Longitude to Google. It uses the following URL: http://api.hostip.info/get_html.php?position=true&ip=000.000.000.000 where 000.000.000.000 is the IP of your visitor to get city, country, longitude and latitude. Taking my own IP and submitting it to the URL; voila! City, Country, longitude and latitude returned, excellent. Now that i know what is returned and in what order, now it's time to pop the hood and see what the LiveHits PHP code is doing.

After a couple quick scans of the code, i came across this in _livehits.plugin.php file:
// Look up the location of the IP
if (!empty($row->hit_remote_addr)) {
$url = "http://api.hostip.info/get_html.php?position=true&ip=$row->hit_remote_addr";
$rawlocation = $this->fetch_remote_page( $url );
if (!empty($rawlocation)) {
$loc_array = explode(':', $rawlocation);
$location = $loc_array[1];
$country = trim(str_replace('City', '', $loc_array[1]));
$city = trim(str_replace('Latitude', '', $loc_array[2]));
$lat = trim(str_replace('Longitude', '', $loc_array[3]));
$lon = trim($loc_array[4]);
}
}


Hmmm...an array with explode and a string replace. Now I know the api.hostip.info returns the lookup in this order:
Country: CANADA (CA)
City: Wet Coast (Unknown city)

Latitude:
Longitude:
IP:

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When i was a child, it was always a great day to be able to go visit Sealand of the Pacific near my house in Victoria, B.C. Seeing sea life underwater doing what they do and then emerging to see the seals playing only a couple feet away was a pretty cool feeling. And of course the main attraction, the killer whales, Tilikum, Haida and Nootka! Now this was around 20 years ago but today, one of the whales, Tilikum has made the spotlight but in a bad way.
On February 24, he killed one of the trainers at Florida's Seaworld. Sadly, this is not the first time he has taken a life. When he was still at Sealand in Victoria, he killed one of the trainers who fell into the pool in 1992. Just before Sealand was closed, he was moved to Seaworld only to have a body found in his tank in 1999 (but appears the guy snuck into the tank, so can you really blame the whale?). Tilikum is a bull orca who was captured near Iceland in November 1983 at about two years of age. So he has been in captivity for almost 30 years and most of his life.

Now before PETA gets going on the "You should not put any animal in captivity" tirade they are known for but technically have a good point (and will leave it at that). Lets look at the mammal itself.

Orca's feed exclusively on fish, particularly salmon, and other populations hunt marine mammals such as sea lions, seals, walruses and even large whales. Killer whales are regarded as an apex predator as they have no natural predators. Now if something hunts other animals larger than humans and is an APEX Predator, then we are on the menu like everything else. These animals are not domesticated, they are wild animals taken from their life in the ocean and put into a big tank for the rest of us to enjoy. It is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of WHEN something like this will occur.

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Before i begin this, firstly I want to state i support the athletes and the hard work they put in to make it to the Olympic games. I enjoy all the countries of the world putting down their indifference's and letting their athletes settle it for them. Now what i don't agree with is the added expenditures of hosting the games and over willingness of our government to bail it out when our education system is getting chopped to bits. As the world grows, as does the costs to host and runs the games.

Since we won the bid 7 years ago, things have changed dramatically in the world especially when it comes to the economy. We experienced one of the worse recessions with jobs being lost and no one's job was really safe. Even my wife was a casualty of the job losses. I bet you probably know someone who was affected by this crisis. Now with reduced incomes and higher operational costs, governments can no longer deliver on their promises and is now creating a very dangerous balancing act with our childrens futures at stake.

As a resident of the wet coast here in Vancouver, Vancouverites have seen all the added costs and headaches associated with hosting the games, with some of those passed onto the taxpayers without really an option to say NO. The government claims in the long run, we will benefit but in my opinion, they have fallen flat, at the taxpayers expense, to put on a show for 2010 for us when the games are over. To find that out, we need to look at our so claimed benefits of hosting the 2 week Olympic games first.

To kick it off, we have the $600+ million (more like $1 billion) Sea to Sky highway all nice and shiny for the Olympics. Currently the Sea-to-Sky Highway carries an average of 13,700 vehicles per day from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish, and 7,700 from Squamish to Whistler and doesn't have one toll both. This type of construction wouldn't have been done but was required for the Olympics. Now compare that to the recently built $800 million Golden Ears Bridge, which has 30,000 to 47,000 vehicles per day commuting to and from work and it has tolls. That's 3-5 times the volume. What about tolls for the Sea to Sky?? Assuming they charge the $2.75 Golden Ears rate at 13,000 cars/day, that works out to roughly $12,870,000 in lost potential revenue a year! Does the government only want to tax those living in Langley, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows but not those residing or traveling to Squamish and Whistler? We already have a 8 cents/liter fuel service charge just for living in the Greater Vancouver Regional District plus our provincial carbon tax, why is our province not trying to collect on the Sea to Sky and recoup some of the expenses? Just makes me wonder why they will toll one new route but not another to recoup some costs and the only difference i see is the Sea to Sky is a tourist and Olympic route to Whistler and a tolled highway could look bad for publicity...

Then we have Vancouver's Olympic Athletes village. Due to added construction expenses, the Vancouver taxpayer has adopted a whopping $750+ million dollar debt. Even the National Post, stated Shahram Malek, director of Millennium Development Corporation, the private developer contracted by the city to build the athletes’ village, gave assurances that "there is absolutely no exposure for the taxpayer. None."
Well...a couple months later, thanks to Bill 47, the City of Vancouver gets approved for unlimited, yes UNLIMITED borrowing to complete the village now close to $1 billion. Possible P3 fail in the making? This has impacted us enough to reduce the city's credit rating for taking on so much debt. All i can say is I am glad i am not a home owner living in Vancouver...

On to the speed skating oval in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, which came in at $180-million, costing more than three times the amount originally budgeted. At least the Richmond Olympic Oval will be converted to a multi-use sport facility after the Olympics that will include two Olympic-sized ice rinks, up to eight hardwood ball-sport courts, a gymnasium, a 200 m track and a rubberized turf area.

And lastly, to get my point across on these added expenses, i can't leave out the Vancouver Conference Center. Originally budgeted at $495 million, the expansion project's final cost was $883 million leaving the province on the hook for almost $400 million...hmmm...I wonder where that extra $$ is coming from?? It may be returned in the many years to come from investments and tourist dollars but until then, who pays for it??? Interest needs to be paid and to prevent the province from taking on more debt, like any government, it has to tighten its belt, so education and health care, time to B.O.H.I.C.A.

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With all the issues happening in the middle east with Afghanistan's terrorism issues and Iran's nuclear ambition and censorship of it's people and then down to south east Asia with the Korean's shooting at each other both at sea and at the border and the Chinese retaliating at the US over arms deals with Taiwan. Africa has been left out of the spotlight.

You have good news such as February 11th, 2010 was the anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release. But then you also have what is occurring in Zimbabwe.

The politicians of Zimbabwe are quickly and blindly destroying that country. Now Zimbabwe has slowly gone down the tube since Robert Mugabe’s 'land redistribution’ policy, under which Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms have been brutally plundered and ownership given to black Zimbabweans. One white farmer, who received a serious beating after he petitioned a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to rule against Mr Mugabe's efforts to seize white owned farms, even made a documentary showing the plight that Zimbabweans white farm owners were experiencing. The land taken from some 4,000 productive white Zimbabwean farmers, often with violent force, has been handed almost exclusively to Mugabe’s cohorts. A lot of his cohorts probably didn't have experience in farming so one of the countries best income generators was now being flushed down the toilet. Even with Zimbabwe's economy doing an epic fail, did Mugabe re-think the policy and change it to avoid Zimbabwe's economy from collapsing? No, why would it when he is getting rich from this and favors in all areas from manufacturing to military? And if push comes to shove, he can always flee with his riches. I bet most of his accounts are in US Dollars seeing the government considers it legal tender for there transactions.

Now he is taking it to the next level cause farms weren't enough. Mugabe is now demanding that all foreign and locally owned companies hand over at least 51 per cent ownership to black Zimbabweans.

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In Europe, where it is common for 2 footy teams to clash and create an alcoholic fueled bedlam over who has the better team or a bar brawl spilling into the streets cause someone said something they shouldn't and a fight is now required to settle it, various impromptu weapons get thrown into the mix, such as bottles and glasses, and injuries are sure to ensue.

Well, the Brits have had enough, i guess bar brawls and injuries have gotten so bad, they have taken the next step at preventing it. We've all seen videos of footy matches gone bad and now the opposing fans need to resolve what their team could not. Now as a follow up to my interests in drinking technology and alternatives to drinking, they may have come up with the a solution to solve at least one issue common to any liquor serving establishment.

Did they invoke more education to reduce the violence? No, you can fix ignorant drunks. Did they add more security at the bars and pubs? No, just means the fight is going to go elsewhere. What they did do is look at where the injuries came about and how to prevent that. There are 87,000 alcohol-related glass attacks each year, with many resulting in hospital visit in Briton.

Did I just say glass? Of course! Everyone wants a drink, served in a glass, so i guess everyone gets given an impromptu weapon every time they order a pint at the same time (kinda like an indirect bonus).

Now how did the Brits solve it? They created a shatterproof pint glass of course! Now you're probably thinking "why didn't i think of that.." or it must already be in use but alas it may be in use in some pubs being industry leaders/stakeholders but not on a national scale until now. It is very difficult to change people's perspectives on fighting but if you remove the ability to use common, easily available objects as malicious weapons, that will at least eliminate one aspect of the situation turning bad.

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