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Time travel

If you have ever strolled along the fashionable Robson Street in Vancouver, you probably noticed an interesting brick building at Robson and Thurlow. Built just after the turn of the century — er… the turn of the last century — the Manhattan Apartments reflect the architectural style of the period. According to the Hottson Bakker Architects Online website, it is the oldest apartment building in Vancouver.



The Manhattan Apartments at Thurlow and Robson, downtown Vancouver, c.1910 (photo from the City of Vancouver Archives). At this time, the building is surrounded by houses.



The same building, c.1917 (photo from the City of Vancouver Archives). Buildings begin to pop up on the left and right.



As it is now, 2003 (photo from me). The building is surrounded by retail shops and office towers.

Now the building is home to a nice Japanese restaurant, some trendy shops, and a Starbucks. As an aside, this is the Starbucks that’s directly opposite another Starbucks across the intersection.

About a block away is this building, which appears to be in a residential neighbourhood — you can see the houses in the background.



An apartment building on Burrard St. between Robson and Georgia, March, 1914 (photo from the City of Vancouver Archives).



The same building in 2003. Robson and Burrard is in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

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y6h76rtf7708jhlk.j;lkjdfser

As I contemplated the wisdom expressed by Adrian Bedford’s poignant “y6h76rtf7708jhlk.j;lkjdfser“, something occurred to me that was somewhat unsettling. In his blog, he wrote: “I knuckled down with a fresh coffee and banged my head against the keyboard.”

Looking at a standard keyboard, the pattern of keys struck by his head looks like this:

Such a pattern could only exist if his forehead had an unusually lumpy appearance. The string of characters could only have been struck by strange protrusions, of which one sticks out beside his right eye and one over his right temple. The locations of such protrusions can be noted by superimposing the key pattern on a diagram of a human face.

My conclusion is that Mr Bedford’s skill as a sci-fi writer comes not from his imagination, but from a deep familiarity with the realities of space travel! He is, in fact, a space-traveller from a distant galaxy!

What led him to settle on Earth? Is “y6h76rtf7708jhlk.j;lkjdfser” actually a naughty limmerick written in an alien language? Am I losing touch with reality?

Or maybe he hit a few keys with his nose. I can’t decide.

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Fuzzy bunny porn

I’d just like to take a moment to express my disappointment with Google. Before I changed my URL, my page rank was a solid 6/10. Now that I’m at www.endofline.ca, I’m 0/10. The content is the same… why is the site less important now?

And I miss all of the wacky search requests. I rarely get any since I moved. Oh, I still get the usual requests for “penguin belly button rings”, “chimps on penguins”, “hopping lego robots”, and “chunkylover53”, but the really weird ones are few and far between. Or maybe my definition of “weird” has changed after a year of blogging.

Also, there seems to be a preponderance of animal-related searches. Here are a few:

Nope. Nothing weird there.