Toying with Google Maps…
by xinit • 12/28/2005 • geek, life, live music, Vancouver • 1 Comment
Tomorrow we’re planning on signing a year’s lease on a place in a neighbourhood that I didn’t really intend of renting in; Gastown.
Specifically, this place is very nearly at the intersection of Powell, Water, Alexander, and Carrall. If you’ve been to Vancouver as a tourist you’d know this place, because you likely have a photo of yourself in front of the Gassy Jack statue that stands at this corner. We’ll be able to see that statue from the front of the apartment…
I’m liking the idea more and more because it’s a decent bit of space, and not a 400 square “studio” that’s so prevalent in the area… it’s nearly 800, which makes it about the same size as the first studio space we had at the A.R.C, but hopefully with a fraction of the noise…
The commute to work will be so much nicer without the horrific #8 or the long and slow #19… A short walk to one of the two closest Skytrain stops, and I’ll be deposited directly at work in Burnaby. That’s a big plus….
That’s a story for another post, but in thinking about where we were going to get an apartment; downtown, New West, Gastown, etc, I did a bit of playing about with the Google API for their mapping solution, and I started plotting some of the venues I frequent; Brickyard (2 blocks), Astoria (7 blocks), Pub 340 (3 blocks), etc. Check the results. I built the barest of MySQL backends to hold the data, and I haven’t done anything fancy for management of venues, or alphabetizing the layout, though I did slap in some of my Google Ads for some reason…
I used the great sight at Geocoder.ca to find the Latitude/Longitude of the street addresses I wanted to plot on the map as I don’t own a GPS and don’t feel like doing all the traveling when the information is readily available.
I’ve been living in Gastown, probably half a block from your new place, for a year and a half. I was at Main and Broadway for 10 years before that and I’ll take my new home any day. It is much quieter, especially at this strange time of year when all the tourists are gone; the streets are so empty and the neighbourhood breathes a collective sigh of relief.
I go to the same venues that you do and being within stumbling distance is a Good Thing. The only bad thing is that if you just want a beer on a Friday or Saturday and don’t want to see a band or pay cover, every other neighbourhood bar is overrun with frat boys and woo-woo girls and therefore completely uninhabitable. Also there is much good coffee within a distance that can be covered even with a nasty hangover.
Welcome to the neighbourhood.