Whistler Blackcomb is pretty big, so one would usually look at a map to find suitable runs. What is provided in the “Mountain Atlas” looks nice and mostly works, but for map geeks is there anything better? Turns out that Google Maps conveniently has the ski runs in its map. But there’s more: Google Maps in Terrain mode shows the contour lines like a topographic map!
Dennis
I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP.
Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.
Relic of Saint Francis Xavier
Part of the forearm of Saint Francis Xavier has been making its way across Canada this past month and this past Wednesday it made an appearance at my home parish, St. Francis Xavier Parish in Vancouver. Normally it’s displayed in the Church of the Gesù in Rome. Who was Saint Francis Xavier? Francis Xavier was a Spanish missionary who traveled to numerous countries including India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan, spreading the Gospel and converting hundreds of thousands to Christianity. He was on his way to China in 1552 when he became ill with a fever and subsequently died. Xavier was Continue Reading
Enterphone intercom anywhere
My apartment building has an old hard-wired Enterphone intercom to buzz visitors in. This poses a slight annoyance since the dependency of the phone line in conjunction with a conventional corded telephone means I have to walk to the phone in order to answer the intercom. Given the low rate of visitors and the small size of my apartment, in retrospect, this isn’t really a big deal. Most normal people would just buy a cheap cordless phone and call it a day. But that only helps if I’m in the apartment. What if I wanted to be able to buzz Continue Reading
My T-Comm site gets its 15 minutes of fame
Earlier today, a few local blogs mentioned my T-Comm website (a live map of all the buses in Metro Vancouver): This real-time Vancouver bus tracking map is pretty obsession-worthy (Vancouver Is Awesome) Vancouver bus tracking map allows you to track movement in real time (Vancouver Courier) This map will tell you where every public transit bus in Metro Vancouver is (Urbanized Vancouver/Daily Hive) The site wasn’t really designed for day-to-day navigation, but more for transit enthusiasts who are looking to find specific buses (e.g., the double decker test buses we have on the streets right now, 1008 and 1009). In Continue Reading
Delaying a MacBook Pro’s deep sleep
I bought a new mid-2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro late last year, immediately prior to the line being discontinued (I still think the second-generation MacBook Pros were the best series). After about a week, I found an annoying thing with it: When I turned on the computer after coming back from work, it seemed like it almost always required a cold startup after sleeping, where the optical drive initialized and did its buzz, and took a lengthy 10-15 seconds to wake up from sleep. Also, the computer would wake up (and the optical drive buzzed) even if the MagSafe charger was disconnected. Continue Reading