Also! Expect some social libertarian commentary on this page. Occasionally I'm going to comment on the ills of organized religion, and on arbitrary law, systemic, institutionalized sexism, and generally unreasonable assholes (such as smokers) who believe that their desires are more important than the rights of others. Of particular interest to rightly hurl insults at will be mindless followers and bleaters who do little more than what they are told to by society and/or religion, and bleat pre-fabricated slogans rather than thinking for themselves and learning actual facts. It is way past time to take an honest look at the way humans treat each other, innocent animals and Planet Earth, because the way it is now is grossly unfair. There is a lot of pain and suffering that is still unaddressed. In order to change anything for the better in society, thinking people must speak up and not remain silent. This page is my place to speak. It is a free site, and free of advertising. If you protest the presence of my commentary, by all means don't stop by again. And don't whine to me that I have no business using my own site for my own purposes. It is easy, no challenge at all, to say things that are popular and sexy. I don't need easy, popular or sexy. It takes a lot of guts to publicly say the things I want to say - that need to be said - and not too many people have the guts to do it, so here's someone who finally does.
The camera will usually face in the direction of the sunset (W/S/W in winter, W/N/W in summer), especially at twilight.
*Please note that this webcam is a hobby, not a service! If it helps you, that's great, but we offer no performance guarantee whatsoever.
The view is (hopefully) a current snap from one of the windows at the TSI office. The camera most often faces west-south-west toward English Bay. To the left is False Creek; to the south, Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood; to the south-west, the UBC endowment land; the Burrard Bridge crosses False Creek from Kits to the downtown core. Heading west, Vanier Park with the Planetarium and Maritime Museum; to the right is Sunset Beach and the Stanley Park Sea Wall. In the western distance is Lighthouse Park and West Vancouver. Behind that is Bowen Island, and beyond are the mountains of the Sunshine Coast. On a clear day, Vancouver Island might be visible in the far distance. It spans the entire view along the horizon. ***Please note: Shots of the north-west view will have to wait for longer cords from camera to hard drive. Apologies that this hasn't been a priority.
Please excuse the window if it's rain-spotted, bird-bombed, etc.
IN THE ARCHIVES OF LATE / NOTES TO VIEWERS:
June 12, 2004: There were some naked people riding bicycles northbound on the bridge today, to protest fossil fuel overuse and promote transportation alternatives. The shot is saved in the archives at 16:15 and 16:30. Don't bother looking up this shot if you just want to see people's naughty bits, though, because the camera neither zooms in that close, nor does the shutter snap the second that one clicks the "snap" button.
Late May: The tents in Vanier Park are for Bard On The Beach, Vancouver's annual "Shakespeare in the park" event, which runs from June 03 to September 26.
BC flight logs and photos located below current view.
The live view refreshes every 15 minutes from dawn to dusk (when camera and hard drive not crashed). Click "Reload".
If it's dark or cloudy (or if you don't like the current camera direction),
you can scroll down and look at the ARCHIVES of previous days (and hours).
Kat-links:
BC's HIKING/CAMPING/BOATING/FISHING SEASON is here. 2004/06/11, 9amPDT: The Canadian dollar is still pretty low, at 73.3¢ U.S., which means $1.37.5 Canadian per $1.00 U.S.. A reminder to campers and hikers: BC's forests are very dry. 90% of BC's 320 forest fires so far in 2004 were caused by humans! PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL WITH ALL SOURCES OF FIRE, AND PLEASE MAKE SURE ALL CAMPFIRES ARE 100% EXTINGUISHED BEFORE LEAVING YOUR SITES! And if you are a smoker who is enough of an asshole to throw cigarette butts out your car window, please don't come to BC at all. No one needs the risk you bring everywhere you go.
Here are 2 sites that have some BC travel info that might help:
Tourism British Columbia
About.com/Vancouver and Canada
Canada's weather conditions and forecasts:
Environment Canada Weather Office
Webmaster Randall is a private pilot. In early April 2002, we embarked on a mission to fly over and photograph as much of British Columbia as we could. In the following link are aerial photos of massive mountains, lakes, rivers, valleys and other items of BC's extensive natural beauty. Lots of towns too. Also included: a flight to Calgary, Alberta, which showcases masses of Rocky Mountain pics and a few exciting prairie shots. And shots over much of the Lower Mainland, in particular Downtown Vancouver, Kitsilano and Granville Island; the North Shore, Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast, Squamish, Whistler, Victoria and Vancouver Island...:
BC Flight Logs And Photos
For a panoramic view from Telemark Systems, taken March 4, 2001, click here:
panoramic view.
Summer 2001's HSBC/Powersmart fireworks shots (very imperfect w/errors):
fireworks2001
See various collections and arrangements of images. They are saved at 15-minute intervals during daylight hours. The system is usually off after dark.
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge to full size (640x480).
Archive 1: Time-consecutive thumbnails from a point in the past to the present:
Archive 2: A series of thumbnails shot at the same time of day for a number of consecutive days:
Archive 3: All shots for a single day:
A thumbnail gallery of a variety of interesting shots (New ones added periodically):
A thumbnail gallery of some of the better SUNSET shots :
If you wonder how the Kat Kam works, and/or want to put together your own webcam:
The camera and software package we use has long been discontinued, so there is no technical support for this model or system. We are hoping to eventually replace it with something more stable, as this crashes a lot.
The camera is a 2001 Kodak DC240 Zoom digital camera.
It is attached to a Windows 2000 workstation equipped with a photo capture program written by Randall in Visual Basic over many grueling hours.
Shots are saved in JPG format at 96% quality for faster downloading and smaller file-size than 100% quality.
Randall also wrote a PERL script to generate the thumbnail collection pages based on your input.
The camera came with drivers and some application software to control it and upload images. However this is no good for an automatic application like a periodic webcam. So, we used a developer API from Kodak, which provides a COM object interface to the underlying driver. Unfortunately, the Kodak API (aplication program interface) and/or driver is very buggy and crashes the Katkam computer often once or twice a day. This usually happens at the driver level (though the camera occasionally shuts itself off) and causes blue screens of death, stuck reboots and communication failures, so there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it from the application level. Even more unfortunately, Kodak no longer distributes or supports its camera API so there is not going to be an improvement until we get around to purchasing a new camera that has some developer support. I believe Canon cameras have such support, but for Telemark, we'll have to wait for the money and time to put together another webcam from scratch. We'll never go with Kodak again, after what they've put us through with their crap software and absence of tech support!
So, the upshot is, if you want some advice or help in creating your own webcam, there is nothing specifically that we can offer you. Not only can you no longer buy this camera, but you can't get an API for it. Otherwise we would make the effort of packaging up the code for distribution.
The former video capture was an analog High-8 camera attached to a Snappy interface, which served us well until the camera had its meltdown.
If you know of any others, please drop Kat a line. Thanks for all your suggestions so far.
If any of these links become invalid or change URL, please contact Kat at e-mail address below.
Feel free to link to this page. Do e-mail us if you decide to link, so we can check out your site.
This cute little web application was created by Telemark Systems Inc , January 1996, February 2001.
Comments, suggestions and requests are welcome.
Link to Kat's aerial photos from planes piloted by webmaster Randall also at Telemark Systems Inc
Comments and unreasonable whining (ha!) about rants, html programming (text) and camera operation;
Kat: hepkat@telemark.net . And please, I am a chick, NOT A DUDE! That means FEMALE; "Kat" being short for "Kathryn". E-mail sent to me but addressed to "Sir" will be deleted unread! Unless it is a CC of a message sent to Randall.
Technical wizardry (photo-capture software inquiries, browser problems, etc.);
Randall: randallg@telemark.net.
Entire contents of this web site are copyright © 1996-2004 Telemark Systems Inc.
Permission granted to save and store these images for personal non-profit use only.
Any other use requires authorization.
