Surrey’s Holland Park is the site of several free outdoor movies this summer. In conjunction with their screening of the Mamma Mia movie this Saturday, there will also be a special AirBand competition open to youth and children.
All kids, 16 and younger, can enter the Movies Under the Stars Long & McQuade AirBand Extravaganza prior to the free screening of the film on August 8th. Each contestant will be able to perform their favourite track with instruments supplied by Long & McQuade if needed. There is a super secret mystery prize for the winner as well.
Registration must take place ahead of time and you can do so by calling (604) 580-2321 or emailing joyce [at] downtownsurreybia [dot] com.
The AirBand competition runs from 5:00pm – 7:00pm and the North Surrey Lions Club will be hosting a BBQ in the park with proceeds going to local charities. The film will begin at dusk.
With VinoCamp CheeseCamp happening tomorrow, I’m in a wine kind of mood.
This morning I went searching for a list of wineries on Twitter and I found the motherload here.
Despite the list being very long, a few local wineries were not represented so since the site is a wiki, I was able to log in and add some entries. Here are just a few BC wineries that are on Twitter (some from the wiki and some I added):
@Black Cloud Wine
@Herder Winery
@Nk’Mip Cellars
@Road 13 Vineyards
@Sumac Ridge Wine
@Tinhorn Creek
@Township 7
@Stags Hollow
From Vancouver Island to the Okanagan Valley, BC is home to some of the world’s best wine produced by hundreds of vineyards big and small. If you know of any of them who are on Twitter, but not on this wiki, feel free to add them or let me know in the comments. You can follow @VinoCampVan for updates during VinoCamp tomorrow and tickets are still available if you’d like to attend this premiere event.
This morning as the #5 Robson/Downtown bus turned right onto Thurlow, instead of heading straight towards Seymour, I obviously knew something was up. Usually when there are temporary route changes they take the trolley buses out of comission but this bus was following the lines down Thurlow, left on Smithe, and left on Burrard. The bus driver explained that due to paving and the completion of the Granville Street revitalization they aren’t able to cross Granville at Robson until further notice (or what he estimated to be a month). When I got home the first thing I did, of course, was to tweet this information and that’s when the trusty Buzzer Blog chimed in with the pertinent details of this route change.
(Left) Normal Robson #5 Route Map (Right) Robson #5 Re-route Map
“Owing to construction at Granville and Robson, there will be reroutes for the 5, 17 and N6 for about a month: Monday August 3 to Sunday September 6.” You can read more, including updates for the bus lines, over on the Buzzer Blog.
What does the population do when Twitter goes down? I’m not sure but hopefully they turn to blogs. This morning the microblogging service used by millions across the globe went down, and I’m not taking “Fail Whale” down.
The entire site is unavailable (as well as services that connect to it) so the best place to go at a time like this is the Twitter Status Blog:
Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.
Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.
Thursday August 6th: “Ongoing denial-of-service attack – We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.” Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.
Thursday August 6th: “Site is down – We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly. Update: we are defending against a denial-of-service attack.”
Once they have the time to publish to the regular Twitter blog, updates will appear there as well.
The morning hours on Twitter are usually rich with hot news topics of the day, and many just getting into work and publishing updates such as “why did I even come in today” or “the line up at Starbucks is huge this morning”. In case you’re missing Twitter, try watching “Real Life Twitter” once again. It’ll still make you giggle and ease of pain of not being able to Tweet at this time (and maybe commenting on a blog post will scratch that itch).
Update: Here’s a bit more of an explanation about the nature of the outage (attack).
HowStuffWorks.com
A denial of service attack means that somewhere, somehow, an overload of computers is massively bombarding Twitter — making it impossible for them to manage regular traffic on top of this overload. This is similar to the attack notorious Canadian hacker Mafiaboy used to cripple Amazon.com and Yahoo years ago. Twitter is back up and running however services and programs that use its API (application programming interface) such as Tweetdeck, are having a hard time connecting. With the DEFCON hackers’ conference going on right now (and with Gawker, Facebook and Media Temple being other recent targets) fingers are pointing in all directions.
Social media experiments are popping up all over the place, from sales initiatives, to fundraisers and even selling houses through Twitter. Karen, a local wine blogger known to those on Twitter as Winebard, is conducting her own experiment for one of the most important days of her life.
“I am inviting vineyards in Napa and Sonoma to consider hosting our entourage of four on August 18, 2009 for our vows. We seek a very intimate setting surrounded by the glorious beauty of vines so alive and ripe with symbolism.” – Where Will Winebard Wed
Photo credit:
miheco on Flickr
She and her fiancé will be in Napa along with her dress, shoes, photographer, and all the wedding basics except for a venue. She’s started up this website to see if it can reach out to wineries and vineyards in the area and have them host her nuptials on their land.
On her wish list she’s included the following required elements from the host location (although she is flexible):
- Rose bushes at the end of the rows of vines
- Picturesque location for Wedding photos
- Can accommodate four people for about one hour on Aug 18th
- No staff, or event space required from the vineyard
- BONUS: Will hold a video camera for 10 mins or be our witness
If you are in the wine business in the Napa Valley and can accommodate this, be sure to contact Karen before August 14th. I’m certain your online exposure will grow (both on websites and Twitter) should you be able to host this event. Also, if you read about this campaign on Miss604.com, please be sure to let her know as I’d love to play a small part in making this happy day happen.
