On a grey and rainy afternoon, the lovely Ms. Keira-Anne and I met up with DaveO at a steamy-windowed organic coffee shop. DaveO (the blogger, podcaster and social media evangelist) had a special mission just for us, and we were more than willing to accept. I swear the $100 cheque only had a little bit to do with it.

The terms? We shop at happyfrog businesses and write reviews of products, services, etc. But just what is happyfrog? I’m glad you asked.

happyfrog is a fresh and fun interactive web site designed to leverage the collective knowledge of our community to create an indispensable new resource for bringing about change – in our personal lives and across the planet.

Our vision for happyfrog is that it will become a home for a community of values-aligned members who happily enrich each other’s lives simply by sharing information about their favorite things. [happyfrog.ca – About]

It’s a website, a directory, a community, and a blog all focused on being eco-friendly. Since we’ve accepted this challenge, you can expect some Rebecca and Keira-Anne blog posts over on the frogblog and also more content over here. We’ll each be shopping for items and writing our own reviews so check out both of our blogs for the results.

I’m really looking forward to supporting local businesses, especially those that have chosen to be environmentally conscious.

You can also take part in spreading the happy frog word by adding a business to the directory or by entering their contest. All you need to do for the contest is write a review of a happyfrog listed company, business or service on the happyfrog.ca site (like what Alexa’s been doing). Shop. Login. Review. $500 could be yours to spend.

Last week an article popped up in my news feeds about BC students having one of the highest literacy levels in the world. Today, the Provincial Government reports that Grade 10 students in BC are again, at the head of the pack when it comes to reading, math and science.

B.C. students were in the top-performing range worldwide, with only Finland doing significantly better in the science category. In reading, only Finland and Korea were above B.C.’s range, while in mathematics, five jurisdictions were above B.C.’s range. When comparing average scores, B.C. ranked fourth in science, sixth in reading and thirteenth in math. Generally, the 2006 results for B.C. students show scores similar to the 2003 results. [GovBC]

The report by the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) states that certain social factors play a positive role in the education of a child. Things like immigrant status (we live in a region where 40% of the population is foreign-born), parental education and socio-economic status. However, it also says that students in BC also perform well despite their socio-economic status.

Photo credit: Duane Storey on Flickr

When I was in Kansas City I was asked if people in Vancouver move away from the city to find better schools for their children. I really didn’t know about schools being better or worse based on Geographical location. In this region, I would imagine people would want to be closer to the cities for better schools, unless you’re talking about privately run establishments. The further East you head in Metro Vancouver, you might find more private schools but then you also have the burbs (cue scary music).

Before anyone gets on the Jump to Conclusions mat, might I remind you that I went to West Whalley Junior High and despite all those horribly painful teenage years I don’t think I could complain about the level of education I received at the time. I graduated with honors, with AP credits, and went to SFU. Well that was until I got offered a job at a dotcom in October, 2000 – so I had to take it, I mean really. But I digress.

I’m pleased to see the results in the article, however I personally suck at math so I was probably no help in these studies back in the day.

Update:And now the BC Gov’t has just pledged $5 million to support student literacy.

I’ve noticed a lot of incoming links lately from sites that weren’t previously on my radar. What appears to be happening is something similar to “The Z List“.

This year, Troy Worman has started a meme to recognize outstanding bloggers. There are no awards, no accolades, simply a “pass it on” mentality surrounded by link love. Somewhere down the line, Miss604.com was added. The links started popping up in my stats when Servant of Chaos, Purple Wren, and Flooring the Consumer passed the list on. Regardless, it’s still pretty neat that someone thought to include me as an outstanding blog.

I noticed a few familiar names on there already but I’m going to add Yvonne and John since they’re usually the bloggers I tag in these sorts of things, and I’ve been reading their blogs for years. I’ll also add Douglas Karr and Darren Barefoot (cause I’m sure they love a good meme), and Tyler Ingram (cause he just entered my contest).

Read the list and perhaps add some new faves to your feed readers, after the jump Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics have a couple mascots, three to be precise. They’re all warm, fuzzy little creatures that are starting annoy the heck outta some people already. Since they’re pretty much developed for merchandising and marketing purposes I can see why they did the following:

But here’s what gets me, I’ve become a big MukMuk fan.

So with the launch of the brand spankin’ new Vancouver 2010 store I was thinking maybe I’d look around and see about getting a MukMuk to toss into the prize pack for my contest (that you should really enter). Nope, no MukMuk.

There’s no MukMuk plush, no MukMuk pins and certainly no MukMuk mugs. What gives? I was saying yesterday, to those who actually care about the olympics in this town, that there should be a Facebook group to petition the upgrading of MukMuk to official mascot status. You know, one of those groups you join then forget about, but at the time you think it’s a really good idea.

Vancouver 2010 apparel and mascot loot is now on sale at The Bay – and no, they didn’t pay me to say that, and they should donate a mascot plush for my contest because maybe that might be more incentive to enter the draw. Either to keep the toy, or to throw it on the ice at the Giants game, since that will be encouraged.

Here are some upcoming appearances by the mascots, in case you wanna get the kiddies out to meet them:

December 8 & 9, 2007 @ Hbc downtown, December 14th @ the Whistler Westin, December 15th @ Hbc and Zellers Metrotown, December 16th @ Hbc and Zellers Coquitlam.

Unfortunately all appearances will also be sans Mukmuk.

Update: Mukmuk will now appear in plush form only as he will still be considered a “sidekick” to the others.

Did I not say somewhere that the sea wall still looked pretty sketchy and it didn’t seem like it was ready to re-open? What a crappy “I told you so” moment, the sea wall is closed again.

Heavy snow yesterday and rainfall today has resulted in another closure of the Stanley Park Seawall. Park Board staff are consulting with engineers after a 20 foot wide mudslide occurred around 10 this morning near Third Beach.

Stanley Park Maintenance Supervisor Eric Meaghr says it’s a bit discouraging after so much work this fall. “We had some feelings we may have issues. It’s the first big test of the area and sure enough we did have a slip off the sandstone face today.” The slide came down just south of the lighthouse, just a few hours after an inspection where they actually considered closing the Seawall for the day.

Early reports predict the Seawall will be closed for at least several days. [News1130]

If only we would have spent the restoration money actually restoring the park instead of paving more roads and making more parking lots.