September 17, 2009 Archives
https://earth.smurfmatic.net/canada2008/polls/
Inspired by Stephen Taylor's post (and my own past project from Fall 2008), I set out to produce a website where people could navigate election results by riding, but also by poll.
I used cartographic data from the Geogratis.gc.ca website. I imported the Shapefiles to a PostgreSQL database with Postgis. Then, I processed results by polling divisions from the 2008 election, data available on the Elections Canada website. It was put in a separate table on the same database. A custom program in Python using the very handy libkml (a code library developed and supported by Google) took the data and outputted pretty KML code. It was packed as a KMZ and uploaded to my webspace. [E-mail me, if you want to exchange ideas on the code]
The webpage itself is rich in JavaScript and the code can be seen here. I use hashes to make the webpage bookmarkable and loadable with a given riding pre-loaded.
For instance, the Papineau riding (24048) can be accessed through this link:
https://earth.smurfmatic.net/canada2008/polls/#24048
The website requires the Google Earth plugin, available for Windows and Mac. It works very smoothly on my old computer (bought in 2003).
You could also download the individual KMZ files (they are in fact zip files, so on Windows you would rename them with .zip and unzip them with your usual utility). They are at: https://earth.smurfmatic.net/canada2008/polls/ridings/ . However, if I post updates (which I will), you won't see them.
A new grocery store on Victoria Avenue just opened its doors last week. The half basement shop offers a variety of organic (and non-organic too) produce. It may fit the look of a Westmount upscale boutique, but the prices shown for the basic stuff (tomatoes, apples, lemons) are at market price (similar to PA's price, comparatively lower than the nearby Metro).
On top of that, you also find a unique offering of Asian products (the owner Clara happens to be a food-loving Canadian Chinese) such as soy milk, bok choy and ramen noodles. They are also importing a type of pasta from Italy.
334A Avenue Victoria, Westmount
Speaking of young entrepreneurs, I found out that the newest my cup of tea shop is just next door:
