IT TURNS OUT THAT the Google van rolled through the East Beaches when we were working in the neighbourhood on Kingmount Park Road, and they caught us on film! You can easily identify the Green Apple truck, and even though the software censors have blurred their faces, you can still recognize John, Victor, and Carlos. Ha! Hey, what are you doing there? This isn’t a coffee break! Get back to work! I’m watching you! Just kidding, these guys are real hard workers. I’m sure that the in-house pixel-pushers at Google just Photoshop’d the heavy equipment out of John’s hands. Yeah, that’s it…
TODAY’S NEWSPAPERS ANNOUNCED that Google Maps has now put its “Street Level” feature online for the City of Toronto. That means that you can enter your own address — or any other GTA address, for that matter — into the text field at maps.google.com, and in addition to ability to see an overhead view of your neighbourhood, you can now drag the little orange icon of a dude from the top left corner of the map onto the street that you want to see in photographs. You can then navigate your way through the city streets, and manipulate the angle of the camera by clicking inside the image and dragging in different directions.
HEY, WHO SAYS THAT I don’t get all filthy on the job like I used to? Since I got tapped to direct communications and ecological initiatives here at Green Apple, I hardly even break into a sweat anymore, except when I’m biking to work and back. But today I got to go out into the field and do dirty deeds. It seems that plastic pylons are prized possessions, because someone — or something — has been picking off our pylons one by one for quite a while now. To combat this phenomenon, I used a skill set that I haven’t had any real need for in the last several years, ever since I was a graffiti artist almost a decade ago. I’m obviously out of practice, because it got pretty messy out there, but at least I got the job done: I labeled the orange cones that we use to alert traffic to the presence of our heavy equipment and other building materials. Now pylon pilferers will think twice before disappearing our property, because our logo announces our presence. And when you see the two-tone GA logo around town, you’ll know who’s working the earth behind the house — your friendly neighbourhood landscapers at Green Apple.
