iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

But we spent so much less and got so very much more in terms of actual revitalization by much more modest mean

Trees canopy a very human-sized street with brick buildings, patios, and a street market.

Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Anyhoo. I have digressed a bit, but it's with a point. The arena opened in 2016, and what's downtown's population? About 13K. We haven't really added any people. And most of the time the arena is just this empty space.

Rogers Place looming ominously over the north portion of 104 Street on a winter evening, in a manner reminiscent of of a Simon Stahlenhag painting.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That flow on foot is important not just for the money people spend (and I am much more likely to step into a new cafe I walk past than I am to stop the car for one), but it directly improves the quality of the neighbourhood.

A retail space with a sign saying "The Larder". Prominently, two life sized sheep statues are in the window. My other half and I kept walking by here specifically because we saw those sheep while out for a walk.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Having actual people who choose to be somewhere and aren't just forced to be there until they can escape from their bleak cubicle maze is a game changer, and not just because there's money being thrown around, but because there is LIFE.

A bunch of people skating out front of City Hall in Downtown Edmonton on a Saturday afternoon in winter. The skaters have varying levels of proficiency, and many are adults who are using supports while they work.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This was real revitalization of downtown. In the 2000's, with the redevelopment of the CPR station lands and 104 Street, people started to actually live in downtown again. We grew the pop from ~5K to over 13K by 2014.

A chart of population over time for Downtown Edmonton. Through the 1980s and 1990s it remains in the low 5,000 over three separate census. It breaks 6,000 in 2001. In 2005, it breaks 9,000. By 2014, it breaks 13,000.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Cassia has reached the exploring stage and enjoys our many window views. But she has developed an affinity for this window.

A living room with book shelves, and an art deco cabinet that was originally made for a record player, flanking a ~100L cube aquarium on a quirky mid-century end table/chest of drawers. The aquarium is rather lushly planted and has a very natural sand and rock hardscaping. A little dark tortie cat with dashes of cinnamon colours along her side and an absurd cream-coloured reflector on the tip of her tail has her paws up on the edge of the cabinet and is looking keenly into the aquarium.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Then there is this glorious banh mi place down the street.

An eclectic sign menu hanging on a wall, underneath a large print sign showing the establishment name to be NHO'N HÒA, with a large 2 tacked on to the end.

The establishment's name is repeated again on the top left panel of the menu, with the explanation that it is a "sandwich bar".

The menu is a random mix of deli items, spring rolls, and banh mi with no discernible order. Multiple sandwiches are described as including "saugage". Sometimes the word Gà is translated as chicken in the English description. Sometimes it's left as Gà. Many spare 5's and a 0 are stuck to the bottom edge of the menu board. Some menu items have been crossed out with a sharpie.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

This little cat had her first visit from the vet today. Despite all of the prodding and indignity, I am forgiven.

A little tortie cat curled up sound asleep next to the hip of a human who is wearing jeans and green flannel.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Well, I just rescued this delightful beast from a pack of coyotes and she might be my cat now and she is the absolute sweetest (if questionably ergonomic), so my feed might be in a similar boat.

A little tortie cat who is curled up on a pillow from which she has almost displaced the head of a nearby human. Her patterning is mostly black with cinnamon sprinkles. The cat looks quite cozy.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Well, I just saved what is clearly someone's filthy, dehydrated, scarred, terrified, wonderful little cat from a pack of coyotes. No chip, collar or ID tattoo. I'm trying to find her people, but there's only so much I can do on that front. So, this might be my cat now. Sorry.

A picture of a coyote on a keyboard, posting, "um actually there's nothing wrong with letting cats be outdoor pets. your cat is depressed locked inside forever. it's animal abuse. let it outside. more cats should be let outside more often. especially overnight."

This is from a post by a user named mousegirlheart on an unidentified social media platform on May 22.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The cat who I rescued from coyotes in our local park the other week certainly agrees.

A little tortie cat with her eyes closed. The cat is sprawled across the shoulders of a person and has pressed her fuzzy little cheek against the person's larger, less fuzzy cheek. The cat is purring her little brains out in ways that people who just look at the picture could only guess at, but you dear reader get confirmation.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

At night, when she isn't patrolling, she tends to lay across the top of my pillow. At first I thought that she was taking it over, but it turns out that she actually just wants to be near my head. She mostly just sits there and purrs and keeps watch while I sleep.

A small tortoiseshell cat laying across the top of a pillow. This angle catches the ginger and tan patches along the right side of her face. Her eyes are glowing in the light.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

So, I rescued something from a pack of coyotes this week.

A small tortoiseshell cat who is curled up next to a reclining human. The cat's paws are draped over the human's shoulders and her cheek is pressed against the human's. The cat's eyes are closed and she seems quite content to keep the person from getting up.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Personally, I think that maybe if we just built nice places to live, walk, and bike and broke out of the whole 1980s mindset of downtown as a 9-5 place whose success was measured by cars, it would be okay. And maybe if we didn't leave dumpsters in the bike lanes for most of the summer.

A narrow one-way street with a bike lane. A row of old shopfronts from the streetcar era hosts busy patios and a bike shop. The picture does not do justice to the degree to which bike parking was absolutely filled with bikes.

Also, unlike downtown, this has a REAL BIKEWAY that is actually built and not just painted on with an occasional jersey barrier or plastic baton to try to keep cars out.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I kind of wonder what our downtown had been like if we'd done more of that instead of just knocking stuff down to herd everything to voluntarily come downtown for into bleak mallscapes in the bowels of office towers that shut down when the 9-5's go home.

A less welcoming streetscape. It does have okay sidewalks and a bike lane and tram tracks, but on the left side is a phone exchange building, and the right side the sprawling bulk of Edmonton City Centre which manages to largely avoid interacting with the streetscape despite its considerable size. The building can only be entered through a few tightly controlled entrances, most of which are locked outside of office hours, and just presents grey walls and opaque glass and ventilators. Spaces which once housed downtown's signature department stores have struggled for purpose in a post anchor store world.

Just past the the phone exchange on the left is a conspicuous gap, associated with a pit where an extremely ugly BMO once stood.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

We've struggled with downtown for ages. Our biggest success in what to do with it was when we redeveloped 104 street, where we hampered upon the radical idea of making a quiet street that was pleasant to walk with street facing retail and space to live that respected existing architecture.

A streetscape greatly contrasting with every last previous picture of downtown Edmonton in that it is not just a space to drive through. The street is lined with shop fronts, trees, and it's only two lanes wide. A new tram track cuts across the intersection with some rather nice paver block work. Many of the buildings are old brick rail-oriented warehouses from the early 20th Century which have been converted to modern uses. The street is busy with pedestrians because a block has been closed for a farmers' market.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Remember how every time we build an LRT line the numpties emerge to demand we tunnel it so construction doesn't interfere with traffic?

A photo of Jasper Avenue downtown during the construction of the underground LRT stations. The street is covered with an unruly looking mixture of excavators, cranes, cement mixers and construction materials. In the far background, a city bus is attempting to make a turn to detour around it.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Oh, and I hear the common complaint nowadays is something about construction making it impossible to drive. Construction is having impacts, but that's because 102 Avenue was the major east-west pedestrian and bike route, and now you can't really get through without using our worst stroads. But...

Jasper Avenue in front of the old Paramount Theatre while The Empire Strikes Back is playing. Polyester-clad pedestrians hurry across a wide, joyless stroad full of cars from narrow, construction-hoarding clogged sidewalks. A blue car has pushed its way through the pedestrians. Extending into the far background are a line of "help I am a big brown box" themed office buildings.

Edmonton Archive cat no ET-28-142.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

And no, Churchill Square was not anything to write home about. It was an indifferently landscaped lawn with a bunch of desire paths cut across it that turned to mud every festival season, and it was surrounded by stroads.

An aerial view of Churchill Square in the 1970 when Edmonton City Centre East is under construction. To the west, parking lots and the old CN Freight Station are visible. A few modern buildings like the Law Courts, and City Hall, and a very jail-like building to the south of the Square which is actually the Milner Library in its pre-renovated form, and the phone exchange are surrounded by decidedly industrial and early 20th Century land uses.

The Square is surrounded on all sides by nice fat stroads, with one separating it from City Hall. But on a summer day, you could sit on this big lawn while downtown traffic went by in all directions, breathing lead-flavoured car exhaust, which might be why some are so nostalgic about it.

The City of Edmonton Archives code is stamped at the bottom: ET-23-5.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The whole mechanism where the suburbanites would push all of the poverty and everything associated with it to the core, and then everyone would stress about how downtown was shabby is a tradition. We would whip out the Sim City bulldozer at the drop of a hat to "renew" with a glass box.

Edmonton Archive Map EAM-311: Boyle Street Area. Curiously, the "study area" extends all of the way to 99 Street, but many land uses of concern have been marked off well west of it.

Note that even though "hotels" are a land use of concern, and multiple among them are marked off on 102 Street, the MacDonald is NOT marked. This is because they are specifically targeting land uses utilized by those living in poverty. A big hotspot is located along Jasper Avenue at the intersections of 96, 97 and former 98 streets to approximately 99 street. Lines of concern extend north along 97 Street, denoting the former bounds of old Chinatown.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

And yes, I know thousands of suburbanites have a story of, "But Coprolite! I was downtown and I saw poor people and I felt unsafe!" Well, hold firmly to your pearl necklace there Dawson, but this is what it used to be like. And he's leaving out all of the stuff about the drug trade.

An excerpt from Mordecai Richler's "King of the New Canada", which celebrated Edmonton's rise to hockey supremacy. It reads:

When I asked Peter Pocklington, the owner of the Oilers, about the seemingly endless season, he protested. "We're the only show in town," he said. "Coming to see Gretzky is like going to watch Pavarotti or Nureyev. What else are you going to do in Edmonton in the middle of the winter? How many beers can you drink?" Edmonton, Edmonton. The capital of Alberta is a city you come from, not a place to visit, unless you happen to have relatives there or an interest in an oil well nearby. On first glance, and even on third, it seems not so much a city as a jumble of a used-building lot, where the spare office towers and box-shaped apartment buildings and cinder-block motels discarded in the construction of real cities have been abandoned to waste away in the cruel prairie winter.

If Canada were not a country, however fragmented, but, instead, a house, Vancouver would be the solarium-cum-playroom, an afterthought of affluence; Toronto, the counting room, where money makes for the most glee; Montreal, the salon; and Edmonton, Edmonton the boiler room. There is hardly a tree to be seen downtown, nothing to delight the eye on Jasper Avenue. On 30-below-zero nights, grim religious zealots loom on street corners, speaking in tongues, and intrepid streetwalkers in miniskirts rap on the windows of cars that have stopped for the traffic lights. There isn't a first-class restaurant anywhere in town. But, for all that, the city of 700,000 has a fascinating history.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Wander west of there a couple of blocks, past the stabby bars, and you would end up... here. This thing cut through downtown, launching from slightly north of Jasper so drivers could escape downtown over the train yard.

A picture of the old 105 Street Overpass, with a precarious set of death stairs connects it to an extremely narrow sidewalk, supported by a pillar which would easily be taken out by a marauding F-150. On a winter day, navigating these stairs to access the sidewalk along the overpass would have truly been perilous. Underneath the overpass is occupied by parking spaces. The old industrial warehouse at least has a sign suggesting that it contains a Chinese smorg.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

When people reminisce about coming downtown in the 1980s to go shopping, that part of downtown they're remembering was basically two blocks with Woodward's, the Bay, and Eaton's. And those are gone from everywhere.

An Edmonton Land Use Map from 1982, with the archival code EAM-25.2. Downtown is largely industrial and wholesale land uses, with only a few blocks of commercial except for a strip extending along Jasper Avenue. The Quarters is slated for "urban renewal". This map also has the once-planned freeways through the Mill Creek and MacKinnon ravines. A corridor of other industry extends north of 104 Avenue, and down 109 Street.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Definitely side-eye anyone who says IT USED TO BE SO NICE unless they're like 100 years old, because our downtown actually declined 50+ years ago when all of the rail oriented industries dried up. For most of Edmonton's history, it was warehouses, wholesalers and actual factories.

An old Driscoll and Knight Map from 1912 showing the central neighbourhoods of Edmonton north of the river. Downtown is an industrial area stretched out alongside a major train yard. Rail spurs extend from the yard down the alleys between the streets so that warehouses, factories and wholesalers can receive cargos directly by train car. This map is stamped with a City of Edmonton Archives code 'EAM-420'.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Came back today to pick a few. This is a lot of mushroom.

Four large mushrooms with thick white stalks and large red caps. The largest is bigger than a bowl of cherry tomatoes next to it. They are also rather larger than the pack of Italian sausages to their left, or the bundle of sage, savoury, thyme and wild bergamot in front of it. A bottle stopper at the 1 o'clock position is significantly narrower than the mushroom stems.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

They are popping up again. I think this just happened overnight. Didn’t see any when I looked yesterday.

A cluster of wine cap mushrooms erupting from bark mulch in the corner of a garden bounded by blue grey walls. Electrical conduit boxes nearby show that the mushrooms are already wider than the conduit.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

104 and 102 Ave just reopened to at least pedestrians and looks better than it ever did.

The intersection of 104 Street and 102 Avenue. The downtown farmers market is on and the intersection has been redone in brick with tram lines crossing it.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Ran across a guy on Facebook showing how he had enhanced lidar hillshades of Stonehenge to emphasize signatures of Bronze Age to Romano-British agricultural enclosures with Google Gemini and ChatGPT. Anyhow, I did this with a bit of screwing around in Eduard and QGIS. #GIS #archaeology

A texture relief image of tile SU14sw 1m Composite Digital Terrain Model lidar data, depicting the Salisbury Plains around Stonehenge. Relief is exaggerated to emphasize topography, so subtle dry drainage channels and lazy meandering stream beds look much sharper. A highway cuts across the middle from east to west, with the Stonehenge ring just off the road to the west of a drainage channel running north-south down the middle of the map. In the immediate vicinity are numerous burial mounds, including King Barrows to the east, the Norman Down round burial cemetery to the SW, and the Cursus Barrows to the NW. The fields of the western half of the landscape is stippled with trapezoidal patterns indicating ancient agricultural enclosures. River Avon winds its way through the SE corner, the British Army's Larkhill Garrison sprawls along the north edge of the image.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The Alberta "Report a Bike Lane" form has somewhat limited options. There isn't really a category for "under attack by a day-drinking massive dweeb". But I have made do. #yegbike

A "share your concerns form". The location is reported as Edmonton, 97 Street from Yellowhead to 137 Ave. The reason for reporting is "Cost to taxpayers". The concerns are described:

Absolutely ridiculous. Super expensive to maintain. Terrible to drive. Terrible parking. Seems to have been designed by cows. Unsafe for all users due to turning cross traffic. An affront to the quality of life of all nearby. Negligible usage for 20+ hours per day (see picture for typical flow). Could really use better dedicated transit and bike/MUP infrastructure. Worst bike lane ever.

A picture of 97 street on a lovely summer day. A couple of trees are visible on the side, but mostly it is just a giant eight lane mess of grey. A handful of vehicles are visible, two of which are buses. No median is present. It is just an indifferent stroad. The sidewalks have been eroded by constant car strikes, and would have been miserable to exist upon even when they were freshly poured.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Edmonton has done a lot as a bike city, but boy oh boy do we have far to go in some ways. We still close the only bike route into downtown from the east for peak bike season to store dumpsters, like we've done every year . #yegbike

A bike lane into the hear of Edmonton. In the background is Churchill Square and the towers of the Ice District. It is a lovely, perfect day for bicycling and there is a dumpster parked in the lane with a bunch of red barrier fences around it.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Ah yes. Piddles is bringing back the "warrior" culture.

A screenshot of a news article with a picture at the Calgary Stampede of Pierre "Piddles" Poilievre wearing a white sparkly blouse and cowboy hat giving a lecture at Calgary Stampede.

The article reads:

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has again echoed U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth's pledge to abolish "woke" policies in the military and replace them with a "warrior" culture.

Speaking at a Calgary Stampede event on July 4, Poilievre, wearing a cowboy hat, told Conservative partisans: "We will ensure that military spending goes to protect our country and support our troops."

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

How could it flop with quality cross marketing like this?

A Masters of the Universe themed “Limited Edition” of Whiskas Temptations cat treats, with He-Man riding a Battle Cat regalia version of the Temptations cat mascot in pursuit of a distraught chicken. The label describes the flavour as “Eternian Roast Fowl”.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

We had a Roger visit, and he is very insistent upon outside time at home. He had to settle for supervised time on the roof.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

So I have been playing around with some new landscape rendering tools to improve my hillshades in some of my maps. Both of these hillshades were based on 30m Digital Terrain Models. The left is what you get from generating a hillshade with a #GIS suite. Right used a program called Eduard.

A 1:50K scale map entitled "Sand and Gravel Deposits of the Project Area." A river cuts through the SE corner, with a rose area indicating "Sand and Gravel" and an orange area indicating a deposit of "Sand, silt & clay minor gravel". Ages of valley thalwegs are also indicated on the map. A road runs atop what is apparently a Ridgeline overlooking the river. A hillshade effect has been applied which gives a reasonable indication of hilly terrain, but not so much that some of the streams particularly make sense. It is also rather rough and pixellated.

The same map as in the previous picture, but this one has a much silkier look to it, almost as if it were hand-shaded. The same ridge structure is visible, but the coulees of the valley wall overlooking the river are much more apparent. The shadows are subtler, and don't do much hide the entire NW wall of the valley in shade.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I think Eduard might be my new favourite hillshade renderer. #gis

A grey texture relief map layer depicting an area around a lake with multiple watercourses. The terrain is striated with glacial landforms running NE-SW. The resolution is fine enough that roadbeds can be discerned.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Realized I haven't said anything about that aquarium I was setting up back in January. Well, it's going amazing. #macrophotograpy #aquarium

A reticulated hillstream loach (Sewellia lineolata) clings to quartzite river rock with the sort of anxious expression that suggests that it is wondering if it remembered to turn the stove off. It has a pancake shaped body and fin arrangement that makes it resemble a tiny stingray, and true to its name it is in fact reticulated with yellow and black spots. A translucent red Neocaridina davidi shrimp has settled onto the rock next to it.

A macrophotography of a snail (Planorbella duryi) cruising along the aquarium glass. Its foot is pink, while the shell is red with leopard spots and has a pearlescent sheen to it. Riding upon its shell is a tiny juvenile Neocaridina davidi shrimp

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I’m pretty sure that the other half’s super shy cat tolerating me was a serious green flag in our relationship. Ditto that I brought a cat of my own to it.

A dark little tortoiseshell cat on a very vintage looking floral patten rug. A torbie and white cat sits upon a nearby bench looking back at the other cat.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Sat down on my desk to get some work done and heard a thump up on the roof. It turned out I had an unexpected health and safety issue.

A roofline above a door with a single large window set into it. Poised above the door are two Canada geese. The one on the right is winding up for a particularly loud honk.

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Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️ @coprolithic.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

On the subject of irregular texture and slubby flecks, I'm looking forward to the weather for this hopsack field jacket.

A green hopsack jacket cut in the style of a hunting jacket with large bellows pockets and broader lapels. The buttons appear to be horn. The model wearing it is a tall thin guy, who has matched it with a waffle texture brown shirt and khakis.

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