Vancouver

I've just received a road alert: The middle lane of the Lionsgate bridge is closed due to a police incident. Motorists are advised to expect delays

Edit They've just updated the alert. The middle lane is open again. I would still expect delays due to the backlog plus now the usual rush hour traffic

Looking to grab brunch this weekend and wondering what everyone's favourite brunch spot is.

Will they take a vacation? Say they are striking in solidarity with 3rd party apps? Create, gasp, original content? What do you think?

On Reddit, there used to be subreddits for universities that were very active. There doesn't seem to be an alternative here.

Where's [email protected]?

Exchange rate, border lineups and online shopping also contributing to downturn at B.C.-U.S. border

Some Langley, B.C. residents and environmental organizations are pushing back against a proposed expansion of an industrial development into a protected wetland area they say is being slowly destroyed.

See final paragraph - set to be the tallest building in Western Canada. The article focuses on the 14 stories of underground parking that will be included, which does seem excessive given that the SkyTrain is literally across the street.

Nearly 800 individual humpback whales were sighted this year in the Salish Sea, says marine naturalist

Honestly I'm on the fence about this. There are probably some good reasons for this and equally bad reasons, but I don't think the kids really care though.

A previous article was written by somebody in my neighborhood who was against this. Not sure she wants to talk to me anymore because I didn't completely buy in to her side of it.. she is 80 though. I'm not going to sit there and argue with an 80 year old lady in the street.

The warning is concerning to those whose livelihoods depend on water, such as cattle ranchers

Indigenous men 4 times more likely to be killed than Indigenous women, data shows

Hi c/Vancouver!

This is a follow-up to my initial post.
I have since checked libraries of Metro Vancouver for video games and made similar lists for those which offer them on loan - afaict there is a total of six:

• Coquitlam Public Library - CPL
• New Westminster Public Library - NWPL
• North Vancouver City Library - NVCL
• North Vancouver District Public Library - NVDPL
• Richmond Public Library - RPL
• Vancouver Public Library - VPL

First, you should know about InterLINK and member libraries.

Second, those six libraries have different borrowing rules / limits w.r.t. video games:

NB: Any renewals are conditional on the games not being on hold for anyone else / the games not being in demand.
(¹) 2 automatic renewals and 3 manual ones
(²) The writing is specific to "Nintendo Switch Games", but you'll see they only have a handful of those listed on the website. This probably applies to other platforms but you might want to double check.
(³) I couldn't find a clear "limit", so this is the maximum number of items which can be requested at a time - I am assuming the actual number of video games that can be checked out is lower, I will attempt to confirm with staff.

Lastly, here are my HowLongToBeat collections for each library:

A few things that are good-to-know:

• There's strictly no M rated games at VPL or NWPL.
• If you want a blast from the past, there's a single OG Xbox game at CPL, Tom Clancy's Splinter's Cell - and FWIW it is backwards compatible with every Xbox model - with a disc drive - in existence.
• RPL
  • I was told by staff that they have another 10 Switch games on a first come, first serve basis, but I haven't heard back yet as to what those might be or where they are (and they're not in the system - that much I've been told). If you come across any of those games, please ping me so I can add them to the list!
  • I was also told that they should begin buying new PS4/PS5/Xbox Series games at some point in the near future, budget permitting.
  • Lastly, there's technically around 450 games listed on the RPL website, but I've found that they were either impossible to place a hold on or had a due date well in the past (> 6 months ago), thus the far lower number of games I listed above. I'm still checking with staff whether that's correct.

If you see any mistakes or for instance a game that is not actually available but is still listed in the collections, do let me know!
And if any of you is familiar with Chilifresh or the Polaris ILS, please get in touch with me :)

Happy gaming!

Hey vancouver community!

This is a c/p from a thread I made over on reddit, which I think might be of general interest.

Did you know the VPL has almost 1,800 video games on offer? (As of writing this)
I've never been happy with how difficult it is to find them and how little info is actually shown on the VPL website.
And I'm sure many of you either had no idea the library even had any video games available or potentially just gave up on borrowing one because searching is a bit of a pain.
All you need is a library card and you can borrow a maximum of 5 games at a time. The default loan period is one week and you can renew loans for games which are not in demand (on hold).

Enough with the intro, here are my collections on HowLongToBeat.
I've made collections for each console separately, so that's it's far easier to filter them separately, and searching inside said collections is also mostly instantaneous.

And here are direct links to them:

• PS3 games
• PS4 games
• PS5 games
• Switch games
• Wii games
• Wii U games
• Xbox 360 games
• Xbox One games (including Series X games with Smart Delivery)
• Xbox Series X games

Once on a specific collection page, it defaults to a "Rating" sort (this is community-driven, same with the "time to beat" shown for each game) and "Card View" (with cover / title / time to beat and notes), but those can be adjusted to your liking.
I've included links to the game VPL listing(s) in the notes for each of them, as well as the corresponding search filter on the VPL website.

NB: Some games are missing from HLTB, so it's not a 1:1 match, but I'm working on that.

And please let me know if you see any issues / wrong links/games or if you have any questions!