The following is a collection of your most Frequently Asked Questions.
Why did you do this?
I like to make novel creations. While this isn’t really pushing the boundaries of technology like my site QuickDrive.com did in 1999, it is something nobody else had done.
Hey! You don’t show WHERE my brick is.
That’s right. This website and domain cost real money to operate, and I’d like to keep it going, so in order to offset that cost I’ve built an iOS and Android SmartPhone application that uses GPS and the original Key Brick location method to help you quickly locate your favourite bricks. The app costs less than 1/3 of what it will cost you in bus fare to and from Olympic Plaza.
How did you make this?
The creation of this website was preceded with a few years of work that included the investigation and discovery that there was no digital record of the location of the 36,045 bricks in Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, obtaining a copy of the paper print-out of the now-deleted database and (the biggest part) manually confirming the accuracy of an OCR scan of each brick record on 556 pages.
What if I don’t have a Smart Phone?
Since 1987 there has always been a paper photocopy of the 556 page paper record of each brick location at the Information Counter in the big blue Municipal Building right across the street from Olympic Plaza. That paper record doesn’t have GPS values for each brick (that’s something that I’ve added to each brick’s record), you’ll have to remember the Key Bricks that your brick is located between.
What about copyrights?
First, let me say that I’m not in any way attempting to co-opt or take over or assume the ownership of anything with this site. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their owners and any use of a trademark or other property in this site is solely for informative purposes within the intent of Fair Use practice. I’m not a lawyer and this site and its contents have been developed in good faith as a citizen of Calgary.
When the City provided me with access to the paper list of the bricks in Olympic Plaza I agreed to not reveal any brick donor names and to keep them confidential. That information was never provided to me, so no risk there. That I would provide the City with a copy of the electronic database created from the paper record. A spreadsheet of each of the bricks and their location information was sent to the City of Calgary in March 2017. As well, the agreement stipulated that I will not transfer or assign any of these rights to anyone else. This whole initiative predates the creation of the City of Calgary’s Open Data portal, I have no insight as to what plans the city may have for the electronic Brick record spreadsheet.
If you or your organization feel that I’m doing something illegal or improper with this site, please get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to chat.
Do you have customer service?
Of course! Just click on the Contact menu above. There are a number of ways to get in touch with me.