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This is for you, holiday lights nuts.

You know who you are: the guy who can reel off exactly how many tens of thousands of twinkling bulbs there are engulfing his house; the couple with the electric meter about to vibrate off the wall every December, the fanatic with his own FM transmitter that broadcasts music perfectly synched to his 11 blinking Santas.

Once again, The Roanoke Times and roanoke.com are offering our readers a searchable map and database of holiday lights displays in the Roanoke and New River Valleys -- and beyond. And we need you folks with the lighting displays to populate it for us.

You can submit information about your display online using a convenient Web form. We're looking for your address, so people can find your lights, the times you have the lights on, and a description of what visitors will see.

You can even upload a photo of your display if you have one, though that's not a requirement. And if you want to shoot a photo, we have some tips on how to do it from one of our own staff photographers, Eric Brady.

Only a display's owner can submit info, but if it's your neighbor instead of you with all the lights, by all means, encourage them to submit their information.

Once you click submit, your information is instantly available to our visitors at roanoke.com in a searchable database.

So put down that extension cord and get clickin'.

According to Money Magazine's August issue, the 89th best small town in America is Cave Spring, Va.

Huh? Cave Spring is a small town? It’s a fine place to live, I’m sure, but a small town?

Money does this every year. They compile a list of America’s best places to live, and this year they chose to focus on small towns. They define that as “U.S. towns that have a population of 8,500 to 50,000.”

Cave Spring, according to the U.S. Census, had about 25,000 people in 2007.

But is a town only about a population count? That word, for me, conjures the image of a mini-municipality, with a Main Street and demi-downtown, rows of houses, and probably in rural surroundings. That’s not Cave Spring, but that’s only one subjective definition. Towns also typically have governments and borders. Cave Spring has neither.

In other words, it lacks the kind of independence and apart-from-the-worldness that a phrase like “small town” connotes.

The Census Bureau has a word for a spot like Cave Spring. They call it a “place.”

All this goes to the meaning of Money’s findings. Per the magazine, they looked at the economy, jobs, crime, affordability of homes, how many things there are to do, schools, health care, diversity, weather and more.

It’s certainly valid to look at something where there’s a definitive answer for Cave Spring alone, like population and diversity. Money discarded towns that were 95 percent white or more. Cave Spring, according to the census, is 92 percent white.

You can certainly determine a crime rate or housing affordability for an area like Cave Spring, too.

But how do you evaluate the economy in a suburb like Cave Spring where few people work where they live? Does it make sense to talk about the economy of Cave Spring alone, when it’s really just part of the larger economy of the Roanoke Valley?

And how do you evaluate the quality of health care in Cave Spring, when really you’re talking about the quality of health care in the whole valley?

Even the schools are part of a larger system that serves both suburbs and rural enclaves.

“Lots to do” there? Well, it’s hard to tell how many people in Cave Spring limit their search for things to do to their neighborhood, but my guess is they get off their own street at least once in a while for shopping, entertainment, the arts, dining.

Oh, and you have to have a major airport within 60 miles. Congratulations, Roanoke Regional Airport. Money thinks you’re major.

Not to take anything away from Cave Spring or the folks who live there. Not at all. If a major magazine says part of the Roanoke Valley is one of the best places to live in the whole country, that’s something to be proud of.

But when you really look at the criteria, part of what makes Cave Spring a great place in Money’s assessment, is the bigger place that Cave Spring is part of.

That's something the whole Roanoke Valley can brag on.

Just a heads up that the data for the Roanoke Valley crime map just got it's weekly update. It now has offenses through April 20. Same goes for the separate database and map of Salem felonies.

To refresh your memory, the valley-wide data includes only serious violent and property crimes. The Salem-only data includes all felonies.

A repeated thanks to the Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem police departments for providing this data consistently and reliably each week so we can offer it to you on roanoke.com.

Finally, don't forget you can now follow the latest updates and additions to the DataSphere and the DataBlog on Twitter.

The Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Board's annual report came out recently, and the latest data on the top selling liquors was featured in The Roanoke Times today in a story by your favorite data delivery editor.

And, like last year, I've offered the data as interactive graphics in the DataSphere.

Here's the top of the story:

Thirsty, Virginia?

Apparently so. Virginia ABC stores sold about 9.2 million gallons of liquor in fiscal year 2008.

That's more than a gallon and a half for every person of legal drinking age in the state. That's 795,412,236 shots. That's enough to fill 14 Olympic-size swimming pools and still have enough left over to keep a football team schnockered for a good chunk of the off-season.

Statewide, vodka is the big seller, with 28 percent of all liquor sales by volume. But around the southwestern part of the state, it's dark spirits, not clear ones, that rule.

"You're going to skew a lot more brown goods than in an urban area," said John Knutson, director of marketing for Jim Beam bourbon maker Beam Global Spirits & Wine.

Liquor sales representative Michelle Brooks sells Jack Daniel's whiskey products to every one of 130 clients she has in the Roanoke region. Her colleagues elsewhere in the state say "it's like water in these parts. Everybody's got it." (more)

Hey gang, it's been a while, but I finally updated our Roanoke real estate sales search. It now has sales through mid-December for all 45,000 or so parcels in the city of Roanoke. This is the same data that's behind Roanoke's GIS, just re-tooled for a simpler search so you can find sales history on a particular home or parcel, or on a street or in a certain neighborhood.

Search by buyer, seller, address, neighborhood, a date range or a price range.

And your results are matched. Happy searching.

You only have to poke around the DataSphere for a little while to figure out I love Google maps, and partly because I'm so dependent on them to give you, gentle reader, a geographic look at data sometimes.

Google just seems to jam out great new stuff all the time -- Google Earth, Google Chat, and now the Google video chat.

The latest Google thing we in the Roanoke area ought to be checking out is it's "Street View" images of Roanoke. Just go to maps.google.com, search on an address, and if there's a street view there, you'll see a link to it in the info bubble that pops up. Click that, and you'll be transported to that spot photographically. From there you can pivot in any direction, 360 degrees. You can look straight up, or straight down. Notice the arrows on the roadway. Click one to move forward.

I played with this a while yesterday. Naturally, I plugged in my home address to see if my house was there. It was, in an image shot, apparently, on a spring day, while we were all gone. Neither of our cars was in the driveway. Well, that's cool, right?

I mean, this is not only a visual document of pretty much every square inch of roadway around here, but it's also a snapshot of the second in time when a particular image was taken. You can see cars on the road, pedestrians on the sidewalk, notice the weather.

On the other hand, it was kind of creepy. It made me feel vulnerable somehow, made my private life feel a little more out there than I really wanted it to be.

Now, as a journalist, I defend the right of any documentarian to take photos in a public place like a city street. This newspaper depends on that.

On the other hand, this feels invasive somehow. I'm all about more information, but do we really need this much information?  Granted, there's not a minute level of visual information in these photographs. You can see people in some places, and you can zoom in, but not to a great extent before the image begins to deteriorate. I've been trying, and I've yet to be able to really see a face or make out a license plate. But is there still potential for abuse here? Could people use this to gather information about you for nefarious purposes?

No doubt, the technology is amazing, but this puts me in mind of something I ask myself about putting data on the web. I'm all about data, and the more the better, but all journalists, including data editors, ought to be frequently asking themselves,  "Just because I can, does that mean I should?"

What do you all think? Go play with this new toy, and if you think about it, report back here.

Oh, yeah, crime has marched on the last few weeks. And that's not a joke about the last two weeks on the campaign trail.

The Roanoke Valley has been racking up it's share of crime during that time, though you couldn't tell it from our Roanoke Vallley and Salem crime maps. I haven't been able to update them thanks mainly to being swallowed up by election coverage here lately.

But I put in an update today, so the data now runs through last Monday, Nov. 3.

So you can't stand it, you gotta know how it's going. Votes don't get counted until late tonight -- if not into tomorrow or into December.

You can watch early returns in key places tonight after the polls close to get a glimpse of how it might be going for your candidate. My boss, Dwayne Yancey, wrote about five (or more) places to watch for that purpose in a column in Sunday's paper.

But suppose you don't want wait that long. Well, you can always look at turnout. And I'm here to help you.

I'll be endeavoring to post at least two updates on turnout in precincts in Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem, Montgomery County and Radford.

Here's an idea of what to look for:

Will young people, notoriously low in turnout, really come out this year? Conventional wisdom says big youth turnout helps Obama. To gauge it, watch turnout numbers for E-1 (St. Michael's Lutheran Church) and F-1 (Luther Memorial Lutheran Church) in Blacksburg, the East precinct in Radford, and both North Salem precincts.

What about black voters? Roanoke is a highly segregated city, so some precincts have very high percentages of black voters. Watch precincts like Lincoln Terrace, Melrose, Villa Heights and Eureka Park. All historically vote overwhelmingly for Democrats in presidential races, but also have low turnout -- just over 50 percent in 2004.

To gauge Republican turnout, watch Roanoke County's Bonsack precinct. While John Kerry didn't win a single precinct in Roanoke County, Bonsack went 72 percent for George W. Bush. Others to watch include the Orchards in Roanoke County, Auburn High School in Montgomery County, and Beverly Heights in Salem, all of which went for Bush in large numbers in 2004.

Some 10 a.m. turnout data is already available, so check it out here.

And I lived to write about it.

Candidly, I wasn't sure for quite a while if I could go back after seeing the pictures and reading the reports from the health department after a well-documented mouse-infestation and general disrepair caused the city to shut the building down.

But yesterday, with a fair amount of forethought, I made the trek down Campbell Avenue and had one of my faves, a bowl of pho soup from the Hong Kong restaurant.

Why? you might wonder. Partly I missed some of my favorite food. Partly, just habit.

And then there's this: I found I didn't care as much for the other options out there in downtown when I didn't have the market building. Don't get me wrong, there are more great restaurants serving lunch within walking distance of my building than I could name here from memory. But I rarely have the time or the do-re-mi to eat at those places.

In the Market Building, there's a great range of stuff, moderately priced, no waiters to tip, and I can get in and out fast.

I wonder how many others -- including those who want to change the Market Building one way or another -- came to this same realization, that the place as it is serves an important role for downtown diners, and is the only place serving it.

I went back to a place that, while seemingly less-crowded, was more pleasant than before. It's cleaner and the dinged-up old furniture is gone. I looked around and saw an anchor and reporter from Roanoke's two tv stations, a federal judge, and a high-powered local banking muckety-muck.

I ate my pho sitting in chair with a back on it -- a nice improvement from the old benches -- and never once thought about the kitchen where it was cooked, or what might be in it that isn't in the recipe.

With all that's gone on, the hard-scrubbing the whole place got, the damage to reputations and everyone's heightened awareness of cleanliness, there's probably no eating establishment in Roanoke that's cleaner right now.

Plus, I find I'm really back where I started with all this, eating food I like, and because I want to keep eating it, preferring my ignorance of how that food got to my plate.

Well, the evidence is in. It's not a pretty picture.

The health department released reports from the latest inspections of the Roanoke City Market Building's 10 restaurants on Tuesday. What emerges is not the image of a small rodent issue. Mouse "excreta" - poop to us regular folks - was found in essentially every corner and every stall of the building.

The building was shut down and all its vendors' licenses suspended after a health department inspection Friday. Read the reports yourselves here. Links are on the left side of the page about half-way down.

Some had worse problems than others. Read more »