Merry Christmas!

As most of you likely know, I'm a Czech thoroughbred, so naturally when spending Christmas with my family, we do it the Czech way. I don't want to go into the details about the Christmas carp and the bathtub, but one significant thing we do differently is that we celebrate Christmas Eve as opposed to Christmas Day. We have a traditional meal, maybe have a drink or two, and open gifts in the evening. Since St. Nick had already delivered his gifts on Dec. 6th, the presents received on this day are from none other than baby Jesus. (If you don't believe me, read about it here!) Anyway, all this means is that little boys and girls get their goodies and play with them until they get tired, and when you crazy North Americans are getting up early, I'll be snoozing away :)

So to all of you, have a wonderful Christmas! Veselé vánoce!



Here's a demonstration of how easily the finest photographic equipment can be rendered useless.

UW revisited

Having dwelled in the photographic doldrums for quite some time now, Ryan and I decided to recharge our batteries and take some early-morning snaps. The idea, in theory, was wonderful, but it turns out that overcast early-morning light is no better than overcast late-morning light... and more importantly, winter is cold. We drove to Waterloo Park and took a few shots there before walking over to our old haunt - the University of Waterloo. The Davis Centre (DC) - a spectacular mess of garishly coloured pipes and glass - seemed like a good place to stop and take some indoor photographs. Results are below, along with photos from the adjoining - and visually uninspiring - Mathematics and Computing building (MC).


One of a few crazy people we saw that morning. It was probably -20C, and the man is wearing little more than tights!


A plant in Waterloo Park. I desaturated this photograph to highlight the form of the plant against the stark snowscape. It looks a bit pixelated here, but I think it looks better in actual size.


Appropriate sticker, considering the temperature. At first glance I only saw "Freeze Now!"


A pair of benches in the Davis Centre. I used to study on these benches because there was nobody else around usually... the benches are quite uncomfortable :)


The ghost in the halls. Here is Ryan taking a photograph.


A fountain in the Davis Centre.


A locker in MC. CS 130 was my first computer science course. We learned about robots!


One of the classrooms in MC. Can you read what's written on the board? Maybe I should have sat closer...

Sweep and be healed!

Well, doing spot-healing in post-processing is all well and good, but I'm the kind of guy that avoids post-processing as much as possible. I want my best picture to be the one created when I trip my shutter, not when I dress it up in Photoshop (not that there's anything wrong with that). So you can imagine that I hate having to use Photoshop just to make pictures viewable.

I need a solution.

I found it.

It is... the Arctic Butterfly!



This little baby has bristles that can be electrostaticlly charged so that when you sweep the sensor - technically, the low-pass filter in front of the sensor - it attracts dust. And, as the Golden Compass has shown us, Dust is evil!!! So yay for the Arctic Butterfly!

Here are some sample shots:


Before


After the Arctic Butterfly!


So, as you can see, it's quite effective! I will now be able to save myself my yearly trip to the Nikon repair centre in Mississauga, the $80 fee, and the heartache of having to wait until next year to get the darned dust off again! You'll notice there is still residue, but this is likely water or oil stain that requires a wet solution (in the chemical sense of the term "solution"). I'll be posting the results once I buy the required materials. But for now, I can kiss dust goodbye!

Click and be healed!

I found a magic feature in my photo editing program (Elements 5.0... I can't afford Photoshop). It's called "Spot Healing Tool Brush". You paint an area of your image that you want eliminated and it automagically removes all evidence of its existence. This is fantastic for me since I have lots of photos defaced by ugly sensor dust particles.

Here are two images from my trip with Carolyn to Saskatoon. I liked the images but the originals had horrendous black smudges on them. Now that I have this handy tool, I plan to upload more photos that have been collecting dust (pun intended).

Friday photoroam

After two weeks of solid crazy work (weekend included), I finally got a chance to get away from it all and 'decompress'. On Friday afternoon, I went on a photoroam with two friends from work: Richard and Andy. Just being outside was very cathartic, and having my camera and some friends just made it better. I definitely needed the break from work.

Click here to see photos from the walk.

Did you jiggle the cable?

I can't think of a single person who hasn't had a computer crash on them at some point. Getting a computer to crash is fairly straight-forward nowadays and doesn't require too much technical skill. However, crashing a printer is another matter.



This is what happens when Vista doesn't support your printer anymore, but you try to trick it into working anyway. Lights flashing, assertion errors, and I could have sworn I heard the printer say "danger, danger!" Maybe it's time to invest in a new printer. Thank you HP and Vista, for making the choice for me.

Extreme fallage

Here are some pictures from two recent hikes. The first was a hike with Carolyn near St. Jacobs a few weeks ago, and the second hike was with Richard in Homer Watson Park today (or, I guess yesterday at this point... I really should go to sleep)


Firey-red maple along the trail in St. Jacobs.


This shot isn't all that great, I'll admit. The tricky thing is that I had a manual-focus lens, and I was nearly able to compose a shot that doesn't look blurry. I like the really short depth-of-field that my 50mm lens gives me.


A fallen leaf along the trail in Homer Watson Park. Again, taken with a manual-focus lens. It's not super-crisp, but I think it came out fairly well.

untitled

Well, Carolyn has up and gone to India with her mom. The only instruction I was given was not to mope. So here I am... not moping...

Hmm... on an entirely unrelated topic, did you know that there are about twenty-thousand minutes in two weeks? And the average resting heart rate for a man is 70 beats-per-minute. So that equates to approximately 1.5 million heart beats.

1,499,995

...

1,499,985

...

*sigh*

Photographs

The HR department at my company (with some encouragement from fellow camera-geek employees) have decided to spruce up our walls with photographs by the employees. We had about a month to post five pictures to a dedicated flickr group, and the photos will be chosen from there. It took me nearly the entire month to sit down and browse through my photos, and many hours to actually choose five... but eventually I did... and I'm still not sure if I made the best choices. Going through the hordes of photos (probably over 10,000) was a truly lamentable task - it emphasized what a small fraction of my photos are actually good. I'd like to think that ratio of good to crappy photos is increasing at the very least, but I'm still a long way off from where I want to be. Having said that, I'm still enjoying my camera, and I'm looking forward to all the things I have yet to photograph, and to all the ways I have yet to photograph them.

Anyway, you can see my pool of photos here. The pictures I posted can be found here.

You don't know Jack

We've had the pleasure of caring for Jack for over two years now, and he still manages to surprise us.

For instance, we woke up in the middle of the night to a strange rustling noise. When we turned out the light, we found Jack had settled quite comfortably in this dresser drawer. Surprisingly he both got up into the drawer (2nd from bottom), and managed to fit inside of it.



Secondly, despite being emasculated years ago, and being a fairly... let's say "leisurely" cat, Jack is still inclined to defend his honour and his territory. When a rogue element was discovered in our yard yesterday, this is the scene the ensued:



We broke up the fight when it got dirty, and Jack was not injured in the melee. But I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of Lord Blacky yet.

On Saturday, we took Jack to the vet to get his annual shots, and of course we got him weighed. He's now in his teens, weighing in at 19.8 lbs! Yay Jack! At this rate he is soon to be featured on the cover of FQ.

The kitchen transmogrifier

I don't know if many of you have one of these, but if you don't, you should get one. They're great! It's this big box that transforms dirty dishes into clean ones! We got ours on Wednesday, and we just love it. All you need to do is feed it small blue tablets, add water and electricity (always a pleasant mixture), and it does the rest. Ingenious.

200th post

Well, I've hit the 200 mark, almost 2.5 years after starting this blog. If I include the 57 posts I had at my previous blog that I started in February of 2005, it seems I'm averaging about 3-4 days between posts. I'd say that's pretty good considering I haven't posted since the beginning of August, right? Cut me some slack.

Anyway, I've been a creative funk for the last little while. Not quite sure why, but camera was collecting dust and I had no incentive to take it for a walk. Then on Friday I got an e-mail saying that one of my flickr photos was being used in an online publication (look at the Tulip Festival photos, top-right corner). Maybe it's a bit silly, but I was flattered and started to feel good about myself. I checked out the picture they chose and I thought: "if you think that's a good photo...". It's particularly funny because I had only recently realized that I still had a flickr account active.

Confidence revived, Carolyn and I took a walk around Old Westmount neighbourhood on Sunday. The weather was perfect and the golden embers of the setting sun set everything aglow. I wanted to keep it simple. I know if I tried too hard, I would just get frustrated. Here are the results:


I think the is a dahlia, but I could be wrong.


Funky plant that hasn't bloomed yet.


Capturing the fountain on Westmount.


Yellow.


Yellow, and then some.


Fall is here.


Ryan, up to his old tricks again.

Tales of Tobermory - Part 4

Flowers, flowers, and more flowers! (And maybe a butterfly).


Some Castilleja (commonly known as Indian Paintbrush)... I think. This was on our hike in Singing Sands Provincial Park.


A pitcher plant. It eats bugs. And if you're not careful, it'll eat you too. Don't fall for it's innocent demeanor.


An orange lily. There were many of these scattered throughout the region. Very lovely.


Some sort of fern. With shadow.


One day...


Viceroy butterfly in some sort of plant. Can anyone identify it? The butterflies just loved it.

Tales of Tobermory - Part 3

Ok, the weekend is coming up, and we're heading to Tobermory again, so I'd better catch up with my previous Tobermory pictures.


Scuba divers at Big Tub.


The Big Tub lighthouse.


Kayakers in the harbour.


Plant, stone, and shadow.


Nasty, nasty bugs. These little buggers were swarming all along the road we were biking down, sticking to our clothes and in our face too. Blech. Gross. This one was one Carolyn's helmet. It's about 2-3cm long.


Night shot of the mist above Larry's Lake.

Thank You

Thank you to the people at the Emergency Veterinary Clinic of Waterloo Region who were there when Jack came home late Thursday night with miniscule needles embedded in his body. In particular, thanks to the vet who removed the needles from Jack's paws, nose, and eyelid. She did an amazing job considering the lack of specialized equipment. I'm sorry I didn't catch your name.

Thank you to Julie, the vet working the night shift at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC). She was kind and sympathetic, and did wonderfully in assisting with the needle removal.

Thank you to Jen, the technician who got a late-night phone call about the equipment required to closely examine Jack's wounded eye. She also lent a helping hand in examining Jack on Friday, and ensuring that he had a comfortable stay at OVC. Thank you for taking Jack's loose bowels in stride, and I hope you had a change of clothes at work.

Thank you to Chantelle, an opthamologist at OVC who came in to examine Jack even when she wasn't doing clinics on Friday. She was thorough and straightforward, and fully explained all of our options to us. She supervised the operation that would remove that final five needles from Jack's eye.

Thank you to the anesthesiologists who safely put Jack under for his final operation, and in doing so caused him to resemble a poodle owned by a six-year-old. Thank you to the staff at OVC that took care of Jack while he stayed there overnight on Friday. Thank you to everyone at work for being understanding when we told them we had to talk the day off to take care of Jack.

Most of all, thank you to Tara, our dear friend and studying veterinary opthamologist, who - without hesitation - got up from bed and drove from Kitchener to OVC in Guelph. There she spent over an hour removing 30-40 nearly invisible needles from the inside of Jack's eye. Afterwards, she set us up with the necessary medications to keep the eye from getting worse, as she recognized that Jack would need more specialized care. The next morning she spent her time calling countless clinics in Ontario, trying to get Jack an appointment with an opthamologist. She ended up getting us an appointment with Chantelle, her supervisor. In the afternoon, with Jack unconscious, she used a microscope and some amazing skill to remove the remaining needles from Jack's eye, thereby mitigating further damage. And all throughout the ordeal, in her confident yet unassuming way, she would keep us up-to-date with what the current status was, what the options were, how much things would cost, and what needed to be done. She lessened our worries and healed our cat. Her dedication and compassion is inspiring.

Carolyn and I thank you, and Jack - though he might not appreciate the cone and eye medication - thanks you.

[Edit: Just to let everyone know, Jack is doing much better now. He is receiving eye medication to help heal the ulcer on his cornea. He's going in for a checkup on Wednesday, and if all goes well, he'll have the cone off by the weekend.]

[Edit 2: Photo credit goes to Carolyn]

Tales of Tobermory - Part 2

More pictures!


Pink flowers.


Carolyn practicing safe photography.


A stop along the trail. We biked down Dyers Bay Rd, along Georgian Bay.


Some cool plant. I liked the green/red contrast.


A turkey vulture we happened upon. Not the prettiest of birds.


Carolyn waiting for me on the path, at the end of the bike trail.


Gears. Who can pass up rusty old gears?


The lighthouse at the end of the tunnel. Apparently you can volunteer to live here and take care of the place from March to November. Between December and February, the road access is closed. At this point we had biked 10km, and were about to bike back another 10km. Yay us!

Later that day...


The previous day, on the way to Owen Sound to see Ratatouille at the drive-in theatre (which I really enjoyed, btw), we had not taken the opportuntity - we were running late - to photograph these mustard fields that looked amazing in the sunset. So we timed it so that we could do it after biking. The lighting wasn't as good, but the yellow is still overwhelming.


Yellow and fence.


Lost in the flowers.


That evening, Carolyn whipped up some delicious cider-infused chorizo. Now that's camping!