Cubist

I realized this morning that this cube must be at least 20 years old. This would probably explain why playing with it hurts so much. Rubik's cubes shouldn't be stiff should they? It also sometimes makes strange noises.

I solved it 3 times today. Yep, I think it's time to move onto something else on my list.

rubik's and the holidays.

I spent about 3 hours last night working on my Rubik's cube. It was really irritating. I solved it once. And then when I tried it again I just kept messing it up. By about 10:30 I was getting really frustrated and my hands were starting to get sore. I had to fight the urge to take it and whip it at the wall... [SERENITY NOW!]

I'm not sure why I started doing this - well, actually, I found the cube sitting on my nightstand a few nights ago and thought to myself that it would be kind of fun to be able to solve it.

This is how I chose to start my "staying at home" holidays this year. I have a list of things that I'd like to do this week - rubik's was on it but after last night I think it may get removed from my list.

If only I were feeling better though... I'm fighting through my second coughing fit of the night. The first one was at around 1am... it's currently 4am.

My head hurts from coughing too much. I'm tired. And no amount of water seems to help. I took a lozenge during the first one - that made things worse. So now I'm trying staying upright and drinking lots of water. Such a strange cold... I usually get a pretty bad cough when I get sick but I usually get sick first. This jumped right to the cough, no real sickness. It's making doing stuff kind of hard because I start coughing.

Also - it looks like it finally stopped snowing for the night. I don't remember it ever snowing this frequently. It seems like every afternoon big clouds roll in and it starts snowing. It's cold so the snow isn't melting just yet (we have over a foot now).


I realized last night as I took a few pictures that my hands are surprisingly steady when I take pictures. It's kind of crazy. The picture above was taken at 1/6 of a second. No tripod, just me standing on a street corner quickly snapping shots. Same with this one: (shot at 1/3 of a second, hand held)

I mean, they aren't completely clear but they're not terrible either. (And this is on a non-VR lens!) [These pictures aren't particularly interesting, just kind of me documenting the amount of snow we have.] Also, I've definitely noticed that Auto-ISO is off on my camera. It's so much better now that it's off!

I'll probably end up working on some more HDR shots tomorrow while I wait for my turkey to cook - yes, that's right, I'm cooking a turkey... on Christmas eve. I'm irritated that every year I never get to make turkey (for ANY of the holidays) and never have turkey leftovers or have bones to make turkey stock with. So I decided to cook a turkey. I'm going all out for this one: stuffing, turkey, cranberries, some sort of mashed potato, something green (salad or brocoli or both...) There'll be way too much food but it's okay. Let the holiday indulging begin.

so tired... need more sleep... I think the coughing has subsided for now... I'm going to try going back to sleep. Wish me luck.

Auto-ISO

ARGH.

So I just realized that the D40 has two places where you can set the "Auto-ISO". I had only seen the one. And so as I struggled to take some HDR photos today (I had tried doing this a while ago but gave up because it wasn't working) I realized that my problem was that my ISO was changing with every shot (increasing noise in some of the pictures!)

I figured out how to turn the second auto-ISO setting off... and now I'm kind of annoyed because my lack of attention means that my pictures for the last year have in a lot of cases been auto-ISOed. *sigh*

This really explains a LOT... I'm glad I figured this out.

Here we go:

HDR shot of the Massey Harris building

I don't know... I'm really not convinced. I should try this again earlier in the evening before the street lights turn on and when less light is coming into my room (there are some reflections of the glass in the picture - not exactly ideal...)


The city has been blanketed in a thick layer of snow (it just seems to keep snowing!) No it is not a disaster, we don't need the army, we're doing okay here. People seem to be quite sensible about it and roads have been pretty deserted. I went out on Friday night with a few friends and everything was ridiculously quiet. I think this was probably for the best - it forced me to come home shortly after last call. I've developed a bad cough lately and staying out late and drinking alcohol do not seem to help at all.

Anyway, my Weezer album is done, I've got nothing interesting to say or to post here, it's getting late and I want to go read a bit before falling asleep. Goodnight.

Schmap Toronto!

Little victories!!

I just got an e-mail this evening letting me know that Schmap Toronto had selected one of my pictures for the 6th edition of their Toronto guide. I had received a message a while ago asking me if I'd be interested in having them potentially publish a picture if they selected me... I guess they selected it.

Here is the link. Nothing special. It looks like it's the first picture for the Distillery District set. Shmap is kind of like a travel site where you can find pictures of places, reviews, that kind of thing... I've never actually used this site. It's kind of interesting to have something on there though.

The picture in question (shown below) happens to be a (handheld) panorama that I did during my worldwide photowalk back in August. There was some interesting cropping that had to happen as subjects in the various exposures (can you even call them that when you're talking digital?) were moving and so appeared more than once in the completed panorama.

the holidays

I have a week and a half off starting next week. I'm not sure what to do with it just yet. I'm not a huge fan of the holidays. I always end up feeling like I'm getting pulled in all directions and left feeling pretty exhausted. Every year it's the same thing. And so... I keep thinking to myself "maybe I could just go..." but where? Where would I go? The idea at the top of my list is New York City. Then maybe Montreal (though I really don't know what I would do there other than eat bagels - ha!). I also, out of curiosity (and research) looked at flights to Tokyo (that's just ridiculous I know).

Unfortunately, I think I will be stuck in Toronto for the holidays yet again. And this is disappointing. That being said I have a trip planned in March to Paris. Mais Oui! Paris! I've been there before and wasn't a huge fan the first time around but maybe this time, if I spend a week there I'll like it better? My friend Aleks has been living there for the last 4 months now and I would love to go visit her. I'm debating whether to stay with her and save a bit of cash or if I should do a hostel adventure. The thought of staying in a hostel is really exciting (is that bad?) - I'd be able to meet some new people, possibly go out and also have some independence. I guess I'll see what prices are like... I should start doing some research for good photography spots before I go!

Which brings me of course back to... Tokyo. So this evening I started re-reading my blog about my trip. It's funny to re-read it now. The further the trip seems to get from me the more the blog is meaningful - it reminds me of so much (though it seems that at times I said very little.) What does this have to do with Tokyo you may wonder? Well, nothing really... other than I really want to go back and reading about it really makes me realize how far it is. Both in distance and in my future plans. I will be saving up my vacation time next year to go to Japan in December (most likely for most of the month if possible.) In the meantime, I'm working on getting some basic level of conversational Japanese happening. I'm taking courses (I think I mentioned those here before?) and going to meet-ups to try practicing. Also... I'm doing research as to places I would like to go, things I'd like to see... mainly this is surrounding photographic opportunities.

I know... maybe I'm crazy for thinking so far ahead... I admit, I have a slight obsession about this...

And in the meantime, I will try to keep my wits about me here. Study hard and take pictures when I can... Here are a few from the last 4 weeks:

North Edmonton:


The Bell Conferencing holiday party which I photographed (pro bono):


And the Movember Gala which was probably the highlight of November for me. Tons of fun, amazing pictures and lots of moustaches!

he's coming to town

so we finally went live this morning. I was at work at 6:30 to make sure everything was working okay... and luckily it was.

I'm tired and it's cold in the office today which somehow brings me to what I did yesterday.

Yesterday was the annual santa claus parade in Toronto. I don't think I ever went to this when I was a kid - I think i usually sat at home and watched. I vaguely remember convincing someone (maybe my dad) to go down to Christie Pitts to see the parade set up at some point but as a child I never sat / stood and actually watched the parade in the cold. I think my first time watching it would've been when I was 16 or 17 with Ryan - he'd heard I'd never seen it and decided it was one of those things I just had to experience.

Anyway. I went to the parade yesterday. I bundled up (jamaisian toque, mitts and boots), grabbed my camera and headed off. I should note here that it was snowing as I left. I got to the parade probably about an hour into it (from where I was on the route) and quickly realized that it was really cold outside. And that the parade was not as interesting as I thought it would be. I had looked online to try to find out what time Santa would be making his appearance but I couldn't find that - I could only find the float line-up which I should've printed because once I got there I started wondering how long it would be before he'd show up. As I turned into an icicle I decided I should go and find him (walk up the parade route to both keep warm and speed up the process.)

And then Santa arrived. After about an hour of standing in the cold he arrived. And he wouldn't stop talking about the most stupid things (like the weather and how it rained yesterday but rain won't stop Santa, oh no! ho ho ho!) - yeah it was lame. And I could tell from the expression of the kids around me that they were not all that impressed either.

My pictures turned out pretty lame. Maybe my editing them just didn't work the way I anticipated...

Looking for Santa...


I think their expressions say it all


And who doesn't like an out-of-tune marching band? Actually, the band following this guy was pretty insane - probably 70 or 80 musicians and they were pretty good.


and finally.... the big guy:

a quick visit

So I'm not sure where I left off on this blog here...

I think probably it was some point before I decided to go full-time at work. It ends up that they wanted me to stay on (they asked me to join the team full-time at some point during my second month at work so it felt kind of good - I guess I was doing an okay job after all). The transition over has been a little strange - I keep having to remind myself that this isn't temporary anymore. Also, my role is kind of in-transition and has required some adjustment on my part. (How is it that my roles always seem to be transitioning?!)

We are about to hit the holiday code freeze which of course means a mad scramble and crunch to get our final version of code out into production. It's been a pretty exciting project to work on - very high profile for the company and one that I can actually say I'm proud to have worked on (at least to this point! I don't want to get into further details here - just ask me and I'll tell you what it is.) This week has been particularly bad and it doesn't seem to be coming to an end. It seems like I sat down this morning and next thing I knew it was 5pm! (That can't be a bad thing).

Anyway - enough talk about work! My parents spent the last 7 days with me. It was nice to see them and still baffles me that they choose to drive 3 1/2 days out here! Yeah, I know... I have to admit, I sometimes miss the drive out to Alberta - it seems like that was an annual thing when I was a kid and I really do consider myself lucky to have been able to do that (both travel across the country repeatedly and spend some time in Alberta.) Doing that trip really makes you appreciate the country so much more - it's size, the variety of communities, terrain... and just how boring the prairies can get!

I took a couple of pictures while they were around - it feels like my photography has kind of decreased in quantity over the last couple of months - could be the cooling weather or my other projects that are getting in the way?




Anyway, it was very nice to see them and I wish I could've spent more time with them. Unfortunately work and school were both pretty stressful over the last week and so I couldn't take much time off.

Other than that... I just finished Level 1 of Japanese! Kantan desu ne!? (it's easy isn't it?) Ha... not sure about that yet! I think I definitely need to study and practice speaking more... and so I am taking level 2 in January. It's been a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. It's a little difficult - mainly because I don't have much of a vocabulary and my memory isn't that great so unless the word has some sort of latin root it takes some memorizing. That being said, I can read and write in Hiragana and I am making it my goal to be able to read in Katakana come January. I think maybe the fact that this is the only "course"-like thing I am doing in my spare time it's making it somewhat easy to focus (and I do kind of miss being in school so it's nice to be in that setting again.)

I find it extremely rewarding to be in situations where I can read something in Hiragana or understand very basic parts of conversations. It makes me feel like I'm actually learning something. On Monday, before class, I was in a restaurant waiting for my burrito to be ready when I realized that two girls sitting next to me were speaking Japanese. I tried to pay attention to their conversation - which was somewhat difficult to follow but I did understand parts of it (times that things started and ended... I kind of felt ridiculous because I honestly didn't know what they were talking about aside from start and end times... but hey, it's a start... right?)

I've also discovered that with my new job I'm developing this terrible addiction to books. I've been buying at least one every few weeks... I managed to read the last one I bought in a couple of days and so had to order myself some more today. I guess it could be worse right?

That's it for now.

more pictures

I haven't taken all that many pictures recently. (Well, at least not for me). It's been a slow week - I'm pretty busy right now. I just started my Japanese class and have been pretty much focusing on learning to read for the last couple of weeks. It's coming along. Every day I'm finding myself recognizing more and more characters so I do feel like I'm making some progress. I've been spending my lunch hours at work trying to write and memorize as much as I can. I've been also doing quite a bit of studying on my own to get the most out of this course as I can. We'll see how much it helps.

I just realized that I never talked about the photography event I went to in August. I signed up for what was the first "Worldwide Photo Walk". 50 people in cities across the world (over 7500 participants) got together on August 23rd to take pictures as a group. I started getting a little concerned as other photographers started signing up for it in the city because, well, they're much better than me at this whole photography thing. I got to the meet-up and was immediately surrounded by people who had much more expensive cameras than me and though I was a little intimidated at first I got over it pretty quickly and took a few okay pictures. We did our walk in the distillery district which I found to be a little boring for this type of thing. Here are a few of my favourites from the 2 hours we had to take our pictures:


I'm not sure why I liked this one... I wish she had her eyes open, but what can you do.


I caught a street festival a couple of weekends ago and got some okay pictures there:










I guess that pretty much sums things up... Seems like most of what I've been doing is either focusing on work, photography or learning Japanese. I guess it could be worse.

I've had a few pictures posted on various websites. I'm trying to keep track of all of them (my pictures have been posted 4 times recently I believe. It's hard to know for sure...) Maybe I'll post the links here? Ryan says I should be saving the links somewhere for future reference (I have a feeling he sees me having a future in this or something?)

I also just noticed that everything I just posted is in black & white (or completely unsaturated in the case of the first one). Strange. I usually enjoy my pictures in colour (this is what draws me to photography - colour and light) but all of my street festival ones were post-processed in black and white. I feel like I should balance it out... so here are a couple of pictures I took on an evening out with my co-workers at the CNE (Ex):




Co-workers:


I haven't said much of anything here. I don't have much news. I may post something a little more interesting (and that doesn't consist of pictures) later in the week. Stay tuned.

Some new pictures

Here are some new pictures...

I've been playing with panoramas quite a bit lately...


the go train


I think the kid in the background here was mesmerized by ryan's beard and hair. She didn't stop staring at him the entire time we ate these wonderful tacos. I discovered this new tortilleria shortly after coming home from traveling but didn't try it until a bunch of co-workers brought me there for lunch. It's pretty good - you can get 4 tacos of any kind (they have about 8 varieties) for $8.50. They're tasty. And the tortillas are fresh. Mmm... mole tacos... oh and the chorizo ones are pretty amazing too!


Igor Kenk's store on Queen West that was recently raided by the police as part of the crackdown on stolen bikes in the city. I cannot understand how this shop managed to remain open for so long without the police ever getting involved. I remember shortly after moving into the area seeing a man running down the street toward this shop with half a bicycle - it had obviously been sawed in half... I quickly realized that my bikes would need to be locked up inside somewhere.


Ryan and I will be printing some pictures up in large format in the next little while to put up on our wall at home. It's time to get something up there that isn't posters we have from University. We've been going through them and trying to decide which ones to print out. I really want to print out the Go Train one I posted above. We may print out the panorama as well. I think a lot of them will be pictures that I posted during our trip - there is a very good night shot of Hong Kong that we're printing out. We'll see. Once I know which ones I'm printing I'll post them here. The printing will actually be fairly inexpensive... framing them will be a different story... unless I'm feeling crafty enough to make some frames... we'll see.

A new toy

Yesterday I decided that my dreams to own that wonderful (and highly rated) Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens were just that - dreams. It really makes no sense for me to spend that much money ($800) on a lens right now.

And so... I opted for the next best thing - a Nikkor 55-200 VR lens. This should complement my 18-55mm lens nicely and allow me to do more of that street-type photography I was doing when I was traveling. It was also a quarter of the price of the other lens... definitely makes more sense for now. For some reason, it seems very hard to do any kind of street photography in Toronto. Is it that there aren't enough people here? The fear of getting caught? I don't know but ever since coming back I've been struggling to get any kind of good street shots. And so hopefully (even though I've said many times that shooting street at 200mm is not the same) this new lens will help me a bit.

And so I went out, picked up this wonderful new (to me but slightly used) lens and started scouring the streets for something interesting. What a perfect weekend to get this lens - it's Caribana!







These are from today's walk. As I was telling my dad, this new lens is pretty cool. I can hide in bushes and take pictures of old men:


Or stumble upon a turkish festival:




As I was preparing to take a picture this man walked up past and then turned around and asked "do you want to take my picture?" Not sure what the appropriate response was (it seems rare that people want their pictures taken...) I asked "do you want me to take your picture?" and he said sure. I took the picture and then thanked him, went to shake his hand but instead he wanted me to "punch it"...




I can't quite seem to get the screen I'm using on my photoshop computer calibrated correctly. I've been trying for the last two weeks and every time the pictures end up looking kind of like the saturation is wrong. So then I have to check my second computer to see if the colour is any better and then readjust. I think it's time to swap monitors.