BagelHot

The loss of stuff

2011-12-28T23:50:00.014-05:00

I dedicate this blog entry to the events that transpired today. I suppose every blog entry I write, now that I think of it, has something to do with that particular day. The focus is on the 'loss of things' because I have friends that are secretly getting rid of their kid's toys to alleviate the amount of stuff collected within their homes. 'Secretly' to the kids anyway, I found out because they posted the getting rid of stuff on facebook. This entry also documents my loss of data today from my iPad2.

Ironically the chain of events that follow all started off from performing a back up, of all things, of my iPad2 because my computer hard drive was getting full.

I had purchased Torchwood the complete seasons of one and two (mistake number one) which take up about 1.5 gigs an episode. My main hard drive sits in a netbook. Not a lot of space to begin with. The idea was to use iTunes to back up my files to an external drive. That was it. Simple. Straight forward.

Unfortunately it was neither. After backing up my files to my 'R' drive and checking to make sure they were all there by comparing it to my 'C' drive I proceeded to delete the stuff off my 'C' drive (mistake number two).

Upon running iTunes I noticed that all the apps were gone. How to solve this? I decided to hook up the iPad2 to the computer and download them (sync them) back to the laptop (mistake number three).

Instead of downloading the apps, iTunes decided to sync the empty laptop back to my iPad. Doing this not only wiped out all my Apps on the iPad, it also deleted all the support files and files created for those apps.

I lost music compositions, sketches, spread sheets, Word documents, game settings (including about a month of fish planet data), and all my sound recordings from travelling around the Boston T just before Christmas. Ugh. There could still be more stuff gone that I haven't discovered yet.

I suppose the part that really sucks about this whole experience is that it took almost 12 hours to get things back up and running properly and still not have those files. The good news is that Apple does keep track of all the software you buy so you can at least re-download everything. That was a small victory in itself. Had I not been able to reinstall the apps I would have probably put the iPad on eBay.

Things could have been a lot worse. Most of the data was only two months old. iTunes managed to back up my contacts and my notes data. This is the problem with a closed system like the iPad. You forget to backup files because they're hidden away. I knew this going into buying the Apple product so it wasn't a complete surprise when everything went to crap.

Whether it's computer data loss, a hundred view master reels your uncle gave away as a kid, that Apple ][+ (with all the software) your mother gave away to your relatives, your best friend dying, or your loss of youth and the ability to bend without grunting, you'll always lose something in life. It's just the way it is.

Wow, as I write this I realize that this blog entry is a big downer. To help pick you, the reader, back up here's some photos I took of Phoebe while I was working on the restoration of the iPad. We went outside when the computer was re-downloading the apps.

Also despite knowing the fact that loss is a fact of life, know this... Appreciate stuff when you have it. The memories of having that stuff in your life will last forever (or at least until your memory fades due to old age). If you buy an Apple product with a close system remember to back up each individual file (see, out of a horrible time consuming experience for me you have taken away some valuable time saving information; life is good)

Here's a photo of Phoebe with the neighbour's newspaper from today (It's the Wall street Journal)

The bridge near the park (again)

Phoebe rolling around on the ground (why? I have no idea)

Phoebe sleeps while I start the iPad's restoration

Phoebe changes beds. My restoration is taking a while.

Position three

Position four

Back to the softer bed (position five)

While the laptop is re-downloading all the iPad Apps I decide to take Phoebe for a walk.

Haymarket Pizza Prices

Phoebe with the statue of Kevin Hagan White, the longest-serving Mayor of Boston

Phoebe waiting for me across the street while I use the bank machine.

Phoebe at South Station

Phoebe near the Children's Museum

Phoebe across the street from the Barking Crab

Phoebe on a bridge connecting Boston to South Boston

Phoebe in front of some Christmas lights

A Boston park display

Phoebe in front of a large Christmas Tree in Quincy Market

Christmas in Boston

2011-12-25T23:06:00.004-05:00

Phoebe Hurd

There was not a lot going on today being Christmas and all. All the stores were closed and even if I were in a shopping mood (which I wasn't) most of my day was filled with lounging and reading.

I had picked up some novels, yeah okay they are Star Trek related, purchased from the Apple iBook store. It's the four part Invasion series where each book covers a different crew (TOS, TNG, DS9, and STV respectively). A while ago I owned the first book, part one, in paperback and read through about half of it before losing it into a box while moving apartments. That was a few apartments ago.

The reader for the iPad2 was a free download so I figured I'd buy the book and see if it was any good (the iPad2 as a reader). The night theme on the newer version of iBook helped. It was easier to look at a dark screen.

I am posting this blog entry before some of the days past. I'm trying to catch up on blog entries since RollerCon. So if you already know I'm in Boston then pay no attention to what follows.

I'm in Boston. I'm currently on vacation from working on a movie being filmed here and instead of going back home to Toronto I decided to stay here at Patrick's apartment for Christmas. I really didn't want to do any travelling during the holidays. So in exchange for staying at the apartment I'm taking care of the family dog, Phoebe.

Looking for a good place to poo.

Phoebe reminds me of an ewok if one were to be real. If the dog were to say 'yub yub' this would not be of any surprise.

Phoebe requires walking a few times a day. This is a good thing as it gets me out of the apartment even if it's only a few minutes. I then get out of that stereotype of being that guy barricaded in an apartment by himself (or herself; let's not be sexist) over Christmas with food and movies on DVDs, sandbags at the entrance, and a shotgun to drive the curious kids and nosy neighbours away. Yes, walking a dog makes you more normal.

Wandering at the nearby park

Not that I was looking for this to happen but according to Patrick, and other dog owners, walking a cute little dog is a babe magnet. I would like to blow that myth out of the water. I had not seen or talked to any 'babes' today. This could also be that it's Christmas. Who in their right mind would be outside when they could be opening presents, spending time with family/friends, or sleeping... oh wait across the street... yep... another dog walker (specifically a guy who looked like he was thrusted out of his house by his spouse/girl friend/person that wears the pants in the house). Geez, he looked in sadder shape than me.

Did I mention that it was snowing? Not enough to start calling for snow plows or to start the barrage of putting salt on the streets, just enough to notice that it was indeed snow and not some person with a dandruff problem on a second floor apartment shaking their head. The snow melted by the time it hit the ground.

Phoebe walks toward me and the camera

The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge in the distance

Dinner

For dinner I had forgotten to take a chicken I bought a few days ago out of the freezer. So for dinner I had cereal (Krunch Heads) and a choice between two calm chowders I had bought at the grocery store (the same day I bought the chicken).

CHOICE A: Cherrystone Clam Chowder

CHOICE B: Snow's Clam Chowder

I went with Choice A. The Cherrystone. I wasn't really that impressed. It seemed to have more sand in it than I expected. That or hard shell like particles floating around. Also it wasn't that thick. Stay tuned for Choice B, which I'll probably eat tomorrow.

Close up of Phoebe

Phoebe, like most dogs, watches me without blinking (creeps me out a bit) while I'm eating. I suppose all animals are like that. She'll just sit there and stare until I have no more food left and have put the bowl in the sink. If I'm still holding the bowl she's still there... staring.

Suspicious but lazy

She also has a lazy side to her. If she's sleeping and hears me doing something not food related she'll look around with as little head movement as possible shifting her beady little eyes towards me to see what I'm up to. If it's food related she's up and as close to the bowl as possible.

Sunset over Boston.

And that was how I spent Christmas.

My Wobbly Brain, My Ill Stomach and Destroyer

2011-08-06T14:30:00.003-04:00

Sometime in the night maybe two hours or so after falling asleep I woke up to run to the bathroom where I would revisit those two filet-o-fish sandwiches I ate on the way home. They were completely digested but I suppose my body didn't like them mixed with the alcoholic booze and needed to reject them as quickly as possible despite what my brain wanted to do.

In my haste while attempting to find the light switch, the light switch that's been in the same place since moving in over six months ago, I missed the centre of the toilet bowl. At that point it wasn't like I had any control of what my stomach was going to do. Five seconds more and I would have made it.

Luckily the majority made it in leaving the rest dripping off the far side of the bowl onto the floor corner for easy clean up.

Still feeling hungry I scooped out three spheres of ice cream (mint chocolate), inhaled them, then fell back asleep.

14:30 woke up exhausted. Logged on to facebook to catch up on my reading.

19:14 while on my way to the Rock pile it started raining. I am liking this weather after being in the desert for a week.

20:39 listening to the opening band. Not sure who they are only that they're from Toronto. Name got garbled when they announced it. Sounded like 'Burning Danny'

There seems to be a birthday party going on over to the left side of the stage.

'Burning Kennedys'. They mentioned their name for a third time. I'll go check a roster layer on tonight to see if I was right.

21:16 Broomfillers. The band I was strong armed to see. They sounded okay. At least the instruments did. The lead vocals levels were pretty low so I couldn't really tell what was being sung. The band members did a lot of moving around on the stage, the lead singer (and also the guy from work) jumped off the stage into the darkness of the under lit bar. I hope he didn't want pictures of that because I couldn't see him let alone focus the camera on him.

22:30 One night stand did a cover billy idol's 'rebel yell'. The lead did a great job with the vocals. The band sounded great. From a photographer's point of view they didn't do much other than stand behind their mics.

Destroyer, KISS tribute band

23:30 Destroyer (Kiss cover band)

Wow, these guys were incredible! They even had the moves down. Anyone who has seen the way Gene Simmons stands while holding his axe knows what I'm talking about. They even had the platform boots!

This alone was worth the $10 admission. Up until this point I didn't really have much hope the night would be that interesting.

The Demon

The Catman

The Starchild

The Spaceman

KISS moves!!

Total cost of going out to photograph Broomfillers

Ticket (in advance) 10.00
TTC (return) 5.00
Ginger ale 4.50
Burger and fries 9.50
Mike's hard lemonade 8.50

total $37.50

Leanna and the Tattoo club

2011-08-05T22:30:00.004-04:00

01:00 woke up early. That's what I get for sleeping since Wednesday. Yes, my time table of sleep is messed up. Since I couldn't get back to sleep I stayed up for another five hours then went to work.

I got to work an hour early, call time was 08:00. So I spent the hour talking to Paul the hair guy about Still Seas, a movie coming to Toronto and used a bit of time to optimize the computer set up.

Luckily work was pretty simple today. Some inserts were canceled at the last minute and big decisions on wire rearrangement and set set up could be put off until next week. I found out today that my computer work space would be replaced by elevators so I'd have to rewire everything in the next day or so once I got back to work.

by the end of the day 20:45, I was ready to pass out. I was on the subway when I got a call from Leanna. She wanted to go see some band one of her friends was in but didn't want to go alone.

21:55 dropped off computer gear at home.

22:30 met Leanna at Bathurst station

We ended up at some Tattoo bar. $10 later, inside the dark venue lit mainly by purple and blue lights we saw the band on stage. I took about three photos but only one turned out and not that well I'm afraid.

We talked to some people Leanna knew, went downstairs to hear 80s music (I think it was the Cult) danced a bit, returned to the main floor where more 80s music was playing (Billy Idol "Rebel Yell", Ramones "Blitzkreig Bop"), danced a bit more, then sat down and talked to more people.

Leanna outside the Tattoo bar in front of a parked Hot Rod.

While all this was going on I had finished a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and while normally I'd probably be okay I think the combination of loud music, lack of sleep, and the booze did me in. I had a buzz the rest of the night. Did I say I hadn't eaten anything since lunch?

I got into a cab with Leanna, got out at Spadina station and took the TTC the rest of the way home. I picked up two filet-o-fish sandwiches from the Dundas West subway station and inhaled them. As soon as I got home I fell into bed and conked out.

Delta Airlines

2011-07-26T11:00:00.013-04:00

Irmena and fam.

The first stop was Irmena's. I needed to borrow their scale to weigh my suitcase. If you go over 50 pounds there's a extra fee that gets added on to your air fare. If my suitcase was too stuffed I'd have to leave stuff at home. I had heard that the venue lighting was pretty poor and since there were no outdoor skating events this year chances of getting any good photos would be pretty limited. I decided to pack my flash gear. The SB-800s with the cheap light stands I had. It was this or more clothing.

After packing all the light gear I weighed the suitcase and it came to 46 pounds. Woo woo!

YYZ - Toronto's Pearson airport.

Flight 5374
My first time travelling with Delta. Generally I would go with Westjet but was booked on Delta through the travel agent. The cost difference was almost $400.00 between the two airlines, Delta being the less expensive of the two.

I was dinged with a luggage fee of $25 and another $25 to bring the luggage back. Plus it's not a direct flight. There's a stop over in Detroit. The seats felt a bit narrow. I was squashed between two guys that had iPad/iPhone technology and were catching up on what looked to be news in Chinese.

Despite this he stewardess, Louryne, was quite a nice distraction. We talked a bit about the city (Toronto). She had flown there many times but never stayed there overnight. It got me to thinking about working in an industry where you're moving around all the time. While it's kind of neat to see the world you really don't have a lot of time to have a base of operations or a decent relationship. Louryne said she was pretty old for a flight attendant, I would have guessed she was in her40s, she could have been a grandmother perhaps. She had a great intercom speaker voice. It sounded like something you would hear in a movie narration.

Looking out the window

The barf /"air sickness" bag.

The air sickness bags had "I'll be back" printed on them. I thought this funny as I could imagine if a bad egg salad sandwich sitting on a radiator over night could speak, would say something like this... with the Arnold accent of course. Maybe the bag should have said "I have returned".

Looking out the smudged window

16:50

Detroit has an amazing airport, who knew? It's gigantic. It even has a monorail in it! Wow. There's also food places all over the place (including Popeye's chicken). Unfortunately my incoming flight was stuck on the Tarmac leaving Toronto so the time to be had in Detroit eating and taking in the environment was cut short. I managed to grab a cheese steak sandwich at Charley's, inhaling it before getting on the next flight.

The underground tunnel in the Detroit airport

Impressive water fountain

The monorail

Charley's

my sub.

Flight 1217

17:30 hey Allie gator is on this flight!

Allie Gator

With Montreal playing in Texas and only a handful of skaters from Hamilton or Toronto going to Rollercon this year I figured chances of bumping into any skaters that I knew on the way down to Las Vegas would be non-existent. With the added connection on my non-direct flight I suppose the odds improved. Sure enough a skater from Madison.

Airplane food

19:00 pacific standard time

We arrived at the McCarran airport. Like other trips I have going to Vegas I remember that it's hot (but a dry heat) but I forget how hot it actually is. I believe my brain is blocking out these uncomfortable experiences and just remembering the general overall sun of experiences. Las Vegas fun? Definitely! Hot? sure... maybe.

Being to Las Vegas now for the fifth time (three previous RollerCons, one NAB conference) I am still surprised at the amount of heat that blasts at you as you first walk out the airport doors to the bus stop. While not humid (like New Orleans), it's like opening an oven and sticking your whole body in. The automated doors open to the outside and Bawhooosh you're sweating like a pig.

Eventually your body gets acclimatized to a certain degree but five out of five times I have felt the weather change a shock to the system. So what if it's dry heat, it's still hot.

Waiting at the airport bus stop for our shuttle bus

There's this great service in Las Vegas called the airport shuttle bus. Not only does the shuttle bus take you to your hotel front doorstep but you can buy a two way pass so it can bring you back to the airport. I'm not sure if it's cheaper but it's a nice option to have while you have money, at least you'll be able to make it back to your plane if by the end of your trip you're broke (just don't lose your ticket stub).

Now in the lobby of the Riviera, Wendy checks her messages.

The line for registration was about 12 people long. While this doesn't sound that long we still ended up being in line for over 40 minutes. The people at the front desk were pretty understaffed or slow to get us all in. Being RollerCon and all though the 40 minutes didn't seem so long if you knew people in the derby world. I stopped some girls to take their photo on the account that one of them was wearing the Neon Skates T-shirt.

A Neon Skates T-shirt worn by a Guelph skater.

Neon Skates is the Montreal skate apparel shop owned by Marc and Tush. So seeing the familiar logo was a nice reminder of home I suppose. The girls as it turned out were from Guelph, Ontario (Canada). Hammer City just played them (How did I miss that game?) recently.

B-Train!!!!

"Bagelhot!" I looked toward the front of the line and it was B-Train from Wicked Skatewear. Yay! My first West Coastie of Rollercon. Like most people you like it's always good to see the person in real life and not just on the internet.

The hotel room

Skaters from Houston.

After checking in I decide that it's time for food and wander back downstairs to scout out nearby food places. On the main floor next to the Queen Victoria Pub I bump into some people from Houston. One guy thinks he remembers me from the previous year. After a bit of talking I figure out he actually remembers Marcus. Asian looking guy with camera, wearing shorts, and camera bag.

Kim Supersonik (on right)

Wondering around the lobby, especially the registration line, I kept bumping into people I knew or people from Canada. It was like attending a family reunion of sorts. Even with out Montreal, Hamilton or Toronto there, it was nice to see familiar faces.

Skaters from west Canada!

Our hotel signage

The hotel had a few things around it that would be useful. There was a Wallgreen's (drug store) just down the street, some food places (including a Denny's), a McDonalds and Subway sandwich shop across the street and a food court inside the hotel itself.

In the hotel food court

I ended up getting dinner at the Wok Express. It didn't really matter what type of food I ate, at this point I just needed to eat something. The Wok Express food was nothing out of the ordinary but it was just what I needed to keep my stomach from rumbling.

My first dinner of the night

A skater from San Diego left watching luggage

While heading back to my room (and trying to find it through the maze of slot machines) I found myself back in front of the registration line. This is where I saw this girl surrounded by luggage sitting on the floor. She was from San Diego. Her team mates had left her holding the bag, sitting next to a few of them actually. It was at this point I hear "Hey!". It was Marcus.

Marcus Metropolis!

That same guy that the guy from Houston mixed me up with. Marcus had just gotten in from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He hadn't had dinner yet so we ventured out to find food.

A San Diego girl looking for other San Diego girls

On our way through the hotel we saw this skater looking for her peeps. As it turned out she was from San Diego. I told her about the lonely skater sitting next to all the luggage downstairs.

Marcus at Denny's

Marcus and I ended up at Denny's where I ordered a round two order of food. Mostly light desserty stuff. Some Hawaiian tropical pancake puppies chased down by a rootbeer float.

Dinner two. Hawaiian tropical pancake puppies.

It should be noted that while the Hawaiian pancake puppies sould good having pineapple in them, if there was pineapple it was in powder form. The pancake puppies were pretty dry and hard, equivalent of eating a timbit that sat outside for a couple of days. The rootbeer float was good though.

The bronze Crazy Girls statue at the entrance of the Riviera

Day before lift off

2011-07-25T19:00:00.004-04:00

Captain Hill crawls on the grass.

I worked today. It would be the only day of the week that I would work. In terms of going on vacation or going away it was bad timing job wise. The previous week had no work days scheduled and the week I got back I'd have only one day scheduled for work. So two days of work in three weeks.

It's not like I knew what the work schedule would be like when i started to plan taking time off once I figured out when Rollercon was. Just finding someone that could work in my spot was challenging enough. Toronto has been pretty busy this last year with work. At least for playback operators. I kept getting job offers while I was working. Something that's not that usual in past years.

My first thing to do once I got home was to change the hamster cage (aka The POD). While doing that I took the Hamster outside for a bit so she could crawl around in the grass and breathe in the fresh air. The following are some of the photos taken with the Fuji W3 in 2D mode.

crawling toward me and the camera...

Hears something...

Andy's travelling to Taiwan.

2011-07-24T15:00:00.001-04:00

I arrived home from London to find the Captain had escaped. My friend Andy was having a going away party. The dilemma was choosing between whether to go to the party to see a friend off or look for the hamster. My logic told me that the hamster had been missing for a maximum of two and a half days. There really wasn't much I could do.

Worse case scenario - the resident cat, Lucy, made up for all the times the Captain ran up to her at full ramming speed in the hamster ball or that the hamster found her way into the air ducts, got stuck and died. I didn't smell any rotting and didn't see any body parts on the floor so I was pretty sure she was just some where sleeping. Perhaps the couch.

I thought that's where I'd be if I were the hamster. It's warm and dark with a close proximity to the POD. Cheryl noticed a toilet paper roll knocked over saturday. So we pieced together, like a Crime Scene Investigation, that it was pushed over by the hamster after escaping from the back of the POD.

The latch sometimes flips open. With a nudge, I figured the hamster made it's way out and crawled out the open back panel. Once on the outside, while crawling around, the hamster then pushed the toilet paper over, then fell to the ground (about a 60cm drop). Once on the floor crawled along the wall past the shelf and to the couch. It's dark, and made of soft material that the hamster could easily climb up and into. Plus there's food in there. I found a pretzel bit when pulling up a cushion.

I decided to go see Andy. I wouldn't see her for at least a year otherwise and the hamster would eventually be found. On the way to Andy's place I stopped by the local grocery store to pick up some peanuts to use as a lure for the hamster when I got back home.

After an hour of commuting I ended up standing at the front door to the going away party with no one answering the door. It's times like this where I wished I had phone numbers of people that were going to be there. I didn't. After about 20 minutes of looking like some stalker on the front porch I eventually left.

While on the subway travelling back home between the Summerhill and Rosedale stations, the train is outside above ground, my phone picked up a text message. It was Andy saying that they didn't hear the doorbell or door knocking because they were all in the back yard.

Using incoming phone number attached to the text message I texted her saying I was turning around. At Bloor I reversed course and headed back to the party.

Andy at her going away backyard party

Posing for the 3D camera.

The party was fun. I ended up chatting to various people, talking about the 3D camera, eating a large number of hot dogs and taking photos. Photos of people dancing, being clocked on the head with stuffed animals, lawn bowling. Fun stuff.

It was good to see Andy in real life as well. Talking to someone on facebook is one thing but it's definitely not the same as actually seeing someone. I'm glad I went.

On the way back home I received some text messages from Cheryl (the landlord). She and Lucy (the cat) had located Captain Hill in the couch and the hamster had run behind the shelf unit. I instructed Cheryl to block the floor vents and told her I was on the way home.

By the time I got to Dundas West station I had more text messages on my phone. The last one stated that Cheryl had caught the hamster in her derby helmet and scooped it up putting in back into the cage (POD).

Captain Hill with banana chip

I got home and gave the hamster a banana chip. One should note that banana chips cut length wise down the banana are not easily moved by the hamster. It does provide some entertainment when she tried to squeeze into a tube with the banana slice horizontal.

Bag Lady? We're having breakfast with a bag lady?

2011-07-23T10:00:00.010-04:00

Last night at the Nite Owl, I overheard Diane telling Mirambo something about breakfast and a bag lady. There was loud ambient noise and music playing so I couldn't hear everything definitively. Was it an actual bag lady that we were going to meet? Does this bag lady have a name? Is this a famous well known bag lady of London? Mirambo seemed to know who this person was and then so did Becca. I figured if Diane wanted to spend time with this person she, the bag lady, must be an alright individual. Who am I to judge. Should we go out and buy her sandwiches? Diane is a pretty good judge of character and not flaky in the slightest. Ergo, the bag lady is therefore a pretty decent individual. Let's meet this bag lady friend of yours.

As it turned out, and I'm not sure if this was a let down or not of my expectations, the Bag Lady turned out to be a restaurant. A restaurant loaded with tea cups and aprons and other girly things. Also filled with knick knacks that I haven't seen since I was a kid. It kind of reminded me of something one would see at Disney world while waiting for the "It's a small world after all" ride.

Diane at the Bag Lady (N42 59.728 W81 14.441)

Toys, books, board games, records, all packed into a room of assorted tables and chairs... with floral arrangements. I was kind of surprised that the place didn't have a bunch of doilies. This was one of Diane's favourite haunts. I could see why. It's unique charm combined with a menu filled of comfort food. Yummy, tummy food. By this point I was pretty hungry.

Look at all that nostalgia on the shelf.

Diane with a potato head

Diane takes a photo

yummy peanut butter jelly.

the breakfast burrito

Diane at the counter of the Bag Lady

We saw some aprons on the wall. I'm not sure if this triggered us going to the Weezi studio. That's where we ended up. There was a collection of notepads and postcards made from recycled record album covers to 50s (if you could put a time on them) dresses. They also had purses and assorted bags. I was impressed with the hand made bag out of newspapers that was sewn together used to package your bought goods.

Diane buying goods at Weezi Studios (N42 59.355 W81 15.050)

It was while talking to the shop keeper about the previous night's Rock in the Park that we found out Amy Winehouse had died and also that there was a massacre in Norway. The shop keeper told us that she had been glued to the TV watching news. We were surprised to hear the two stories. Where were we?

A planter. It would be cool to grow lettuce in it. Then you could say "I've got a head of lettuce".

We stopped by the farmer's market (N42 59.474 W81 13.281) for food (fruit and an apple fritter). It was here that I discovered Diane's cherry sorting capabilities. She even impressed the guy working the fruit stand. I think he even offered her a job.

The freshly made apple fritters... yummy apple fritters.

The apple fritters were amazing. Like pocket sized sugary apple filled pies, loaded with apples. Move over Tim Horton's apple fritter, you've been replaced.

Diane at the beach

From there it was a trip to the beach in Port Stanley (N42 39.602 W81 13.204). I was kind of surprised to see that it was so populated. The demographic ranged from toddlers making sand castles to older people sitting on towels baking in the sun.

Diane posing at the beach

We sat on the beach taking turns going into the water. It was refreshingly cold and for such a shallow beach the waves were pretty good. Kind of reminded me of being on Ward's Island as a kid before the Leslie street spit was made. Waves came at you that were powerful enough to push you off your feet.

Diane's browning prompted us to return to her house. It's there where we watched about five hours of 'Sons of Anarchy', a FOX tv show about the life of a biker gang dealing with gun running.

London and the grilled cheese sandwich

2011-07-22T10:00:00.009-04:00

Today involved a lot of travel prep. The normal stuff like doing the last minute load of laundry to the packing of the suitcase, the mad dash to upload past photo files to my web site. I wanted to upload the rollercon photos from the last three years before leaving.

I really should have started this a few nights ago. Today's upload time determined that only the photos from 2008 would be uploaded before I leave (if that).

Added to the list if things to do I also had to pop by the travel center to pick up my plane tickets and hotel voucher for RollerCon and before that had to go to the bank to get rent money and some US dollars. The US dollar is now trading at 98 cents Canadian. That includes the bank fee. Nice.

Everything seemed to time out well and before I knew it I was at union station waiting to board a train for London (London, Ontario).

Union Station

I waited at gate 20 for about 40 minutes before being allowed to board. The heat and stagnant air in the under ground waiting area had me sweating through my t-shirt. It wasn't just me, looking around I saw people using their boarding passes as fans, attempting to blow wind on their perspiration filled faces.

I thought about the combined body odour stink from everyone that would be filling the train cars once we all boarded. If you're reading this blog entry and designing a waiting area for a bunch of people to eventually cram into a smaller space please keep this in mind. Ventilation is key.

It might have been me only smelling me, and I thought I stank (it's like I inherited the mutant power to increase my B.O. levels off the charts), but maybe it wasn't that bad, the woman sitting next to me didn't say anything. Plus her eyes weren't watering. That's a good sign. Yes, I'm comparing my man smell to mustard gas.

In other news, I've noticed on past rides on planes that my GPS doesn't seem to work. I thought it was some kind of shielding based on how the vehicle was made. Being in the train car seemed to have the same effect. It wasn't until we passed Hamilton that the GPS started to find a satellite signal. I'll have to look into this with further experimentation.

London, the destination, was planted in my brain about two weeks ago. The props guy, Robert, on the show I've been working on mentioned a rock concert in London featuring Cheap Trick, Meatloaf and Stone Temple Pilots. There were other bands but the ones that were of interest to me were really Meatloaf and Cheap Trick.

As things worked out at work. My schedule had me not working for the entire week before and after RollerCon. London just seemed to fit into place.

Rock in the Park

Diane was in London. It would be cool to see her again and this time in city six. I met Diane while staying at Tush's place in Montreal, city one. Tush picked her up from the bus station a day before I left Montreal. Since then we've met in different cities. Las Vegas, Toronto, Hamilton, and Kitchener/Waterloo. These didn't all coincide with derby events, FYI we do have lives other than just derby.

Diane met me at the train station, we dropped off my luggage at her place, then got to the park where we caught the tail end of one of the bands.

Me and Diane sitting on a large stump waiting for Meatloaf.

The guy with the Van

It was the end of Cheap Trick's set ("hello there" and "I want you to want me") that we got to listen to. At first from a bridge, then making our way over to the entrance we found a large stump to sit on. This is where we sat while waiting for Meatloaf to go on we heard music pumping out of a guy's van. We figured he was showing his sound system to some passerby. From our vantage point we could also make out that he had a 42 inch TV screen in the back. He saw us listening and asked for us to rate his system. "Did I get a 10?" he asked. Diane gave him a 10 with her hands spread out.

Meatload eventually took the stage, he opened with the song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show (Hot potootie - Bless my soul) then went into some new stuff interspersed with ranting about no one buying his new album. He also told off a guy near the stage (we assume he was near the stage from the audio, we didn't see him) that he should be standing up and not sitting. The argument based on Meatloaf being 63 and standing on stage. I wondered what made Meatloaf so bitter.

We left after the rant and a few of his new (and unknown) songs to meet up with Mirambo at the Nite Owl. A place where I was supposed to buy a grilled cheese sandwich.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich goodness

"Grilled cheese sandwich?", you ask? I know right? I had imagined a cheez whiz squirted in between two slices of wonder bread then burnt shut (with a clothes iron) and wouldn't have been surprised if it had a footprint on it. It's hard dehydrated casing could have been flung around and maybe killed someone (from the biker bar next door) before making it's way to the plate. That would add flavour.

To my surprise, my pleasant surprise, my B.S.T. (Bacon, Swiss, tomato) came on some nice bread and was toasted to perfection. On the side there were things that looked like fries but were hollow and crunchy like a shrimp chip. Added to that was a small dish with mayonnaise mixed with maple syrup.

It was quite good. Exceptional even. If Montreal is known for smoked meat and poutine, London is now known for the grilled cheese sandwich. Yes, it was that good.

Mirambo and Diane pose in 3D in the VIP room!

Becca

Mirambo

Mirambo as Justin Bieber

Diane getting sloshed

Mirambo and Diane

Captain Hill versus the outdoors

2011-07-19T16:28:00.008-04:00

Captain Hill near the school yard fence.

There's a heat wave this week. Today isn't supposed to be that bad (28°C / 82°F). Over the course of the next few days the temperature is supposed to steadily climb reaching it's peak on thursday where the mercury will hit 37°C or 99°F on the thermometer. I'm sure there are people that live closer to the equator thinking I'm a wimp. To them I say "Yes, I am!". I like cooler temperatures in general.

Anyhow, I managed to stay indoors for most of today by going through photos from my trip to Kitchener and photos from RollerCon 2008. I want to post a few before the week is over. It's nice to have an air conditioned environment and live in a basement in times like these.

While the computers crunched through the photo data I kept up the productivity levels by cleaning Captain Hill's space pod. This woke up the Captain from her nap and she climbed out of the sleep pod, which was no longer attached to the main pods, and started to crawl around the desk. It was at this point that I decided that she needed fresh air and proceeded to take her outside for an impromptu photo shoot on the grass across the street.

Captain Hill explores the grass across the street

Making the most of a short day

2011-07-11T10:30:00.004-04:00

Hot Wheels '67 Chevelle SS 396

Work today started at 07:00 but as luck would have it I finished early, getting out two and a half hours later. This is a very rare occurrence and before you get all jealous when I tell you I get paid for a minimum of eight hours even if I clock in less hours, know that I also put in a large number of hours on my own time that are unpaid for. Today things just worked out in my favour, a nice change.

Ever since the trip to the Bass Pro Shop I've been looking at how things are marketed and brainwashed into kids brains so when they become adults they're already conditioned to buy the bigger priced "real" items. With the Honda Indy having just gone by I thought I'd like to look into toy cars.

I ended up at Zellers and picked up a toy car for $1.50. Partially to do a macro camera test and partially to own the tiny toy car. This is how things collect into giant piles of stuff that no one wants to help me move. I think there's a disorder there some where. We can call it "Packraticus Alotus".

There's a nostalgia that comes with the toy car purchase. When visiting my grandmother's (when I was much younger), my cousin Lance would help me set up a giant orange track that would go down stairs, do a loop de loop, run the length of the living room, then head back towards us at the bottom of the stair case.

I don't have a track but the car is fun to photograph.

This blog entry isn't all that interesting, I know. Since the backlog of photo editing from the Beast of the East I really haven't been able to catch up. Luckily blogspot allows for older entries to be typed in later (or in my past history not at all). I figured I'd start typing something. Maybe something interesting will happen in the next few days and we'll be current.

Anyhoo... if anything this blog entry means I'm still alive and doing stuff. Boring stuff maybe but stuff none the less.

I spent the night with Imants Krumins' friends

2011-07-08T19:00:00.010-04:00

One of the posters floating around Hamilton

About a month ago one of the best derby fans died thanks to brain cancer (stupid cancer). Imants Krumins I would find out later that he was also a major fan of the punk rock scene. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise as there seems to be a lot of overlap (at least with my friends). I knew Imants from the various derby games. He was usually at all of them and if he wasn't it seemed weird. He also kept track of seeing me at games. Not just Hamilton, derby in Toronto, Kitchener, London. Yep, he got around.

He was also one of the fans that actually kept stats on all the skaters. I'm not saying he pulled out a book and read you details of each jammer, from his brain he would recall derby events and recount stories of a jammer's or team's past accomplishments. Usually this would come up when I asked him how he thought a game went or who would win the game being played.

Poster at This Ain't Hollywood.

Tonight a memorial was being held at This Ain't Hollywood. Friends would come and watch bands that Imants would go to see play in the past. It was a great way for the various bands to give tribute to one of their biggest fans and friend. Money was donated to help fight brain cancer.

Friends of mine that knew Imants...

Craig

Joe

Leah

Al

Candy

and some bands that played that night...

Boojies

The Let Downs

The sign at This Ain't Hollywood

Jeff Healey Park

2011-06-05T15:30:00.007-04:00

I went down to Woodford park for the festivities. They were changing the name to Jeff Healey park in honour of the Canadian musician that grew up in the area. To be honest I really didn't expect anything other than a sign with a drop cloth over it and a "Ta Da" noise to accompany it.

I wasn't even sure I knew how to get there. Were the directions I got accurate? Was Delroy drive going to be a dead end? As I got closer and the road started to dip down hill I could see people wandering around. Then noticed James in his car beeping at me. Okay If I'm lost than he's lost too. A comforting thought.

As the view opened up I noticed trucks and a stage set up. There were kids running around an inflatable playground air mattress and people sitting around the stage on the grass eating hot dogs and other foods. Even the fire department made an appearance.

Woodford park

Watching the stage

I suppose it's no wonder that musicians were at this thing. It was for Jeff Healey after all and most of the people there were his friends or in my case friends of friends. It was a nice turn out. Enough people to make it look busy but not so many people that it was hard to move around.

Danny Marks aka the human juke box

I had missed the opening musicians by the time I made my way to the park and to be honest I was eating a goat roti that I picked up near Dundas West station on my way to the park. I sat around listening to the music and ate. I did manage to have my gear out by the time Danny Marks got up onto the stage. The last time I saw him was at the Jeff Healey Rock tribute and until now noticed that there are no photos of him on my blog entry. This is a terrible over sight as he's quite a talented individual.

For the kids and the rest of us, he performed a rendition of "Twinkle twinkle little star" switching his sound between Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and himself. It was so incredible to hear. Posting in the blog with words really doesn't do him justice.

The Mississippi Queen

Behind me in all the chaos of kids running around with ice cream and older folks lounging in lawn chairs I noticed this strikingly attractive women dressed in red with a red umbrella. It was hard not to notice. The red on the green background jumped out at you like a sore thumb. So of course like any good photographer I had to ask if I could take a photo of her. (see above) As it turns out she runs a food company that, yes you guessed it... Cajun food (okay maybe you didn't guess it).

The Comic Juggler, Craig Douglas

There was a point where a juggler took the stage. Juggler? Yes juggler and a funny one. Really?
As it turns out he was pretty funny (and could juggle). He got the whole park laughing. Yes, even the adults. If have an event, and it doesn't have to be a kid event, and you need entertainment... hire this guy. (www.comicjuggler.com)

Roger and James laughing at the Juggler

The Jazz Wizards

Unveiling of the sign

There actually was a drop cloth with a sign under it.

Rob Quail friend of Jeff and the brains behind the operation

Jeff Healey park would still be Woodford park had it not been for Rob. He's really the guy that spearheaded the whole thing. I'm thinking Jeff would have liked this.

Captain Hill versus The Banana Chip

2011-05-23T02:12:00.000-04:00

Captain Hill with a freshly made banana chip.

With a food dehydrator I've been making a constant array of chips out of bananas and fuji apples. The hamster seems to like this stuff. I figured tonight would be a good time to take some photos of the sampling of these chips.

Stuffing the banana chip in mouth.

Ready and looking for the next piece of food.

Found a apple chip

The Captain inspects my multi max receiver

Attempting to escape from the POD

Here's a good product placement photo for the Habitrail

Beef Jerky

2011-05-22T14:00:00.003-04:00

While the world seems to be filled with roller derby somewhere. I spent the day cleaning and organizing the apartment. This was all just something to do while I was waiting at the various stages during the making of beef jerky.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I had my fill of banana chips and dried apple slices. I made some bagel chips from some of the Montreal bagels I still had in the fridge. Those didn't last long.

3D on the W3

2011-05-21T16:00:00.007-04:00

The Fuji W3

Mix a few weeks of work with a small surplus of cash and a long weekend with nothing to do. Add to that a random sale on a specific camera and you've got one impulse buy for the month of May. I was showing the Fuji W1 to some people in the Art Department at my current work and a few days later (while supposedly drunk) one of the guys went online and bought the Fuji W3 at Henry's for $400.00. $100 off the regular price!

The Fuji W3 back

Today while stumbling around downtown looking for a few replacement trays for the food dehydrator (as I melted two of them while burning my finger and I still don't quite know how this happened) I went into Henry's to see if the camera was on sale in the store (and not just the internet).

I realize that going into a camera store would not find me food dehydrator trays. I've gone into camera stores while looking for trousers, not camera trousers just normal work clothing. So going into a camera store while looking for food dehydrator parts isn't a big leap out of character.

One thing led to another and "Viola", an upgrade from the W1 was made.

The built in HDMI 1.4 port will allow you to attach the camera right into a 3D TV!

The Fuji W3

The first thing one notices, other than the lower price, is that the power cable that came with the W1 is replaced by the battery charger for the W3. The W3 does not have a visible power outlet. Instead the power adapter is sold separately and fits into the battery chamber instead of the battery. This means you cannot charge the battery in the camera like the W1. Instead of a power output on the side of the camera there is an HDMI output (version 1.4 compatible with HDTVs with 3D capability).

The USB plug on the W3 is in roughly the same spot as the W1. Controls for the camera have been moved over to the right side. I suppose this makes for easier handling. One thing that they removed is the buttons that light up. Which in the end, while it might have looked cool, really didn't help the camera shoot (or focus) in a dark setting. Sure you could find the controls but the camera was pretty much useless without some external light to light up the subject so the camera could see it.

Since the W1, controls have been moved to one side of the camera for easier operation.

The Fuji W3 top

Convergence controls

The zoom and shutter button

The Fuji W3 bottom showing the camera mount and the battery and SD card slots.

Close up of the battery and SD card slots

The new NP-50 battery

The old NP-95 battery next to the newer smaller NP-50 battery

you can see the that the NP-50 is thinner too

Overall I like that the camera can shoot HD video. I find that the photos taken at higher ISOs are really grainy compared to my Nikon SLRs but it does fit into my pocket. Also shooting action photos really isn't this camera's strong suit. It takes a long time to focus on objects (even if they are well lit). So unless you're focusing in advance, I wouldn't recommend this camera for fast moving things.

For 3D though. Well there really isn't anything comparable out there is there? You could buy a lens in a cap for your Nikon or canon but it'll split your existing 4:3 image into two. The Fuji W3 allows you to shoot in 3 aspect ratios. 4:3 (3648x2736), 3:2 (3648x2432), and 16:9 (3584x2016). There are smaller resolutions but who really cares about them?

Food Dehydrator

2011-05-18T18:00:00.005-04:00

Salton Food Dehydrator

Monday night at work, one of the snacks that made it's way to the craft services table was a bunch of banana chips. I ate some and took a few home to see if Captain Hill liked them. She did. This was the seed that started today's mission... "Buy a Food Dehydrator"

I reasoned that the food dehydrator would allow me to make banana chips from scratch thus eliminating any odd preservatives that might be used in the banana chips available at the grocery store. I did a bit of research and as the world of food dehydrators opened up to me I realized that banana chips weren't the only things you could make with one of these things. Beef Jerky, bagel chips, various dried fruits and herbs, I imagine you could even dry a pair of socks in one of these things. There's a web site that refers to the drying to lingerie. I don't own any lingerie (sorry to disappoint any of you out there) but I do own socks.

Not that I would put socks into this thing as there's that whole stink thing they one would have to contend with, but if I had to MacGyver a solution for wet socks, well there you go.

As with any purchase being done with limited research I found it difficult to find a dehydrator for sale. The Bay, Kitchen Stuff Plus, Future Shop, Best Buy, Sears, none of them sold food dehydrators. I ended up getting the last one on the shelf of a Canadian Tire. It was $50.00.

Made by Salton there's not a lot to the thing. There's a base, 5 drying racks, and a cover with an opening that can be open to closed. I'm not really sure what the opening does as there's no mention of the vent in the manual.

Speking of Sax

2011-05-17T16:00:00.006-04:00

Fred Spek plays the Dundas West Station

While transferring from the bus to the subway I heard the sound of the saxophone. It made me retrace my steps back up the 10 stairs I managed to navigate to find Fred Spek playing in the busker area. It was his birthday a few days ago and I thought I'd say "Happy Birthday" in person even though I was in a rush to get some hard drive cases before the computer store closed.

Himy for Mayor

2011-05-14T15:30:00.002-04:00

Volley ball posts.

Ended up walking down to the beach today. It was rainy and it's been a while since I've been down there since moving to the other side of the city. Not surprisingly there was no one around. Torontoians are odd that way in that a bit of rain scares them off. Being a saturday they couldn't even use the excuse that they were at work.

The boardwalk

While walking toward the life guard station, in the distance I saw a figure moving rocks around. On of my friends, Himy, would make mazes or patterns out of rocks on the beach for the public's enjoyment. As I got closer the figure turned out to be Himy. What were the odds?

"Hey, It's my yogurt!" Himy

While talking to Himy I found that he was still head deep into Toronto politics. He even ran for office. He'd do a better job than Rob Ford just because he lives in Toronto and sees what the people of Toronto see. Hopefully our new mayor doesn't screw up the city too much by making short sighted budget cuts.

Hammer City 2011 Season Opener

2011-05-07T17:00:00.007-04:00

Deep Fried Mars bar at the Jet Cafe

Today marked Hammer City's fifth season opener also known in some circles as Mother's Day Massacre. Times change and with it names. The 'Mother's Day Massacre' was dropped for the PC 'season opener'. Meh. I was told this was done to lure sponsors and to not upset overly sensitive fans.

One of the coaches of the HCRG had passed away. Affectionately known as 'Mister Dave', he had been a major influence in the early years of the HCRG training. His funeral was today. This put a damper on the season opener.

Breakfast at the Jet Cafe

Harlots at breakfast/lunch

I can't remember if I was invited or I hijacked the Harlots lunch. I think I let myself in, come to think of it as I bummed a ride from one J.J. who was driving in from Toronto. The deep dried mars bar had been cooked too long and any moisture had left the lump of battered chocolate had left at least two deep fries ago. The breakfast was good though.

I like the 'more beer' sign where the 'kids' are

Slamtastic Slam Wow and Demolition Dawn of ToRD

Diane!

Definitely one of the high lights of the day was seeing Diane. She's a girl that i keep bumping into in different cities and almost travelled across Canada west with her. As things worked out, or didn't, the guy with the car got someone else to drive it to B.C. and the person on the other end needed their car in B.C. for a wedding. So that all fell though. It's just as well. I managed to snag a paying job soon after.

Lunch lady feels the HCRG love

There were two games. The Lunch Ladies VS the Hamilton Harlots. The Thames Fatales VS the Eh Team. While watching the first of the two I thought to myself "Who are these people?". The freaky thing is then the same line, more or less, was verbalized by the guy behind me. It was the Derby Nerd.

It's true. I didn't recognize more than half the skaters. It seemed that the HCRG had been upgraded and I hadn't noticed until now. In both games the Hamilton teams got wallopped (see derby nerd for coverage).

Bitch Slap Barbie

Naughty Bee (#58) in action

Diane!

Slacker Smaker of forest city manoeuvres through the Eh team pack like a hot knife through butter

HCRG's Eh Team and the Thames Fatale

Beast of a Road Trip

2011-04-29T05:00:00.014-04:00

05:18 the journey begins. I grab a cab to the Canada coach bus terminal. I arrive 45 minutes early. The bus doesn't leave until 6:30.

To some, journeys start with a first step, I see my voyage starting off with a first meal. Specifically an Italian sausage on a bun loaded with onions, red peppers, corn relish, and a bit of mustard.

I started exploring the bus terminal for forms of food. There was none, other then the pop vending machines that is. Everything was closed, food wise that is. Even the downstairs McDonalds and some other restaurants, part of the Atrium on Bay building were all were closed. How is a person supposed to eat in this town? sheesh.

Hope flickered before my eyes in the form of people wandering around with Tim Horton coffee cups. Where were they coming from? I couldn't think of any close by locations but decided to get up to street level and check just in case some new store front popped up.

Instead I found a hot dog vendor. YEEEEESSSSSS!

A girl checks to see what bus is in lane 2.

11:03 on the megabus we're located somewhere just approching Cornwall. This double decker bus is great. There's power plugs and free wi-fi. Actually the seats aren't that comfortable. For me the seats feel too curved making you sit like a curled shrimp (it's just like being in the fashion photo pit but without the crowds). I can see that sitting in these things for more than two hours may prove challenging.

We stopped in Kingston but weren't allowed off the bus. While the bus driver said it was for our safety, people getting hit in the parking lot by cars perhaps, I couldn't help but think it was just a clever way of saying "We don't want to put in the work to keep track of you all and if you want food you have to buy it from the girl with the food cart and not the local Tim Hortons."

Yes, in the olden days you used to be able to get off the bus and go to the Kingston bus terminal for grub and/or a bathroom break. Because of the proximity of the Tim Hortons you could go there as well (where the food is better). When I say olden days I'm really referring to two years ago.

We are currently travelling at 115 km/hour..

Looking at the decomposition one wonders how these bridges are safe.

Warp speed. Travelling the tunnel before Montreal.

12:38 I'm in Montreal standing in a park next to the bus station (gare d'autocars de Montréal). It's really bright out after being in a bus for 6 hours. There's a nice breeze and there's a odour in the air, it smells like barf. I look over at a guy sleeping on the grass scratching himself under the arm pit oblivious to the two girls making squinty eyes while fanning their face while they walk by him. Horray! It's not me.

While waiting for Tush to meet me I decide to take a look around a bit and take some photos. The first thing I noticed while looking through the window of the bus about Montreal was the enormous amount of NDP signage there was. (The election for Prime Minister is in two days). Hey if Jack Layton becomes Prime Minister that photo I have of him giving the thumbs up to Roller Derby might be worth something. Crud... I think I just jinxed it.

13:53 enjoying the first of many Montreal bagels from the Fairmount Bakery.

14:09 arrive at Neon Skates

Neon Skates!

Surprisingly Marc's hands have not fallen off from working on T-shirts all week

Tush internetting¹

Marc and Tush internetting¹

"Tribbles?"

Skaters from the Fog City Roller Girls (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada)

Ninja Simone

The Arena, Registration, and Men's Roller Derby

This is too awesome for words.

Montreal's Mont Royal play their first game playing the Burlington Bombers. IT should be known that this is the first all men's game that I have photographed. I figured it would be different due to where the center of gravity is located. I've photographed co-ed skating in the past but I noticed something about men's derby that was kind of alarming.

When a female skater hits the floor it's usually kind of cat like. Maybe a really awkward cat with no elegance what so ever but cat like all the same. When a guy falls, at least at this game, it was more like a splat. a big wet pancake sound if you will. As elegant as a sack of potatoes hitting the floor. Not like that light kitty paws hitting the floor but a solid, heavy, oh my god please don't fall on me, thunk sound.

I kept my distance for the most part sitting further away from the track then usual while taking photos.

Skaters from Tri-City (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada)
note: the new glasses on Martini

Quadzilla, the James Bond of Roller Derby, shows up and looks... amused.

The Rev making his rounds.

Mark the Shark using vocal intimidation on the Bomber skater

The crowd cheers as Montreal gets their first win

The victory lap

Final Score Mont Royal 133, Bombers 65

Mont Royal

Burlington Bombers

01:28 End of a long day, heading toward a couch

¹ "Internetting" - to browse the internet

Hamilton for three hours

2011-04-08T19:00:00.001-04:00

"We so excited"

On the second friday of every month, Hamilton has an art crawl. This month's art crawl had some derby stuff to start the advertising ball rolling for the upcoming season opener in May. Affectionately known as the Mother's Day Massacre. Due to sponsors and political correctness it is now referred to as the "Season Opener".

As one of Hamilton's derby photographers I was asked for some photos, prints, of some past bouts for display. Adam Swinbourne, artist, had some poster work that he designed for Hammer City.

As we both live in Toronto we decided to take a bus in say hello and see our work. We didn't leave until 19:00 and the last bus returning to Toronto is 23:35. That gave us just over three hours to schmooze and greet all the friends we knew. Not enough time.

Adam Swinbourne, derby poster artist

A nice use of a photo I took (if I do say so myself)

Miss Carriage at Hammer City Records

Craig and Leah and Hammer City Records

The Junction

2011-04-05T11:00:00.007-04:00

Today was one of those days where I had stuff to do but instead decided to do other something else. I started off by going to the bank to convert change into larger denominations. There was a small pile building up from all the pocket change that I'd been dumping into the inverted money pyramid (container that sorts change) over the last few months.

After the banking done I decided today would be a good day to wander the new neighbourhood and see what was around. I walked to the Junction. Noted the interesting stores. There's a pet store for lizards and smaller pets (ie. hamsters) on the north side of the street. There's also a hardware store, a No Frills grocery store (yay) and an assortment of restaurants (including Vesuvio, the pizza place to go to if you're in the pizza mood).

Exploring the area was also a way to test out the GPS. I needed to get some photos with some actual coordinates to use on my program when I continue to write it, I'm thinking I'll reopen that project on thursday after I finish work on Wednesday and push to get it operational by the weekend. Lofty expectations I suppose but that it my goal. Most of the guts are programmed already.

Keele

SLUT walk

2011-04-03T13:30:00.004-04:00

A poster is held up at Queen's Park

On January 24th, 2011, a representative of the Toronto Police gave insight into the Force’s view of sexual assault by stating: “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

This short sighted statement in turn caused outrage in some York University students, enough to organize a peaceful demonstration voicing their opinions to the police and public. It makes sense. Why should the victims be blamed for what negative things happen to them.

As one of the speakers put it, it would be like blaming banks for getting robbed because they advertise that they have money, or putting blame on home owners that leave their doors unlocked for getting robbed. It is important to tell society that rape in wrong and just because someone is dressed scantily clad doesn't mean that it is okay to have non-consensual sex with them.

The following are photos from the demonstration today also known as the SLUT walk...

Toronto Roller Derby girls represent

Greater Toronto Area Roller Derby Girls also in attendance

Sunday morning movie

2011-04-03T09:30:00.002-04:00

Emmanuel and Hartley at Gabby's post movie.

I was invited to go to the TIFF lightbox to see a movie this morning. What it was we didn't know until the movie actually started. It was one in a series of movie previews held for the last few weeks. Today's movie was the last in that series.

The movie was "A Better Life" and was about a mexican worker in L.A. While kind of depressing I thought the movie was interesting enough to watch. Would I see it again? No. While I didn't hate it I didn't really think it was something I'd want to keep on DVD either.

Captain Hill VS the robot teddy bear

2011-04-02T19:30:00.002-04:00

Captain Hill inspects the teddy bear robot

While looking for cable to hook up the Genesis to the TV I found an old robot figurine complete with mini back drop in my cable kit. It was a pretty good guess that I hadn't required coaxial cable in a few years. I'd been looking for the robot ever since work finished on Earth Final Conflict. It had sat on my desk back then for the entire fifth season along with some figurines of the Gatchaman team.

Stuffed with almonds.

There was a whole series of these robot bear figurines. Imported from Japan and sold in boxes kind of like trading cards in that you wouldn't know which one you had until you opened the box.

Re-Genesis

2011-04-02T17:31:00.004-04:00

Coleco Genesis motherboard

Earlier on today while at the Dufferin mall I picked up some solder. It was so I could fix Cheryl's Genesis. Some of the joystick contacts had worn off due to the way the inputs were soldered onto the motherboard.

The fix was pretty easy. All you had to do was reconnect the contacts. About 10 minutes later I was done. Although after playing the various cartridges, like Yar's Revenge, I realized how ancient the games were.

To remedy this I plugged in my Super Nintendo and played a few minutes of Choplifter III.

Trip to the Nut House

2011-04-02T12:00:00.003-04:00

The Nut House

Spent some time with Irmena and the kids walking to the Dufferin Mall and stopping by at the nut house. No, not a place for the insane or mentally challenged, but an actual place that sells nuts and other food items. The place has a pretty cool sign made to look like a giant walnut.

I bought some almonds for the Captain but ended eating more than half of them before getting home.

Finn and Asha in a motorized tow truck ride at the mall.

Welcome to the neighbourhood

2011-03-02T12:15:00.003-05:00

The oatmeal waffle door to door delivery

The highlight today was getting a house warming gift from Irmina. While taking Finn (her son) to school she dropped off some oatmeal waffles, blueberries, syrup, biolife dish soap, cleaning fluid and a homemade cotton dish rag. Not only would I have something to eat today but I'd also be able to clean up after myself should I be a slob. All while being environmentally conscience - the dish rag was hand knitted. I must put emphasis on this as there was probably a lot of effort going into this. Can we say "Wow!"?

This was great, even better than getting rolls of bathroom tissue¹. Not only because the food tasted great but because in the move all my cookware, dishes and food have been hidden from me. Hiding in moving boxes that have been dumped in random order in my new apartment. Looking for a can opener I found a Wii steering wheel. Chaos would be one word to describe my belongings.

Making breakfast was looking grim without any cookware, or utensils. That's about the time Irmina called to say she was going to drop by. It was a bonus that the stuff she was dropping off was food.

The waffles, the syrup in a cup, underneth blueberries in a Chinese take away container, environmentally friendly cleaning spray, and dish soap, with a hand knit dish rag.

Awesomesauce!

The new place

2011-03-01T01:14:00.002-05:00

It works like a mug

Having just moved... yet again... I'm in the phase where I don't know where anything is. All my stuff (food, cooking gadgets, computers, entertainment, clothing) is packed away into boxes. Also the new place has to be learned. Where to put your hand to turn on or off a light switch, the odd noises the house makes, the ninja cat, water temperature, faucet water flow, and the geography of the apartment in general (placement of stairs, doors, things that can be tripped over).

I wanted to drink something other than water and managed to find the powered hot chocolate container. Found the kettle. The only thing missing was a spoon and a mug. Eventually I found the spoons, forks, knives, and sporks in a labeled tupperware bin. I couldn't find my mug. I only have one. It's an extra large mug that I bought in San Francisco while eating sushi at the airport. I did eventually find a measuring cup.

cool.

Did I mention the sushi?

2011-02-11T20:00:00.002-05:00

Downtown one of my friends was having a fund raiser to find a cure for breast cancer. I had offered my services as photographer to record the night's event. Girls in lingerie, a guy on stilts dancing, and sushi made out of a marshmallow rice crispy square like recipe. It made for an interesting night of photography.

guy on stilts

Sushi candy

Morning photo shoot

2011-02-08T09:00:00.003-05:00

The world of Sanjay Burman (click on photo to make bigger)

I had an idea to photograph a panoramic photo of the apartment but due to rescheduling and an enormous amount of people in the apartment on sunday I volunteered to come back and shoot the empty apartment today.

The last photo I did like this was of Emmanuel in his apartment before he moved. I like these photos even if there's a bunch of post work involved.

Fat Snow Flakes

2011-02-07T09:40:00.004-05:00

A snowman a few doors north of the apartment.

Was snowing today. I figured I'd take some photos of the neighbourhood before I move.

Looking northward along Euclid toward College.

This photo almost has a postcard feel to it.

ToRD Gore Gore Girls versus Death Track Dolls

2011-02-05T20:00:00.006-05:00

Land Shark of the Death Track Dolls puts the squeeze on Dust Bunny of the Gore Gore Girls

While the Death Track Dolls were pummeled by the Gores there were moments where the Death Track Dolls fans went crazy cheering on their team. One of the exciting moments was when Land Shark out skated Dust Bunny while competing for lead jammer.

For more coverage of this event (and photos) check out the Derby Nerd.

SpitFist

2011-02-04T22:45:00.003-05:00

Spitfist

It's been a while since I was sandwiched in a mosh pit taking photos of a band. The dim light, the loud ear splitting speakers, the sticky beer soaked floor (with glass), the people jumping/dancing/standing in the way of a photo capture. This is the fun I've missed since I can't remember when.

It's definitely a different type of photography. Different from taking photos of skating girls zipping around a track, or photographing some thing outside. Inconsistent lighting, microphones and stands blocking the musician's faces, the odd fist pump blocking your view. This is what separates the great photos from the crappy ones. Timing and location is everything.

Spitfist on stage at the Garrision

As a few of the girls in the band are in ToRD I''ve heard of the band before but until now didn't get a chance to see them play. They're pretty awesome. I liked the "Meow" song. Being pretty impressed with their performance and thinking that I actually had a good time getting outside, I compared notes with other people in the crowd. The majority commented that this was the band's best performance ever. Really? Maybe this was a good time to see them then.

Alicia Marie, bass

Caitlin Watson, Drums

Dee Prescot, guitar

Stacey McCool, lead vocals

Captain Hill VS The Dinosaur

2011-02-04T05:29:00.003-05:00

Captain Hill 'examines' the toy Dinosaur

Is it just me or are there companies that make toys for kids, then if the toy isn't successful they repackage the same toy for animals? Are manufacturing rules for making toys for animals less strict compared to making toys for human kids? If I buy a squeaky hamburger toy for a friend's five year child that was made for a dog is that toy going to decompose into hazardous chemicals compared to the human toy equivalent?

If so then I address the receiver of said hamburger to stop using it. Your boy has probably gotten too old for that toy anyway.

For the past week or so, Captain Hill has been gnawing away at the plastic cage (dubbed Space pod one) and making a huge racket. Almost like clockwork I'd be up at 4am wondering why the hamster chose that particular time to start munching. To fix this I bought a few hamster chew toys.

Some multi-coloured triangles made of lava rock and this dinosaur on wheels made of wood. The wheels actually work, the dinosaur can roll. The idea being that Captain Hill would work on the toys leaving the cage alone and make less noise. For all I know the hamster is just filing away the plastic to make a grand escape.

I've placed one triangle into the cage and for a night it stopped the gnawing the plastic. I woke up instead to the sound of rocks being thrown around. That's what I thought it was. I turned on the lights to find the triangle wedged into Captain Hill's mouth. The noise was from the Captain charging into the tube hole and bouncing back due to the triangle being wider than the tube opening. It must have been about an hour that passed before I stopped hearing the noise. Either the hamster had given up or I just fell asleep from exhaustion.

The next day the triangle wedge had disappeared and the plastic pod gnawing continued.

Tonight I have put the other two wedges into the cage along with the dinosaur. Will keep you updated.

Snowmageddon

2011-02-02T16:00:00.007-05:00

The school bus that parks in front of my house

So there's this big snow storm that's been hitting people in the States (Minnesota, Chicago, to name a few) quite hard. I know this through my friends on facebook. The weather guy said Toronto would get 30 centimeters today. Schools have closed, businesses have told workers to stay at home, and I had to go back to the production office to pick up some gear that had been accidentally packed into luggage being shipped off to British Columbia.

It was time to break out the winter boots. In my case giant Sorels, boots that I don't wear much because they somehow managed to move my socks to the toe area where they bunch up into clumps leaving my feet bare.

Looking down Euclid avenue

Snow boots

I was kind of disappointed. The last time there was a big snow storm here in this city, the army was dispatched to help dig senior citizens out from waiting at bus stops. Snow levels were at least knee deep and cars that were parked on the streets were buried in snow and wouldn't be moved for days.

This blog entry is for my friends that are in those sunny places around the world. While it's no where near the snow accumulation of Chicago or the iciness of Indiana it's somewhat annoying to wander around with the slush on the road.

Toboggan day instead of school also note the wipes on the car (smart)

not completely snowed in

Dundas street

Dim sum at T&T

Looking out at the Docks (next to the T&T parking lot)

Waiting for the bus

snow dozer

Back in the downtown core

Toronto cyclist

Go for Tuna

2011-01-17T14:30:00.003-05:00

Mushroom broccoli tuna casserole

Last night I made a tuna casserole based on a recipe that I picked up in college. (Translation: It's fast and simple.) You can use whatever cheese you like. For today's ensemble I used Oka cheese from Quebec. I picked some up at the cheese store the other day. Last time I made this dish I used holandia, before that cheddar. If you're lactose intolerant you can forgo the cheese altogether.

gear

pot
casserole dish

ingredients

2 cups of uncooked macaroni
half a pot of water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil (optional)

2 cans of campbell's mushroom soup
1 branch of broccoli
1 onion
1 cup of grated cheese
1 cup of sliced mushrooms
1 can of tuna

directions

add salt and oil into pot of water and bring to a boil.
add macaroni to water, turn down heat and stir.
when macaroni is soft empty water then pout the macaroni into casserole dish.
cut up broccoli and onion into bite sized pieces.
add broccoli, onion, grated cheese, tuna, mushrooms, and mushroom soup to casserole dish and mix with macaroni until everything is evenly distributed.
cover casserole dish and place in oven for 30 minutes at 400° C
take casserole dish out to cool, then serve.

Nuke Someone Happy

2011-01-15T21:57:00.008-05:00

It's a far cry from one of those little cakes that your cousin made for you as a kid using a device that harnesses the immense power of a 100 watt light bulb but it is quicker. It's the microwavable chocolate mug brownie and there's a recipe floating around the ether of the internet.

One of my facebook friends had a scanned image of the directions on making this concoction. Was it real, would it taste okay, would it even be edible? Thanks to me, the "I'll try any food at least once guinea pig", this blog entry will not only tell you how to make one yourself but will then rate this uber quick dessert.

ingredients

4 tablespoons of flour
4 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of coca
1 egg
3 tablespoons of milk
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 teaspoon of vanilla

directions

pour ingredients into a mug and mix until smooth.
put in microwave.
set on high and nuke for 3 minutes.
when done take mug out of microwave, let mug cool, then eat.

Note: if the ingredients aren't mixed thoroughly there will be a bunch of crud on the bottom of the mug. To get around this you can mix the ingredients in a separate small bowl then pour into mug.

Critique

I would describe the resulting food as a dense chocolate sponge cake rather than a brownie. For the time it takes to make the "brownie", under 10 minutes if you have all the ingredients, it's not bad. Overall I would rate this as awesome college food right up there with instant cake mix. Not terribly great but not bad if you're in a rush to make something to squash a cake fix. With the world going GREEN is it even possible to get a 100watt light bulb anymore?

This is not a drill... It's a fire alarm

2011-01-09T11:00:00.005-05:00

I woke up to a fire alarm. More precisely to the fire alarm right outside my bedroom door. It wasn't so much the loud, prolonged, ear piercing beep that got me out of bed. It did wake me up. What got me out of bed was that I couldn't understand what the artificial voice from the fire device was saying. I thought I heard "blah battery blah blah".

It took about 10 times listening to the garbled message at one minute repeating intervals to make me so perplexed that I got up out of bed to investigate. It should be noted that at no point did I make out the fire alarm saying "Fire" or "carbon monoxide".

Closer I just heard a louder "blah blah blah blah". I didn't even hear the word "battery" any more, just a shrill, annoying, loud (bordering on making your ears bleed) beep and some unintelligible voice. I was still tired from the party and the bus trip ride home from Hamilton, and watching the Merlin marathon I PVRed the day before. I was up until the sun came up. I'm guessing around 7am? Being 11:00am, it meant I had about four hours of snooze time.

We had a problem like this in the apartment went I first moved in. There is a fire alarm in the downstairs basement that had a low battery and it triggered the sound system the same way. My tired brain figured I'd go out and get a replacement battery since I didn't see or smell smoke.

I got dressed, went out to the grocery store (about a 15 minute walk both ways). Bought a couple of 9 volt batteries, some eggs, some sesame seed oil and soy sauce (it was on sale). Got back home, replaced the old 9 volt battery in the fire alarm, then went back to sleep.

That was pretty much my day as I slept until about 6pm. It turns out the fire alarm was saying "Low Battery... blah blah". The "blah blah" was in French "Pile something or other". My question is this. Why can't the device have a softer voice for changing the battery? Like the Majel Barret Star Trek computer voice would be nice. "Battery levels are low, please change batteries." Do you really have to be waken up to a noise akin to a piglet caught in a blender?

Hammer City End of 2010 party

2011-01-08T17:00:00.006-05:00

Cut off (706), Death Row Dames

Waiting between cheques would be an understatement today. I haven't worked in the last month. Partially due to December being a slow month and partially due to a guy booking me three times to cancel at the last minute three times. Aggravating. Not only did I not work on the three days booked for those particular jobs but I also turned down work, photo work on those same days. Note to self: ask for a non-refundable deposit up front when dealing with this person.

I managed to scrape together enough money from the magical change filled piggy bank to afford a GO bus ticket to get to Hamilton. The girls of Hammer City would reimburse me when I arrived. That was nice.

The rest of the money I had from the pig I spent on making prints of the skaters retiring this year. There's four of them. I managed to have just enough to cover the four prints. (The pig works it's magic once again).

Jett Girl (15), Hamilton Harlots

Mean Little Mama (0), Death Row Dames

Perky Set (¶), Hamilton Harlots

The Alumni

It's times like this where I kind of wished I had all the skaters photos indexed to pick them out at a moments notice. I have a vague idea of where some of them are but I rely on this blog to remind me when I've taken those photos. Perhaps this is where I'll change things around a bit this year now that I have the photo store and all.

Candy asks, "Are you supposed to look like 'Devo' or are you supposed to look 'retarded'?"

The party was a lot of fun. This is the norm when attending a party with Hammer City. As like all of their past parties it's always a sad affair when you have to leave before it's over. Adam and I had to catch the last bus to Toronto.

Oscar

Carl bringing back early 80s break dance fashion

"Less food, more explosions!"

Ivy Rupted singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin".

Leaving early to catch the last bus.

We bumped into Candy at the bus stop. She had left quite a bit earlier but missed a bus, then forgot her mittens in some public bathroom. Things weren't going very well for her and she was a bit sloshed from the party. She had a determination to walk home but Adam and I insisted on getting her home by transit. We stuffed a token into her hand and made sure she got on and off the TTC subway.

Candy stumbles onto the train tracks

Candy clamps onto a transfer

Candy leaves the train safe. Adam waves 'bye'.

the purge continues...

2011-01-04T11:25:00.005-05:00

Today was a long day. I only had an hour worth of sleep. After waking up from the "power nap" I decided I'd stay awake for the rest of the day to get my sleep schedule back to normal. Waking up at 9-10am then falling asleep somewhere around midnight-2am? This sounded like a good idea at the time but as the day dragged on being awake became more of a challenge.

Two boxes down only eight to go.

In the afternoon I helped Robin move the first instalment of my laserdisc collection to her house. She had a wagon and we could only wheel two boxes of the ten in one go. Her apartment has three flights of stairs. Lugging up the boxes proved incredibly taxing. By the time I brought one of the boxes up I was wheezing like a heavy smoker. I'll really have to look into exercising more. It was truly a sad display of human under achievement to say the least.

After the move I found that just walking around was a lot of effort. I had to concentrate to make sure I wasn't wobbling. It was the lack of sleep kicking in, my eye lids were getting heavy. We ate lunch at xelua, then went to the Dufferin mall. Robin wanted to look for Christmas stuff on sale at the dollar store. On her list were miniature houses and knick knacks to make a mini Christmas town setting for her train set.

By this point I could have fallen asleep standing up. I almost did. I was leaning next to a column while waiting for Robin to scope out a sock store. I closed my eyes for a second and caught myself falling over.

The cold walk home didn't help either. I didn't notice my jacket wasn't done up until about 10 minutes into walking home. I managed to stay awake until 11pm doing data backups then turned off the phone and fell asleep.

Say bye to Star Wars

2011-01-02T16:30:00.006-05:00

Dave and the pile o Korean food.

I met up today with my cousin Dave to grab food at the all you can eat Korean BBQ. It was good to get outside. Being sick over the Christmas holidays turned me into a recluse. Since I was being 'dragged' outside the house anyway I figured I'd drop off the Star Wars Definitive LaserDisc Collection over at William's. He had expressed interest in the Star Wars box set when I first started blabbing about the possibility of getting rid of my collection.

The few buyers that I had talked to were only interested in a few titles and out of that few they didn't offer much. Not that I was expecting a high resale value but at least a buck a disc. I didn't want to have just the crappy movies left with a few bucks so I ended up keeping the discs. Part of me didn't want to part with them at all. The time and effort that it took for me to find these specific LaserDisc titles was a large chunk of my life in the days of doing multimedia, visual effects and animation.

The weekly pilgrimages to Bay street video, Sam The Record Man, HMV, Tower Records, Monster Records, and the online LaserDisc mecca store Ken Crane's, to find that limited run of TRON or Seven Samurai, took some doing. I suppose like any collection a collector has put together there's the meticulous storage, the indexing, and in my case building a customized database for all the titles in my Psion 5. Like anything I suppose each title comes with a bit of history, sacrifices made to buy the "box set", and determination to collect titles before they went out of print. It's similar to listening to a song on the radio. Certain titles bring up certain memories.

I placed the S.W.D.C. on William's house stairs when he didn't answer the phone. It was like leaving a baby on the porch in the dark of the night. Sad to leave the item but happy that it would go to someone that would appreciate it.

The bowl runneth over

2010-12-31T04:54:00.002-05:00

The Captain crawls out of the bowl into a dish.

I made some fried rice and while getting the hamster it's food went back to the table to find the hamster had gotten into my bowl of food. I had eaten most of it by the time the hamster crawled in.

So instead of feeding the usual peanut shaped hamster vittles I added some more fried rice to a dish and took photos as the hamster cleaned off the plate.

Finishing off the fried rice sample.

Out with the old...

2010-12-31T04:09:00.010-05:00

...and out with the really old.

Boxes and boxes of Laserdiscs.

There are people that say that in order let something new into your life, one has to make room by getting rid of things. Weather it's letting go of something emotionally or getting rid of something physically I suppose this all makes sense. After all, getting a tank of fish is easier after you got rid of the pesky neighbour's cat. You could have both but it might prove problematic in the long run.

As 2010 comes to a close and the time do another apartment move draws near, my motivation for making that move easier has been increasing exponentially as the date approaches. This will be the tenth move since moving out of the parents place, oh, so long ago.

A few months ago (ie. When I moved in to the current apartment) I came to the realization that I had boxes of stuff that I hadn't unpacked from the last move, the move before that, and the move before that move. Some of the boxes were falling apart and I had to move the contents of the crumbly box into a new box. This is when I realized I had a C manual for version 6, 5 and 4 taking up space. If I recycled these books a while ago, along with a whole bunch of other used items, I could have saved space and the energy it took to move them.

The real back breaker as far as moving goes, and I have friends, maybe ex-friends, that will attest to this, is my laserdisc collection. These discs represent all that is unholy when getting friends to help move. It wouldn't be so bad if "we" didn't have to lug all those suckers around. The nearly 800 reflective silver record sized objects takes up about 10 boxes with the average box weighing 65 pounds (approx 30 kilos). It's a frightening thought for anyone about to move.

Moving them along a flat terrain isn't so bad if you don't have to bend down to pick them up or put them down, but I live in a place with stairs. Not just stairs but narrow stairs. Narrow enough that if you're carrying a box, you've got a 75% chance that you'll mash your fingers between carrying the box and into the wall, all while trying to squeeze up to the top hallway. Moving, yeah, hate it.

I told myself that if I had to move out to some other rental place I would unload the boxes of stuff I don't need. Today that's what I've started to do. It's always dangerous opening boxes you haven't looked in for years. There's the risk that you'll start to reminisce or decide you don't want to throw something away.

I started going through the discs to see if there were any real keepers (mistake #1). Mainly stuff that I don't have on DVD or something so rare that it would be worth keeping (along with a player - mistake #2). I have a Japanese disc of the Yamato animated series, It's number 15. I don't have any of the other volumes. There's also the Star Wars Definitive Collection. While it's a bit water damaged, thanks to some jerk I lent it to, it's the three Star Wars movies (the good ones) in CAV format, spanning nine discs, plus a hard cover book. Back in the day I paid $270 for it. $30 off regular price! You can probably get it on eBay now for $30. Ugh! If it wasn't for watching the movies 150 times, I might have been better off investing in 8 track tapes.

The Tron Box set liner notes.

In some ways I feel like one of those record collectors when CDs came out. The large packaging allowed for not only the discs but sometimes books, CDs, and liner notes. The Tron box set (which was around $180.00 at the time) had some liner notes (see above). It was all very nice looking. It also was a movie with directors commentary. This was an awesome feature for movie buffs at the time because VHS and BETA tapes only had one audio track. We take this for granted now on DVDs.

Before DVDs, cool movie people could buy laserdiscs at average record stores.

Not all laserdiscs were expensive. As you can see "The Man Called Flintstone" was $17.99. They got cheaper as the DVDs started taking their place on the store shelves. At one point i was buying them from Ken Crane's online store for $3.00 each. Some were good and some were pretty crappy. Cheaper than a rental though.

Of course collecting them for 6 years adds up. Kind of like cigarettes without the smoke. They did keep me entertained all those long sleepless nights doing visual effects work and some were great reference material that I could go over and over again to. That was worth having them right there.

I'm going to miss them.

Six Year Anniversary

2010-12-30T04:11:00.011-05:00

This photo really has nothing to do with this blog entry other than Captain Hill was doing this while I was writing.

It's not that the number six had any significance that created the theme for this blog entry, it's that I actually noticed the anniversary and remembered to blab about it. It would have been more significant if I talked about the fifth year anniversary last year (five seems more significant for some reason to me) but I was busy at the time. Last year I was probably figuring out how to move all my stuff/junk to transfer to my current apartment.

Some things don't change. Year to year, around the month of January I always wonder how I'm going to get by. Something always throws me a curve ball (or fires a bullet) at me and every year I've managed to dodge that bullet and seem to come out for the most part unscathed (also documented, in at least the last five).

This time, this January, a few things are coming into play. While none of them seem that great at this moment, just like in previous years, things will turn out alright. This is what's going through my head right now. It's like thinking about the pain of going to the dentist to get a wisdom tooth out.

The plus side is that I'm not entirely stressed. No acid reflux. Probably because I've been in worse situations or at least similar situations before. I'm not concentrating on going to the dentist and the pain that will occur (although to be fair my dentist is pretty amazing at non pain giving work), I'm concentrating on leaving the dentist's office and being able to eat again and enjoy it. It's falling into an abyss, it's marching towards it with purpose.

Life can be compared to a model walking along a catwalk. There will be a point that the model will fall down. As a model it's easy to do, the floors are generally slippery and the designers make the model wear shoes that don't always fit her feet. This gives to a high probability, if not certainty, the model will fall.

Life is the same way. You will fall down, fail, and even get beaten down to the ground to a point you won't want to get up or not even know how. Everyone fails and there will be times that your best isn't good enough. It's a fact.

It's times like this where I think about my FAB Fashion Editor, Max Macdonald, commenting on the model that just did the banana peel slip, land on her butt, hit her head, wipe out. "It's not how they fall, It's how they recover."

Sure enough the model in question at the time, got up, threw her overly sized shoes to the end of the catwalk, and kept walking toward the camera pit. She was applauded not only by the audience by also by some of the photographers (the ones that were in between taking photos of her). She could have started sobbing or even ran away but no she stood up, with confidence, and did her job. It was definitely something inspiring to see.

To be an optimist, when one really thinks about it, being at a low point not only makes you appreciate the high points, it also shows you the person you really are and maybe more importantly where you can improve yourself.

Of course you may not feel like this is a good thing at the time. Your thought of personal betterment might be overwhelmed by the thought of being stuck in that low, dark, place. Stop thinking of the pain and concentrate more on the leaving of the dentist's office and being able to enjoy that toasted bagel with salmon lox and cream cheese.

Heck, I'm not only going into the abyss but I'm marching right in and marching right out yelling and screaming "Victory!". (insert exclamation of colorful metaphor and fist pump action here for emphasis)

Inspector Coconut Day Three

2010-12-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Inspector Coconut with today's paper.

13:20 - showed up at the house to take photo of Inspector Coconut with today's paper.

I didn't spend as much time at the house today as the allergies started kicking in quicker today than the other days. The cat seemed more content today that the last few. More prone to purring.

Cat food.

Adrienne's mail on the stairs.

Hilary's mail on desk.

Hey, there's another bowl full of food.

Although there was an incident in the upper hallway. While petting the cat with my foot the cat rolled over exposing it's belly. I should have paid heed to the Oatmeal as there was murder in the eyes of Coconut and not empathy as my foot became a claw pin cushion. After being released I went downstairs leaving the cat upstairs.

Inspector coconut on the top of the stairs.

Ted's mail on coffee table.

Inspector Coconut on Hilary's chair.

Before leaving the house I checked to see what the cat was up to. The subject was lying on Hilary's chair upstairs. A bit of petting and wheezing later I left the house.

14:30 - left house.

Inspector Coconut Day Two

2010-12-23T09:48:00.001-05:00

Today's paper.

9:48 - showed up early. Between the creaky door at home and Captain Hill making noise I woke up early. Subject greeted me at the door and walked me to the food container.

12:42 - found the subject at the top of the stair case.

12:45 - went to pet subject. Subject curled up and started purring.

13:26 - went back to check on subject. Subject was in a playful mood. Started batting the camera with it's paw.

Stayed around to program and nap on the couch.

16:20 - left house

Inspector Coconut Day One

2010-12-22T14:00:00.006-05:00

Inspector Coconut with today's Toronto Star

14:00 - subject seemed happy to see a human enter it's dwelling. Like most cats, Inspector Coconut started purring when I approached the food bag. The cat food measuring cup seems to have disappeared. Had to eyeball food amount.

"Why are you not petting me?"

Note: Subject requires petting to eat. Experimented with petting and non-petting while subject ingested food. Petting really does encourage subject to eat.

17:00 - woke up from napping on the couch. Sun's gone down. Located subject in window. I think the subject misses the people in the house. Subject was meowing that "I miss people" meow.

18:00 - after working a bit on the laptop I noticed that the cat had disappeared. After an exhaustive search around the house found the subject sleeping under the covers of this bed...

note to other cat carer: look under sheets if subject goes missing

18:30 - left the house.

Pirogie Night in Canada

2010-12-18T19:00:00.011-05:00

My first homemade perogie.

I've been craving perogies (pirogies) for the last little while. I saw a sign that had "Pirogie Night in Canada" on it a while ago and for the life of me can't seem to find the photo I took of it. But obviously it stuck and it got me to research various perogie recipes online. After a bit of experimenting, the recipe below is what I've come up with.

When broken down the perogie is basically mashed potato in a dough wrapper. You can buy them at a grocery store for only a few dollars a bag. Should you be located in the world where these things don't come easily, or you want to make them yourself from scratch to fully appreciate them read on for my recipe in this blog entry.

The last few days I've been perfecting my technique on the creation of pirogies. This got me out today looking for a cookie cutter that would allow me to cut dough to the size of a dumping mold I got a few years ago.

NOTE: You don't need a dumpling mold or a specific cookie cutter.

You can use a cup or glass as the cookie cutter and your hands to fold the dough wrapper. However, since I'm a fan of food automation and like the idea that making food can take less time than actually eating the food I use a cookie cutter and mold. Part of that could also be that I just like kitchen gadgets.

The dumpling mold and the cookie cutter.

To help avoid confusion I've broken down my recipe into two sections, the wrapper dough and the filling. When shopping for ingredients make sure you look at both lists otherwise you may forget some food items and have to go out again.

Also it helps to have some kind of automated mixer perhaps with a J hook specifically for dough. You can mix with a wooden spoon in a bowl but it'll take some work.

Gear Used

frying pan (for onions, and cooking pirogies)
pot (that can hold at least 5 potatoes, for cooking potatoes and/or boiling perogies)
mixing bowl (for making dough)
bowl (for holding cheese, can later be used to hold mashed potato mixture)
container (for refrigerating dough)
container (for made dumplings)
mixer (for dough) or wooden spoon
knife (for cutting potatoes, cheese)
measuring cup
cheese shredder
cutting board
cookie cutter
dumpling mold

The Wrapper: Ingredients

4 cups of flour
1/2 cup of butter
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of sour cream

Directions

cut up the 1/2 cup of butter into small chunks
place all ingredients in bowl and mix.
Place dough mixture into the refrigerator to let butter harden (could be 30 minutes or over night or while you are making the filling).

The results of the mixed ingredients should look something like this

The Filling: Ingredients

5 potatoes
2 onions
1/2 cup of cheese (does not have to be cheddar)
2 tablespoons of butter (or to taste)

Directions

take cheese and shred into a bowl.

cut up the onions.
place in a frying pan with butter.
cook until onions are translucent.

Wash potatoes, peel them, then chop them up into small cubes (1 cm cubed is good).
Place in pot, add water so the potato cubes are submerged.
Place on stove and cook until potatoes become soft.
Drain out water.
Mash potatoes.

add the bowl of cheese and the frying pan of onions.
mix on low heat until cheese is melted.

Altogether now

Cutting the dumpling wrapper.

Take the wrapper dough out of the refrigerator.
Use a rolling pin to flatten. If dough is sticking to everything lighting add more flour to surface of dough.
Cut out dough circles using the cookie cutter (or cup).
Place a teaspoon (or approx 1 inch ball) of filling into wrapper and seal.
Repeat until you're out of filling or wrapper dough.

You should get something like this.

The time consuming part is now done. Now the easy part, the cooking of the perogies. There are two methods.

Method 1: Boiling

The first method is to boil the perogies in water. You know when they're done when they float up to the surface. I have not actually done this so you're on your own here.

Method 2: Pan Fry

I love crunchy food so this is the cooking method I've selected. Add butter to the frying pan until it's melted, then add the perogies until they're brown on both sides. (it took about 7 minutes per side on my stove top). You'll note that the perogie side being cooked becomes hard (but not black) and crunchy when it's done. When it is, flip over and repeat until the other side is the same.

Eating

I like sour cream on my perogies with chopped chives maybe even bacon and more fried onions. I've also eaten them with mayonnaise when there was no sour cream to be found. I realize this borderlines eating like a college student, but you've got to do what you've got to do.

TRON Legacy

2010-12-17T02:57:00.003-05:00

Greetings Program!

This week has been pretty terrible. No work and the job I had booked Thursday, today, was cancelled at the last minute. On top of that, I had passed up a paying photo gig that fell into my lap after I was booked for today's cancelled gig. I couldn't do both so I had to decline. So a big 'boo' to that.

The highlight today, of this week, was meeting up with some friends from Hamilton to see Tron Legacy. They drove into Toronto (this was good because I had used the last of the change in my change jar to buy the movie ticket).

Without wrecking or giving away anything I have to say that this movie made my week. For about two hours I was reintroduced to a world that had been upgraded, while still reminiscent of the old one introduced to us back in 1982. The Tron of yesteryear had reinforced the computer animation programmer in me (pre Amiga days) and ultimately resulted in getting into visual effects. It was a nice two hour escape.

This fan is AWESOME!!!!

What was really awesome was seeing this fan in a homemade suit (I liked the fact that the slurpee was color coordinated with the lit blue stripes). It's been a while since I've been at a Premiere where someone was dressed up. The last movie was probably the Phantom Menace. After that nothing. Geeks are awesome! Being surrounded by them you could feel the giddiness fill the room when the game warriors showed... I'll stop there.

So Tron... YES!! and hooray for (geeky) friends!!!

I say "Go see the movie."

Space Pod One

2010-12-14T01:30:00.000-05:00

The hamster habitat (aka Space Station One)

Up until now I hadn't really taken the time to photograph the hamster in her environment. That is I've taken photos with bad tungsten low level lighting but no photos that were crisp with nice lighting. I wanted a photo to show people what the configuration of the cage was as well as the cage itself.

I transported the hamster and her habitrail to the basement where I set up some black material as a backdrop (It really makes the cage look like it's in space). Then with the limited space I positioned the lights and took some photos. What follows are the results...

"I smell a raisin."

"Uh, hey hello... food bowl... empty... could you get on that?"

Captain Hill in her sleeping pod.

Sitting in the food bowl.

In the observation deck.

until next time...

Olive Oil

2010-12-08T19:00:00.004-05:00

I recorded Dolores giving a speech about olive oil at the Spoke club the other night using my fuji W1. Since then I burnt the video clip to CD and today I finally met up with her to give her the file. As a thank you she gave me a bottle of Full Moon olive oil from Spain. It's ranked some where in the top 13 out of 100 olive oils that were submitted in the Swiss gourmet food show. I say one of the top 13 because Dolores entered a few different olive oils and they all made it within the top 13, So Full Moon could have been 1, it could have been 13, or somewhere in between.

It was quite a nice gift and while I'm thinking about how to use the olive oil properly I thought I'd take photos of the bottle. It's square and cool looking. After all you can't just throw the olive oil into a stir fry or salad that mixes flavours. At least not the first time you try it. You've got to have a dish where you can actually savour the flavour and taste it by itself.

Someone had suggested pouring some of the olive oil on a plate and then tasting in on a nice piece of freshly baked french bread. Yes, that sounds quite yummy.

Hammer City Fashion and Rock and Roll

2010-11-27T21:00:00.008-05:00

Morgan in evening wear

Blackbird studios had a showing tonight of their fall winter 2010 line. Among the models featured were some of the Hammer City Roller Girls. As usual it's always good to see them and photographing a fashion show is always kind of fun.

The venue was dark. Luckily I brought some external flashes. Unfortunately I didn't bring enough remotes. So I only had one slaved flash. There was a point that I attempted to use a second flash but it was tripped by other photographer's flashes. I didn't have enough time to set it up properly.

Ginger St. James sings to the audience

With the one flash I probably got the best photos at the venue as none of the other photographers brought extra lights. Yay me!

Brandi-Lee shows off one of the Blackbird Studios T-shirt prints

Buckshot Bebe and Kiki, Blackbird studios designers

Oribe

2010-11-15T16:00:00.004-05:00

Fashion editor of FAB, Max Macdonald interviews hairstylist Oribe Canales.

Oribe, for those not in the know, is not just a hair stylist he is one of the best and renowned the world over. Mainly from working with well known celebrities and photographers (see his wiki page here). At the time of the interview I didn't know any of this. It was just another assignment for FAB.

Max had been going on about him as soon as he knew he was going to interview him. I blocked most of that out. When photographing people I'd rather just concentrate on the person and not how famous they are. After all when dealing with famous people you treat them like any other person. If they're nice to you, you're nice back. If they're crumby to you hopefully you don't spend a lot of time with them and move on.

Oribe talks to Max about Justin Bieber's doo (among other things).

From the interview and spending a short moment taking photos afterwards I have this to say. Not only is Oribe well dressed, well mannered, with great stories, he is also a very gracious open individual. Max and I found the time we had with him to be too short. Personally I could have listened to his celebrity stories for hours. We didn't even get to ask him about his work with some of the more famous American photographers.

It was a real privilege to be able to meet him even if only briefly.

Mallville with Larry

2010-11-14T10:30:00.002-05:00

Larry in a Scarborough mall.

While I still had the car rental from yesterday's dance shoot and derby bout I figured I'd maximize the car rental by going shopping for food and stuff that seemed to be too big to carry while on foot. Even with my errands of running around I still would have the car for a few extra hours. It wasn't due back until later on in the evening. I called Laer to see if he needed to get anything.

Our first stop was to drop off a disc to Emmanuel. Laer was looking for some washers and parts for repairing stuff so the next stop was the Home Depot at Gerrard square. From there we drove up to Congee Queen for lunch, then headed over to the Golden Mile.

For the outside the Golden Mile seemed small and there was parking. That should have been our first clue. Available parking. Heck Gerrard Square parking was pretty full and Gerrard Square is one of those malls bordering on being a ghost mall.

Inside the Golden Mile it looked like something you might find in the neglected part of Detroit. Boarded up shops and a lot of room with no one in it. Zellers, one of the anchor stores, was no longer there. It was pretty depressing.

Larry and the Golden Mile.

Depressing but for some reason we couldn't stop making jokes at the Mall's expense, "Golden mile? Mile of what? That sounds disgusting." An image of elderly people with poorly working bladders waiting in line came to mind. "A whole mile of them" and other images which were probably more stupendous than the first.

We hit the road and looked around for other stores. I started out looking to buy socks but instead bought a Lego set on sale. It was after hitting about 4 toys R us shops that Laer spotted the giant Lego train set and it was on sale! I had plans for this to possibly make the hamster's life more exciting. My brain works in really odd ways at times when it's trying to justify a purchase. It would be my early Christmas gift to myself.

"There it is!"

Our last stop was at a No Frills where we picked up some food.

ToRD 2010 Championships

2010-11-13T18:30:00.005-05:00

Dust Bunny of the Gore Gore Girls zooms around the track as lead jammer.

After photographing the dance school I packed up my gear and made my way over to the Hangar to set up my lights. While the owners have replaced a few of the bad bulbs that weren't turning on the light is still way to dim for action photography.

The car rental allowed me to bring in the studio lights. They would be heavy and awkward on the public transit system.

Some of the girls from Hammer City

While the strobes provide adequate lighting they unfortunately are also very fixed in position. This limits where I can go shoot. Ideally I like to have eight around the track but I only have two.

The Derby Nerd has a second floor seat thanks to Rogers and their camera scaffold.

Lunchbox of the Gore Gore Girls skates around MegaBouche of Chicks Ahoy

A gore gore cheerleader/fan.

Wipe out!

FINAL SCORE: Gore-gore girls 107, Chicks Ahoy 31

The after party at the Garrison

White Cowbell Oklahoma performs

A derby after party wouldn't be a derby party without girls wrestling on stage.

Having a laugh outside

The big finale

For more photos of the bout and the after party go here (http://bagelhot.zenfolio.com)

Dance to that happy place

2010-11-13T08:30:00.003-05:00

Serge stands as a lighting model. Looking good!

Erin needed some photos of her teaching dance lessons to kids. I was a bit worried about taking photos of kids. Specifically ones with parents. Parents can get touchy about photos of their kids floating around the web. As it turned out Erin had already thought of this and had the parents sign a wavier letting us take the photos.

Since I was taking photos anyway I though a way to make more money and share the work with the parents would be to sell the photos to the parents themselves. From past events I have found that it really isn't worth taking orders, going off to a print house, then shipping the photos. I actually dislike all that work and would rather be off photographing other stuff. Plus no one really wants to pay for my time to do all that shipping stuff.

Erin teaches the kids to dance

Colin, one of my photographer friends in Detroit, uses a web service on the web called Zenfolio. You can see and buy his photo work here at 'shot on a whim photography'. I had been looking at the service for a while but didn't really have a gig to pay for it or make it worth my while. until now.

The nice thing about this service is that certain galleries that are made can be password protected. A very important feature if you're taking photos of kids. It can also be used for photo shoots where you only want the photos accessed by the clients.

And so... the Bagelhot photo store was born.

Visit to Hamilton and Hammer City Records

2010-11-12T19:00:00.005-05:00

Slow moving traffic heading to Hamilton.

It took two and a half hours to get to Hamilton today. That's about a hour and a half longer than usual. I'm not sure why. Weather wasn't that bad. Construction? Accidents? It's all a mystery to me.

I was on my way to deliver the final picks of the wedding photos to Melanie. She already had all the photos I took but the photos on today's drive were the edited ones. Some were even color corrected a bit. It was Art crawl night and finding parking proved a bit difficult. I ended up parking next to Hammer City Records. It was the only place on James street near Melanie's studio that I could find parking.

The Hammer City Records sign.

Odd how things work out. So I dropped in for 45 minutes (all the time on the meter that I had quarters for) to say hello. The record store had a large gap of a door that you could walk through to see one of the galleries that normally you could only access via the front door off the main street.

Employee of the month (complete with portrait in the BG).

Food!

Leah looks perplexed.

Some stuff on the walls.

After saying 'hi' (and the parking meter running out) I drove over to Melanie's. The parking wasn't as bad and I managed to find a spot in the parking lot across the street.

Nope it's not a sock puppet on Jackie's hand.

Originally I wanted to go through some of the photos to finish a final edit of them but ended up talking to people about some of photos I shot. I really need to get out more as I only have about 5 years of stories in me and to me they sound pretty boring (as I retell the story of the fashion cockroaches, for example, for the upteenth time). I suppose to the new audience these stories seemed mesmerizing. I blabbed on until everyone but one had left. One person and Melanie that is.

Dancing to the Electric Company theme music

From there we ended up going to the Boathouse (Ray's place, 303 Dundurn street, Hamilton). The Philly cheese steak sandwich was really good. Crunchy bread bun, hot meat, real cheese. I was starving at the point of eating it so pretty much anything would have tasted good I suppose. Still, I'd like to go back just to make sure.

We stand on guard for thee...

2010-11-10T19:30:00.004-05:00

Support out Troops!

Who would have thought that you could have a fancy dinner gala with troop carriers and jets? The True Patriot Love Foundation did and it was awesome! Tonight's photo assignment was to assist photographer David Artemiw to photograph the enormous gala event. High ranking officers, dignitaries, a past prime minister and on top of all that I was wearing a suit (and tie! - I know crazy!).

There were helmets with artwork on them being sold, lounge areas sponsored by Bell, a troop transport carrier that you could board, a body of a CF-18 where you could sit in the cockpit, there was even a photo booth where you could dress up in fatigues and get your photos taken. All that would take place before dinner.

Transport

One of the things I love about being a photographer is the different things that are introduced to you, the photographer. A hamster one day, a General the next. You could be swamped with bodies in a mosh pit, or freezing your butt in -40 C degree weather taking photos of nature.

Today was a good photo day.

Oily, salty, grease... with chicken

2010-11-09T20:53:00.007-05:00

Poutine and the Double down

While buying a tie at the Dufferin Mall I noticed a Kentucky Fried Chicken and was wondering what all the hubbub was with regards to the new bread-less sandwich, the Kentucky Fried Chicken Double Down. Like a hamster that keeps "falling" off the side of the table to get to see what's on the ground far (usually hard surface) below, ordering this new meat/processed cheese concoction with bacon was right up there on my list of things to do.

It's good to be adventurous. Sometimes there's disastrous results. Well okay, a lot of times there are disastrous results, Like when I made pizza with a can of bad mushrooms; the can was dented and I guess the mushrooms soaked up the rust. My roommate at the time, Laura, who owned and donated the mushrooms ate some of the pizza which resulted in her having to get her stomach pumped. I ate the pizza as well and keeled over for about half an hour before going out to grab something better to eat (this was back in my younger days when I could eat Christmas turkey in February).

Then there are the wonders of success like deep fried mars bars, poutine (with smoked meat), seafood poutine, pirogies and mayonnaise, cheese on a apple pie, the list goes on. It was time for the Double down to have it's turn. As it happened, the other thing that turned was my stomach.

Gads, the amount of salt in the sandwich had to be exceeding the human body's limits. It's a heart surgeon's dream come true. As for the grease, I'd have to say that it's the same amount as any other chicken wing, leg, breast that you're used to while eating at KFC. It didn't bother me that much. I realize, as I'm typing this blog entry, I'm still burping up the grease from the double down that I ate an hour ago.

I love food but if you go through discomfort while eating it then maybe that's not the right food for you. Overall I'd give the double down a two thumbs down. As the food sits in my stomach like a brick I'm consistently reminded of what a poor choice that was. Just like the hamster bouncing off the floor on it's head, dumb move, really dumb.

On the plus side of the KFC visit, I also tried the KFC poutine. It seems all the fast food places are trying to jump on the poutine band wagon. The poutine actually wasn't bad. There were cheese curds and the KFC gravy. I don't know what spices they throw into the gravy vat but it's one of those things that I can drink right out of the little styrofoam tub. But like the McDonalds shake, KFC gravy has an optimum time for ingestion. It's got to be eaten or drunk while warm. Once it gets cold it changes consistency. It's like fat that cools. Not only does it go down weird but it looks bad for you.

To summarize using BRS (yes, this rating system works for things other than movies)

Double down (zero bagel)
KFC poutine (full on bagel)

Captian Hill versus Gravity

2010-11-08T16:59:00.004-05:00

Today while cleaning out parts of the hamster cage, I plucked Captain Hill from out of the sleep pod and placed her on a chair with a towel on it. She seemed content to sit in the middle and clean herself.

After a while, as most hamster do, she got curious and started crawling around. Nose twitching, possibly searching for that hidden peanut, she crawled around the chair in an orderly pattern, stopping, smelling and moving on.

At a certain point she stopped at the edge and looked down. At this point I was taking more photos of her than doing any actual cleaning. She started to reach down and slowly started to creep further and further until only her back feet were holding her.

I grabbed her and plopped her back to the middle of the seat. She crawled around a bit more then returned to the edge and started looking over the edge and then, again, started the descent toward the floor.

It was at this point that I thought should I grab her or take a photo then grab her.

The point of no return

I placed a pillow on the floor beneath her then I took the photo (see above). Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to catch her. Her back landed on the footrest of the chair as she bounced off of it, missing the pillow, and hit the floor. D'oh. It was at this point that I grabbed her and put her into the clean cage.

Off to Nikon... again

2010-11-08T12:08:00.004-05:00

I just got my D700 body back from Nikon on friday and as luck would have it my 28-70mm f2.8 lens aperture mechanism died on the weekend. So back off to Nikon I went. I bought the lens back in 2007 so it should still be under warranty. This is a good thing as money is pretty tight right now. At least until I start getting paid from the last few gigs.

It's times like this where I'm glad I have a zipcar. Taking transit to get to Nikon would take 3 hours each way and taking a cab would be easily $120 for the round trip. With Zipcar it's only $26.00 and it still gives me time to do grocery shopping.

King's Crown

2010-11-07T20:00:00.002-05:00

Melanie, Rebecca and I pig out at Sneeky Dees.

I had gone through all the wedding photos and needed to give the photos to Melanie. As it turns out she was in town visiting her sister so we all met up at Sneeky Dees for mexican food.

If you've never gone to Sneeky Dees one thing that stands out on the menu is the King's Crown. It's an $18 plate of nacho chips with layered, bean, meat, salsa, and stuff that will fill you up pretty well. I had a beef burrito as well and in the end, even with my legendary eating, couldn't finish the crown. I took it home as leftovers.

Wedding at the AGO

2010-11-06T14:30:00.003-04:00

With the D700 body back in my camera kit after a week and a half at Nikon I thought today would be a breeze to shoot. This all went out the window when I realized my 28-70mm lens was acting up. While doing some test photos in front of the church, I had gotten there early, I noticed the aperture in the lens wasn't closing down to f22. It was sticking at a larger opening. This threw off the camera's ability to properly take a light reading. A lot of my photos were coming out over exposed.

Ugh, and I just got it back from Nikon for the focusing issue.

Luckily I had my 50mm f1.4, and my 70-200mm f2.8, and for the really wide shots my 10.5mm DX lens. While it wasn't the same range I would make do with those lenses. I really didn't have much of a choice. They would have to work out.

The advantage of using primes is that you get a sharper image in general and generally the focus is much faster. The ended up being great for taking those candid photos.

I have to thank Melanie for giving this gig. Not only did it put much needed money in my pocket but it was a lot of fun to photograph. Better than staying home on a saturday night watching TV.

Captain Hill versus The Pod

2010-11-05T20:24:00.001-04:00

Captain Hill in the sleep pod.

Having just gotten back my D700 back from Nikon today I figured I'd do a run through on the camera focusing issue. It's always good to test your gear before going into the field. With the wedding photography tomorrow I didn't want to take any chances the focusing would be flaky. I'd need help. This is where an active hamster would come in handy. Nothing tests a focus mechanism quite like a small active rodent. The reflexes of Captain Hill are so sharp that she'll move upon hearing the click of the camera.

So it would be difficult to get her to 'pose'. I took her from probably a nice nap. She was in the sleep pod and I basically detached the whole pod to get her to start roaming around. I figured it would be better to have her crawl out of the pod bowl that to actual pick her up.

The bowl has been disengaged.

Why is my bed on an angle?

Captain Hill driving the bowl.

Really? This is for a camera test?

Stop, no more photos. I want to go back to sleep.

The test went well. The camera seemed fine. Nikon had fixed the focusing issue. Hurray!

24 playback operator gets married

2010-11-05T19:41:00.005-04:00

My friend Mark gets married at city hall.

As a wedding gift I went to city hall to take some quick photos of Mark getting married. He's a friend of mine that also works the 24 frame playback gigs.

One wouldn't think there's much to photograph in a government building other than cubicles wrapped in the awful glow of florescent light but in the "new" city hall (Toronto has two, referred to the "new" and the "old" city hall) there's a piece of art work that's made out of nails (see photo above). It provided an interesting background for the newlyweds.

Inanimate objects

2010-11-05T12:05:00.003-04:00

Why does adding a hat make this jack O lantern that much more amusing?

Stuff I saw today that 'needed' to be photographed and shared.

A robot made of Sony Products displayed at the Eaton Centre.

Flashing Melanie

2010-11-03T19:00:00.010-04:00

Melanie, sans flash (sad)

My friend Melanie is a portrait photographer in Hamilton. While she has studio gear and space, she doesn't have a portable flash for her camera. With a wedding gig on the near horizon Melanie wanted to know if I could lend her one of my SB-800s (Nikon Speedlight, aka flash for Nikon camera).

I figured I'd lend her one a few days before the wedding. It would allow her to experiment with it before the actual day of shooting. As a general rule for photographers. You should always test the gear before trying it out in the field. If something doesn't work you can find out why that is and minimize the "screw ups" or quickly adjust on the day should any curve ball be thrown at you.

Melanie with flash! (happy)

We ate at the Ship. A relatively new restaurant that opened across the street from the Plucker. They had seafood poutine. SEAFOOD poutine. I had to type that twice as it was really, really, amazingly good. SEAFOOD poutine, french fries with clam chowder and crab on it. Holy Moly was it tasty and that was just for appetizers.

Let's Eat!

We also shared some gator nuggets (with real alligator) and I had a very large hamburger (see photo). By the end of our visit I was stuffed. Wheel barrel stuffed (ie. I would need a wheel barrel to get out of the restaurant). I'm not sure who came up with that saying or where the need for a wheel barrel specifically came from but the statement seems a bit old and outdated. I suppose someone should update that with a robot or some kind of technology from at least the year 2000.

Instead of the old "I ate so much I need a wheel barrel.", I'm officially using this statement from now on "I ate so much I need a BEAR (Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot)." Battlefield could be substituted with Banquet just to keep the BEAR acronym.

I think this would be a great thing to have in the trunk of your car. You could have a remote control or a "I've eaten way too much" device (kind of like those medic alert bracelets, not really fashionable but functional) and with a push of a button this robot would be activated to bring you back to your car or home.

Bacon, Yummy Bacon

2010-11-01T10:00:00.004-04:00

Yummy, yummy, crunchy, bacon.

Didn't do a heck of a lot today. I spent the day loafing around the apartment sifting through a huge amount of photos from the weekend trip in Ottawa. I saw the sun come up and go down from the window in my room. The non-sifting part of the day consisted of making some BLT sandwiches with extra thick bacon.

As much as I love the eating of said bacon, washing dishes with all that fat clinging all over is really off putting. It's times like this where maybe being a vegetarian might be a good thing. I poured the bacon fat into an empty soup can to be frozen and thrown out, maybe recycled.

I wonder if you can make soap out of bacon fat? I'll have to do research on this and get back to you.

Ottawa to Toronto the scenic route

2010-10-31T09:30:00.025-04:00

I had the option of going back to Toronto today or stay an extra 24 hours and photograph the third and final instalment of Ottawa fashion week. I decided to return to Toronto to get a head start on looking for another job. While generally I'm not that career oriented being broke and the thought of moving (which costs money) is a great fire under the butt way of getting motivated. I photographed what I needed to in Ottawa. the Trive catwalk for FAB and the Andrew Majtenyi collection (the paid gigs).

Cat looking outside

The newlyweds...

"Katie's" Candy Store

Before dropping me off at the Westin to meet up with Andrew, Josie and Patrick we stopped by Katie's candy store to pick up some stuff. I noticed that they sold those ginger gummies, a candy Stacey and I horded and ate on the set of The Thing (prequel). Craft service had brought in a bag of it and I think we hovered around the food table looking for these things.

Katie at the Westin

James at the Westin

The Westin lobby

I arrived to the hotel early and sat in the lobby. Worked on the photo sifting while I waited. We didn't drive home right away. We stopped by the upstairs restaurant where we had the all you can eat breakfast. It was quite good. No oily scrambled eggs at this establishment. We piled food on our plates when one of the servers announced last call for food. I think a wheel barrel would have me get from the restaurant to the car. The eyes may be bigger than the stomach but as William says the cheapo (don't waste food gene) is all powerful. While we didn't have to pay extra for food that we didn't eat, Mom didn't raise a kid that would leave leftovers. You take it, you eat it, or take it to go but don't throw any food. This is especially true if the food is good and it was.

Andrew wanted to hike around (it had just snowed). Walking around muddy trails in dress shoes didn't really appeal to me or Josie. We ended up driving up to Late Meech anyway. To my relief it turned out to be more of a car ride than a hike in some forest.

Patrick, Andrew's fashion developer, came to Canada specifically for the show. We picked him up from the Ottawa airport on Friday and he was flying back later on in the late afternoon. Since we were going on this "hike" I figured we should take photos of Patrick in front of all that we could to prove to people back in England that he was in Canada. Grand vista views and backdrops that people like Enzo appreciate Canada.

The spider in front of the National Gallery

Quebec, a round about

Patrick and the chicken cars

So okay chicken cars are not something I would associate with visiting Canada (until now) but like any place there's the odd thing that one needs to get photos of. The US has the Payday chocolates bars, the Lifesaver holes, Randy's Doughnut sign (which is still on my list to see). London has incredible ice cream with flakey chocolate bars stuck in them, the London Eye, round red mailboxes, streets that are going in the other direction than ours, double decker buses, and labelled genetically modified food.

The Chicken signs up close

The menu associated with the chicken signs.

Patrick in "Canada"

Andrew and Patrick standing on a "Canadian" dock

Nothing says Canada like a picture of a fish.

The weird blue reflection

Patrick and the Canadian weird blue reflection.

Nice landscape type photo

Lake Meech

Stopping the car to look around at the lake and woods.

A cottage on a cliff

I tried some poutine at a branch in Toronto and wasn't that impressed.

Working on designs before leaving.

Construction work

The flying J sign near Napanee... for maybe the last time (N44 15.837 W76 58.054)

Downtown Belleville... it's kind of becoming a ghost town.

The Little Caesar pizza guy.

his cat companion

We started getting hungry around Belleville. It was there that Andrew thought about getting some seafood. Using the GPS we looked for the Lobster Trap supposedly located downtown. If you're using a GPS in Belleville be careful that the map corresponds to the street geography. There were times when the Garmin didn't quite match up and it's not because new streets were added recently.

We finally rolled by the address the GPS spat out only to find no Lobster Trap there. We concluded that it went out of business as a lot of store fronts were boarded up.

Smokehouse Blues - (N44 11.079 W77 23.689) the best smoked meat in all of Ontario

As luck would have it we passed by a smoked meat place on the way to the Lobster Trap that stuck in Andrew's head. We ended up going there when we discovered the seafood option was a no go. In the small parking lot in the back of the restaurant we got out of the car to be bombarded by the best smelling meat food odour ever. I was salivating before even getting to the front door.

Andrew sitting in front of the food we ordered.

Pulled pork sandwich

The pulled pork sandwich as shown above does not come with any sauce on it. This is a good thing. The BBQ sauces, there's more than one, are added separately by you. This is great as you can control the amount and type that go on the meat. No more soggy over saturated pulled pork sandwiches with crappy sauce.

There were two kinds to choose from today. A smoky Kansas city based sauce and a more tomato based sauce inspired by Texas. I really liked the K.C. sauce. The food just melts in your mouth. If you're ever in Belleville, you HAVE TO go to this place. Program the coordinates into your GPS NOW!!! (also note: If you're looking at the Google maps link, you may notice a Syd Silver instead of this smoked meat heaven - the Smokehouse Blues has only been there for two weeks)

They have good chicken wings as well.

On the way back home

Andrew Majtenyi collection SS2011

2010-10-30T02:58:00.009-04:00

Oh yeah, it's halloween.

In the morning James, Katie and I went to some school where they had pies. I'm sure there was some other thing going on but really who can tell when there are pies at $2 a slice? After filling up on eight dollars worth I was ready to start my fashion filled day.

James and Katie surrounded by kids.

Pies!! Loads of pies!!

Yummy chocolate pies.

Some embassy pies

In case I forget where it is or what it looks like.

So I'm going to write a big thank you to James and Katie (or Katie and James) for allowing me to crash in their wonderfully geeky home, provide tickets and directions for the Ottawa bus, the transport from the venue and inviting me to go to the school of pies with them. You guys are awesome... and yes Ottawa does own a piece of Bagelhot officially.

Ottawa Transit bus tickets.

Bus receipt

Bus (N45 24.195 W75 44.038)

Bus stop

Canal (N45 25.466 W75 41.674)

Biking in the rain

The underpass to the Westin Hotel

In the lobby

Along came a spider...

National Gallery

The Andrew Majtenyi collection

Patrick does some last minute alterations

I spent the day behind the scenes photographing models getting ready for Andrew's collection. Hair, make up, getting in and out of clothes, the whole craziness that most people don't see and aren't aware of. What model is getting ready for what catwalk, who is wearing what, does the hair style and make up match, are the clothes ironed, coordinating the team of volunteers required, it's all quite amazing.

I have to say that I was quite impressed with the hair make up teams. They didn't have any real lighting at the National Gallery set up so the hair make up people had to do all their work using work lamps. Work lamps are n0t that great when using on constructions sites but at least you might be able to see where you're hammering in a nail. For make up? A work lamp is terrible. eeesh.

The volunteers for Andrew's collection

To see the entire collection of Andrew Majtenyi for this season (and to purchase prints) go to the Bagelhot Photo Store.

The rest of the day

After the showing of Andrew's collection I figured I'd just take photos from outside the photo pit of the other designer's collections. It's been a while since I've had the chance to do this. Generally I've had to go into "shrimp" mode in the photo pit and stay there in order to take photos of the different collections. You can't just hop in and out of the photo pit willy nilly. You're either in or out. Depending on where you are it's not always possible to get into the pit and generally it's bad photo etiquette to jump in and out during a show as you're moving other photographers around.

Raymond, the other photo thug from Toronto (the other being me).

At one point yesterday some guy jumped into the front of the photo pit photographers to photograph the catwalk. He rudely blocked at least five other cameras that had been in position since the start of the collection. Raymond and I started yelling "Hey, hey HEY!" at him until he moved. I refrained from calling him a douche bag or taking a swipe at him with my monopod. I think some of the hate from Toronto fashion week was coming out. The other photographers from Ottawa were too polite to really get upset. It's from this that Raymond and I designated ourselves as the photo thugs from Toronto.

The photo pit

Lisa Marie Noseworthy

You may know her as the photographer of popular children's books such as "Pigs to Pork"

I want to thank Lisa Marie Noseworthy for her halloween party,the half pizza, and all the cookies to eat (yes even the cracked but fixed with icing ones). Food is such a great thing after a long day of photography.