10th anniversary of the Great Plate Explosion

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the great plate explosion of 2004. Exactly 10 years ago I was working at a place where we were about to have a client wander in to check us out. A note was passed around giving us workers a heads up and suggested that we tidy up our workstations to make the place a bit more presentable. Even the secretary sent us an email telling us that we should clean out our communal refrigerator of all foods that we had forgotten about (and might be going moldy).

We all got together to make the office something to be proud of and by the next day the office was clean and the kitchen was sparkling white. It kind of looked like one of the sets of 2001, it was so white and uncluttered.

It was that day that I brought a rubbermaid container of pasta with tomato sauce in for lunch. I emptied the contents into a bowl and stuck it into the microwave oven. I was about to press the start button while I realized I should cover the bowl with something so that the sauce wouldn`t splatter getting the insides of the newly cleaned microwave messy. So I found a plate and covered the bowl.

I started the microwave and 3 minutes later I had successfully heated up my lunch. The plate was smothered with tomato sauce. I decided I`d wash the dish and put it away. I would leave zero dirty dishes. I went over to the sink to wash the sauce from the plate.

As soon as the water from the tap hit the plate, BOOM, the plate exploded slicing a part of my finger off. Blood started squirting out. I went around the kitchen looking for the first aid kit but couldn`t find it. I went back into the office to ask the receptionist where she moved it to. It was under the sink in a cabinet. So I went back and looked for it. It didn`t take long to find the red container and I opened it up to grab a band-aid.


Cut finger

Darkness crept into the edges of my eyes. I fainted. When I came to I was staring up at the ceiling. The receptionist`s head came into view. I looked down to see my finger had been bandaged. I also noticed that there was a trail of blood sprayed all over the kitchen. That`s when the clients walked in.


Tip of the finger sliced off

Six Year Anniversary

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)

Get a haircut ya damn hippie!!

Hair length, the result of about two and a half years.

Originally I thought it was back in November 2008 when I took on a job for Microsoft that my hair started it's growth spree but looking back at this blog I have found evidence that dates the hair growth to an earlier time. It would have been before meeting for dumplings back on June 10, 2008. It's at that time and place where Jup said "You should grow your hair and donate it to locks of love.". My hair was already pretty long, I remember thinking "That's a great idea! How hard can that be?" .

How hard it was

The stages.

A few weeks after deciding to let my hair grow I woke up one morning and noticed a weight was tugging at my scalp. "What is that on my head? Oh right it's the hair, my hair." This is the first stage indicating that things will start moving downhill from this point on.

Once the hair started to grow past the eyebrows it started poking me in the eyes. This got annoying. You could cut the hair to make bangs but then you might look like a page from the 1700s. There are some people that can make this look work. The people that have jobs working at Medieval Times come to mind. Otherwise this look might come across as "weird" or "strange". Yes, stranger than you having long hair in the first place.

To solve the poking of the eye thing. I wore goggles for a month. I realize having goggles on could get the "weirdo/strange" complement but that's just the way I roll. Wearing goggles can also categorize yourself under geeky if done properly. Plus goggles are actually useful against things exploding coming out of the microwave.


Using goggles September 25, 2009

Eventually the hair grows past the eyes and the goggles are no longer needed. There's a short duration of peace before the hair starts getting caught in things. On my way to Fort Wayne I had stuck my head out of the car window in order to take a photograph of the sunset. Having taken the shot I got back into the car and rolled up the window to find my hair stuck. Ugh!

The next stage happens when you're eating a hamburger (or some other food). The burger tastes great, everything seems normal, until you feel the pulling of the hair on your head. Yes, it's the next stage, the one where you start eating your own hair.

Your hair isn't long enough to be pulled back into a pony tail and since hair bands are girlie you resort to the rock star approach, sun glasses. It was on the way to Buffalo following the Montreal derby team that the hair became a major nuisance. I picked up some white sunglasses to alleviate the problem of loose strands in my face.

Once the hair travels past the mouth it then becomes a problem when waking up. Humid days are the worst. You open your eyes to see a net of hair sticking to your face. You wipe your face a few times with your hand trying to move the nuisance out from blocking your vision and it's a few times if your hair has volume.

The next stage is just sitting somewhere like a theatre and finding that the hair has grown down to your lower back. Every time you lean forward with your head (maybe while eating popcorn) your feel the tug of your hair being squished between the chair and your back.

There are times throughout all this that you're thinking "Screw the cancer kid!!! This thing comes off now!!!". You might think for a while and figure you've gone this far you might as well keep going. There's also the odd female that'll say "Ooooh, that hair looks great on you!". SUCKER!! And so the hair continues to grow.

For locks of love the requirement hair length is 10 inches (25.4 cm). There are other places to donate your hair where the length isn't as long. See the Canadian Cancer Society for more hair donation options.


The cutting of the hair

Hot Roller (her name makes sense to me now) is a hair stylist, cutter, and overall amazing person who offered to cut my hair. Being a guy that goes to the barber shop for a quick hair cut I was a bit surprised to get my hair done in a "spa".

Having an appointment for getting my hair cut is pretty foreign to me. I showed up at 11am for my hair cut. I was greeted at the door by Slaughter Laughter who out of her derby outfit looked like an entirely different person. I was expecting to sit somewhere to read a paper or something while I waited. I wasn't expecting to be guided into a seat right away to get my hair washed let alone be offered a beverage.

A beverage? Where the heck am I? I was then asked to pick out of an assortment of different smells (vanilla, sandalwood, some other stuff). I think I was started to freak out a bit. "Just pick a flavour and go with it." I was told.

As the vanilla concoction was massaged into my scalp I realized this was a good thing. So this is what it's like to be pampered? It sure is different from the barber.

Wow, so this is what it's like to be pampered.

Once the hair was washed I then moved to the hair cutting chair. It was there where Hot Roller worked her cutting magic starting with the lopping off of the 12 inch pony tail. She tied it off with one of my hair elastics then placed it into a ziplock bag that I brought.

Off with the pony tail

A clip here, a clip there, and viola... The short hair corporate look. Do I miss having long hair? Heck no! Actually it does come in handy when doing the rocker head banger thing playing rock band but other than that no.


Hot Roller cuts the hair.


Holy Crap, I can see the back of my neck!


left overs.


The hair all dried and ready to mail out.


Short hair/corporate hair.

Tree Hugger

The raccoon - cute, fuzzy and filled with death rage

My new neighbour Martina is scared of these things. When you think about it it makes sense. Razor sharp teeth, claws, and although usually fat looking they're as nimble as a cat. Oh and they're smart. Real smart.

I'm not saying that if you look at one in a tree, another one will jump you from the side or behind smart. I'm talking if there was a peanut on your head they would probably figure a way to get it smart.

I've seen raccoons jump six feet straight up onto a fence. It's like they were on an invisible bungee cord. Vaawhoop. Boing. Standing on the fence, not trying to pull themselves up onto the fence like a fat guy going over an obstacle course in the army. All four feet on the fence.

With this in mind, if they wanted to, they could jump right up onto your face to do the alien face hugger. While I'm sure they don't plant raccoon seeds that develop into baby raccoons that burst out of your chest, they could mess you up just by biting and scratching your face off. If you were seven feet tall you could by chance get the fat furry wheezy raccoon that would try to get up to your face but in the end couldn't resulting in you getting a whiff of it's bad breath as it exhales falling off your face like the fat boy army grunt. You face is safe. Your crotch is another story.

Yes, biting and attacking you until you look like some scarred mutant of yourself and that's before introducing the rabies factor. Holy crap RABIES! What could be worse? Well maybe one thing (in Toronto anyway) a rabid SKUNK. They can do the same thing as the raccoons but simultaneously fart in your direction.

Aaaah!! Tiny, furry, rabid animals!! Run away!!!

What the heck would our friends in Australia say to that? Tosser? They live in a place where almost all animals are poisonous if not deadly by some other means. The trap door spider, crocodiles, the crusty butted koala and the deadly underwater platypus.

When this realization hits and you figure out you're in Toronto, that's when you get out of your snivelling bent over position of a coward and stand up like a man (or woman as the case maybe) and say "They are more scared of me than I am of them."

After that thank God you're not a garbage can and make sure you don't have a peanut on your head.

Ack! Is it morning already?

Nermal probably wonders how humans can function after an all night partying binge.

I woke up freezing, curled up in a cocoon made up of two blankets that were infested with cat hair. One of them was the size of a bath mat and really had no purpose being on me other than keeping my feet warm. The pillow was nice and soft compared to the hard wood floor. The only thing missing from making this scene look more harsh was maybe a pool of drool next to my head on the ground. Then again maybe it was there and I hadn't noticed it? No, the pillow would have absorbed any of that nonsense. Sorry guys.


Agh, the sun is seeping into the room.

How did I wake up here? It's not a big mystery as I didn't drink. There was no fuzziness from booze only maybe from bad sleep. For the first four hours of the after party I had been sitting in a lazy boy like chair. Only it didn't tilt back. In fact it tilted forward. The back was curved and there was a person sitting on the floor in front of me. It was the only place on the floor that hadn't been taken over by the accidental beer swamp. It was because I was in this embryo like body position that I eventually crawled up out of the chair to sit on the floor where it was more comfortable. I would find a pillow and lie down. One thing would lead to another and before long with the help of a blanket or two I was fast asleep with the party going on around me.

Derek's Party Tip: One should be careful when doing this. You should know the people you're falling asleep around. If the people get too drunk they could step on you, fall on you, drop things on you, or worse case do things to you that you don't notice until you wake up (ie. Shave off one eye brow, put a potato chip in your mouth, put hot chili peppers down your pants - yeah, I saw slumdog millionaire).

There is also strategic positioning to think of. example: if you're sleeping on the couch, is the couch an active area? Where others night push you out of the way or join you and squish the lfe out of you because it's "comfortable"? People don't always use common sense when under the influence.


Perky is still going. Take that Energizer bunny.

By the point I was losing consciousness most of the people that were partying had gone home or to get laid. Only the hard core smokers and drinkers were left behind. Most of them were tired and didn't move around much. conculsion: sleeping on the floor was A-OK! One of them, Carl, was amazed that I could fall asleep in the middle of the floor. I told him it wasn't really such a big feat as I would be paying for it later on. I was sure of it.


aftermath on the coffee table

As the sun slowly crept into the apartment it revealed all the things that were hidden in the previous darkness, empties, cigarette butts, Nermal the cat... People were actually surprised to see the cat and were wondering where he was hiding all night. He was lying on the bed... in plain sight. It's things like this that you notice because you're the sober one.

Waking up in the clothes you were in the night before is not what I'd call refreshing especially if you smell like smoke. I've noticed this more with the longer hair. The hair seems to suck up all and every odor you come in contact with. I had to get out before I vomited. I'm not big on cigarette smoke.

I waited for Carl to down another beer then it was off to the Plucker.

Case of the Mondays

Eeek, there's snow!

While I generally don't ever have a "case of the mondays" as I don't work regular hours or regular days for that matter. Today, today would be the exception. I would freely admit to the mondays or at least today getting to me a bit. I woke up to snow. Lots of snow. It was also cold, very cold, winter cold out. It's descember, it's Canada, there should be snow. That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

A few years ago I would have ran down to the beach to freeze my ass off and take some pretty snow photos in -40 degree (with the wind chill) weather. Today, however, I realized my refrigerator was happily filled over the last week (by me - wow). For once I had a food storage unit with actual food in it, stuff like meat, pre-made curry chicken, fried rice, even vegetables, and fruit. And they were recognizable (not moldy - exhibit A, exhibit B)!!!

Yep not just a fridge with condiments, real food, pre-made food, food waiting to be prepared food. It was right up there with finding out I had a four months supply of toilet paper (actually I don't have a four month supply but you get what I mean). It's the little things in life that make it truly worth living. Filled fridge, toilet paper, one's health, shelter over head (maybe not in that order), and the ability to not have to go in to work.

The only thing that could make the day better was an internet connection, a pre-paid two month subscription to the World of Warcraft and some movies to watch over the Christmas holidays. I could barricade myself in until January. Oh wait, I do have all that. Woo woo!!!

See you next year.

Photo Disaster Day

The rented Yaris in front of Nikon Canada

My day started this morning waiting for James to call, return my call, to see if he could make a trip to Nikon. The night before he told me he could be swayed into going. It was 8:30am when I made the decision to leave without him and rent a car.

I had come to the conclusion of renting a car long before talking to James the night before. It was a plan B or rather plan A, James was the plan B. A car rental plus gas would be less expensive than getting a taxi to go to Nikon and back. Plus it would let me putt around a bit, maybe even do some grocery shopping.

The reason for going to Nikon this time was to pick up my camera. I had brought in the D200 body because I dropped it last week during a boat cruise. I had a different camera strap on the body and when I went to grab the old strap, it wasn't there. Whack! The camera dropped onto a carpet.

At first it didn't look like it had sustained any damage. The lens was intact. Whew! It wasn't until I tried taking out the battery that I noticed a small hairline fracture in the body. D'oh!!! The nikon guys at the counter practically know me by name. Anyhoo... I brought the camera in last week. I got the call that is was repaired yesterday.

Because I had a full day planned for today (which was going to lunch with William and seeing "Wanted") which meant I had to get to Nikon and back before noon. With the car I was done by 10:30. The camera was in great shape. Nikon did a great job restoring it back to brand new condition. I had them replace the cracked part in the body, clean the thumb knobs, the eye piece and the sensor. It cost me $300.00 but was well worth it.

I arrived about half an hour early in front of William's house. Instead of going and ringing the doorbell I drove down to the beach, parked the car, and sat on a bench watching some lifeguards out rowing boats. It wasn't really planned, just what I ended up doing.


life guards out rowing.

At noon I picked up William and drove to the all you can eat sushi place, Wasbi, up on Steeles. Another advantage of having the car. Did I mention it was a Toyota Yaris? Wow, does this car get good mileage. At the end of the day I refilled the tank with $17.00 (more travelling to come).

After eating lunch, driving over to see the Wanted movie, driving to Best Buy where I impulse purchased a GPS, I drove William home, then drove myself home. Took a photo of a plant in the backyard that I parked next to and noticed the sky starting to getting dark. I jumped back in the car thinking I would take photos of lightning hitting the CN tower and I knew just the spot.


The backyard plant

Just south of the CD tower near the Gardiner express way there's a garage with the top floor exposed to the outside. It was my belief that I could drive up onto the garage and take photos with my camera on a tripod, aimed at the CN Tower while it was getting hit by lighting.


Skies getting dark with strange blue clouds

As things turned out, I couldn't find the entrance to the parking lot in time and by the time I got to the top of the roof I only had a few minutes to take the shot below before being pelted by rain. I was on the roof for about 30 minutes (that's how much I was billed) before leaving for some place better to photograph. Perhaps away from the CN tower looking up at it from the ground?


A panoramic photo I took using a bunch of photos and stitching them together


Traffic on the Gardiner


Me with my newly acquired GPS, looking for another spot to shoot from

There was a baseball park near the Tip Top Tailors condo and Ontario Place with parking! I parked the car and moved my gear to see if I could shoot from under the nearby building, which I think it was a bunch of public bathrooms.

I started shooting a panoramic shot, kind of boring actually, it was the rain coming down hard with a drinking fountain in the foreground. About half way into my photo taking two joggers came up to me and asked if they could use my cell phone to place an emergency call.

While one of them called 911, the other described to me what was taking place. Apparently three people in a car somewhere near Ontario Place were trapped with water pushing the car toward the lake. The joggers didn't really know where they were and asked me for their location. I said "near Tip Top Tailors". Once finished with the phone they jogged away before I could ask them where the trapped car was. The only reason why I thought to ask was if 911 decided to call back my cell phone for better location details. I didn't know where it was specifically just somewhere near Ontario Place.

Then I thought "Hey, I have a GPS.", I could find the spot and get more accurate coordinates. So I got into the car and drove toward Ontario Place. I didn't have to drive far. There were emergency vehicles already at the scene. Firefighters were already trying to figure out how to get people out of the car.


A family looks over at a car between two broken sewage pipes

At first glance it looked pretty crazy. The car trapped was sandwiched between two springs of sewage water. Then with a little more inspection I noticed that the levels of the water really wasn't that deep. Maybe up to your shin or even knee. Still, the firefighters piggybacked the people out of the car.


Firefighters start to help people out of car


Car in relation to all the water


The sludge water.


Sky starting to clear up.

With a bunch of photos I drove back home to upload them to the Sun (newspaper). Should they be interested in them I didn't know but figured it was worth a try. This time I got photos of actual firefighters at work... rescuing people.



On the way home I noticed some really cool sky colors. The sun was setting and the clouds were starting to break up. I pulled the car over and ran out and took some shots before continuing on.

Normally, that would be a pretty interesting day as far as photo taking goes. Since I had the car I decided to see if Darryl wanted to meet up for food. Maybe we could drive somewhere that we don't usually go to eat. On my way to the office I drove by Queen and Spadina. There was smell of smoke in the air. I parked the car nearby and walked over to find that the police had just gotten there and started taping off the area.

A third floor fire had broken out in a building across the street from the Cameron (a local bar). I thought to myself why are there all these disasters and me carrying my slow lenses. Agh! I tred shooting a few shots. The flood shots of the car when seen on my computer monitor were a bit blurry and I only got a few non-blurry photos (seen here). Now there was a fire. The sun had gone down and my largest aperture was 3.5-5.6? arg! For the wider photos it wasn't too bad. For the long shots (300mm, f5.6) I ended up squeezing next to a telephone poll to shoot so the photos wouldn't suffer from camera shake.


Police block off Queen street.


Fire on the third floor


fire engine parked near the fire


A closer shot with the help of a telephone pole.


wide shot


Recognize this family? They were at the car flood. How's that for coincidence? We joked that we'd meet each other again at the "famine".


Fire fighter going into action


Fire put out from the inside


Parked fire trucks


The fire truck ladder operator


Police car on Cameron blocking traffic and pedestrians


Waiting for the fire to go out.

Once the fire was over I went to Darryl's office and conveyed the odd day I had while using his machine to upload the fire photos to the newspaper. We went for dinner at Xulah, a restaurant located only a few blocks away from the office.


Darryl at Xulah

The moral of this blog entry? Even though it would have been way more convenient to get a lift from James, going out and renting a car allowed me to see all this stuff. A good example of "When a door is closed, God opens a window." or for everything bad the happens something good comes out of it.

Update

The next day in the Sun there was a better photo of the flooding that happened. The photo featured a TTC bus and car in the water... a lot deeper water. As for the fire, I didn't see any photos of it at all.

Quality sleep is a good thing.

Poking my head outside to see Kyoko busy doing yard work.

Woke up late today. Partially due from working weird hours on a new project for Microsoft and partially because a few nights ago I locked myself out of my apartment. I forgot to take my keys which I left on a hook about two meters away from the outside door. I could see them through the door window. D'oh.

I had gotten home around 2am after shooting Integer, a band playing at Clinton's. My cousin Dave and I walked home from the pub/bar. It took about an hour and a half with a few stops to visit the neighbourhood bathroom and buy some pizza. I had drank about three litres of coke at the pub and it was a bit chilly outside.

COLD + full bladder + walking = need to wee

By the time I got home I was really tired and my feet were starting to get sore. That's when my hand went down to the usual spot on my camera bag to find out that the house keys weren't there. D'oh!

I had a few options...

1. Call Dave and sleep over at his place.
While that would have been the more comfortable option it meant walking back to his place. While it was only 10 blocks away I thought "Nah." Besides, he might already be asleep.

2. Stay up and sit on the porch.
It would only be a few hours until someone woke up. Four hours, five at the most. It was 2am. Chris would leave the house around 7am or earlier to go to work. I was tired so I opted for option 3.

3. Go to sleep on the porch.
After all it was an enclosed space. Wind wouldn't be too much of an issue. So I naively thought. I found four lawn chair cushions that I turned into a makeshift mattress. For the first two hours it wasn't so bad. Then I started to get cold. My bladder started to remind me of all the fluid I drank that night. Luckily there's a Coffee Time that's open 24 hours near by at the intersection of Coxwell and Danforth. I went there to answer the call of nature and while there picked up a chicken patty.

The chicken patty that I bought was pretty warm. It was microwaved. I thought about using chicken patties from the microwave as hand warmers that you could eat later. Would that catch on? The wearer would be the cat or dog's best friend thanks to the potential food and the chicken smell that was wafting around. I decided to eat the patty rather than sticking it into a pocket to warm my hands. After a while the semi-digested patty started making my stomach feel a bit queasy.

On the porch there were some sides of empty boxes. I stacked them against the wall for insulation and the rest I stacked like cards making a makeshift box to crawl into in order to keep some of the warmth around my body. My 70-200mm lens in it's carrying case padded with foam sections from my camera bag was used as a pillow but it might as well have been a hard cold pipe. In the end I used my right running shoe under the lawn chair matte. It created a pillow like bump and worked like a charm.

With the exception of the bit of wind creeping up my back it was pretty comfortable given the situation. I should put tape on the porch next time so I could tape up the cardboard together (or just not forget my key).

At 6am I was woken up by Chris opening the door. He had gotten up to photograph the sun rise. It was at that point I noticed a chill over my whole body. I went up stairs and crawled into bed. I slept until the afternoon within the warmth of my cocoon like blankets.

That was two days ago now, but I'm still in that awake at night, sleep during the day mode. Next time I see some guy sleeping in a refrigerator box I'll make sure he's stuffed it with a sleeping bag first. In general for those I see sleeping outside in cold weather, I won't be as lean with my spare change.

Jim Butterfield

Jim Butterfield sits at a help desk at the Toronto Computes computer show Feb 7, 2003

I was talking to Rick Dolishny of TAZA (Toronto Animation/Amiga Zeotrope Association) on facebook today. We were reminiscing about the old computer days. The conversation was based on his profile photo being of him with a cake that resembled an old PET computer. Eventually the conversation brought up Jim Butterfield a name synonymous with the Commodore 64 and PET computers. Rick did a search on him.

I'm sad to say we found out Jim had died of cancer on June 29th of this year. The last time I saw him was four years ago at a computer convention (see photo above). Kind of like a comfortable fixture, Jim was sitting there in the usual spot at the help desk, assisting people with computer related questions and problems. I'm kicking myself now for not having the courage to go up to him to thank him for all the help and inspiration he gave to me, my computer life and career.

Way back when I was just starting to learn to program the PET computer I had a friend, Carl Reid. He was about the same age as me but was a programming genius. Where as most people were trying to wrap their heads around the BASIC programming language (The Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, gawd I'm old) at the time, Carl was programming in 6502 machine code.

One weekend while over at Carl's house hacking around on the computer Carl got stumped . He was programming a word processor for "kids" (kids that were younger than us). He decided to phone Jim to ask for help. It was 3am in the morning! Not only did Jim pick up but he answered Carl's questions. From that point on I always had an admiration for the fellow late night programmer.

Another weird instance of geekdom was when Carl and I had figured out how to attach a joystick to the back of the PET computer splicing the joystick's wire and using alligator clips. It was a pretty new thing in those days. Then we thought there wouldn't be any games since the joystick on a PET was pretty unheard of. To our surprise, some StarFighter game (I can't remember the actual name) written by Jim Butterfield worked with the joystick. It was uncanny. How did he even have code that knew about this device? It was hooked on by alligator clips!

As the PET and Toronto Pet Users Group (TPUG) heydays started to fizzle out so did our contact with Jim. I'd see him every now and then at an Amiga convention and then at the odd Toronto Computes show at the help desk and then not at all. I always wondered what happened to him.

Thanks Jim for all your help, rest in peace.

Case of the rattling garbage bag

The garbage bag with the skunk in the background

Around 4:30, maybe 5:00am I heard rattling outside my window. Being wide awake I went outside to poke my head around the corner. In the darkness two raccoons ran beside me, up a fence, and disappeared into the darkness. Down the alley one of the neighbours had left a garbage bag out and had not put it into a bin. The raccoons were getting at it tearing the bag to shreds.

Most people would have placed the bag into the bin and gone back inside to sleep. Me, on the other hand, decided it would be a great opportunity to try out my ML-3. The Nikon ML-3 is a wireless remote that plugs into the D200 (camera body). One of the nifty features is that you can set it as a trip wire. The hand held remote can be placed somewhere aimed at the receiver attached to the camera. An infrared beam is continuous. When something breaks the beam the camera takes a picture.

I had originally bought the remote to use as a wireless trigger only. To be able to press the button with my finger and take a picture. It was an important thing to have when trying to sync two camera bodies while doing my stereoscopy imagery. Having a trip wire option seemed excessive. Excessive until now.

I started setting up the camera on a tripod aimed and focused on the garbage bag. While fiddling with the camera I heard something and automatically fired the shutter (using the camera's shutter button). The result being the above picture. At the time I was expecting a raccoon. When my brain realized it was a skunk there was a whole different outlook on shooting the wild animal.

Raccoons can have rabies but skunks can make you stink for days. For some reason getting a needle in your gut for the rabies seemed okay compared to showing up at an event smelling like skunk. It's amazing how one's brain works in the wee hours of the morning.

Once the skunk was scared away by the flash I decided to pack up the gear, throw the bag of trash into the bin and call it a night.

The Unwanted Guests

After the fabulous food at the chinese restaurant I left Enzo somewhere around Piccadilly Circus. It was nearly 1am. This meant the tube had stopped running and to get back to the hotel I needed to get on a bus. The transit system in London is truly incredible. It runs like clock work. The schedules located near the bus stop tell the duration from your present position to your destination.

The trip to the hotel was pretty easy. Enzo made sure I knew how to read the bus details before reluctantly leaving in the opposite direction. I suppose it freaked him out a bit when I said I could walk back to the hotel as a worse case scenario. "Do people not walk around much in London?" I thought to myself. Then I realized with an efficient transit system and a lot of women wearing high heels, high heels and skirts I might add, it would probably be easier to take the bus or train. People in London, perhaps even all of Europe, seem more fashion conscious then us track suit wearing, sweat shirt, T-shirt, jean, baggy pants wearing people of north america (with the exception of Montreal).

By the time I got back to the hotel, about forty minutes later, I was damp. It was raining most of the night and I managed to get a bit soaked while walking from the bus stop to the hotel. I changed into dry clothes and put my jeans on my suitcase to dry. I spent about an hour and a half lying on my bed in front of my laptop editing the pictures I had shot today. It was around 3am and I thought I'd go out to shoot some street shots with my tripod.

I grabbed my damp jeans from the top of the suitcase when two big fat roaches fell to the floor. Eyaaah!!! I hadn't seen the roaches since friday and had sort of forgotten about them but because of the sighting on friday I had gone to Sainsbury's and picked up some yogurt and creme brulee. It is important to note that when I get creeped out I do not start eating (necessarily).

I had bought these food items because of their containers. The creme brulee, which was incredible by the way, came in a glass container that resembled a short threadless jar. The sugar was in a separate pouch. The glass would allow you to blow torch your dessert without the container melting, unlike plastic. Last season I had bought this dessert so I had not only a yummy dessert but the jar which served as a small change holder.

The second food item, the yogurt, came in a tall plastic container that had two sections. The bottom section that had the yogurt and fruit. The top layer that had crunchy granola like nuggets. There was foil that separated the two sections. Once you took out the foil the container became a cup with a bubble lid.

The Roach Hunter

This brings me to the roaches. Once on the ground, after coming off my jeans, I dumped my change on the counter and dropped the creme brulee jar over one roach. The other roach ran behind a water pipe againt the wall. To pick up the captured roach I slid a postcard, I bought to send to some lucky person in Toronto, under the jar. Then carefully lifting the jar with the postcard underneath I went over to the sink where I had placed the opened yogurt cup. removed the postcard away from the jar and plop, easy as pie, the roach dropped into the yogurt container which I then immediately covered with the bubble lid.

Interestingly enough I noticed that the roach could not crawl up the smooth surface of the cup. Perhaps it was because of the size. Cockroaches in North America or Canada at least can pretty much crawl up anything. This made catching the second roach easy.

I took the cover off the yogurt cup and placed it under the roach that was trying to hide behind the pipe. I whacked the butt of the roach with the postcard and into the yogurt cup it fell. As a side note the hotel wall was textured allowing the roach to crawl up it. Once in the cup the roach was trapped. Just to make sure I put the lid on it. That is I put the lid on it after I took a few photos with my extension tubes. If I only had a nikkor micro lens.... (insert big sigh here).


Cockroaches the size of your thumb!

Flight AC868

The Esso is closed and so is Tim Horton's

After Humbert's final injection I left Rick and Sabrina's place to go to Andrew's. The cab I took to get there arrived a bit early. To kill some time allowing Andrew to pack I decided to go to the local Tim Horton's to get an ice cappacino. No such luck. The store was closed. In fact the whole Esso gas station was closed. D'oh!

From Andrew's place we drove up to Woodbridge to meet up with Josie and drop off Andrew's car. Then from there we took an airport limo to Terminal One. There were a bunch of kiosks that would take your passport and print out a boarding pass. I'm not really sure what the use of these things were. They didn't speed up anything. We still had to get in line to drop off our check in luggage. In the end the boarding pass kiosks seemed to be a waste of time and money.


The boarding kiosk. It functions inversely proportional to how cool it looks.


Andrew and Josie waiting in Terminal One


My flight kit to fight off boredom and change of pressure

Once on the plane the first thing I noticed was the amount of leg room. I could stretch my legs out without the chair in front cramping me in. It was a nice change from the days of flying in the fetal position. To give you an idea of how much room there was I had a window seat, Annabel, the women sitting in the aisle seat didn't have to get up to let me in past her. I suppose that's the luxury of sitting right next to the emergency exit.


Our wing gets sprayed with anti-freeze


A nice cloud shot over Toronto

Sitting next to the exit near the midsection of the plane also meant that I couldn't take wide angle pictures looking out without the wing getting in the shot. The new plane we were in had tiny LCD monitors built into the headrest in front of us. This distracted me from taking pictures. The monitors were touch sensitive and offered a variety of TV programs, movies, radio channels, and albums to listen to. You could even program your own play list from the tunes available. It sounds great... if it functioned properly.


No "Mister Roboto" for you

I started by playing with the audio selection picking the category "classic pop" out of which there were only two artists. Billy Joel and Stix. Cool. I picked "Mr. Roboto" by Stix. Only the first 12 seconds played before the song crapped out and the computer skipped to the next song. What the hell? I tried playing it a number of times before determining the file was corrupt and moved my attention to the movie access panel.


The movie interface nice layout but slow response

I didn't have much success. I started watching "Driving Miss Daisy", a movie I hadn't seen and didn't want to buy or rent, and about five minutes in the movie menu popped up aborting the movie play. I was fiddling with this stupid thing for about half an hour before one of the flight attendants noticed and asked if I wanted to sit in another seat where I could watch the movie in a seat cluster with a different file server.

Reluctantly I moved from my window seat to a middle aisle seat. Sure enough the movie worked. I paused the movie to see if I could listen to "Mr. Roboto". Nope. The file was corrupt on this server too. Just dangle that twinkie in front of you and yank it away. Damn them.


Stupid server


Why do they even advertise the feature and let you pick it in the first place?

Although I liked the design of the interface, at least for the most part, the response time between touching the screen and something happening was incredibly slow. The interface, while I liked some parts, seemed badly designed in certain areas. For example if you stopped the movie, you could start it up again from where you left off but you would have to choose the language you wanted to view it in. Why wouldn't the programming remember the language you set at the beginning? That seemed dumb to me. Especially since you could change the language while the movie was playing. Probably some band-aid programming solution.


The waffle meal. Tasted pretty good.

Because I was engrossed with watching movies I didn't take any pictures of the food after our first serving (the waffles) not that we had much. Some ice cream followed later on by a sandwich with a cup of sliced fruit.

After "Driving Miss Daisy" I went back into the menu and picked "Good Cop, Bon Cop". It was actually a pretty good movie overall. The only downside is that there's a lot of subtitles. When they speak english there's french subtitles, when they speak french there's english subtitles. Normally if you're watching this in a theatre that would be okay. I, however, was not in a theatre.

I was in a seat with a tiny monitor in front of my face (because the guy in front of me was reclined and the monitor was embedded into the seat in front of me), not quite the fetal position but very, very close. The text on the tiny screen was very small. Now add the fact that we were in an airplane. About half an hour into the movie we hit turbulence. Turbulence that lasted for about 40 minutes. Turbulence that made people spill their drinks all over themselves. Turbulence that had people in the back of the plane falling on their faces. Turbulence that even made the flight attendants nervous. One started barking orders to sit down and everything would be okay. You could hear her voice shake of uncertainty. I suppose I'd be nervous too if the plane lurched and I fell on my face.

Images of the "Perfect Storm" and the airplane scene from "Superman Returns" came to mind while I gripped the head rest in front of me. I realized I was white knuckling it. I found myself laughing as I thought about how pissed off I was. Couldn't this force of nature thing go away so I could watch the movie and read the subtitles without getting nausea?

I quickly looked around the plane at people gripping their arm rests, praying, wiping the food or drink they had spilt all over themselves, looking desperately at the buckle up signs or out a nearby window. The only one that seemed to be having any fun was a small girl. She was under one year old, 14 pounds. She had a huge grin on her face watching her mother with a worried look. It was one big ride at the amusement park for her.

Here we were in a plane, who knows how high in the air, being subjected to "surprise" weather conditions, people on the edge of panic, possibly near death, and here I am trying to watch some french canadian movie with subtitles thinking why is this happening now? Can't I watch a movie without all the hullabaloo?

As you can see from this blog entry, we all pulled through. I managed to see "Good Cop, Bon Cop" all the way to the end. Just as the credits started to roll the server was turned off as we started our descent. The movie gods were with me after all.

It took about an hour from the airport to Earl's Court station via tube (subway), then while walking along the street toward the hotel a large rat walked by in front of me. At a pretty leisurely pace I might add. It came from under a car and headed down into some home garden just below street level. As it wasn't that big, it was the size of a normal looking rat, not beaver or raccoon sized, it didn't really phase me much other than I was glad I didn't step on it by accident. By the time I reached for the camera it had disappeared into the shadows.


The street with the rat.

Upon arrival at my hotel, which I made it to just minutes before the reception staff had left for the night, I was asked to verify my one nights stay. "What? one night?" Yes they messed up. I looked in the book of reservations and there I was for nine nights. This was the second time the person behind the counter didn't know what was going on.

They were nice enough though and it was shortly after that I got my key to room 102, the room located just above the room I had last fashion season. I got in and turned on the lights and saw something move in the corner of the room. At least I thought I saw something move. Upon closer inspection of the carpet seam next to the wall... nothing. I saw nothing.


The room 102

It was at that moment I had a intuitive flash to go look under the sink. I opened the cupboard and found five of the largest cockroaches I had ever seen. Please remember I'm from Toronto, a relatively cold city, with brown roaches the size of maybe a centimeter in length. These semi-tropical roaches of the UK were black and about three times the size. About the size of your thumb, from the tip of your fingernail to where it is attached to your hand. I use the thumb size reference as I thought if if came down to me killing them with my bare hands I'd have that much gunk to deal with.

I tried to capture one of the larger specimens in a zip lock bag I had. No luck there. It ran into a crack next to the plumbing and got away. I really need a jar of some kind.


The restaurant where we ate lamb shwarma

After leaving my hotel room, leaving the lights on, I met up with Andrew and Josie to get some lamb shwarma at a nearby restaurant. Mmmmm... the food is really good here.

After dinner we ventured off to Sainbury's in order to pick up some roach hotels and zip lock bags. We got to the store to find that they are no longer open 24 hours. They close at midnight thanks to some construction that's going on.

Back at that hotel room I realized I had no towels. It had been raining since we landed and I was soaked. Rainy but a balmy five degrees. Geez, I could wear shorts here. It's supposed to snow sometime later this week. Tomorrow I've got to figure out if I was registered with the British Fashion Council correctly. Fashion week this season starts on Sunday.