Friday night at the Silver Dollar

Jet (Guitar/vocals) and Sadie (vocals) of the Threat.

I put off an appointment to see an editor about photography rates and canceled dinner with cupcake in order to go to Niagara Falls to film the skylon tower from a helicopter. As it turns out I found out at the last minute the trip to Niagara Falls was cancelled. This left me with a big gap in my "busy" schedule leaving me with not a lot to do. I suppose I could have gone over to see what's new at Monster Records but instead I ended up burning the pictures taken last halloween on to CD and travelling across town to deliver them to Craig's mail box.

While executing this made to order task I ran into Sadie (aka Sarah), singer, trumpet/piano player of the Threat and the Tijuana Bibles. The same Tijuana Bibles band that Craig was/is in. I found out through Sarah that the Threat was playing later on that evening at the Silver Dollar. Voila. Evening plans.

The Silver Dollar, for those of you that haven't been there or were too drunk to remember, is rather narrow as the front of the stage and the bar are quite close to one another. Off to the sides of the stage there are seats and tables which is great for listening to the bands play but not not good to see the bands head on. Also due to the close proximity of the bar a lot of people gather in the area in front of the stage. It makes maneuvering around a bit difficult when taking pictures.

Despite the crowd I managed to get some good shots of the band while at the same time meeting some girls at the bar. While it's not in my nature to take advantage of drunk girls, it is in my nature to take pictures of them. Especially if they ask me to take their picture while showing me their underwear. What am I going to say, "No"?


"Fish net stockings and panties - a nice combo"

Nikon Battery Recall

Nikon Canada - 1366 Aerowood road, Mississauga

My day actually was planned from the night before. On the web I read that Nikon was recalling a bunch of batteries (for the D70, D70s, D100) due to a number of them melting on the charger. Yikes! I went to the Nikon Canada site to see if any of my two batteries were listed with a defective lot number. (click here for the battery recall list on the nikon USA site)

It took me a while to actually find where the lot number was located. Turns out the four digit lot number was in black ink on black plastic so it was a bit hard to see under low light conditions. See picture below.

Where to find your battery lot number.

Once I found out that the battery was considered bad I made up my mind to go to Nikon the next day. For those that aren't aware, Nikon is located in one of the most inconvenient places for someone that doesn't own a car. It's near the airport, on the side furthest away from the city of Toronto (in mississauga). Trying to be money conscious I decided to take the subway to the end of the line, Kipling station, then take a cab from the station to Nikon. The cab ride cost me $27 and took about 20 minutes in total.

Once at Nikon the exchanging of the battery was pretty quick and painless. I had to fill out a tiny form saying that I owned a bad battery and I received a good one in exchange. The total procedure took about 10 minutes at most. I got some parts to replace the lost ones for my SB-800 and asked about their Nikon professional services program. After piling up on brochures I left thinking I didn't want to spend another $27 to get back to Kipling station.


weird blue clouds

I decided to be cheap and walk back. Upon leaving the building I noticed it was cold. At least colder than when I walked into Nikon. The sky had a weird blue cloud layer. The same color as frozen ice in those antarctic documentaries. Minutes later I would be pelted by small pea sized pieces of hail. That didn't really annoy me, only the fact that winter is suddenly upon us. What did annoy me was that I was walking on the wrong side of the street. It was the down wind side. Being on a street that had a lot of trucks with diesel exhaust spewing out of them I started hacking to the point where I wanted to vommit. Feeling a tad sick I took refuge in a Wendy's along the way.

After eating a burger, some fries, and a lemonade, I set back out to walk down Dixie towards Bloor, and towards Toronto. It's funny, on the map everything seems kind of close. I only had to walk two and a half pages. It took about two and a half hours to finally stumble into the city limits. I could have taken mississauga transit but decided while trodding along, "No. I going to save money dammit". It wasn't like I had anything to do for a few hours anyway.


Toronto City Limits - yea!

Once inside city limits, notice it's dark, it only took another half hour to get to a TTC bus stop. Next time I think it would be easier to just bike all the way there and back.

Neighborhood Signage

A cat wanted sign posted near the neighborhood No Frills store.

I saw this and liked the cat's name. Hopefully the owners find the cat intact.

Photo Fridge

Hot off the press - photos !

Something that never occured to me while printing photos is that they stick to one another, at least while using an epson printer. I'm sure other printers have the same problem. It's interesting that they don't have driers made by third party companies. I suppose you could have a clothes line and peg the drying photos to it. It would be like being in the darkroom again. As an aside there is a Kodak printer that has a blow dryer built in so the photos come out dry.

The first time I used my epson I thought I was being smart by putting ten photos in a queue so they'd be done when I got back from wandering off to do something else. When I got back they were finished printing. They were also all stuck together. What a horrible waste of ink and photo paper.

For the last day or so, which is why there's no blog entry for monday, I've been hiding in my apartment printing off some of the photos I've taken in the last few years. Another problem with shooting digital is you don't always get prints made of the photos you take. So sooner or later when you actually want prints you have to spend a bunch of time going through all the crappy, poor, maybe not-so-good ones all the while you're reminiscing, which takes up more time, while trying to get to the great photos.

So why this and why now? The reason is too fatten up the old photo portfolio before I go pushing it to various companies. I'm trying to dig up enough miscellaneous photos so I can break it down into smaller more customized packages geared to whatever company I'm applying to. Sounds simple enough. The stars must be in some kind of alignment as I'm usually not this motivated.

I've also been working on some 3D graphics for a friend. So while the computer renders the 3D images, I'm using the computer's extra processing power to scan through the library of photos and send them to the printer. Only this time I'm there to pick up the photo once it's printed and put it on the fridge. What better use for all those fridge magnets? I knew I was collecting them for something.

Lord of the Ant People

Darryl looks down on the "ant" people

I had to retrieve my firewire drive from Darryl today so while in the neighborhood we decided to go for dim sum at the Sky Dragon resturant located on the corner of Dundas and Spadina. From there you can see the busy intersection from a balcony just outside the third, maybe forth, floor resturant.


Grange Park revisited

Last night and maybe even this morning there was rain and wind. Lots of it. I wondered if the leaves would be on the trees from yesterday. When I got to Grange Park I noticed that the leaves were blown off the tops of most of the trees (hence the tight crop so as to minimize the number of gaps).

Autumn in Toronto

Grange Park

It's been a very color filled day today with the grey sky. As someone pointed out usually there's leaves on the trees then BAM it's winter. All the leaves have been blown off and there's just bare branches and brown goop on the ground (the leaves decomposing).


Michelle and Marc conversing.

After our weekly dim sum, this week at the Bright Pearl on Spadina avenue, Michelle, Marc and I walked on down to the Paramount to see what was playing. They ended up seeing Jarhead while I went for the CG film Chicken Little. Chicken Little was pretty flat story wise. It was pale if compared to last years hit, the Incredibles. As disappointing as it was I would like to see it again in 3D at one of the theatres in boonie land.

On the way to the theatre we stopped, or rather I stopped and started taking photos, while Marc and Michelle sat around talking and waiting. They're great friends that way. Grange Park, just south of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and just west of the Ontario College of Art and Design (see the checker board kleenex box in the top picture). Note: The Kleenex box term comes from Laer. I can't take credit for that. Although I do take credit for the "ker-plunk" sticks that the kleenex box rests on.

I took some incredible orange photos today. I might go back tomorrow before all the leaves "leaf" (ho ho) the trees.

Fun with extension tubes

Go from this...


...to this.

First off I would like to point out that the extension tubes I'm talking about are for the camera, not the nether regions for increasing the size of your unit. That said, I picked up some Kenko extension tubes for my D70. I am determined to shoot another small animation using the SLR instead of my Nikon 990.

Problem: You want to shoot things close up.

Solution #1: buy a micro (or macro depending on the company) lens

Solution #2: buy extension tubes.

The advantage of extension tubes is that they are the relatively cheaper solution going for around $200 compared to the micro lens going for about $750.00. They are lighter to carry around. There's no glass in them, they are just tubes that have pass through circuitry so the camera can talk to the lens for auto focusing. When buying your tubes make sure to look for this feature as not all tubes will have it. Also depending on the model of your camera you have to make sure to put the tubes and the lens on in the order the instructions tell you. Otherwise you can damage your camera.

The disadvantage of the extension tubes is that focusing is a bit more dicey. I find it's easier to moce the camera back and forth than rotate the focus ring. Also extension tubes do not work well with large aperatures or wide angle lenses.

After this post I'm sure you'll start seeing pictures of bugs and other small things as I "test" out the new equipment.

Thursday is Roti Day

Natasha, Gudrun, Chris, and Derek outside Island Foods

One of the nice things about having an irratic work schedule is you get a lot of free time to do things like going out to a different roti place each day for lunch. Some of the better ones are coconut grove (dundas just east of university), the caribbean roti palace (744 Bathurst, just south of bloor), and island foods (north east corner of King and Dufferin). I finished my four day roti tour at Island foods meeting my ex-roomate and friends in the TV/FILM industry during their lunch.

The Proctor is IN

Ryan, my so called clone, proctors an exam at York University

Ever wonder what it would be like to meet someone that everyone tells you reminds them of you? Well as of today I have and it's down right weird. It's like the merging of "matter and anti-matter" as we both stated within half a second from one another. It's not like we look the same or were born the same day. If I put my hand in fire Ryan doesn't start screaming in pain five kilometers away. At least I wouldn't think so. We haven't actually tested that.

Happy Garbage Day

The garbage truck on our street finishing it's rounds.

Novemeber 1st. I really didn't do a lot today but I did get outside if only to take out the trash. That was at about 3am. Since my cousin has started visiting my sleep has shifted from going to bed at 4am and waking up around 10am to going to sleep at midnight and waking up at 3am, then going back to sleep at around 9am to wake up at around noon.

At least that's my schedule when I'm not working. If I am at work then just ignore the 9to12 sleep shift. As you might expect the working after a three hour sleep and being up for five hours is not really a good thing. I start getting punchy around the half way mark at work then fight to stay awake for the second half.

It's a rare thing when I see the garbage truck. They never seem to pick up the garbage at the same time on tuesday morning. There have been times when they pick up the trash on wednesdays. Maybe they forgot our street that week or were full up by the time they got to our area. Who knows?

As a general rule they usually pick up the trash early on the tuesday morning if, and only if, I just remembered it was garbage day and had to run out in slippers only to find the truck speeding off and away in the distance. If I do remember the night before or at 3am, as in today's case, the truck seems to show up later in the afternoon or not at all.

As it's rare, the sighting of the truck, I thought I'd take it's picture. I've even included it next to the emptied garbage can. Wow! It's like sighting a four leaf clover, seeing a rainbow, or having the government give you a cheque because they made a mistake.

While doing this, as it would just so happen, my upstairs neighbors were going for a walk when they saw me kneeling on the sidewalk trying to shoot the garbage can. I think they thought I was nuts. That or I was shooting for an article on waste management for some paper.

After a bit of explaination they too had come to realize that the sighting of the garbage truck was a rarity. But instead of being awestruck or the least bit fascinated they just shrugged their shoulders and walked away.