The Sunset Grill

The neighbourhood Sunset Grill.

It started raining a bit this morning which put me off going to visit Al at Sadie's Diner. On top of that I wasn't sure I wanted to make the long trek out there via transit with all the other commuters this morning. I felt a bit groggy from being up at 2:00 this morning.

In the end I ended up going to the Sunset Grill due to still not being able to find any frying pan or wok like kitchen tools. They are still packed away somewhere in a box. I was the only person in the entire restaurant, aside from the cook and the waitress, which seemed odd. Maybe it was the cold weather. The temperature felt like it had dropped a few degrees just on the way there.

Into the Wii of the night

The Nintendo remote with protective skin.

Got up at 2am this morning, a schedule that my cousin Dave might think was normal. There's not a lot to do at 2am. At least not a lot an unmotivated person would do. I thought about cleaning for a split second but that went out the window as I didn't want to wake anyone else up with all the moving things around.

Instead I fired up the Wii and played the Mario Party 8 game. Kind of sad really playing a party game meant for four by oneself. After a bit of board game fun I checked out the Wii message board to see just how long I played (you can do that). That's when I noticed an email from Nintendo sent to me on the 3rd.

Upon opening the letter I found out that Nintendo is offering free sleeves for the Wii remote. Apparently people have been throwing them into TV screens or smashing the remote into walls and other solid things destroying both the remotes and the item they were thrown at. (see Wii have a problem) as well as suffering from injuries. Just how crazy are these players?

The third remote that I picked up after Christmas actually had one of these sleeves (see photo above). I spent some time looking on the Nintendo site for the sleeve press release and where I could order some for the remotes that didn't come with any. (click here for North America)

Pumpkin the sneaky cat

Pumpkin sneaks upstairs to lie in my bed.

I had gone downstairs to do laundry while upstairs I was saving photos to CD for delivery. At some point while burning the CD I turned to see Pumpkin (the landlords cat) on my bed. While I generally like cats I am allergic to them. The cat looked pretty comfy and I need to wash the bed sheets anyway, plus I was in a rush to meet up with Linda for lunch. I didn't want to be late. So I left my apartment room door slightly open so the cat could make his way out.

On a different note. While walking through the bayview subway station I noticed these interesting pieces of art work as part of the permanent TTC environment. Images of various objects (ie. Butterflies, salt shakers, this clock) are scattered around the station and only by looking at them from the correct angle to they look right. I thought I'd take a few photos and put them on the blog just because I thought they were neat.


Bayview subway station.


The clock image aligned.


The clock image not aligned.

Into the Wii hours

The Wii on the web

Didn't do a lot today. Went to an all you can eat sushi place with William for lunch, slept then played Tomb Raider on the Wii. My laptop has been tied up backuing up my blog. Yes, Still. I've been trying different settings in order to not download the entire web.

To check my email I've installed the internet channel on the Wii. By accident I ran across a arcade console for $800.00 CAN. It was Pengo. I loved, loooooved that game, in high school. It had eaten a many a quarter. I spent hours in front of that machine at the arcade.

While I didn't have the money or space for a full sized console I was disappointed that the unit sold back in october of last year. Drat. Then I remembered something about a PC emulator that one of my friends used to fiddle with. It was years ago but I thought I'd check the web for it anyway.

Doing a bit of research on the web I found it. It's called MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). An emulator that uses images of the original arcade game and allows you to play them on your computer. I found the link for the Pengo images at CAESAR and within minutes had Pengo up and running on my laptop. How cool is that? (yes, I cancelled the blog backing up just to play Pengo).


Pengo, one of favourite video games from the 80s


The Pengo game grid.

Chalkers

The new C-4 energy drink.

Tonight I covered another Simon Mah event at Chalkers (a pool hall, restaurant, pub). It was a duo autograph signing session and product launch for C-4. Like any product launch there's always the good looking people that are passing out the drinks and interacting with the crowd.

The challenge of shooting events is getting the shots while being crammed in by people or trying to get from one side of the room to the other to get the various shots. As a photographer you don't want to bulldoze your way through the crowd especially if you have to constantly go back and forth.

There are some photographers that will do that as well as stick their camera up in your line of sight. These would be your stereotypical paparazzis. Generally they have no photo etiquette. While I don't condone this method of photography I can understand why they do that. One picture can be worth a few hundred or more dollars. The difference between paying your rent and starving.

This event wasn't too bad in that regard. Most of the photographers know each other and are pretty good about being mindful of other people in the room.


The C-4 t-shirt front...


...and back.


Playboy playmate Tailor James with Simon Mah


Playboy playmate Christina Cruise.

Raptors and Pistons

The Raptors play the Pistons at the Air Canada Centre

Still feeling a bit under the weather, today I was invited out to the Air Canada Centre for Andrew's birthday and to see the Toronto Raptors play the Detroit Pistons. I was a bit concerned as I was still sick I didn't want my germs to spread to the other people there. Andrew told me everyone else was sick as well and not to worry.

As it turned out the only other person that had cold like symptoms was Andrew. Everyone else was fine. As we were located in a little room just above the general seating I managed to keep to myself as much as possible eating hot dogs, salad and chicken wings.

The game was actually pretty interesting to watch. The Raptors had great passing buy the Pistons were better at getting points from shooting at the hoop from far away. The final score was Raptors 85, Pistons 101.

Nikon called...

Pumpkin follows me up the street on my way to Nikon.

Feeling a bit better today I commuted for five hours on the TTC and Mississauga transit to make my way to Nikon and then back home. I went to pick up my 28-70mm lens. The lens I broke during a job shooting at the Four Seasons Centre of Performing Arts. I had brought it in for repairs and sometime yesterday Nikon left a message on my cell phone that the lens was ready to be picked up.

It's getting to the point where the guy behind the service desk recognizes me before I even approach the counter. I'd like to think that it's just good customer service as opposed to showing up a lot lately to get stuff repaired... yeah that's it.


For those that might have to do the same trek from the Toronto or surrounding area their main office is here.

Nikon Canada Head Office
1366 Aerowood Drive
Mississauga, Ontario L4W 1C1
Telephone: (905) 625-9910
Consumer Products Division Fax: (905) 625-6446
Service Department Fax: (905) 238-3487

If travelling by the TTC get off at the Islington train station, take the Mississauga Burnhamthorpe number 26 bus (located in the station) out to Burnhamthorpe and Dixie, then take the number 5 bus north to Aerowood Drive. Get out and walk the rest of the way.

HTtrack that blog

Today's view outside.

Day two of the new year and I'm still feeling under the weather. Stupid cold.I've been trying to back up my blog (yes, this one) using a program called HTTrack. It seems to be working but is downloading way too much. The software has been spidering through my blog for the last five days. Downloading gigabytes worth of data. Something is wrong here as my original source directory for all the images before shrinking them and putting them on the web is smaller in bytes then all the data collected, as in it's 10% the size of all the data collected. I don't write that much for text to take up all that space. What's going on? More investigation and experimentation required.

On the movie side of things I watched "Tomb Raider, the cradle of life" with in the comfort of my blanket cocoon in bed. Comparing it to the Indiana Jones series I've come to a conclusion. Things that have been lost and hidden in secrecy for hundreds of years should not be found or bad things happen. In movies at any rate. In real life, much like anything in real life compared with movies, it's different.

A few weeks ago, during the move, I found a box I had taped shut 15 years ago. 1992!!! I know this from the contents in the box. The meaning of this has to be clearly stressed. I had been travelling around with a box from place to place (and I've moved eight times in those years) without opening the box! Kind of like lugging around and storing a time capsule only with no digging.

The only reason I had found the box is that I had to move it to the next location. It was buried under and with other boxes not really worth mentioning. At least not worth mentioning for at least another ten years, the time it'll take for me to forget what's in them as well. Hopefully it will not come to that.

I opened the box and along with some Star Trek novels¹ and tech manuals there were two things of note. My old TI-74 calculator and all my thesis notes in a nice 6 inch yellow binder. It was kind of a magical experience. I flipped through the notebook like it was some old manuscript from some mummy's tomb. In it were all my notes on the logistics of a 3D rendering program. Breaking down and storage of polygons in 3D space, cross product, dot product and other vector calculations, sorting algorithms. All kinds of really well thought out stuff. I would have thought the person writing it was someone else, a genius someone else, if it wasn't for the fact that it was all in my own hand writing. Hand writing all done with a four color Bic pen.

So yes, in real life sometimes finding things have a happy outcome and do not always result with some guy melting and dying.


My I'm sick and lying in bed POV

HTtrack had sucked up all my laptop internet resources. Since I didn't want to stop the program I ended up taking out the Wii. Originally to keep myself occupied playing games but then later on I remembered you could hook it up to your wireless network and surf the web and internet.

A bit later on in the evening while going out to buy groceries, I for some reason, ended up at Gerrard Square (mall) and the local EB games (store). One of the new games on the shelf was Tomb Raider (the anniversary edition) . I ended up buying it based on reminiscing value of playing the first game (now over ten years ago) and the movie I had just watched.

The game is great and takes advantage of the Wii remote very well, unlike Bust-a-move, and super monkey ball. Plus with today's advanced technology they've allocated more polygons to Lara... I won't go into any more details, you get the idea.

---

¹ I'm not sure what's more surprising to you blog readers, me reading Star Trek novels, or me just reading.

What a way to start 2008

Looking out the bathroom window

I woke up today with a sore throat. Not the greatest way of starting the new year. People around me are getting sick. It seems another flu bug is going around.

Not wanting to spread the sickness I cancelled my dinner plans with Andrew, Josie and Robert today as well as my lunch plans with Nilla tomorrow. Haven't seen Nilla in at least a year since she gave birth to her daughter. Funny how parenthood changes things.

I slept most of the day and while awake watched the Indiana Jones movies, all three of them. I did manage to poke my head out the bathroom window to see that it had snowed. That's when it hit me. "I'm looking out the bathroom window! Woo Woo!!" To fully appreciate this statement you have to go back a year. I was in a basement apartment. There was no bathroom window to look out of.

"I'm looking out the bathroom window! Woo Woo!!"

Happy New Year to anyone reading this.

There's snow in them there hills

Pumpkin contemplates the snowy outside

Woke up early to let the contractor in to work on the bathroom window. I thought I heard someone downstairs at the door but when I went to investigate the only noise was coming from the cat. Pumpkin was meowing at the door. I opened the door to let him out but he just sat in the doorway. Probably just pondering if it was worth getting fresh air with the expense of getting his feet cold.

I thought the same thing. The thought of stepping into a puddle of slush made me shiver. I peeked out and looked around just in case the contractor was hiding somewhere around the corner. Nope. I looked down at the cat thinking "In or out?". The cat looked around (maybe at a bird flying by) then waddled outside after the sound. I closed the door and went back upstairs.