Jenga Master Zee

Mike Zanette holds one of the Jenga blocks after winning the nights Jenga tournament.

There are some board games that get kind of simple and or boring as you grow up. Snakes and ladders for example seems pretty simplistic and Monopoly seems to always play out the same. Enter Jenga, a game where you have to pull blocks out of a stack and place it back on top. Sounds simple, it is simple, but it takes a bit of motor coordination to play. It's even more fun when you have to play for shots.

Tonight's tournament was played at Tony and Reneta's place, somewhere just north of Aurora. Where that is exactly I don't know. I got a drive up and never really paid much attention to which way it was out of toronto or how far. Some where out in farm lands would be a good description. It started off as a foodfest bbq and tour of the "new" home. Eventually due to rain and being too full to move we ended up in the living room. That's when the game came out.

After a few hours it was down to two people. Both Marc and Zee had not toppled the tower of bricks at all and so the last game that was played was between just the two of them squaring off for the title of Jenga master. In the end ti was Zee that tasted victory leaving Marc with the agony of defeat.

Camera stores

Toronto skyline 2005

I thought I would work the photo stores along queen street to see what's new in the tripod world. As my tripod has now been missing for several days I have decided it is gone and should replace the "lost" item with a new one.

My dad has a buying philosophy which resembles "Buy cheap, if it breaks (or you lose it) you can afford to buy another one.". I, on the other hand think the opposite, "If you buy quality it will last a lifetime and you'll save money in the long run because you'll just have to buy it once.". Now that I've lost the tripod that last statement seems rather naive.

In the end I picked up a Manfrotto 055MF4 (legs) with a 229 3D super-pro head. Compared to my old tripod the legs are in four segments instead of three. The advantage being the legs collapse slightly shorter than the 190pro but extend so the tripod is a bit taller. The head however is a heavy brick like thing. It's heavier than the head I had on my old tripod. I may try to pick up a lighter ball head later on when I get another paycheck. I was looking specifically at the Acratech ball head which is really nice and light. The only bad thing is that you have to buy a camera plate seperately and the camera plate requires an allan key to put it on. It's a really nice design though.

Still Lost

Blimp grounded at Hanlans Point Airport

I got a phone call from the people at the lost and found building on the island. So far no one has turned up a tripod. It doesn't look good.

Lost

The haunted lake lighthouse located behind some trees on Hanlan's Point.

We have all done this at one time or another. Loosing a cell phone on the bus, forgetting a camera in a bar, taping over an unwatched TV show, locking yourself out of your apartment to do laundry, locking yourself out on the apartment balcony (while doing laundry), attempting to eat a really hot bagel. Yes, losing your mind for a few seconds/minutes only to discover that you made a terrible error and as a result have lost something or have found yourself in a peculiar position. The results vary but the question that comes up after is always the same, "Why did I just do that?" or maybe even "Fu*k!", depending on how bad the situtation is.

Usually the said event happens after a segment of time when everything seems to be going okay. It's like someone (possibly upstairs) says "Hey don't get too comfortable" or "Appreciate what you have". One day you wake up, maybe still sleepy, you put the house keys in the freezer while getting out some frozen blueberry waffles. After eating breakfast you leave for work and realize you don't know where your keys are. Then you go around looking for your keys that you knew you had earlier that morning. If you're lucky you get your keys in time and get to work. If you're not too lucky, you get to work a bit late. If you're really unlucky, you get to work but have to smash in the lock on your door when you get home. It's like the brain stops working for a second.

First off I would like to say that I'm glad, and I'm sure other people are too, that I'm not an air traffic controller or doctor. "Where did I put that plane?", "The sponge was right there on the tray a second ago.". Not everyone is ON all the time but there are those that are ON more of the time than others. I would like to think I'm one of those people. Until something like this comes along and informs me otherwise.

For me it's usually due to lack of sleep (as stated above - yes that was me with those house keys) or maybe because there's a girl involved. A lot of bad things come from the result of thinking of the opposite sex. It's kind of like seeing a girl then walking into a column or street lamp. That's on a good day. The brain stops thinking for a second and then there are the consequences. Today my brain turned off while taking a pebble out of my shoe. Well before I get to that let me paint a picture of what I was doing today...

Tuesday. I decided to go to the Toronto Islands to take pictures. Newspapers predicted rain and maybe some thunder. Well we didn't get thunder but we did get rain. As I tend to set out to do something that my brain has decided on (stupid brain), I left the house and went to the Islands. As soon as the boat dropped me off at Hanlan's Point (the western part of the Islands) it started to rain. It came down in buckets.

I waited around till the rain eased up then proceeded towards centre island (located between Wards and Hanlans, the three are actually one big island). There was a beach with a lot of birds lying around so I thought I'd shoot some of them. Crawling on my stomach to get some worm eye photos eventually pebbles managed to find their way into the holes of my shoe. There was a nearby bench where I decided to put down my tripod, sit on a semi-wet bench, take my shoe off, and get the pebbles out.

I continued to walk along the boardwalk to Wards island and when I got to the end and the ferry docks I decided to take a picture of the Toronto skyline. I decided to use the tripod so I could take a series of pictures for a large panormic shot only there was no tripod. Crap! I left it on the bench at centre island. I walked back the pebble extraction bench only to find it wasn't there.


The bench that I left my tripod on (between the center island snack bar and the boardwalk going towards Wards island).

The lost and found building was closed and the lost and found building on the Toronto shore didn't find anything. I'm hoping someone returns it over the next few days. I left my phone number in case someone does. My gut feeling is that I'll have to buy another one.

When you loose something you always tell yourself things like "Well that wasn't very bright" or "It could be worse". It's funny, I said that to myself just before losing my tripod when a drink machine, I was trying to buy a bottle of lemonade, gave me my change without giving me my drink. "Gee, I lost $2.75. Well it could be worse". Yes you could have lost a tripod worth $500.

The guys working at the Ferry docks were quite helpful and sympathetic. Through them I heard some kid burnt his hands on a park barbeque because he forgot it was hot from his parents cooking on it earlier. Painful and not too bright. I decided losing a tripod is better than third degree burns on your hands. So yes, "It could be worse".

Despite the loss I'm still trying to optimistic that the someone who found it will turn it in and I'll get a call sometime this week. Keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime I will be looking into new tripod gear. I've always wanted a carbon fiber tripod with a head that rotates around the camera lens axis and has a hex mount.

Land of the Gulls

Scrutinizing the cake offering.

Monday. I didn't have any work today so I slowly made my way down to the beach. I had about 3/4 of a cake I had made for William and Sara's pot luck that didn't go over very well. First time for everything. The three layered cake was pretty heavy. It was based it on a couple of muffin recipes that sounded like a good idea at the time. As a giant muffin it would have been good. As a cake it was dry and dense.

Just so it didn't share the same fate as the bread I decided I'd bring it down to the beach and see if it could be used as bird food. If I could get in a shot or two great. I dumped the cake into a plastic bag and rode down to the beach. The beach was pretty populated by people. Doesn't anybody work these days? I wanted to find a place on the beach with as little people as possible. A) to make sure people didn't walk into the shot scaring off the birds once I had baited them with the cake, B) to make sure people lying on the beach sun tanning didn't get a swarm of birds around them (as I type this the scene from the Hitchcock movie Birds comes to mind where the girl is trapped in the phone booth).

There are those that think of these birds like rats with wings as opposed to the cute bowling ball pins with legs. Actually that's pigeons, to me anyway. I find gulls annoying, like white mini vultures that populate Toronto green space. Still they're an interesting subject to photograph.

I found a spot. It looked like a dock hidden behind some rocks. It was almost the same height as the water line. It was perfect. I threw some cake at some geese passing by but the cake dropped into the water like a rock. There were no birds around other then the geese and I scared them away with my rock cake. Fortunately, birds have keen eyesight. I wasn't long before a gull flying by figured what I was up to. Then like a siren informed other birds in the area of the cake buffet. In less than 15 seconds, after the bird cry, I had about twenty gulls hovering over my head waiting for the next crumb.


"That was my piece!"

To get the shots on this blog a placed a rather large piece of cake (about the size of two fists) in front of me. Then laid down on my stomach so I could look through the camera at ground level. I have to say I really miss my Nikon 990 (with the swivel body) for stuff like this. I could only stay in that position for fifteen minutes before my neck started to cramp up.

Eventually the cake was devoured by the gulls, a two pigeons, and a duck.

As a side note, these birds are not the same as the gulls shot the other day. I thought they were just younger versions of the same bird as the feathers may not have turned white yet. The eyes however on todays birds were black (like a sharks) where as the other bird's eyes had some color (a greenish yellow). Anyone have a bird guide?

Late Night Outing

Coxwell and Gerrard at night..

It was pretty humid last night. Couldn't sleep so I decided to run out and play around with some camera settings. Mainly the white balance function. The camera lens fogged up resulting in blurry lights in the pictures. The above shot was taken over a 20 second interval with an aperature of 1/36. There was an overall red cast to it which I pulled out a bit using photoshop.

Beach Jazz Festival

Facing east on Queen street during the beach jazz festival

Saturday night. Each year around this time William and Sara host a pot luck dinner that coincides with the Beach Jazz festival. It's very convenient as they live in the beach area. We stuff ourselves with food then wander off to queen street to burn it off while enjoying some good music.

This year the amount of people seemed a bit more overwhelming than the last few years. Between Coxwell and Beach ave (near the fox theatre) the street was just packed. It reminds me of the episode of Star Trek (the mark of gideon) where Kirk beams down to an almost empty Enterprise, there's a girl on it of course, only to find out he's on an over populated planet.


Facing west on Queen street during the beach jazz festival

Once the sun went down picture taking became a bit more difficult. You'd have to resort to using the flash and hope someone didn't stick their arm or head into your picture. I should bring a milk crate or box to stand on next time I'm at one of these things. Maybe even platform shoes or stilts. Now that I think about it my 990 (swivel camera) would be more ideal for taking these types of shots. You don't have to have your eyeball looking through the viewfinder.

As inviting as the beach party is there's always something else that I'm missing that I'll forget about or that has to be skipped because there's just not enough time. The thing I forgot (now it seems five years in a row) being Mike Demonte's birthday party. The thing I missed was the Thin Lizzy show put on by Roger Costa at Monster Records. I even bought a ticket. D'oh!

Happy Meal

Breakfast at the skyline restaurant (located on Queen street west).

Like yesterday, I ended up going for breakfast before going to work on set. My breakfast consisted of three eggs, three sausages, some home fried potatoes, and a tiny glass of orange juice. All for under $5.00 (including tip!) It was odd seeing the configuration of the food on my plate. When was the last time I ate food that resembled a smiley face?

Although unintentional I think the happy eggs brought back a flood of childhood memories. Eating the broccoli like you were a dinosaur eating trees, having the food plane spoon land into the "hanger", making moats in your mashed potatoes to help keep the pea people from being drowned in the flood of gravy. It was all fun until some parent told us to "Stop playing with your food.".

Wasn't it the parent that started us down the dark path of playing with the food in the first place to get us to eat things we didn't want to? I have this sudden urge to eat mashed potatoes and relive the flooding of the pea people.

Easy Breakfast

One of the sugar containers at Easy.

On the way to set, Peter (the other playback technician) and I stopped into a breakfast place called Easy located on Queen street west near Roncesvalles (south east corner). As an aside, Easy is an amazing little breakfast place. If you're in the neighborhood go. On each table along with the salt and pepper shakers and maybe a bottle of ketcup there was a suger container with a blurb. Each table had a different blurb as far as well could tell. We only checked about three of them so if you go there and you find some blurbs that repeat... well you've got too much spare time on your hands.

The blurb, which might be a little hard to read, in the photo says "The contemplative life is often miserable. You should do more, think less and not watch yourself living.". Followed by the guy that who said those words, a Nicholas-Sebastien Chamfort.

People tell me this all the time. It's odd that the words really didn't sink in until I read it on a sugar container.

Gopher It!

An odd little visitor making the rounds.

I was just getting out stage one, the set for Mayday, heading to the truck when James noticed this little critter roaming around a few meters away. The gopher (I think) came closer then scurried away into the bush. James tried to coax it out with a left over french fry. It worked. I took this picture, then we left.

Gophers seem to be rare within the city limits. Usually one might spot a raccoon, or maybe even a skunk. Come to think of it a few nights ago we (Ryan, Kim, and I) actually did see a raccoon. It was crawling up a telephone poll trying to get away from us. Later on it climbed back down when it figured out that there was no where to go.


A baby raccoon.

If I should run into a skunk it goes without saying I will be sure to use a long lens.