Walk-In Fridge

Twitterfied

2011-01-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

I've given in. I've now joined Twitter.

More and more people in the software testing industry are using Twitter to start discussions and thought processes (most recent exhibit A).This is something I want to get in on, hence the twitter account.

Hopefully anything I post will be insightful, fully or informative but I make no guarantees. I'll try not to be too much of a hipster.

I'm @RichardSiemens. If you twitter you can follow me here.

A little Christmas gift for myself

2011-01-14T22:14:00.000-05:00

Three years ago I bought my first digital SLR. The d70s is a great camera; it's rugged, reliable (a couple of trips to Nikon notwithstanding) and it produces fine image files. However, it is getting a little long in the tooth. It was 3 years old when I bought it. In DSLR years, that's a couple of generations.

When I first got my d70s, it was more than I could handle. It provided more control inputs than I could manage at once. It could handle any situation I could throw at it with few exceptions. And at 6MP, I could comfortably print up 11x14 without issue.

However, as I have and learned and grown as a hobbyist photographer I've wanted a bit more out of the camera than it could give. Most notably with respect to print size and high-ISO performance. I've made a couple of prints larger than 11x14 but I had to stitch separate photos together. Additionally, I've been unable to photograph Tara and Lego when she is riding in the arena at the barn due to lack of light.

Work added a little bit to my last paycheque as a Christmas bonus so I decided to upgrade. I picked up Nikon's new d7000 a couple of weeks ago.

I've only really taken it out a couple of times; between unpacking from Christmas travelling, house work, and taking care of a flu-ridden wife, I haven't had the time. The sun setting at 5:30 doesn't help either. A few of the photos I've taken are below. It's going to take a little while to get used to my new toy; keep an eye on this space for more photos shortly.

For better and worse the new camera comes with a larger file size. At 16MP (14 bit), my current computer is having a hard time keeping up. Changing exposure of RAW files in Nikon's ViewNX takes 60-67 seconds. Exporting the photos to JPGs can take up to 4 minutes each. I'm afraid I'm going to have to shoot in both RAW and JPG for the time being until I can scrape together some more cash to upgrade my 5 year old home computer.

Two, two, two videos in one

2011-01-10T23:18:00.000-05:00

Saw these today and thought I'd share.

That is all.

(via my wife via her dad)

(via Neatorama)

Richard the spam king

2010-12-06T22:33:00.000-05:00

If I have ever sent you an email, you probably got some spam in your inbox this weekend from me. Somehow my gmail account got compromised and somebody from China sent out email hawking fake electronics. I believe I've rectified the issue; please let me know if you get any more suspicious emails from me.

As for how it happened, I don't' have a good answer. My local machine is clean, so it's not a virus. I haven't been super vigilant about keeping strong separate passwords online so maybe somebody at another site sold my password and it was close enough to guess my gmail password. However, last weekend we sent Tara's Dell back to Dell to get it repaired. It seems like a awfully strange coincidence. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.....

Thank you all who let me know something was amiss.

Long time no post

2010-11-28T15:38:00.001-05:00

A few unimportant updates from the past couple of months.

For the past few half a year our washer was telling us it wanted to die. After every load a little more grease, oil and water was leaking out from under it. Our dryer was also taking longer and longer to dry clothes. So we bought a new pair a couple of weeks ago. Cool new frontload, electronic, LG appliances. I've never had new a new washer or dryer; it almost makes doing laundry fun. Both the washer and dryer play a little ditty when they start up and when they shut down. Plus they have cool LED lights. I'm not convinced that the washer takes any less time but it definitely uses less water.

I went up to Lake Memesagamasing for the deer hunt in November. It was the first time that I have been hunting with a rifle. I'm not use to walking through the bush with a 8lb rifle on my back; I fell over more than a few times. The hunting party was a little smaller this year and we only bagged one deer (a joint effort between my brother-in-law Tim and the cottage neighbour and all-round awesome guy Mr. Mathews). The deer were scarce this year - I didn't even take my safety off. But as always a great time was had by all. Plus I only got lost once this year (and technically I wasn't "lost"; I knew where I was I just didn't know where I needed to go).

My parents came down for a quick visit in October. It's been a while since we had some time to just visit together. We hit the farmers market Saturday morning and just relaxed in the afternoon. It was good to spend time with them.

I haven't been taking hardly any photos lately. It's been a combination being busy and not making the effort to get out and shoot. I want to get out and shoot more, I just need to make the time. I'd like to get more into portraits and have been considering making a concerted effort to find subjects to practice on. Let me know if you want to be such a subject.

We got one of our retaining walls redone in October. It was built by the previous owner of our house and was basically stacked flagstone. That might be good enough for a fence but not for a retaining wall. The new wall was done by Black Diamond Landscaping (email address - no website). It was built in less than 5 hours and looks really solid. If you use them, let them know I sent you.

We got a small amount of snow yesterday. Seamus couldn't get enough of the stuff. He ran and ran and rolled and rolled. He even started digging in it (which quickly turned into digging into our grass - that behaviour won't be tolerated). Here's a quick pic of the dog in all his snowy glory.

I think that's all the important stuff. I'll do my best to keep this blog thing more up-to-date.

On a swiss hillside...

2010-09-15T23:02:00.004-04:00

This past weekend Tara and I went to a horse show out Orangeville way. Tara and Lego were supposed to be in it, but Tara is still out of commission from her fall a couple of weeks ago. The horse show is inconsequential except that we met up our friends from the barn, Laurie and Ian. Laurie and Ian weren't riding in the horse show either. Like us, they were there to cheer on Jeanine who is also from the barn and the only from the barn competing. But Jeanine competing is inconsequential as well. I only bring up the horse show for context.

Ian, who along with my lovely self, were the only ones from the barn at the show that don't ride. And Ian is a photo buff like me. Only he is much better at it.

While we were chatting and waiting for Jeanine to start riding, Ian offered to lend me a few lenses to try out. Nice lenses. Nicer-than-I-have lenses. I took him up on his offer and very carefully attached them to my old camera body and took a few shots.

70-300mm. The rider was at least 150ft away (large version)

The first one he lent me was the 70-300mm 4.5-5.6 IF-ED. I took a few shots and noticed how much quicker if focused than my cheap 70-300mm G lens. It also has vibration reduction which results is much sharper photos. At less than $600, I'd consider buying this lens, if only for photos of Tara riding.

70-200mm. Wide open. (large version)

The second one he lent me was the 70-200mm 2.8 IF-ED. The famous 70-200mm. This lens was bigger than I thought, and I really had to be careful using it without a tripod. It handled beautifully and even wide open it was still sharp. This is a lens I would love to have, but it's currently out of my budget (at $2400, I'd need to take a lot of photos to justify it).

However, the last one he lent me stole my heart. The 85mm 1.4D. This is the lens I want. This lens made my dinky little D70s, my 6 year old camera, work like I had always envisioned cameras to work. And the image quality, well it is like butter. But not factory farm butter, more like a fine European butter, from a Burlina cow grazing on the side of a Swiss mountain. Butter that makes day-old baguettes taste divine. But don't take my word for it, take a gander at the photo below (click the link for a larger version).

My hottie and a 85mm (large version, flickr)

With the announcement of the D7000 today, the smart money is on upgrading my body from old and out-of-date to shine and new. But the wise money may be on the 85mm if I can hold off camera envy for a little bit longer....

Bees!

2010-09-08T21:20:00.000-04:00

Busy month

2010-09-05T23:06:00.001-04:00

August was a busy month.

August 1-3 was spent in Buffalo.

Hot and hazy was the name of the game

A week after that we headed down to Raleigh, North Carolina (Aug 10-15). This was for the second part of Tara's residency examinations (the practical part). We gave ourselves a couple of days to drive down and a day to adjust before the Friday exams. We are glad we did; the weather was very very hot. We're talking 38°C at 8:00 pm hot with a humidex in the mid 40s.We ate outside one evening; it was like being in a sauna.

We spent our adjusting day visiting with other optho residents and trying to chill out before the Friday exam. On Friday, Tara had her exam in the morning and then we drove up to York Pennsylvania to stay with one of Tara's good friends and fellow resident Mitzi.

The visit with Mitzi was really great. It was good for Tara to chat about the exams and get rid of some excess stress. Saturday evening we spent at Mitzi's parent's country club. It was pretty swanky; we took part in a wine tasting for Mitzi's upcoming nuptials. We tasted quite a number of great wines included a Heitz Cabernet Sauvignon, 2001 which was divine! It was back to Ontario on Sunday for us.

Tara was up in Caledon on Aug 16-18 learning how to do a surgical procedure involving the eye and anti-inflammatory implants. I don't really understand it all, but Tara had a good time.

Tara and her mom headed to Ireland Aug 19-28.This was a long awaited Mother-Daughter trip to the emerald isle. Tara had a great time. I was left at home to take care of the dog :). I got a few things done around the house, but not nearly as much as I had hoped.

A few days after Tara got back from Ireland, she put in a few days working at a vet clinic in Toronto (Aug 31-Sept 1). Time to start paying off the trip.

The plans for this long weekend were to head back down to York for a wedding. Unfortunately Tara had a rather abrupt meeting with the ground this past Thursday at the barn. Tara and Lego were jumping the cross-country jumps when Lego clipped one of them and stumbled. In his effort to right himself, he dislodged Tara and sent her flying. She hit the ground rather hard and an ambulance had to be called. Tara is sore, but doing OK. No bones were broken and nothing seems out of place. Her fall did cause the cancellation of our weekend plans.

So that was our August; a little too busy if you ask me. Oh, and in case you were wondering, we found out on Wednesday that Tara passed all her exams. No real surprise, but a welcome relief from the waiting.

Inception

2010-08-08T22:41:00.001-04:00

We just came back from Inception. Excellent movie - best I've seen in a while. It's kind of a cross between the Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Sort of.

It's one of those movies that I you need to watch a couple of times to get everything out of it. The DVD extras have the potential to be outstanding.

Go see it.

Preview

Two days in Buffalo

2010-08-07T21:03:00.000-04:00

The irony that Tara was writing a othptomology exam
at a center for the visually impaired
was lost on the staff at the center

Tara and I spent a couple of days in Buffalo New York this past weekend. Tara was writing the first part of her Veterinary Ophthalmology board exams. These exams are at the end of her residency and she needs to pass in order to become a ophthalmologist. The exams were on the long weekend; the organization Tara is involved with (American College of Veterinary Ophthalmology) is North America wide, but centered in the US where they don't have a holiday in August. Consequently, Tara got to spent two 8 hour days in front of a computer and I spent some time wandering the city on the long weekend. Yipee.

There are no two ways about it; Buffalo is a bit of a dump.Nearly every other building is abandoned. The sidewalks are all cracked and broken (although the curbs are all cut stone, which was surprisingly classy). Windows and doors are boarded up. Graffiti is prevalent. There are few stores, few restaurants, few parks. Even around the HSBC center where the Buffalo Sabres play there is nothing to do. The city is in decline.

Bricks everywhere

In it's hay-day, Buffalo would have been a beautiful city. Nearly all the old buildings are brick with lots of windows (now boarded or bricked up). There are both wide and narrow streets. Being so close to both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the city would have been swimming in money. It's too bad things have gone so far down hill. Interestingly, there were much much fewer street people in Buffalo than other American and Canadian cities I've been to.

Tara's exams went well and she gets the results in a couple of months. Besides 1.5 hours at the border and a couple of wrong turns looking for the hotel, the trip was a success. We even took in some shopping. That said, I'm hoping we don't need to go back any time soon.

I bet this old office building would be interesting inside

W and R with a Xed-box was on a number of buildings - I wonder what it means?

Tara celebrating at home

T-Shirt Sorrow

2010-07-11T14:20:00.002-04:00

"I don't think I shall ever see,
A shirt as lovely as a T."

A moment of silence please: my favorite shirt has gone to the great laundry basket in the sky.

A couple of weeks ago when I was getting ready for bed, my favorite T ripped as I was taking it off. Ripped beyond fixing, beyond salvaging. The shirt wasn't in great shape to begin with, but it was good enough to wear around the house after a long day of work. It was light and comfortable. Comfort clothing.

I bought the shirt in Ithaca when I was visiting Tara the summer before we got engaged. Tara and I went shopping because I had somehow managed to forget to bring short sleeve shirts with me. I picked it up at an American Eagle, back when they had decent quality clothes. Tara was never really crazy about the shirt, but I loved it and we were in that phase of the relationship where we still a little afraid of speaking frankly with each other.

As silly as it sounds, the shirt always made me feel cool. I don't really know why; it was just a plain mustard yellow T. It's funny how clothes can have that effect on you. You can go from feeling down to feeling great just by slipping into your favorite shirt or jeans. And you can do the reverse when you need to wear that shirt to work that doesn't really fit you properly.

I am on the lookout for the next great T.

Summer treat

2010-07-11T13:24:00.002-04:00

Presenting my new favorite summer treat. Super easy: angel food cake, custard, and strawberries. Go to the store; the three ingredients will be there for the purchase. I'm using PC's Devon Custard; it's not super sweet and it lets the strawberries shine through. And get the little mini angel food cakes are nice for individual servings - you could use a regular sized one for a larger gathering.

Go and make one for you and yours.

So you want to get an Afghan Hound

2010-07-05T21:09:00.003-04:00

It's been a little over two months with Seamus now. I didn't grow up with a dog, let alone an Afghan, and I've learned all sorts of benefits to owning such a dog. If any of the points below resonate with you, it's time to consider getting an Afghan of your very own:

Your floors are too clean. If you have a house where you feel your floor are too clean, get an Afghan. With hair that grows between toes, Afghans collect dirt like it's nobodies business. And that dirt stays with them until they come inside where it magically leaves the body and lands on your floor. Be prepared to sweep multiple times a day and to wash the floor several times a week.
Your counters/sideboards/tables have too much food stuffs on them. The Afghan head comfortably rests on the kitchen counter and dining room table. Afghans can pick out two slices of cheese from a full plate and they can very quietly slide a bag of buns off the counter and carry it to the living room, conveniently out of your sight. If you have a glut of food around your house, an Afghan is for you.
You don't have time to pace in your backyard like you would like. Afghans will run the same route in your backyard, shadowing it's perimeter, over and over and over, leaving behind a nice worn path for you to pace on when you are deep in thought. There won't be any pesky grass to ruin your concentration as you walk the same route (although you may need to watch out for doggy do).
You don't have enough hair of your own to brush. If you are like me you don't have hair long enough to brush. If you ever have that yearning to brush a long mane of hair an Afghan is for you. They require constant brushing and they even have their own hair products that are required. Bald men - forget hair plugs; Afghans are ~~cheaper~~ ~~less painful~~ hairier.
You don't have enough wet spots around your house. With their shaggy beard, Afghans soak up more water into their fur than they get in their belly during their drinking sessions. This water then drips off the beard into the floor, counters, books, shoes and cats. This will be great in the winter to increase the humidity in the house.
You have too much free time. Two 20 minute walks a day (three if Tara isn't home), three 15 minute feeding sessions, time spent rescuing inanimate objects from Afghan jaws, time spent rescuing cats from Afghan noses, time spent brushing, time spent sweeping floors and washing walls and time spent trying to train the crazy thing all add up. If you find yourself with too much time on your hands consider an Afghan!

There you go - six good scenarios where having an afghan will be a benefit to you and your household!

Walking shoes

2010-05-02T20:05:00.000-04:00

I had my first really nice experiance with Seamus yesterday morning. I took him out for a walk at 8:00 with a coffee in one hand, the dog leash in the other and a nice breeze blowing. It was nice going for a walk that early on a Saturday. For the first time this week I thought to myself "I could get used to having a dog around."

But of course for every yin there is a yang. At 4:20 today we walked in on Seamus chewing holes through my work shoes. 4:20 on a Sunday. Not impressed at all.

Dogs

2010-04-25T20:35:00.001-04:00

A few months ago Tara's brother announced that he and his wife were thinking of getting a dog. Not just any dog, a Vizsla puppy. They had a lot of questions for Tara and she did her best to answer them.

A couple of weeks ago they got their puppy and brought him by (photo - warning: cuteoverload material). He is a bundle of energy and a lot of fun. At only 10 weeks, he requires a lot of work and training and patience and ear plugs.

Tara got the dog bug; she and I have been talking about getting a dog for the past month or so. I blame Tim and his cute puppy :). Tara grew up with dogs and she had one when we first got married (it lived at her parents place and in the end was really their dog). Tara brings treats to the dog at her barn and at her friends house. Tara loves dogs.

I, on the other hand, didn't grow up with dogs. I sneeze when they are around. I have no desire to wake up in the morning with walking the dog as my first thought. I like the freedom you have with cats; dogs require more forethought into your day's activities.

Tara likes dogs that need exercise, love to be around people and look pretty. I like dogs that are lazy, obedient and don't smell. We didn't get asked about dog breed preference in our pre-marriage counseling.

Last month Tara got in contact with an Afghan Hound breeder outside of Orangeville (Candyland Afghans). The breeder thought that she just might have a dog that would fit us both. After many long talks and a brief meet-n-greet, we decided to get him for a 3 week trial. I present to you Seamus:

Seamus is a 10 month old Afghan Hound (wikipedia link). He was going to be one of the breeder's studs but deveoped some confirmation traits that preclude him from winning in the ring. He's really hairy. He's a bit whinny. But he is house-broken and he mostly heels. He doesn't really like to fetch but he does like to run around like his tail is on fire (which is fun to watch).

If we continue to like him and if our cats start liking him he will be ours at the end of the 3 weeks. If not then it's back to the drawing board.

We picked Seamus up on Friday. Saturday we took him to the barn. Below are a few snapshots:

Wish us luck.

Camera update

2010-04-11T13:27:00.000-04:00

Quick update on the camera situation. Black's eventually replaced my camera after some arm twisting and forceful reading of my warranty in the store. Surprisingly they found another D70s in their warehouse somewhere; while I was hoping for an upgrade, I'm just happy that I have a camera that works.

Lessons I've learned:
1. Keep all your documentation in one place. They asked for it often.
2. Keep on top of the store personnel - they already have your money and don't have much intensive to work in your favor.
3. As much as a pain as it was, buying the extended warranty was worth it for me. For $50 I got three trips to Nikon and then a replacement.

Photography with an end result in mind

2010-03-06T16:00:00.004-05:00

Warning: this is a photography post. Tldr: I talk about the process of going from a vision to a print. If you want to see a pretty picture of mine, scroll to the end.

Photography is fun. With a few hundred dollars you can get yourself a nice kit that lets you take some great photos. It's exciting to walk around, take photos and get a few good ones. In the beginning you feel lucky when you capture a great image. If you are bitten by the photography bug, you want to keep your camera on you at all times and you are eager to share your photographs with your friends. The next stage moves from a reactive motivation to a proactive motivation. This is where you seek out or pose your environment for a greater chance of getting a great photo. You travel to fun locations or you starting telling your spouse or friend to pose just like so. This is also a fun stage. This is the stage I'm firmly set in.

But also I'm trying to move forward, past begin reactive to my environment and past setting up my environment for maximum chance of getting a good photo. Now I'm trying to pre-visualize specific photographs I want and then going out and making it happen. I'm not doing it all the time because, frankly, it's a lot more work with a lot less results that meet your expectations¹.

With that in mind, I took advantage of some flowers I got Tara to celebrate the fact that she had only seven and a half weeks of clinics left. The vision I had in my head was a triptych of monochrome closeups of the flowers. I wanted something with detail. More realism, less impressionism. Something with an 'art' quality to it. Not art as an highfalutin ideal, but art as in a piece of art; something I could make presentable and something I would want to hang on the wall. After a hour or so with my macro lens and my trusty D70s (which still don't have back yet), I had some good source material. And after another 2 or 3 hours of processing and editing, I had something I liked.

I got my photo printed at Black's. In Kitchener-Waterloo, we are lacking a high quality developing and printing lab (if I'm wrong and there is one hidden somewhere in town, please let me know). The last good one was Heer's in downtown Kitchener, but they folded a few years ago. So I went to Blacks to get it printed. Instead of me just handing them my CD, they made me sit down at one of the printing kiosks and submit the the photo from there (lame, really - if you know if a lab and printers in town, please let me know). A week later, I got an email from the lab that was printing my file. They couldn't open the TIFF I had uploaded from the kiosk. The file opened just fine at the kiosk, so I don't know what happened. After converting the TIFF to a JPG and emailing to the lab, things were on track. The print arrived a few days after that and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. It's printed on Black's Pearl paper at 12" x 24".

Finding a frame was another fiasco. I had no idea framing was so expensive. The three quotes I got hovered around the $175 mark for a frame in the size I needed. My lovely wife suggested I look for an existing frame and print and just get a new mat. A $40 frame from HomeSense and a $30 mat from a nearby framing shop and I was all set. It did take me a couple of hours to remove the old print from the frame and to mount my photo properly and without dust and cat hair, but my time is pretty much free.

So here is the final product. I'm happy with it. It matches the image I had in my head early on and it's something I feel good about putting on my wall. What else could I ask for?

¹ There is one more stage of photography that I want to get to, past the pre-visualization. And that's the stage where my photography moves beyond about being centered on subjects. It's a stage where I can take a photograph that evokes emotion. In my mind, this is the stage a photography moves from being a craft to being an art and producing something that can be called Art. Even though I have rare glimpses, I'm not there yet. No where near there.

Too much to hope for

2010-02-21T19:34:00.001-05:00

My camera is back in the shop. Apparently the second time I sent it into Nikon they just sent it back without doing any work; this doesn't 'count' towards my three repairs before they consider the camera a lemon.

Hopefully my camera comes back in one piece or they decide to give me a new one; my extended warrenty runs out on the March 31.

The Blacks manager said that the repair could take anywhere from 6-8 weeks although last time I got my camera back in 3. I guess I'll be shooting film or borrowing Tara's camera until then...

It's like deja vu all over again

2010-02-20T18:08:00.001-05:00

Boooo!

I was taking some photos this afternoon (for a blog post about me deciding to get in shape) and between frames, the viewfinder in my camera got really dim. At first I thought I had something on my glasses, but a quick examination of the camera and lens indicated that the camera was no longer controlling the aperture of the camera. And since the aperture blades have a tiny little spring to help the camera close them, they stayed closed on the camera. This in-effect, makes the camera useless on all of my newer lenses (which don't have a manual aperture control).

Boooo!

This is the third time I've had to take the camera in to the shop for repair (1st, 2nd, 3rd). I bought the extended warranty which means Blacks should replace my camera this time; I'm heading in tomorrow to talk to the manager. I'm hoping I don't have to go through the whole rigmarole of sending it in to warranty again, but given Blacks' track record, I'm not holding on to more than a sliver of hope.

Boooo!

Comfort food - chocolate cake

2010-02-04T22:42:00.001-05:00

I don't know about you, but chocolate cake holds a special place in my heart. When I was young, my mom used to make a chocolate cake recipe. It was baked in a 9x13 cake pan. It wasn't too light (denser than a angel food cake) and wasn't too dense (lighter than a brownie). Most of the time my mom didn't put any icing on it. It was cut into 2" x 2" squares, the perfect size. Perfect.

Chocolate cake is comfort food. It's not pretentious. It's not expensive. It can be eaten warm or cold, with icing or without. Like I said, perfect.

A couple of weekends ago I made Devil's Food Cake for a good friend's 40th birthday. As you can see, there wasn't much left of it after the party. I got the recipe from the February/March edition of Fine Cooking. The recipe is fancied up a bit; it's layered and has been given a ganache icing treatment. But take those things away and it's pretty close to my mom's recipe.

I repeated the recipe the following weekend, splitting the cake into two smaller ones. One for us and one as a gift for one of Tara's co-workers (who went way out of her way on a Friday afternoon to help out with Tara's studies). I made a few tweaks the second time and I think it came out a little better. I used four 6" pans for the two cakes. But it you want to be a purist, you can find the original recipe here.

I'm sure each and every one of you can do a better job with the icing than I did. I wanted to get it really smooth, but the more I tried, the less smooth it got. I'm sure there are many tricks of the trade for icing a cake, but it's never been a skill I could master.

Devil's Food Cake with Ganache Icing

The Cake
(all ingredients at room temperature)
3/4 cup butter plus 2 tbsp for buttering the pans
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour plus 2 tbsp for flouring the pans
2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
3/4 cup cocoa power
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1 1/2 cup butter milk
1/3 cup mayonnaise

Preheat the oven to 305F
Cut out 4 circles of parchment paper to line the bottom of the four pans. Place the parchment in the pans and butter the parchment and sides of the pans. Dust with flour.
With a mixer, whip the butter, sugar and vanilla together for a minute or two (until it is light and fluffy). Add the three eggs to the mix, one at a time until they are completely incorporated.
Sift the dry ingredients together into a separate bowl.
Whisk the buttermilk and mayonnaise together in a third bowl (or large measuring cup).
Alternating between the dry ingredients and the butter milk mixture, add the two mixtures to the butter/sugar a third at a time, mixing until fully incorporated.
Divide the batter into the four pans and bake for 40-45 minutes.

The Ganache
2 cups whipping cream
1 pound chocolate chips (semi-sweet)
1 Tbsp butter

Boil the cream in a medium pot.
Pour the cream over the chocolate chips in a bowl. Let sit for 5 minutes.
Gently mix the cream and chocolate until homogonous. Stir in the butter.
Let cool to room temperture.

Put it all together

Slice cakes in half.
Assemble 2 cakes as such: cake slice, ganache, cake slice, ganache, cake slice, ganache, cake slice.
Apply a thin coat of ganache on the sides and tops of the cakes. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to let the ganache set.
Apply a thicker coat of ganache to the sides and tops. Re-refrigerate to set the ganache. Remove from the fridge 60 minutes before serving.

Winter Webster's Falls

2010-02-02T21:27:00.001-05:00

This past Saturday my good friend George and I headed down to Dundas on a photo excursion. Our destination: Webster's and Tew's Falls.

We wanted to get there for the sunrise, but a short delay at Tim Hortons proved to be our undoing. By the time we arrived at Tews Falls, the sun was up ready to warm the world. She had a lot of work ahead of her. It was -20°C when we stepped out if the car. C-o-l-d. That cold has a few unexpected consequences on (digital) photography:

Your battery doesn't work so well at these tempertures. To combat this, carry a spare inside your jacket and swap them out frequently. Your battery isn't drained, it just needs to warm up a bit.
Don't get your lens too close to your face lest you accidently breathe on it. I found this out the hardway when I blew a piece of fluff off my lens. I had to wait a few minutes for the frost to clear.
The same goes for your LCD screen; your face is already close to it so try not to breath on it.
Cameras have lots of fiddly little knobs and dials and such that are hard to use with your gloves. Hand warmers are finger-savers.

The cold notwithstanding, Saturday was beautiful. The sun was out, the wind was calm and the people were sparse. George and I spent a hour or so at Tew's Falls and then a couple of hours at Websters falls. We then headed to Tiffany Falls, but there wasn't much to see there besides a few ice climbers. A quick trip to Henry's to replace a lens cap that went over the falls and a bite to eat and we were done.

Head over to my flickr page to see a few more photos of Webster's falls. And take a look at George's photos; he is much more talented at this photography thing then I am.

Chicago quickie

2009-11-10T22:27:00.008-05:00

Quick post. We got back from Chicago Sunday night and I'm leaving for the rest of the week tomorrow.

Here are a few photos I took in Chicago. It's a nice city, but I wish there was more to do downtown.

Buying prints

2009-10-22T22:01:00.004-04:00

Jim Goldstein is currently running his annual "Buy Prints" project. He is encouraging photographers and others to contact their favorite photographers and buy one or more of their prints. He sums up the project better than I could:

One of the unique aspects of digital photography is that we’re now able to enjoy photographic work with out viewing it in printed form. More so now than ever before supporting a photographer is shown almost exclusively online through photo forums, blogs, and other online communities. While viewing photographs online is easy and relatively inexpensive it is a hollow experience by comparison to holding an actual print from a photographer you respect and admire.

The goal of this project is to introduce fine art photography, photography books, print exchanges, and other photography related products to photography fans of all walks of life. It is also to spur photography fans to think in terms of financially supporting talented photographers so they can continue to do what they love.

I wasn't able to participate in the project last year, but I'm hoping to this year. A brief look through my Flickr Favorites turns up quite a number of photos that I would be happy to hang on my wall. And even if I pick something that my lovely wife doesn't approve of, I have 3 and a half walls in my cubical at work that are open for photos :).

Real prints are a different beast then digital photos. It's one thing to have a photo as your desktop, but something entirely different to have a tangible photo handing on your wall. A well printed photograph can evoke emotions that a digital one can't. It's not that digital photos are inferior, just different.

I don't know how many of the photographers represented in my flickr fav's are professional photographers. The ones that are probably have photos out of my price range (the range isn't huge to begin with). But it doesn't hurt to ask, and it can only help the photography community if people start recognizing talent with more than just a comment about the photo.

While it may seem like it, this isn't a request for people to buy my photos. Buy art that you like, that speaks to you, that makes you feel warm or challenged or reminiscent. Don't buy art out of some ill-conceived duty to the artist. Buy it because it speaks to you.

Photo above by I, Timmy.

RIP Fez

2009-10-04T20:51:00.005-04:00

We put Fez down today.

It wasn't an easy choice but it was obvious. He hadn't been eating much lately, he hadn't be moving around much and he was getting sick to his stomach more and more frequently. We had done everything we could for him and further procedures would have only prolonged his discomfort for our sake. It was time to let go.

Fez was the youngest of our cats. He was another rescue from the Humane Society; scheduled to be put down the day Tara brought him home to 'foster' him. He quickly became a member of our family, bossing the other cats and owning the joint. He ate whatever was dropped on the floor often before he could tell what it was. He never learned to hiss. He frequently came to the door to greet you after a long day of work (although, that may just have been him wanting to be fed). Always a great photographers subject, I have over 200 photos of him at last count.

Goodbye Fez. You will be missed.

The weekend where everything went wrong

2009-09-04T21:56:00.004-04:00

We drove up to Tara's parents cottage last weekend for a little retreat. Just Tara, myself and Sarah, one of Tara's resident-mates. We had a grand 'ol time, but a number of things went quite wrong.

a. We got up to Arnstein (25 minutes from the cottage, 5 hours from home) when we realized we forgot the key to the cottage (and Tara's folks were in Ottawa).
b. After 15 minutes of calling, we got a hold of Tara's parents. Turns out they don't have a key hidden at the cottage and the only person around that would have a key is Steve the plumber. Steve is supposed to be putting a sink into the basement bathroom of the cottage. Tara's parents didn't have his number with them.
c. Steve the Plumber's phone was busy (we looked him up n the phonebook), but the nice people at the general store told us where he lived. We drove out of town looking for a "double driveway with a gray house on one side and an unfinished house on the other". Surprisingly we found the house.
d. Steve wasn't home, but his wife was (we never did get her name). She didn't know where he kept his keys for the cottages and houses, but told us we could find Steve by going back into town, turning at the gas station and looking for the green half-tonne. We drove back into town and, surprisingly, found Steve.
e. Steve didn't have the keys on him; they were back at the house. So we drove back to his house. Once there, he gave us a tupperware full of keys because the cottage key wasn't labeled. We had about 25 keys from different houses around the area in the container..
f. We drove to the cottage and, thankfully, one of the keys worked. We labeled it before returning it (another 20 minute drive back into town and the 20 minutes back to the cottage).
g. That afternoon we discovered that we left Fez's medication either at Tara's parents place (where we spent the previous night) or at the mechanics where we dropped our car off that morning for an inspection. We called Tara's mom who gave us the phone number of Marcel, a neighbor of Tara's parents. We called Marcel who graciously went over to see if we left the medication at the house. Thankfully we did. Tara's parents brought it to us the next day after coming home from Ottawa.
h. After a wonderful time at the cottage, we drove into North Bay on Monday to pick up our car, and then home stopping in Trout Creek to see Tara's grandmother. When we got to Guelph to drop Sarah off, she realized that she had forgotten her house key and nobody was home!
i. Sarah called her fiancee to see if he was around. He was at a local resturant and came to the house fairly soon after. He was all worried because he thought we were supposed to be home Sunday night and not Monday. He didn't even have the cottage number to call us! He looked quite relieved to see us.

So that was our crazy weekend. Even with all that we had a great time - mostly just relaxing and reading and eating (recipes to follow!).

Attention RSS Reader Users: Crispy bits side bar

2009-08-18T22:04:00.002-04:00

To all those who track this blog through an RSS reader (and I suspect that's most of you): there is a new sidebar called "Crispy Bits: The Good Stuff on the Web". It's a collection of the interesting and funny stuff I find while surfing (which I do probably more than I should).

Right now there are links to a Beach Boys cover on a ukulele, an interesting way to use an exercise ball and a musical flow chart. All good stuff.

If you use a RSS reader, you won't get an update when I update the list. So come here every once and a while when you are bored - there will probably be at least one interesting thing in the list.

Wasp photos

2009-08-16T17:30:00.003-04:00

I took down the wasps nest today (see post). It broke as it fell open and I grabbed a few photos.

Even though I sprayed the nest over two weeks ago, some of the wasp larvae were alive and starting to emerge from their cocoons. I don't know if they would have made it out with the residual pesticide and with no family members to take care of them. The nest also stank pretty bad - I should have taken it down right away I guess.

I don't really like wasps around but I have nothing against them living. If they didn't build their nest so close to my house I won't have bothered them at all. The nest opened up when it hit the patio and the inside was pretty interesting. I'm amazed at the structures that they built. Really quite awe-inspiring.

Reading material

2009-08-14T21:21:00.003-04:00

I love Amazon.ca. Click click click and your books are delivered to your door within a week. Delivery is free, the selection is pretty good and browsing is easy.

I picked up a few books with my birthday money. Three books for three hobbies.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a classic. It translated and delivered regular french cooking to North America. Recipes range from simple (Sauce Béchamel, white Sauce) to the complex (Coquelets sur Canapés, Roast Squab Chickens with chicken liver canapes and mushrooms). Butter, cream and wine are featured prominently in many of the recipes. I'm either going to have to take it easy on them or increase my meager (read: non-existent) exercise routine.

Light: Science and Magic is the definitive beginners guide to light with respect to photography. It has real world examples of lighting scenarios and enough theory to let you apply the scenarios to situations not covered in the book. How do you avoid glace when photographing people with glasses? How do you photograph shiny objects? How does the size of the light source affect the photography? All this and more await!

Working with Handplanes will hopefully help me achieve more success with my wood working projects then I am currently experiencing. Handplanes are mysterious creatures; when they work well, you feel like you can do anything. When they don't you feel you can do nothing. I'm hoping to move from the latter to the former.

Bon Appetit - Julie and Julia

2009-08-09T22:15:00.004-04:00

We just came back from watching Julie and Julia. If you are a foodie or a fan of Julia Child you should really go see it.

The movie is based of the book of the same title which follows Julie Powell as she tries to cook through the Art of French Cooking in a year, with flashbacks to Julia Child's life in France. The book is based on a blog that Julie Powell used to track her progress through the book (the blog is still available, though the last entry is from 2004). Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and her portrayal is really quite uncanny. The movie is funny and interesting and makes you hungry - what more can a movie do?

I never really watched much Julia Child as a kid - Canadian television played more Yan Can Cook and the Urban Peasant (and who can forget Just Like Mom) but her impact on North American cooking is unparalleled. My copy of the Art of French Cooking is on it's way from Amazon.ca. I'm looking forward to cracking it open and trying the most involved recipe in there: Pate de Canard en Croute.

Eat Canadian

2009-07-27T21:28:00.002-04:00

Hellman's put together the following interesting video about how much food we import into Canada. It feels like a bit of propaganda (it was commissioned by a profit-driven food company after all), but if even a quarter of the statistics are accurate, we import a lot of food into this great country. I know I will keep a better eye out for grown in Canada food (easy to say in the summer I know).

Hellmann’s - It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

QA geek note: The video does a really good job of presenting statistics in an attractive and informative manner. The charts are pleasing to the eye and contain a significant amount of data. The graphic designers and animators did a real bang up job. I only wish the software I test looked as good at this does.

World Wide Photo Walk 2009

2009-07-21T18:50:00.003-04:00

Saturday evening I participated in Scott Kelby's world wide photo walk. Scott Kelby is a big name in digital photography and he came up with a fun idea - organize a multi-city photo walk and then share the results. This year over 900 groups formed and walked with an estimated 30000 people attending.

I was at the Kitchener one and it was well attended. I think we were close to 50 people. Our leader came a little late so things were disorganized, but I think most of us had a good time anyways. Everyone was friendly and I met a bunch of new photographers. Our route had a good amount of stuff to shoot and it ended up in Victoria Park during the Beer and Rib fest.

I shot both digital and film, but I mis-loaded my first roll, so all my film photos from the first half of the walk don't exist. That's ok - I'm sure there were no winners in there :)

There are prizes for the photowalk. Everyone gets to submit two photos. I'm having a hard time choosing mine. Below are my candidates - any suggestions? Click through for larger photos.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Wasps!

2009-07-19T22:00:00.005-04:00

We have wasps. Bald-faced hornets to be exact (but IANAE*). Thankfully they are outside, in a tree. But now I have to go and remove their nest. Their nest is 15 feet high. Does anyone have any good methods for killing wasps that high up? I'm thinking I'll use that raid stuff that shoots a jet of killing foam whilst standing on a ladder.

*I am not an entomologist.

Our Fez is sick

2009-07-19T21:33:00.002-04:00

We got the news last week that our cat Fez is sick. Quite sick. He has intestinal cancer - large cell lymphoma. The doctors give him 6 months at most.

Fez is our most personable cats. He loves people and loves to be around us. He's clumsy and he eats anything. We love him. The next few months will be hard.

We are going to try chemo-for-cats. We are taking a middle of the road approach - not to aggressive, not to passive. Tara has started a blog to track his progress: Will my cat go bald?

There is a somber mood over our house. We are trying to enjoy all the time we have. That's good advice regardless of the health of your pets.

Distraction

2009-07-13T22:10:00.003-04:00

We got some sad news about one of our pets today. Nothing I want to talk about right now, so I'm posting some photos of animals that I don't need to worry about. Sometimes you need a distraction from the gloomy side of life.

This is one of the herds of sheep at the University of Guelph. I was at the fence for 5 minutes with the sheep ignoring me and then a couple walking their little dog walked by and all the sheep ran to see the dog (or the couple). Taken with Ilford FP4+.

This cute little monster is digging holes in our lawn and under our interlocking brick. He also likes to eat our garden and the cherries off our tree. His only redeeming quality is that he doesn't mind posing.

This is a bunny at my sisters place. He/she was pretty skittish - this was take at 300mm.

Ginger bread cake

2009-07-11T12:57:00.009-04:00

In the summer, when it's warm out, I'll reach for a light dessert after dinner. Maybe something with berries or something airy. Ice cream is always nice.

But our summer here in southwestern Ontario is MIA. We've only had one week of hot weather, the rest has been highs of 20C-25C. Not weather where I was to sit out on a beach with a nice piece of angel food cake and a whack of strawberries. These days I've been craving something with a bit of heft to it.

I used the ~~excuse~~ occasion of my sister and brother-in-law staying with us for a few days to make a nice winter cake in our cool summer. Behold the Ginger Bread Cake!

This is a nice dense cake that goes well with a nice hot drink. It's packed with flavour and can stand up to a rich ice cream with ease.

Note that I have not been able to get the cake out of the pan without at least some part of it sticking. I've tried both silicon and metal bundt pans. I don't know what I'm doing wrong - perhaps I need to to make the cake at a higher temp at the start? If you have success, let me know what you changed.

Recipe: Ginger Bread Cake (modified from Smitten Kitchen's recipe)

1 C stout beer (I used Guinness)
1 C molasses
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 C flour (all purpose)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger (or 2 Tbsp ground ginger)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (fresh grated is best
3 eggs (large and at room temp)
1 C brown sugar (packed)
1 C white sugar
3/4 C vegetable oil

1. Combine stout and molasses in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, add baking soda (warning - it will foam up - keep stirring) and cool until it is just warm (or cooler).

2. Preheat the over to 350F. Butter and flour the inside of the bundt pan.

3. Mix the flour, baking powder and spices together in a large mixing bowl.

4. Whisk the eggs and sugars together in a large bowl until well combined. Add oil and molasses and whisk again until well combined and mostly homogeneous.

5. Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and whisk to combine. Pour into bundt pan and bake for 45-50 minutes. Cake is done when a skewer comes out mainly clean (a little under baked is fine, try no to over bake).

6. Cool on a rack for 5-10 minutes and then turn cake out of the pan and cool on rack until cool.

7. Serve to your friends with a fine vanilla ice-cream and a steaming coffee or tea.

First rule of film photography

2009-07-10T19:04:00.003-04:00

Today I learned the first rule of film photography.

Rule 1: Make sure there is film in your camera.
Corollary: If it takes less effort to wind the film in your camera than usual, see rule 1.

More Killarney Photos

2009-07-02T21:06:00.004-04:00

Camping in Killarney

2009-07-01T19:11:00.010-04:00

Tara and I spent the first half of last week at Killarney Provincial Park.It was the first time either one of us had been to the park. The park is just south of Sudbury and just north of French River Provincial Park; about 5 and a half hours from the KW region. It's a fairly new park, only 45 years old. The Group of Seven petitioned the provincial government to set the park aside and protect it from logging and development. It truly is breathtakingly beautiful.

I've been car camping at a number of provincial parks and this is one of the best. The campsites and trails were clean, the underbrush not trampled down and the park staff very friendly and helpful. I give it two thumbs up.

The weather was great while we were there. Highs of 28-30 and sunny all week. The nights were a little warm, but nothing we couldn't deal with.

There was a fair amount of wildlife in the park. We saw a few foxes (one with a chipmunk in her mouth) and a couple of bears (one a little too close for comfort - 15 feet and startled, but I think he was more afraid of us than visversa). Lots of chipmunks, squirrels, and woodpeckers. Oh ya, and raccoons.

Embarrassing story: I stayed up late one night to try to get some star photos. Only the sun doesn't really set and get completely dark at the end of June in the park until well after 11:00. So I'm sitting on a rock face with my camera by myself, the day we saw a bear up close, and I start hearing rustling in the the bush behind me. I flip on the flashlight and it's just racoons with their tiny reflective eyes, watching me. I turn the flashlight off. Two minutes later I hear more rustling. I turn on the flashlight again and all I saw are the eyes. The smart part of my brain knew I was safe, but the stupid part of my brain didn't think so. I got one 14 minute exposure and I high-tailed it back to the safety of my tent. That was the last clear night of the trip.

Our only problem was the bugs. There were a lot of bugs. Blackflies, mosquitoes, deerflies, and horseflies were out and hungry like I haven't seen in a while. They forced us to wear our bug jackets all the time, except for in the noon sun, at the top of a hill or in the middle of the lake. Both Tara and I had countless bites all over; Tara suffering more than I. When we go back to Killarney, it will be in the fall or very early spring, when the bugs are happily sleeping.

We rented a canoe and had a easy paddle around George Lake. The lakes in the park suffered from the acid rain in the late 80's (the park is downwind of Sudbury and it's smelters). They are just coming back to life now, but are still pretty clear. We tried fishing on George Lake, but only caught a couple of large-mouth bass (out-of-season unfortunately). They are trying very hard to rehabilitate the lakes - maybe in another 10 years the fishing will be better.

We went on a couple of really nice hikes. Both the Chikanishing Trail and the Granite Ridge Trail are not to be missed. The trails themselves aren't too difficult (if you take your time) and the scenery at the end of these trails is simply breathtaking.

If you do end up going to the park, you must make the trip into the town of Killarney for the fish and chips. At the end of the hwy 637 there is a fish stand with the most incredible pickerel I've tasted. Trust me and make the trip - you won't forget it.

Like I said, I think we will head back to the park in the fall (not this year -maybe next). I hope this review encourages you to as well.

-- Click on the photos for more detail. --
-- Watch this space or my flickr page. I'll be posting more photos soon - I tool a roll and a half with my trusty FM10. Hopefully at least one of them turned out. --

Garden Gnome

2009-06-15T23:13:00.002-04:00

Quick photo from the weekend up in Ottawa.

This is Julie and Peter's gnome. Scary little bugger if you ask me.

Kickin' it old school

2009-05-30T21:43:00.004-04:00

(Yes I know, the phrase "Kickin' it old school" is now old school itself)

A few weeks ago I purchased a second hand light meter off kijiji.ca. I'm hoping to improve my portrait photography skills and a light meter will surely help with that. Now I need to spend some time learning exactly how to use it :)

The light meter came with an Nikon FM10 film camera (plus three lenses and a flash*). The FM10 is an entry level film camera. It is almost entirely manual and mechanical; everything is manual except for a rudimentary internal light meter. It doesn't even need batteries if you want to fore go the light meter.

We had an old roll of FujiFilm 400 in our fridge. I don't know where it came from - I think Tara brought it into the marriage (7 years old!). I popped it into the camera and brought it to work for a few days, just for kicks and to get used to using the camera.

The FM10 has a completely different feel compared to my D70s. It's smaller and lighter (550g vs. 800g). It's metal instead of plastic. The shutter is mechanical as is the film winding mechanism - there is a distinct vibration when you wind the film and distinct sound when the shutter is released.

Additionally it comes with a knowledge that each frame has a cost associated with it. With digitial, you shoot and shoot and sort out when you get home. With film, you need to think about what you are shooting becuase you only have 24 or 36 exposure before you need to pay someone to develop your film. I knew that it would cause me to slow down, but I didn't realise how much it would. It spent three or four days got get through 24 exposures (contrast that with blowing through 100 shots when I go to the barn on my D70s).

After I got the camea, I picked up three of rolls of film**. I finished one off today and now need to get it developed and scanned. I'm pretty excited to see what I photos I took.

Below are three best frames from the 7 year old film. Thanks to George for scanning them for me. Not to bad for 7 year old film, eh?

For my photo friends --
*The three lenses are:
MF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
MF Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.5-5.6
MF Tamron 70-200mm f/4-5.6
The flash is a Vivitar 2800

** Two rolls Kodak Portra 160VC and one roll of Ilford FP4+ 125. I just finished the FP4+ today (and now need to find a place in Kitchener Waterloo that will develop and scan E-6 black and white film without costing me an arm and a leg - let me know if you know of such a place).

Splish Splash

2009-05-29T22:26:00.004-04:00

While waiting for my lovely wife to come home for dinner, I set up the following photos. My go-to lighting blog, strobist.com, has a fun post about creating water droplet photos. Head on over if you want to learn about how to do this. If you have a SLR, a flash and a small amount of time (< 60 minutes), you too can take photos like these.

Flower photos

2009-05-23T17:00:00.004-04:00

While I'm putting the finishing touches on the remainder of my photos from my trip out west, I've put a few flower photos on my flickr site.

Sixty and counting

2009-05-20T19:41:00.006-04:00

I was in southern Manitoba this past weekend helping my grandparents celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. That's right, the big 6-0.

We had a party for Grandma and Grandpa. All of their surviving brothers and sisters showed up, along with some of their kids (my dad's cousins) and some of their kids (my second cousins?). All told, there were about 60 people there; most of them beyond the age of 65. And let me tell you - it was one loud party! There was more laughing and carrying on than I expected from a bunch of ~~old people~~ elders. Some people get grumpy and crotchety in their old age -- not my family!

My grandparents are doing well. They are still living in the the same house that I always remember them in growing up. Sure they are slowing down and have the aches and pains that show up when you are over 80. They don't move as fast as the used to and they don't always remember things as clearly but that's all expected. My grandpa is still pretty active in the gardens and in the workshop. A short while ago he built a grandfather clock - that's not something a lot of people can do when they are his age.

I'm sure things weren't always roses and butterflies for my grandparents. My dad talks of his childhood as a childhood without much money or conveniences. Grandpa built houses for a living- not an easy job. But the marriage survived. They survived six children and nine grandchildren. They survived their kids leaving their community. They survived floods and droughts and Manitoba mosquitoes. They still laugh together, cry together and love together.

When something like 50% of all marriages these days end in divorce, it's a blessing to have a legacy of love, friendship and commitment in the family. I pray and hope I have their genes.

My Wife - The Scientist

2009-05-10T18:41:00.005-04:00

Last weekend I got to spend time with Tara in her lab at school. In case you didn't know, near the top of the list of things my wife excels at is biomedical research. She is currently in a PhD program at the Ontario Veterinary College.

A biomedical research lab is a lot less like a movie research lab then you might think. There are no bunsen burners running, no multi-coloured liquids in beakers giving off dense fumes, no spiral tubing moving liquids from one flask to another and no hunched-back assistants. In fact, the lab looks a lot like the labs on CSI. Without the glass walls or dim lights, or instant answers.

I was there to "help" Tara with her research. Since I really don't know my way around a lab, I was given the roles of washer of instruments, labeler of labels, disposer of old experiments, fetcher of things, and official research photographer. I also got to autoclave things (or more honestly I put the instruments in the autoclave packets and watched Tara turn the machine on). Nonetheless it was a fun time where I got to spend time with Tara in her element. And I also got to meet her summer student Jess who is helping out Tara (and by helping I mean real helping, not Richard "helping").

If you are curious, Tara is doing research surrounding interleukin s and corneal heath (the cornea is the clear part of the eye). Tara hopes to determine what the roles specific interleukins play in the maintenance of corneal clarity. The results of her research may provide insight into how to treat or prevent eye disease in animals and people.

The only thing I understand about interleukins is that they are proteins (molecules) that are involved in sending messages from between cells. If you want to know more, you'll need to ask Tara; she can talk for a long time about her research.

There are a few more photos that Tara said I could post, but I need to give you fair warning. Tara is doing ocular research. That's research on eyes. Some of these photos might make your tummy turn or at least look at Tara a little differently next time you see her.

If you think you can handle it, click the link below. If not, here is a nice blog you can read to wash your mind of the imagined images floating around in it...

Show me the gross photos

Hopewell Creek Photos

2009-04-19T22:15:00.003-04:00

I know, I know. I promised photos of the new car. But the timing hasn't been right yet and it needs a little bit of body work done to it before it's ready for prime-time.

In the meantime, check out some photos from the barn :)

Cloudy day in Elora

2009-04-14T21:15:00.004-04:00

A weekend and a half ago, my good friend George and I headed to Elora on a cold photo outing. The plan was to hit the Elmira maple syrup festival, but it was super busy and we couldn't be bothered to find one of the 3 remaining parking spots in the town.

Elora's a nice place - it would have been nicer if the sun had been out and the wind not so strong, but what else can you expect from early spring in southern Ontario.

Check out George's photos here and here for some good shots and here for some mediocre shots of my own.

The Volvo is dead. Long live the Volvo.

2009-03-16T22:04:00.003-04:00

Looking back we had lots of warning. We replaced the fuel pump in December. We had brake and and water pump issues in January. The fuel pump regulator went at the end of February. When we found out the fuel injection circuitry died last Monday, we decided it was time for a new car. Our 15 year old 940 needs to be put to pasture.

We picked up a 2004 Volvo S60 2.4T this past weekend and we get it tomorrow (after the emission test). We're pretty excited.

Photos to follow.

And now for something completey different - squirrels!

2009-01-14T21:29:00.004-05:00

There isn't too much blog-worthy in my life these days so I thought I'd post some squirrel photos I took over the holidays. They are more cutesy than I normally do, but I'm man enough to post cutesy animal photos :)

Enjoy!

Us amateur photographers - always shooting for free

2008-12-07T21:50:00.005-05:00

Although I have no authority or much experience, I thought I would chime in on the "work-for-free" controversy that is going on this past weekend in the photography blogophere from an amateur photographer's perspective. (btw - I hate the term blogosphere).

In brief, David Hobby (over at strobist.com) wrote last week that you can really feed your photography passion by shooting for free. That is, find something you want to photograph and use the promise of free photos to help you be allowed take the photos. One example given was taking photos for an animal shelter (for someone passionate about pet photography), another was taking photos of food for a restaurant that couldn't otherwise afford it.

The responses over the interwebs have fallen into three fairly predictable categories:

The pros who feel that this undermines the value of what they produce. How can they feed their families if every Joe, Dick and Jane are willing to shoot for free?
The amateurs who already don't get paid for what they do. They of course think this is a great idea as it gives them legitimacy for the photos they want to take.
The in-betweens who want the best of both worlds. "Only take the gig if it is for a charity" is a common theme in this group.

Me? I think I mainly fall into category 2 with a hint of 3. Amateurs already shoot for free - that's kinda the definition of "amateur". We already follow our passion and shoot what we want to shoot (or, if they are like me, are still trying to find our passion). The advice Mr. Hobby gives us is that if we want to try something out of our normal subject set, offering our photos to the subjects may be a good way of getting to shoot what we want to shoot. And I think that is excellent advice!

I've been thinking about doing a few projects. One of them requires a fair amount of driving across Ontario (it will probably need to wait until we have second car). But one of them is way more possible in the here and now. In fact, the only thing stopping me was my shyness and the thinking that I should keep all the photos I take. I think the post over at strobist.com may just be the kick in my pants that I need.

But there is still a part of group 3 that I fall in. I've done a few photo shoots for money; I charged way less then a professional photographer would, but I also delivered way less as well (no backup camera, delayed proofs, mid-range resolution, amateur touch-ups). Only one of the gig's I had I think would have gone to a professional if I wasn't convenient. At this point in my life, I don't want to be a professional photographer (I like my day job too much), but at the same time I feel that when I'm not shooting for friends or family, I should be charging something just so people know that there are professionals out there who make their living doing this. But with the advent of affordable professional quality cameras and photo-processing software that professional photographers will need to differentiate themselves from us amateurs or risk going out of business. Us amateurs are a wave that I don't think can be stopped.

Anyways - those are my thoughts (as always, worth just as much as you paid).

End of an era

2008-11-30T20:56:00.002-05:00

Friday was the last day of a contract that my company had with a client. The contract has been going on for just a few months shy of 5 years and I've been on the project since the beginning. Friday was a day of mixed emotions.

The project didn't finish well; it was cut short a month which means that our transition period went form 8 weeks down to 4. Combine that with no team to transition to and you don't get a recipe for success. We did what we could in the time we had, but I don't know if it was enough.

I'm happy to be working on something new on Monday. I've been hoping to work on something new for a while. But part of me will miss the old project and the old team. We worked our butts off making the code as good as we could. I logged close to a thousand bugs over those years. The team suffered together and celebrated together. We made a lot of money for our company and for our client.

It's sad to see it go, but it's time to move on. I'm ready for the next challenge.

Boston - more than a cream pie

2008-10-17T09:27:00.002-04:00

I'm in Boston for my first Conference tag-along. Tara has an veterinary ophthalmology conference here and I decided to tag along. I hope this is the first of many conferences that I get to come along with.

We arrived early Wednesday morning, flying in from Buffalo. The first thing we did after checking in was hit Legal Seafoods. It was recommended by three distinct people back in Kitchener and it didn't disappoint. If you are in Boston and enjoy seafood, I suggest checking it out.

After that we toured the New England Aquarium. It was pretty cool. Tonnes of fish (duh). I tried to take some photos, but most of them didn't turn out. A few that did are on flickr. I've got to learn how best to shoot fish through glass.

That was Wednesday, the only day I had with Tara. Thursday, Friday and Saturday she is stuck in the conference while I get to roam. And roam I did yesterday, taking in a good chunk of the city by foot. It really is a nice walking city. I took some photos, but the sky was pretty overcast and the lighting was really flat. Plus it started raining in the middle of the afternoon. With the rain I headed to the Public Library to see an exhibit on Yousuf Karsh. I had seen some of his work online, but it does not compare in the slightest to real prints. It almost makes me want to give up my dinky D70s and buy a large format camera. He truely is inspirational.

Today I am going to head to Harvard and see what I can see - it looks sunnier outside and a bit crisper (~12C); perfect for photos. But first I need to grab some breakfast. Ah life married to an opthamologist is tough....

There are a few photos on flickr. I'm posting from Tara's laptop and Picassa, so there hasn't been much post production done on the photos. I'll clean them up when I get home.

Richard

Laser Cooling

2008-09-24T21:39:00.003-04:00

Warning: geek post below

One of the podcasts I listen to is TVO's Big ideas (site, podcast). Big Ideas is a series on Ontario public television that is devoted to lectures and lecturers. They put out a podcast once a week with the last week's lectures. I know - some of you are tuning out right now. That's ok - it's not for everyone. But if you like to learn about stuff it's a good place to start.

The lecture this week is from William D. Phillps from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He talks about laser cooling, among other things. Laser cooling was a term I had heard about but never really understood (how can a laser cool something when all the movies I watch has it heating things up?). I won't claim I understood everything, but I could probably now explain the fundamentals about laser cooling to someone who asked.

Anyways - if you are into physics and like a good lecturer with a goofy laugh, take a listen. It's about an hour long, perfect for washing your car, raking your backyard or your weekly status meeting at work (if you get small ear buds and sit at the back of the room)

I have no idea how long it will be up, so grab it while it's hot.

Granola Time

2008-09-17T19:34:00.004-04:00

Tara and I have been eating granola for breakfast these days (well, more Tara than me). We found a great recipe in September issue of Bon Appetit that we've used and improved upon.

If you love granola, give this recipe a shot - it's better then the dried store-bought stuff anyday.

Quick Granola

1 C oats (we have been using quick cook)
1/4 C wheat germ
1/2 C sweetened flaked coconut
1/4 C cashews, broken
1/4 C pecans, broken
1/4 C maple syrup
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp corn syrup
1 Tbsp light molasses
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp salt
1/4 C raisins
1/2 C chopped dried apricots

Preheat the oven to 350F

Mix the oats, wheat germ and nuts together in a large bowl.

Whisk the maple syrup, oil, corn syrup, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt together in a second bowl. Add this mixture to the dry mixture and mix to combine. Spread out over a large baking sheet (rimmed).

Bake for 15 minutes. Remove, stir and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove, stir in fruit and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden.

Remove and let cool on the pan. store in a tupperware container.

Goes well with yogurt, milk or ice cream.

Labour day at the cottage

2008-09-03T21:54:00.004-04:00

Tara and I spent another fine Labour day weekend up at the Richards' cottage on lake Memesagamesing.

We arrived Saturday morning and spent the day just hanging out and relaxing. My folks were able to come up for a night (they were camping in Dorset the week previous) so Tara's dad, my dad and myself went to pick up the boat while Tara's mom and my mom went shopping in the local town.

Sunday morning we got up early and headed out fishing. The lake was calm, the sun was bright and fish weren't hungry. We didn't catch much but I didn't mind- I hadn't been fishing with my dad in 15 years and it was good to do it again. We cruised around on the boat afterward, pulling wake boards, water skis and water tubes. We also hit one of the beaches on the lake and hunted for crayfish for bait (and by we I mean Tara and her family - I didn't want to get pinched by those cray fish).

We got up even earlier the next morning for fishing and headed to Dave's secret fishing spot. This time the fish were hungry and we snagged a few. I caught a 19 inch large mouth bass. Those crayfish sure came in handy. And nothing tastes as good as freshly caught fish.

A relaxing afternoon and evening later and it was time to pack up and head home. Too bad we couldn't stay another day, but bills need to be paid and school work won't do itself. Maybe next year we'll stay more then a few days.

(more photos to come)

More photography equipment to buy

2008-08-27T22:00:00.003-04:00

There is a funny thing about the photography hobby - there are always more things you can buy.

If you are at all plugged into the photography world, you've know already that Nikon announced a new camera today; the D90. This is on the heels of Canon, which announced a new camera earlier this week; the 50D. Both are awesome cameras, but seeing as I'm a Nikon guy and Nikon's rule, I'll promptly ignore the new Canon*.

The new Nikon D90 puts my 4 year old D70s to shame. The photos it produces can be blown up to twice the size of the photos my camera takes. It behaves way better in low light. It autofocuses faster and smarter. The batteries last longer. It can control flashes better. It even takes HD video. I want one.

Some corner of my brain keeps whispering the phrase "You can take better photographs if you buy a new camera". I know this is a half-truth; a better camera will make my good photos look better but it won't make me take any more good photos. Composition, lighting, timing, and all the other things that go into making a good photo can't be controlled by a camera.

All this desire is compounded by the fact that a good friend just dropped 10K+ on new camera equipment. He now has a top of the line Canon around his neck. The part of my brain that was whispering sweet nothings lives right beside the part of my brain that keeps telling me to keep up with the Joneses. It sucks.

I don't need a new camera and I can't afford a new camera. The D90 retails for $1200. The step up from the D90 (the D300 which is even nicer!) retails for $1800. That type of money is hard to justify for a hobby, especially since we already have one expensive hobby in the household.

So for now, I'll hang tight. I'll count my pennies and maybe in a little while I'll have saved up enough to upgrade. By then, I'm sure, there will be an even better camera out.

On a positive side, I had my second paid photo shoot in June. One of Tara's co-boarders at Fantasy Lane asked me to take some photos of her and her daughter and their two horses. With the money I got from that gig I picked up an umbrella and stand for my flash (plus some miscellanea cables and connectors). Now all I have to do is learn how to use it :) Below are a couple of photos from tonight of Tara and our cat Fez with my new lighting gear.

* There really isn't much difference between Nikon and Canon unless you are into really specialized photography. I'm not.

Instagrass

2008-08-23T19:41:00.002-04:00

Our sod arrived yesterday. Four skids plus another 15 rolls.

We started laying it down at 3:15. At 6:45, Tim and Vanessa showed up and we ate dinner (Tara's brother and his wife). As soon as we finished dinner, Dave and Linda showed up (Tara's dad and mom) and we put them all to work. We stopped when it was too dark to work.

We started again at 6:45 this morning and were done by 9:00. All the sod is laid, rolled and watered.

I am 100% exhausted. I can hardly move without some muscle tensing up and and telling me that moving 3+ skids of sod was a task I should have paid someone to do. But I rarely listen to my muscles.

Today was spent visiting, recuperating and moving the sprinkler. The lawn looks great. Thank you so much Tim , Vanessa, Dave and Linda.

Laying sod is hard work. Who knew?

Rain rain go away

2008-08-09T17:57:00.003-04:00

It's been raining here a lot. It seems almost everyday it's raining. Which doesn't help the landscaping we need to do.

The grubs got our lawn this year. There were whole patches of property that had no grass. And then the weeds started. It looked horrible.

We took drastic measures. We killed the whole lawn at the end of June with an unhealthy dose of Roundup. And last weekend we ripped it up. I rented an 8hp tiller which chewed through it like butter. We raked and shoveled and carted off two truckloads of crappy topsoil and dead grass/weeds. I'm in the middle of putting down new soil but the rain is getting in the way.

Hopefully tomorrow will be drier. But I doubt it.

Good to be back

2008-07-28T22:01:00.002-04:00

My trip to California got cut short so I'm back home again.

Traveling for work is fun for a few days you get to try new restaurants and see new scenery. After a few days, especially if you are leaving work late, it gets pretty boring and the urge to go home kicks in.

It's good to be back.

Afternoon Trip to the hills

2008-07-21T00:03:00.003-04:00

Instead of putting in another long day at the office here in Silicon Valley, I took the afternoon off and headed for the hills. The west hills to be specific, up to the Monte Bello open space Preserve for a quick hike. Well, that's not precise, really. What I did was drive towards the mountains and after a bit of time I found myself at the preserve. Who need maps when you can see your destination from half the city?

The scenery was quite breath taking. It's been 7 years since I was last in California and I didn't quite remember it being so beautiful. The road up was tree lined and covered with a thick canopy. At the preserve, there was more grass than trees; golden grass that almost looked like wheat.

I hiked for 2.5 hours. The trails were really well maintained and there were lots of people out. Half of the people I saw were one mountain bikes - I wished I had one of them myself. I even saw one guy on a road bike with slippers and wool socks (there are a few crazies here).

I saw a little bit of wild life, lizards and birds mainly. I didn't see any mountain lions (happy and sad about that at the same time - it would have been a great photo op). I did see a rattle snake which was pretty cool (a first for me).

If you find yourself in the valley for any length of time and you want to go for a hike ( and you aren't afraid of winding roads - more below), I highly recommend the preserve.

The drive to the preserve is the most exhilarating and terrifying drives I have ever done in my short driving career. Page Mill road is twisty and turny all the way up and my knuckles were white for most of it. Very fun, but a little intimidating. The ascent was about 2000 feet over 7 miles - fairly steep. I really really wanted to get some photos of the road itself, but there weren't any shoulders (let alone guard rails) for me to pull off on. That said- if I find myself with another free afternoon, I may just make the trip again. Here is the map.

Flying on short notice

2008-07-15T22:51:00.002-04:00

I'm heading down to Mountain View, California on tomorrow (Wednesday) for business. I found out that I might be going this morning and it was confirmed at 5:00 this afternoon.

Hopefully I'll take some good photos and eat some good sushi while I'm there.

Roundup

2008-06-30T15:51:00.005-04:00

A quick round-up of marginally interesting things going in.

1. We've moved Lego from Fantasy Lane Farm to Hopewell Creek Stables. Fantasy Lane was great, but it was a bit of a hike for us to get there and they had a habit of changing the feed without telling us. That said - it was good place for Lego and a great place for photos. Hopefully I can keep in contact with those from Fantasy Lane - a couple of them expressed interest in a photo shoot. Here is a flickr set of my photos from Fantasy Lane.

Hopewell Creek is right beside Maryhill golf course (for those of you who know the area) and it's a 5 minute detour from the route Tara makes to and from school. As long as they take good care of Lego, I'm sure we'll be more than happy to have him there (plus I get to go golfing more often now :) )

2. I made a really rockin' cream of celery and scapes (garlic tops) soup the other night. It turned out really well and I got to use my new immersion blender (which made it oh-so-smooth). If anyone wants me to try and remember how I made it, let me know in the comments and I'll post the recipe.

3. If any of you out there want to feel manly - go find yourself a tree and cut down. I did this past week and it felt good.

4. I'm wearing contacts now, at least when I'm not at work. Taking photos is a lot easier when I can mash the camera right up to my face. I also enjoy wearing sun glasses. This is a poor attempt at a contact self-portrait

I think that's about it

Spin

2008-06-24T18:19:00.000-04:00

I would pay good money to see any of my friends do this. Seriously.

Art and differences of opinion

2008-06-18T21:37:00.003-04:00

A coworker (and friend) and I had a friendly argument today about some art work. It all centered around a set of photos (on this page and no, I'm not telling you which set).

One of us argued that the photos were technically great, the other argued that they were severely technically deficient. We also strongly argued about their artistic merit, given the subject matter (wedding photography).

This is a coworker and friend who also takes photos. Our own styles are quite different from each other (and the same can be said about our subject matters). I didn't, however, expect there to be such difference in the what we though was good photography. The difference is vast, with one of us indicating that if he had paid for the photos he would ask for his money back and the other willing to spend money on these prints (even though they are of someone else).

All this to say: Art is subjective. Very. Very very subjective. So when you create something and you put it out there for people to enjoy, let your art be its own reward. Don't get bogged down by people who don't like it. Take their criticisms with a handful of salt, improve where you can, and don't be too harsh on others. Everyone gets respect but that doesn't mean their opinions do.

In the end the two of us decided to just disagree. Hopefully we can discuss something else tomorrow.

Arva Flour

2008-06-17T22:34:00.005-04:00

Last weekend was my sister-in-laws graduation. We had a jolly good time which included dinner at my brother-in-laws apartment. While I was there, he gave me a mostly full bag of flour.

Odd? Not really - this flour is from the Arva flour Mills in Arva (which I think is near or in London). Tim said the flour was really good and told me to take the bag. Unbleached hard wheat flour. I used it tonight for the first time. I made pizza.

Oh.
My.
Goodness.

It was simply the best pizza crust I have ever made. Bar none. It was flavorful and crispy and chewy. I ate until I couldn't eat any more.

So the next time I'm in London I'm going to Arva Flour Mills and I going to stock up on flour. Hard and soft and maybe some semolina. I can hardly wait.

(Arva has/had a website, but it looks like they forgot to renew the domain.)

Double plus good

2008-06-04T21:40:00.004-04:00

Two items of good news today. Well one good news and one really good news.

1. I got my camera back and everything is working. It took 4 weeks, but it came back working. My contact at Blacks (Ian) said that they replaced an SB circuit (which seems to be involved with the self-timer) but the guy at the store said they replaced the flash bulbs in both the popup and the flash. It doesn't really matter I guess a long as it works and stays working.

So all told, my camera was gone for 10.5 weeks in three separate 'outings'. Not a great record, but I hold no grudge.

2. I am officially a published photographer. I've been sitting on this news for a while because it seemed a little surreal, but it looks like it's real real.

I have a photo up in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York. It's in a exhibit on horses called "The Horse" and is centered around how horses have shaped our world. The exhibit is on until January and then it tours the world.

The photo is one I took at a dressage show last summer. It's a decent photo - I wish the background was cleaner and I had been a bit more to the right, but I like it. I was approached by José Ramos, a Graphics Research Supervisor for the museum; he saw my photo on flickr and sent me an email about it.

It seemed like a hoax at first, but the AMNH did exist, they did have an exhibit on horses coming soon and his name came up in the internal search a fair amount. He didn't want any of my information, just a copy of the photo and details of when and where it was taken. I decided to take a chance and go with it.

That was early April. Today I got a couple of photos of the panel that contains my photo. It's kinda crazy, but this is real. I have a photograph in a real museum.

Tara has a conference in Boston in the fall. If we can swing it, I may take some time off work and we'll drive down to the conference and and stop off at the museum on the way back.

If any of you are going to New York you should stop in and take some photos for me in case we don't make it.

Anyways I'm a happy camper these days (well, except for the fact that Tara's away at the moment).

Top row, second from the right. That's mine.

She gets beautifuler and then she leaves

2008-06-01T15:12:00.004-04:00

My amazing wife has a new hair cut and colour. It looks pretty darn hot to me. she got this done Friday night.

I just got back from the airport. I dropped her off for a three week course in Madison Wisconsin. I'm home alone for the better part of a month.

So my wife gets even better looking and then leaves. How fair is that? To even up the score, I just bought a bag of Lays Sea Salt and Pepper chips. Tara can't have those because the have MSG. Now we're even.

Tethered

2008-05-28T22:33:00.004-04:00

Well, now that I'm driving more, we thought it would be prudent to carry a cell phone for emergencies. So we picked up one of the cheapest ones we could find, but even the bottom of the line has a camera, plays mp3 and lets me surf the web. Crazy, eh?

I am officially tethered.

And Tara got bit by a fish

2008-05-26T20:53:00.009-04:00

The first day back to work after a vacation usually goes one of two ways; either you are really tired and the day just slogs on or you are so refreshed that the day flies by without a care. I fell into the second category today.

Tara and I just got back from a week in Mexico. We were at the southern tip of the Mayan Rivera , staying at the Grand Bahia Principe resort.

The resort was amazing. The facilities were clean, the food was really good and the staff were aways helpful and friendly. The beach was varied from smooth sand to crunchy coral bits. There was a coral reef not 30 meters from the shore. I would not hesitate the recommend the resort to anyone.

The resort is made up of three mini resorts. We stayed in the one called Coba. It seemed to be the nicest one, but it's also the one furthest from the beach. No worries, they had little carts heading to the beach every ten minutes, right outside our room.

There were iguanas everywhere. You couldn't walk a couple of minutes without spotting one (from 9am to 6pm at least). They weren't tame at all and most would take off if you even looked at them funny. Iguanas are a protected species in Mexico so they can't be killed (and eaten). And I suspect that they help keep the bugs down.

We mainly just sat on the beach or by a pool, swam in the water, and ate. We both polished off a few books and magazines. Tara even got through a few journal articles. It was very relaxing.

We did take a couple of day trips. The first trip was a package deal: they took us to the Coba Mayan ruins. It boasts the tallest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatán peninsula (which is also one of the few remaining pyramids that you can still climb up, which we did). After Coba, we visited a Mayan village where we were shown how the Mayans live (and also how to make tortillas - I think we'll try that on our BBQ). We ate at a mexican restaurant (best pork I had the entire trip) and then stopped at a cenote, which is a flooded sinkhole, for a dip. It was a really fun trip.

The next day we headed out on our own for the morning. We hit the Tulum ruins early, before any of the bus tours were showed up and we got a few good shots. The Iguanas there were also much friendlier (sensitized to us humans). Tara got a couple good macro shots of the lizards. After the ruins we hit the public beach in the city of Tulum. The beach there was awesome, it just stretched out forever and the sand was the finest I've ever seen.

There is more I could write about, but I've gone on long enough as it is, so here is the highlights:

We attended the wedding of one of Tara's lab-mates. It was just coincidence that we booked our vacation for the same week that Meghan and Chris booked their wedding at the same resort. The wedding was very nice.
We got up early one morning to see if we could see any sea turtles laying eggs, but it was too clouds for them to come (they follow the light of the moon, or so we were told). They had been then earlier in the week though - their egg sites are roped off.
I went snorkeling for the first time. The first day was hard; I kept trying to breath through my nose and scratch my eyes. I was also a little panicky (the ocean is a scary place!). The second day was better.
Tara got her hair all braided and likes it so much she is thinking about keeping it.

We had a really really good time. It was a much needed break for Tara (and me too, but I did have a week off earlier in May).

Photos are coming. Check back here over the next couple of days or watch my flickr page for updates.

Oh ya, and Tara really did get bit by a fish, but that's another story.

Third time's a charm

2008-05-04T20:49:00.003-04:00

I brought my camera back to Black's today to get it fixed. This time I've been in contact with the guys that does the warranties for the company (in Ontario at least). He told me he is going to personally walk it over to Nikon himself. In addition to that I showed the issue to my guy at Black's; Tim seems to be the most camera knowledgeable in the store. He agreed that it was an issue. Hopefully it will come back fixed.

I'm glad I got the extended warranty. I paid $49.99 for it and it came with 100 free 4x6 prints. The prints are worth about $15 or so (and I've used them all), and the camera has been sent to Nikon 3 times. Black's has already lost money on it - it's got to have cost them more than $35 for three return shipments to Nikon. Mind you - if I had sent it to Nikon myself I like to think it would have been fixed the first time.

Anyways - I'm without a camera yet again. Wish me luck :)

Photo stroll (with a side of harassment)

2008-05-02T15:36:00.002-04:00

Today is the last day of my week off. The weather wasn't great for photos (overcast, diffuse, flat and boring), but I went out I anyways. I strolled through downtown Kitchener for a few hours this morning and got a few good photos.

I also got a little bit of harassment. After I took a photo of Budds clothing store storefront, mister Budd himself came walking out and demanded that I tell him why I was taking photographs of his store. Seems he worried about people doing that - I'm not sure why. Perhaps he is concerned that I'm with a property developer or that I was staking out the joint for a Ocean's Eleven style robbery. I don't know.

After convincing him that I wasn't with an organization and that I didn't have a business card, and after talking a bit about his store front he calmed down a bit. I still don't think he believed that I was just a photographer who likes to take photos, but there wasn't much more I could do to convince him.

Anyways - that was at the end of the morning. I got a good number of decent shots before he fouled my mood. A few are below (more on flickr).

Tack Locker complete

2008-05-01T16:22:00.004-04:00

Tara's tack locker is finished. It took about 10 hours longer than I had anticipated, but that' ok - it was fun to make.

It's basically a 2x2 frame of pine with 3/8 fir plywood for the sides and shelves and 6" pine T&G floor board for the door. Two and bit shelves, a nice spot for the crops and whips, enough hooks for everything (I hope) and two adjustable saddle racks. It turned out not too bad, if I do say so myself.

It's not without it's flaws. The floorboards were a bad idea for the door - the wood was warped enough that both doors have a insignificant twist to them. I tried several attempts to rectify the twist, but in the end I couldn't do much. In the first shot below, you can see that the door is sticking out a bit - I'm going to see if I can get strong enough magnetic latches that keep the door closed. So the lesson here is - if you are going to make one of these, don't use cheap floorboards (and use a planer!)

But I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I wasn't sure I would be able to pull it off, but I have a great dad who taught me everything I needed to know about building this thing (and who was just a phone call away in case I got into more trouble that I could deal with) - Thanks Dad! All those years ago you didn't think I was paying attention, did you. :)

Now the challenge will be getting it to the barn - not only is it large (46" x 28" x 76"), but it's also heavy - I guess it's about 100lbs empty. And we don't know if it's thin enough to make it up the stairs to the tack room at the barn. If it's not, we'll stick it in the bucket of the tractor and lift it up.

Most of Tara's tack is at the barn (in various rubber maids), but I populated the locker with as much of her tack lying around the house as I could find.

Anyways - this is what I've been doing for 3/4 of my week off. It's nice to build something solid for a change.

A swing and a miss

2008-04-24T22:12:00.002-04:00

I got a call from Black's Photography yesterday saying my camera was ready. It took only three weeks this time to get it back to me in the same condition it was when I sent it in. The Commander mode still isn't working which means I still can't use my new flash (see this, this and this for background).

So I'm headed back to Blacks tomorrow or Saturday to see what they can do for me. I'm not a pushy person, but this is getting ridiculous. I've never had to deal with a warranty issue before - any suggestions from you who have?

Photoroam at Snyder's Flats

2008-04-19T22:22:00.003-04:00

I went out to Snyder's Flats today with a bunch of people I don't know. Martin from work mentioned yesterday that a bunch of his friends were going and he asked the photogs at work if any of us were interested. Turns out the Carolyn and I were (we both have free weekends without our spouses).

I had a really good time - I met some cool people and I took some photos I'm really happy with. Plus the weather was warmer then it has been since the fall.

A few of my photos (more on flickr) ...

Tack Locker

2008-04-19T22:03:00.004-04:00

So I'm building a tack locker for Tara's birthday. Don't worry, it's not a surprise. It's coming along pretty well and Tara said I should post some photos of it. If anyone out there is interested, I can write down the rough plans I have in my head that have gone into this.

For those of you not part of the horse world, a tack locker is a cabinet/cupboard piece that horse people put the horse equipment in. It's like a tack box, but upright and larger.

This is the first draft. When I'm older and I have an extra $1000, I'd like to make another one out of a nice hardwood. Cherry perhaps as it reacts nicely to the ammonia in horse barns. Or a nice walnut. Until then, this will have to do. Plus it gives me time to hone my woodworking skills.

The locker is about half done. I'm soon adding a top shelf, plus the doors and sides. I'll also put that drawer that slides in the bottom (but for now Tara will use rubber maids down there). The saddle racks are adjustable height-wise to maximize space usage and flexibility.

Sorry for the poor quality photos - I wasn't planning on showing them to anyone except Tara.

[update - see this for the completed locker]

Quote of the day

2008-04-16T21:26:00.002-04:00

Overheard in a meeting today about customer supplied code

"Hitting F5 is not unit testing"

This probably won't make sense to my non-computer industry reader, but it's funny to those of us in the industry (or at least me).

Elmira Maple Syrup Festival; Copious Amounts of Food and People

2008-04-06T20:55:00.002-04:00

The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival was this weekend. After a couple of botched attempts I made it there. Tara and I were going to go but at the last minute she had a couple of patients in hospital that she had to see that morning. My backup plan was to go with some friends from work but that fell through as well. My third option came through - I ended up going with Laura and Tim (Tara's sister and brother-in-law) plus a bunch of Tim's university friends.

We got there about 3 hours later than Tara and I usually do and it was packed. P-a-c-k-e-d. We hit the pancake tent (a first for me) and I ate two plate sized pancakes with loads of maple syrup. With three bites left, I had to tap out. It was too many carbs without enough meat or something else in my belly. So off we went in search of meat.

Aside: About 20 minutes after we got our pancakes, there was word that they ran out of pancake batter. I didn't think that would have been possible.

We pushed our way through the crowds and I found some meat on a bun (back-bacon and sauerkraut - mmmmmm). It was exactly what my stomach needed. After that we wandered a bit, as much as you can wander with people pressing in on all sides, and then headed for the car. We didn't even see a quarter of the booths, but we all agreed that there were too many people there.

And that sums up the typical Elmira Maple Syrup Festival experience. Too many people and too much food. It was good.

Here are a few shots I took with Tara's D50.

Grumble grumble grumble

2008-04-03T18:10:00.005-04:00

I'm in a foul mood. It turns out there was a very good reason why my camera came back so quickly. It didn't get fixed.

I tried out the flash on the camera at work today and nothing. Not even a glimmer of light emited from the flash (except when we pushed the Test button).

So I called Nikon to see what was what. After going through an automated voice system, I was plunked to a helpful young man who, despite having to "install software" (ya, right) to look up what they did to my camera, was patient and friendly. He told me that all Nikon did was re-flash the firmware and clean the sensor. He also told me that the problem as reported to Nikon was "pop-up flash doesn't work". I told him that wasn't the case, that the pop-up flash worked fine except to trigger another flash. He didn't say much to that.

He had me diagnose the camera and flash on the phone with him.

"First reset the flash by pressing this key combination. Then reset the camera by pressing the two buttons with a green dot. Then reset the menu. Then change the camera to Commander mode. Then put the flash about a meter away and press the shutter button."

I did all that before I sent it in and I told him so, but I followed what he told me again. Sure enough, just like before, the flash went off the first time, but not the second, third, forth, or fifth. He had me move the camera closer to the flash. He then told me to try a different flash. When I told him that I already did, he said to send it in again.

So I did. I dropped it off at Black's tonight. And now I get to play the waiting game again. Only this time I'm going to call Nikon every day to try and catch the camera while it's there and make sure that they know what the problem is. I'm not convinced that Black's is relaying the information properly to Nikon.

And the kicker is that Black's wants me to pay for shipping for the camera even though I had bought the extended warranty which explicitly says that all shipping and insurance changes are covered. The main office has changed their policy apparently. The lady at the front was nice and just waived the charges without a fuss

OK, my rant is over. I feel better now. And hey - who knows I may be getting that D300 after all (probably not, but one can dream). I double checked my extended warranty and it says:

If your camera need repairs on three separate occasions under the terms and life of your warranty, we will replace your camera with a new or similar model at our discretion.

Two down, one to go I guess.

Three and a Half weeks

2008-04-02T22:23:00.002-04:00

Colour me impressed. Black's called today to tell me my camera was back from the shop. I took it in three and a half weeks ago. I haven't checked to make sure the problem is fixed because I lent my flash to George. He's bringing it to work tomorrow and then we can test it out.

I am impressed with both Black's and Nikon. A turn around time of less than a month is pretty exceptional if you ask me (and this is coming from a guy who knows way too much about the pain and problems involved with repairing electronic devices).

And it looks like they even cleaned my sensor for me. I love you Nikon.

The only downside is that I won't be upgrading to a D300 any time soon.

Photo Phix (foto fix?)

2008-03-25T23:12:00.003-04:00

My camera is still in the shop (which reminds me, I should call for an update tomorrow), so I'm taking this time to observe other photographs to see what I like, what I dislike, what I can emulate and what inspires me. Here's a list of where I go

pixdaus.com - User submitted photos from the web. A lot of it are duplicates from the web and there are a lot of landscapes there, but there are a good percentage of quality photos.

photo.net critique - The highest rated photos on photo.net. Often contains photoshopped stuff or just plain illustrations (not my cup of tea), but there is enough good stuff for me to check periodically. Warning - it does contain a fair amount of nudity, but you can filter out the nudes if you so desire.

Flickriver - Shows the top 500 most "interesting" photos on flickr for the day. Flickr's definition of interesting is, um, interesting, but ~20% of the photos there are worth more than a casual glance.

Strobist Pool - A Flickr group dedicated to off camera lighting, there are some really interesting technical shots here. See also Strobist's favorites - the best of the best according to a photographer I admire.

Nikon 50mm Pool - A Flickr group showing only photos taken with the Nikon 50mm 1.8. This lens is so amazing.

And if you have exhausted all of these, you can take a look at what I think are great photographs here - my list of flickr favorites. Chosen for their technical merit, creativity or just because I like them - these are my inspiration (photography-wise anyways - I've got plenty of other inspiration in my life beyond other people's photographs)

Emulsions and I don't mix

2008-03-13T20:09:00.003-04:00

It's been a bad week for me and my sauces. Nothing has gone right and everything has split.

On Tuesday night I tried my hand at making mayonnaise for the first time. By hand. It's one of the skills I want to have before I die.

If you don't know, mayo is just an emulsion of egg yolk and oil (with a bit of acid to help open up the egg proteins and get them all tangled up with the oil). The trick is to incorporate the oil as slowly as possible, or so I've been told. I got together my ingredients (egg yolk, 3/4C canola oil, 1 tsp lemon juice + my trusty whisk) and started beating. I beat the yolk and then put in a drop of oil and beat it again. I did this repeatedly, until 1/4 of the oil was incorporated. Things were starting to look good at this point; my mixture was really really thick. I started adding the oil a little bit more aggressively, perhaps a tsp at a time. All the recipes I've read say to pour in the oil in a thin stream, but I couldn't figure out how to do that while whisking and holding onto the bowl. At about the 3/5C of oil things went down hill. The mixture started to break; after I stopped whisking, the oil would seep to the top. I was hungry and hopeful, so I continued on and used up the whole 3/4C. Adding more oil didn't help (my head knew that would happen, but there was still this irrational hope that it was wrong). I threw it into my prepared chicken salad mix, added some store bought mayo and ate it anyways.

Tonight was no better. I made myself macaroni and cheese but my cheese sauce split. Another bust.

My cheese sauce is basically roux, milk and cheese. My downfall this time around was the type of cheese I used. Have you ever wondered why you don't see macaroni and blue cheese sold anywhere? It's because it's hard to make a smooth sauce with blue cheese If the temperature of the sauce gets too high, the proteins can clump together leaving clumps of cheese and water. I made the mistake of adding the blue cheese in with the gouda and colby and now I have leftover mac and cheese that is really watery with tiny clumps of cheese dispersed throughout.

So that's been my culinary week (and it's only Thursday). Tomorrow I make something that's harder to screwup.

What a winter

2008-03-09T14:51:00.007-04:00

For the third time this season, we had to skip church because of the weather.

The first service was canceled. The roads were not plowed in time for us to make it to the second service. The main roads were probably ok, but we saw a couple of cars get stuck on our street last night and there was even more snow on the ground in the morning. Then the plow came and we spent 45 minutes clearing the windrow. We are happy for the plough, but it does create more work for us. About 75% of the way through cleaning the windrow, the plough came by again, sealing our non-church attending fate. It's a good thing Creekside puts out the sermons on podcasts; we'll catch up on it later this week.

We've had a heck of a snowy winter. The UW weather station people say that with the last snowfall (37.5cm) we have broken the seasonal snowfall record of 245 cm. And I'm willing to wager we haven't seen the last of the falling snowflakes for the year.

The skies are sunny now but that doesn't hide the fact that we've shoveled 3 times in the past 24 hours. While it is a good source of exercise and of spousal bonding, I wouldn't mind if it was the last dump of snow we get for the year. The snow banks are higher than we are; there is no room for more snow.

Camera in the shop

2008-03-08T11:45:00.005-05:00

I took my camera into the shop this morning. The Commander Mode has stopped working. This means that I am not able to trigger my flash when it isn't attached to my camera. Boo!

If you don't care about cameras, especially Nikon, you can stop reading now and just remember that I won't be taking many new photos for a while. (My lovely wife has a camera she uses for her research at school that she said I could use, bless her soul).

I don't know if they will be able to fix my D70s. If the firmware is the problem they can probably fix it by re-flashing it. If the hardware is the problem then they there is a good possibility they can't; they stopped making the D70s a couple of years ago and I don't know how may spare parts they have. My Blacks extended warranty says that if they can't fix it, they'll replace the camera with an upgraded version since the D70s is out of production. I don't know what I would upgrade to (given a choice):

D40x/D60? - No camera body motor which precludes auto-focusing on my 50mm or my 105mm. This is a deal breaker for me. It also takes SD cards instead of CF, so I would need to buy all new media.
D80? - Same SD issue. Only syncs with the flash up to 1/200s while my d70s syncs up to 1/500s.
D200/D300? - Ideal since either of these are in my upgrade path (if I were to come into money), but they still only sync up to 1/320s. If I had to give up my beloved D70s, I'd push for one of these (the D300 of course :) ).

Another option I have is to continue to use the D70s without the Commander Mode and buy a third-party remote flash trigger. I could go with a cheap trigger ($40 Cactus trigger, made in China, spotty performance) or I could go with the Rolls Royce of wireless triggers ($400 - ouch). The problem with this option is that I can't use TTL metering with the flash but that may be ok as I am leaning more toward manually setting the flash level. I haven't made up my mind about going this route.

So ya, I'm kinda bummed about this. The guy at Blacks said I should expect a wait of 3-6 weeks. That seems like a long time.

Biscotti

2008-03-04T18:11:00.011-05:00

Mmmmmm - Biscotti. There really isn't anything better to eat with your coffee. Not a slice of coffee cake, not a boston cream donut, nothing.

Tara is going to have a number of patients in ICU over the next week so she asked me to make something that she could take in for the ICU staff. I made these biscotti last night and she'll take them in tomorrow. (If you work with Tara go bug the ICU folks for a cookie, but I'm not making any promises).

If you have any confidence in your culinary prowess, give these biscotti a go. Try not to eat them all yourself (even though they last for a couple of weeks).

If you don't like pecans or orange, remove those ingredients and replace it them with something else. You'll need about 4 tbsp of liquid, so don't forget that (I bet Baileys irish cream biscotti would turn out interesting). These are vegetarian, but not vegan; I don't know if you could substitute something in for the eggs, but I'm guessing the protein is important to the cookies.

Orange Pecan Biscotti (adapted from Fine cooking)

14 oz all purpose flour (about 2 3/4 C)
1 1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 C grated orange zest (about 2 oranges)
1 C pecans
3 large eggs, room temp
5 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp orange juice
2 Tbsp Grand Marnier (or 2 Tbsp orange juice if you don't want to buy a bottle just for the recipe)

1. Cover a cook sheet (non-rimed) with parchment paper. That's not shown, only because I ran out and forgot that I ran out. Believe you me, it's much easier with the parchment paper underneath but if you don't have any, just grease the cookie sheet.

2. Set the oven to 350F.

3. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Take about 1/4 C of this mixture and mix it in with the zest (so it doesn't clump). Stir the zest and pecans into the flour mixture.

4. Whisk together the eggs, olive oil, orange juice and Grand Marnier well.

5. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in the liquid mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon until blended. I sometimes use my fingers, but it does get sticky.

6. Split the dough into the three. Roll one third into a log (on a floured table) so it's a 12-16 inches long. Transfer to the cookie sheet and flatten the log to about 3/4 inch thick. Repeat with the other two thirds, making three logs altogether.

7. Bake the logs at 350 for 22->25 minutes. You don't want to brown the logs, just cook them. Rotate the sheet half way through.

8. Remove from oven when the top of the log is still a bit soft. Let them cool (to the point where you can handle them).

9. Slice the logs into thin strips. I like to go diagonally, but you don't have to.

10. Lay the slices back on the cookie sheet on their side (you may need more than one cookie sheet).

11. Bake for 8 minutes, turn the cookies over and bake for another 10-14 minutes. They should be a little soft when they are removed (as they will harden up as the cool).

12. Remove from oven and let cool. Eat with your favorite hot drink.

IngredientsMixed Dough
Three uncooked logs
Three cooked logs
Sliced logs
Ready for the oven (they don't look much different after baking)

Salad attempt

2008-02-24T17:40:00.004-05:00

Quick follow-up to the last post about re-creating a salad I had on Friday night.

I attempted the salad for friends on Saturday night. It turned out ok, but I think I can do better. Here is what I did:

a. Cut up a small head of cauliflower into small florets. Diced 3 medium beets. Put them both in the oven at 425F for 25 minutes.
b. Cut up some walnuts and threw them in the oven for 15 minutes
c. Whipped up a simple sesame vinaigrette (1 part dark sesame oil, one part olive oil, 1 part balsamic vinegar).
d. Mixed a, b, and c in a bowl with 4 handfuls of baby spinach and 200g of crumbled danish blue cheese.

Result: a nice salad but it didn't really "come together". The flavors were there, and they were good, but they were separate flavors. It didn't meld. Additionally, the beets were undercooked and the cauliflower was a tad over cooked.

Next time I'll make the following changes;
1. Boil the beets (and perhaps the cauliflower) and the stick them in the oven of a couple of minutes to dry them off. This will give me more control over their doneness.
2. Take the time to source some good gorgonzola. The danish blue was ok, but a bit stronger and creamier than I wanted.
3. Heat the vinaigrette so it wilts the spinach a tad and adds warmth to the plate.

Thank-you Tara and friends for letting me experiment on you.

If any of you try this out, let me know how it goes. Or if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.

(Sorry, no photo - it's not being a good host to photograph the food while you have hungry guests waiting to eat it.)

Two new salads

2008-02-23T12:23:00.007-05:00

Salad 1: Avocado Grapefruit Salad

This salad came by way of my coworker Ana^*. It's an ultra simple recipe; it's so simple that you may feel you don't want to try it. I urge you to resist that feeling. The salad will surprise you.

If you don't' like avocado, this recipe isn't for you. If you don't think you like avocado, then try this and re-evaluate that thought.

Ingredients:
1 ripe avocado, with shell and pit removed
1 ripe ruby red grapefruit, sectioned
1 pinch of salt

Steps:
a. Mix avacado, grapefruit and salt
b. Eat

Salad 2: Roasted beet and cauliflower salad

I had an amazing salad last night at a little restaurant in Guelph. It shouldn't be too hard to reproduce as I could identity most of the ingredients. I'm going to try to re-create it this weekend and post the results, but in case I don't get a chance and you want to try it here are the ingredients:

a. beets, cubed (1cm³) and roasted
b. cauliflower, small florets only, also roasted
c. gorgonzola cheese
d. toasted walnuts
e. baby spinach
f. sesame vinaigrette

The salad was presented warm, with the spinach oh so very lightly wilted. It was truly amazing, the best salad I have had in a long long time.

The main course at the restaurant was interesting: I had a pizza topped with pulled pork, mango, tomato, onion and feta. The pizza wasn't good but it wasn't bad either. It took the whole pizza for my mouth to get used to the odd combination of moist pulled pork and the sweetish mango. It wasn't bad, but the best word I can use to describe it is interesting.

* I just found out recently that Ana makes the awesome jewelry I see her wearing. If you are looking for something to buy for your loved one (or yourself), you should check her out (shop, blog).

Frozen toes for nothing

2008-02-21T19:36:00.005-05:00

Unless you don't listen to the news or read a newspaper or watch TV or visit other websites, you'll know that last night was the last full lunar eclipse that North America is going to see until 2010. I thought I'd celebrate this celestial event by taking some great photos.

I wasn't alone - my good friends George and Carolyn were up for it as well. So at 8:30 last night, we got all bundled up and headed to the great outdoors.

We drove north of the city to the Optimists Club. We hiked into a wide field and set up shop. Tripod, long lens, wireless shutter remote and patience - what more could you need, right?

I took photos and photos of the moon. I used all sorts of exposures and a wide range of apertures, hoping to get a nice crisp shot. It was cold, crispy cold out, but it didn't feel so bad with good friends around. Around 11:30 we packed up and headed to a Tims to warm up and shortly after that I was home.

I took a look at my photos after work today. I must say I'm pretty disappointed. They are all 'soft'; there isn't one that is crisp. All that time in the cold for nothing.

I don't know why none of my shots turned out. Perhaps I need to buy a lens of higher quality. Perhaps I left the shutter open too long, allowing the moon and earth to move a bit. Perhaps the lens had trouble focusing. I don't know.

Anyways - in case some of you were really excited about seeing a photo of the eclipse, here is the best one I could muster from last night.

Baby it's cold outside

2008-02-13T22:20:00.006-05:00

The other day I was flipping through the blogs I read when I came across this article on Twilight Photos. I read it, and then read it again, and thought that it might be an interesting exercise.

For those who don't care to read an blog article about photography, the author makes the point that many people take photos of sunsets and then move on. But the best photographs near twilight happen 30-40 minutes after the sun has set.

So I checked Environment Canada for the sunset time (5:48pm) and left work today at 5:00. I headed over to Victoria Park and found myself a good spot to setup (I was near that square building facing due west). And then I waited. And waited.

I took about 60 photos, all of the same frame with varying degrees of light and exposure. At 6:30 I called it quits - 75 minutes in the same spot was long enough. I took a few other shots on the way to the bus terminal and hoped that I had a winner. I grabbed some groceries (had burgers tonight, yum!), shoveled the driveway again and looked at my photos. I think the author was right.

All that time and cold and this is the best of the 60 shots, taken 40 minutes after the sun had set.

On the way to the bus, I grabbed this shot of the clock tower. It took 2 minutes to set up and get the exposure right. If it weren't for the previous 75 minutes spent in the freezing cold, standing near a camera and tripod, trying to stay warm, I would say that I like this shot better than one above.

Sprinkles

2008-02-02T12:42:00.000-05:00

Wife went to the barn this morning so I thought I'd setup up at the dinning room table and play with my new flash. I found some old cake sprinkles in out cupboard and went to town.

It was a lot of fun...

Poor cats

2008-01-30T20:38:00.000-05:00

I got a new toy for Christmas!(A super huge thank-you to you know who you are). It's a camera flash - SB-600. I'm really excited - I think it is going to open up a whole new world of photo fun.

I've been lurking over at strobist.com for while now (site, flickr). It's a blog about off-camera flash run by this awesome guy David Hobby. The reason he is so awesome is because has taken the time to extensively write about how to use cameras and flashes, all from the goodness of his heart. He gives this info away free on his blog. If you have any interest in learning about non-studio lighting you need to head over there and read up. If he ever does a seminar near me, I'll be the first in line to buy a ticket.

Anyways - now that I have a flash, I'm hoping to work my way through his Lighting 101 and Boot Camp series of assignments. Look for more photos here in the near future.

But in the mean-time, while I'm learning and gathering more equipment (I'm looking at this as an addition to the flash), I'm going to practice on my cats. They don't seem as adverse to the flash as I had anticipated. This is good but I may have to get my good wife to take a look at their eyes periodically to make sure I'm not burning out their retinas.

Mystery Plant

2008-01-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

I picked up a bouquet of flowers for my wife on the day she had her appendix out. I walked into the store and immediately saw what I would get her: three purple gerber daisies wrapped to a piece of bark in a vase with green stones at the bottom. It was very "Tara".

She loved it of course, probably because just it came from me. A couple of weeks later the gerbers died but the piece of bark started to grow shoots and roots. And now I don't think it's actually a piece of bark at all (they don't call me Mr. Obvious for nothing).

We're going to try to keep this thing alive for as long as we can. The shoots have grown 12cm since we got the thing. It's not pretty, but it is interesting.

I don't know if there are any armchair botanists who read this thing or even stumble upon it, but if you have any idea what this thing is, we would love to know. Leave a comment.

Overactive January

2008-01-22T19:11:00.000-05:00

So....

You know when you are right in the middle of Christmas and you have a flurry of things to do, people to see, and places to go? When you are feeling torn between getting everything done and 'enjoying the Christmas'? You know that thought that crosses your mind?

   "I love Christmas, but I'm kinda looking forward to a quiet January"

I've thought it. You've thought it. We all have. And I hope you have had a quiet January. Because ours has been anything but.

Two and a half weeks ago we were sitting at home on a Friday night wondering what we were going to do that weekend. Perhaps we'll go skiing with Tara's sister and husband we thought. We called them up and invited them to go skiing, but the weather was too warm and we just decided to have dinner together and catch a movie.

Before dinner Tara mentioned she wasn't feeling well and after dinner we all could tell she wasn't lying; she was doubled over in pain and kneeling on the floor. While we drove her to the emergency room, I couldn't help but think it was just my risotto that caused this (it was my first time making it - it turned out a little gummy). We saw a nurse right away and they took a CT scan of her gut. The doctor came back with a diagnosis: Appendicitis. But they couldn't operate at the current hospital so we got shipped to Grand River Hospital (at 1:00am).

Tara had her surgery the next morning and then had a couple of complications (nothing I need go into). She was in pretty bad shape for a few days. Her sisters and I went shopping for her and I got her these cool slippers that said "Kiss Me". I thought it might cheer her up, plus they were only $6. It turns out there was a reason they were only $6. They cat-called every time you stepped on them. While I thought this was hilarious (as did Laura and Alissa), I don't think Tara was all that impressed. Neither were her roommates at the hospital (but the nurses got a giggle).

Tara made it home and her mom came to stay with us for a few days to help out. Life could go on now I thought. Right.

Saturday night I closed the door on Fez's tail. At 10:30pm. This necessitated a trip to the Emergency Vet Clinic to pick up some pain killers. We thought it might be broken, but it's fine now. I felt pretty guilty about it, but thought it was just a bad ending to a bad week.

Nope there was more to come.

Tara started to feel worse and worse so on Thursday last week we brought her to the emergency room again. They did an utrasound and saw an abscess in her gut; they admitted her and started pumping her full of antibiotics. Unfortunately there was no beds in the hospital so Tara had to stay and sleep in the emergency room. For 30 hours. They did eventually find a bed for her, but the good surgeon said she could go home just 10 hours after that.

So ya, life has been full and interesting and scary and tiring this new year. I'd rather be in "Christmas mode". What can you do but ride the wave of life? (Because you know at some point that wave is going to crash up against the beach).

A huge thanks to everyone who helped us out over the past few weeks:
* Laura, Tim, Alissa and Linda for sticking around and pitching in
* George, Darren and Steve for giving us lifts (and you too Andy!)
* Our small group for passing along some movies to watch and food to eat
* Hannah and Deb for visiting my sick wife
* All those who sent flowers
* PEER Group for letting me take off time at such short notice
* All of you who have been praying

January has a week and a bit left in it. I'm not expecting a smooth ride, but I am expecting to have fun.

P.S. Here is an audio clip of the slippers. When you listen to it, imagine Tara shuffling along down the hallway, with the cat calls being made with each step...

The weather outside is frightful...

2007-12-16T19:26:00.000-05:00

Snow. We got it in spades this weekend. It started last night and it is still coming down. The helpful weather station at the university says we received about 25cm of snow, but I think it was a little more than that, at least in some places. The snow came up tot the top of my green boots which stand about 35cm tall.

We started the day with a call from a friend letting us know church was canceled this morning (thanks Darren!) Shortly after we got up and shoveled our driveway. The plow hadn't come yet so the end was easy. It took us just under an hour to get the whole thing done.

Thinking today would be a great day for doing laundry we headed to the grocery store to pick up some laundry soap. The trip took us about twice as long as it normally would - none of the sidewalks were shoveled. We took a quick photo tour of our neighborhood when we got back.

We ate some lunch and I watched the last 3/4 of a football game and then it was back out to shovel the driveway again. Another hour gone. We then ate dinner and I am now writing this post.

It's been a long day of mostly being out side and shoveling. I can't complain though - the snow was light and there wasn't any freezing rain. Plus Tara and I got to spend a bunch of time together. I hope it snows like this more often.

There are a few more photos from today on flickr.

Roasted Pork Loin

2007-12-11T21:27:00.000-05:00

I tried a new Pork Roast recipe out last night with a bunch of friends. It's in the latest Fine Cooking issue (Jan 2008): Roasted Pork Loin with Maple-Mustard Crust.

It really is an excellent recipe. Everyone enjoyed it and it's pretty simple to make. The only gripe I have is the cooking time - it took almost twice as long to get the roast to 145F than the recipe called for.

I recommend picking up this issue. In addition to great recipes for the pork left-overs, there are great recipes for bread pudding and gnocchi.

Below is the recipe I used (their recipe plus some tweaks).

Brine
8-10 C apple juice
3/4 C salt
1/4 C brown sugar
6 cloves garlic crushed
6 sprigs of thyme

Glaze
1/2 C maple syrup
5 tbsp whole grain mustard (PC brand works great)

Roast
1 4-5 lb Pork Loin, boneless and tied up.
1 large fennel/anise bulb, sliced
2 large apples (granny smith worked well), cored, peeled and diced
3 tbsp veg oil.

Step 1 - Make the brine and brine the roast (do the previous day)
Bring 3 cups of the apple juice to a boil and add the rest of the brine ingredients. Stir until salt and sugar are dissolved and remove from heat. Add remaining apple juice and let cool. In a large ziplock bag add the pork loin and the marinade and let sit for 18 hours.

Step 2 - Make the glaze and prep the roasting pan (preheat to 375F)
Make the glaze by mixing the maple syrup and mustard.
Put the apple, fennel, and oil in a roasting pan (a dutch oven works great). Toss.

Step 3 - Roast
Drain the Roast from the marinade and pat dry with paper towel. Place roast on the apples/fennel mix. Pour glaze over top.
Stick an instant read thermometer into the centre of the roast. Put the roast into the oven and roast until the temp reaches 145F (between 90 and 120 minutes)
Remove the Roast and let rest for 10-15 minutes. Slice and serve.

That's it. I promise next time to take pictures of the roast.

Sausage, Leek and Apple Pie

2007-12-04T21:27:00.000-05:00

I tried out a new recipe tonight: Sausage, Leek and Apple Pie.

When I was young we would eat store bought savory pies - I think they might have been made by Swanson. They had beef and peas and carrots in them and the crust was always hard and didn't taste like much. I never really liked them.

So when I saw the recipe for the savory pie at Making Light, I was a little hesitant. I mulled it over in my head for a couple of days before deciding to give it a try. It didn't have any of the same ingredients that I remembered from the old ones I had as a kid and all the recipes I've made from the Making Light have turned out well.

It took me just over an hour to get the pie together and another 45 min to cook it (this included time to make the pastry). It turned out well - not spectacular but way way way better than the pies I remember and the recipe is definitely filled with potential. I ate it with a nice Australian Pinot Grigio.

I did deviate from the recipe a tad. I omitted the saffron because I didn't have any in the house. I forgot the splash of sherry (which I do have in the house). Both of these would add to the savoriness and goodness of the pie. Next time I think I'll increase the sausage and decrease the leeks (there was a lot of cooking water that had to be reduced). I also didn't have any tapioca in the house which explains the runny sauce.

But all in all the recipe is a keeper. I may even try making individual pies to take to work/school.

Zucchini? Bleh!

2007-11-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

I hate Zucchini. I hate the taste and the texture; just the thought of it makes me unhappy.

And I'm going to learn to like it.

I've made myself like olives. A month before our trip to Morocco, I ate olives until they didn't disgust me. It took a bit of work, but by the time the trip came I could eat olives without making a face. And then in Morocco I had the most wonderful olives in existence (they have whole isles of olives in the grocery stores with trays to put the pits for tasting).

I've made myself like wine. The first wine I had was some awful ice wine, but then I started with the fruity wines and moved to more oaky and smoky wines. Now I'm into Chiantis and Pinot Noirs (not sure how you pluralize either of those).

My next target is zucchini - never really liked it. I bought 4 on Thursday and haven't yet had the guts to make anything with them. But tonight I'm going to try it sauteed with butter (lots of butter) and parmesan. Wish me luck.

And if you have a really great zucchini recipe that doesn't hide the taste, leave it in the comments - I'm willing to try pretty much anything.

Back from the hunt

2007-11-12T19:05:00.000-05:00

I'm back. From deer hunting.

(Fair warning: long post about deer hunting. If you morally object to hunting skip this one. My next post will be about zucchini [don't know if that is better or worse].)

My father-in-law told me that his hunting group needed a couple more people to go deer hunting with them this year as they were getting a little low on young blood. I got Friday off and we headed up to Lake Memesagamesing Thursday.

I was very excited but also very nervous. I didn’t grow up with people that hunted and I always envisioned them being crazy rednecks. I’m not really a “man’s man”, if you know what I mean. I also don’t do all that well around blood. Way out of my comfort zone.

I bought all of the gear I needed which really only consisted of clothing of the orange variety. Fluorescent orange toque and jacket, plus insulated rubber boots. Add a compass to that and a couple of things you should always have with you in the woods (matches, knife...) and I was ready to go.

Quick explanation for those who don't know how this works (I was in this category until Friday)

The group hunts from about 8:30 until 4:00 each day, doing 4 or 5 runs each day. A run consists of two groups of people: the watchers and the doggers. The watchers line up in a row and wait. The doggers walk or boat short distance (500-1000m) away and start walking to the watchers, barking occasionally. Yes, I said barking. The point is to scare the deer to the watcher line at which point the watchers will hopefully shoot one.

At this point you've probably realized that the watchers need to have guns, but the doggers don't. I don't have a gun. I ended up dogging every run. That's somewhere between 7 and 10 km of walking each day, through the bush, half the time without a trail. Noon the first day I started to hurt and the hurt lasted right until the end. I am out of shape.

We hunted Friday and Saturday. We got a deer on the last run of the first day. The run was on Burnt Island; the doggers making a line across the island and the watchers on the shore or in a boat. We accidentally let a deer get behind the line so we had to double back and then go forward again, walking the length of the island about 2.5 times. I was so tired after that run that I couldn't move. I just sat down and watched the deer being cleaned (no photos posted of that - you're welcome). I don't know if it was the fresh air or the fact that I was dead tired, but I watched the whole thing without getting queasy.

The second day was more and less eventful. Less because we didn't get a deer even though we walked a lot more than day 1. It was more eventful because I found a dog. In the bush. I crested a little hill and there was this little female beagle, just sitting there with one paw in the air. I tried to feed her but she wouldn't eat. I tried to get her to follow me, but she would do that either. She was close to skin and bones and I couldn’t just leave her there, so I put her on my shoulders like I would a lamb and dogged that last ¾ of the run with a 30 lb dog on my back.

We tied her up at the boat and continued hunting. At the end of the day we brought her back to the cottage with us. She belongs to a hunting group just up the road from where we were. The guys figure that she took off after a deer or rabbit and couldn’t find her way back. I’m just glad I found her and brought her back (even though I got a bit of ribbing for carrying a dog through the bush).

After each day, everyone from the hunt, plus their spouses and kids, plus others from the group of cottages all gather somewhere for drinks and food. Here the stories come out about great hunts, getting lost, or someone's folly. Everyone was ultra-friendly and made me feel right at home.

The guys who hunt Memesagamesing are a great bunch of guys. They accepted me without hesitation. I got my fair share of teasing for not having a gun and for rescuing the dog, but it was all without malice.

There is tonnes more to talk about, but I'm sure I've bored you long enough.

So I’m back. I didn’t get lost in the woods (not a huge concern) and I didn’t faint at the sight of a deer being gutted (a big concern). And I’m thinking of getting my firearms license and a doe tag and going up again next year.

(FYI: this is my 100th post)

Stepping out of my comfort zone

2007-11-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

A wise man once said to me:

"People are so afraid of being uncomfortable. Don't people know that you grow the most when you are out of your comfort zone?"

The conversation was in June and I have been thinking about it ever since. And while I firmly believe that one needs a comfort zone where one feels safe, I also agree with my friend about stepping out of that zone.

And I am. This weekend. I'm going on an adventure, at least for me.

Wish me luck - I'll let you know how it went on Monday. If I make it back.

2007-11-07T19:42:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago a Martin Gommel posted a blog entry entitled 100 Things I've learned about Photography. If you are into photography, there are some real gems of information in there.

Making a list of things you've learned about a particular subject is worthwhile activity. If you are like me you often forget what you've learned. Writing it down re-enforces it in you brain; you'll remember it quicker next time you need to.

I'm not at the point in photography to have a list of 100 things I've learned (I'm not sure I can fill a top 10 list). I can, however, fill a top 13 list of things I've learned about cooking. So without further ado:

Thirteen things I've learned about cooking

1. Cook with others - you'll learn something new.
2. Cook for others - nothing will spur you on to be a better cook then that look of appreciation when handing someone a meal, a loaf of bread or even a homemade cookie.
3. When trying out a new recipe do as much prep as possible before you start. The same goes of old recipes.
4. Acquire and use prep bowls of all sizes - they are invaluable and you can never have too many.
5. There aren't many foods that don't benefit from the addition of cheese.
6. Place an oven mitt over the handle of anything that comes out of a hot oven.
7. Cooking without a recipe exercises the creative part of your brain. Closing following a high-quality recipe exercises your technique. You need to do both.
8. Try to overcome food dislikes and periodically retry food that you thought you didn't like. You might surprise yourself.
9. Learn how to make roux - it'll make pan and béchamel sauces a breeze. Sauces finish a plate.
10. Learn to make your own chicken stock. It'll blow away the store bought stuff.
11. Practice chopping. Carrots, onions and potatoes are cheap. Consistency is better than speed.
12. Use your good friends as new recipe guinea pigs - they'll tell you when a meal stinks.
13. Be mindful of presentation, even for you and your family. Good presentation will make food taste better.

So there you go - 13 tips you can use next time you cook.

Can you make a top 13 list of things you've learned about something?

Totally stoked

2007-11-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

Let me preface this with the blatant observation that I am neither young nor hip so I don't know if "stoked" is a word that is still in use by the hip kids. In case it is not and you weren't born between 1970 and 1985, the definition is as follows:

Stoked: adjective - to be "stoked" is to be completely and intensely enthusiastic, exhilarated, or excited about something. Those who are stoked all of the time know this; being stoked is the epitome of all being. When one is stoked, there is no limit to what one can do.

And I am officially stoked.

If you look at my flickr stream you probably know that I take my camera to the barn almost every time I go. A few weeks ago someone asked Tara if I took pictures of horses for people (other than Tara). She said she would ask me.

I thought about and decided to give it shot. I figured that if I put up a small ad at the barn for 'photos by Richard' the worst that would happen is that either a) I would get no takers b) I would take some photos for someone and they wouldn't care for them. While both would be a blow to my self-esteem, it would be one I could handle. So I put up a flier with a quick advertisement, my flickr account link and my email address.

A week went by with no takers.

And then the Friday before last, one of the boarders at the barn asked Tara if I would mind taking photos of her two horses. When Tara told me, I was both excited and nervous. We set a date for the coming Sunday. I didn't sleep well the night before.

Sunday came and as soon as we got to the barn, the sun slipped behind some rain clouds. As quickly as I could, I took some photos of the first horse. I did my best to remember all the theory in my brain - the rule of thirds, filling the frame, movement towards the center, change up the perspective, look for the details, the exposure triangle. Plus I did my best to carry on a conversation with the horse's owner. After about 25 minutes of shooting we felt rain drops and called it quits. I wasn't thrilled with all the shots but I thought I had done a decent job considering the lack of sun.

I watched Tara tack up Lego and warm him up. After a few minutes I looked outside: the rain had stopped and the sun was peering out. I ran to the door and look at the clouds; there were still a number of them in the sky, but I had some time. I walked out to the paddock and started shooting. 45 minutes I had some better shots of the first horse and a few of the second.

Later that day I picked out about 70 of the best shots, then cropped and corrected their colour. I turned them into thumbnails and burned them to a CD; Tara was going to drop the CD off on Monday. Her schooling got in the way and the CD didn't make it to the barn until Thursday. Friday night I got an email - the client (I can call her a client!) requested 11 photos! Eleven! I was totally stoked!

I got her photos printed today and I'm going to deliver them tomorrow.

I'm not looking to turn this into a career but it is very very cool that someone wants to buy my photos.

Whisky sour

2007-10-23T19:33:00.000-04:00

My Lovely is away this week, working in a clinic in Toronto. This has left me alone with my culinary shackles unleased. So what do I make for dinner? Simple steak and potatoes. I decided on my way home to pick up a bottle of Chianti.

But that's all beside the point. The thing that caught my eye inside the LCBO was a advert for an amateur photography competition, main prize a photography package*: "Whisky in focus". With a quickening step I walked home eager to find out more.

(aside: I don't drink whisky. Don't really like the stuff. But I have a small bottle in the house for a wonderful whisky-maple glaze I make for grilled chicken)

I fed the cats as the computer warmed up. I logged in, brought up Firefox and typed in lcbo.com . The photo competition link was front and center. Bingo. I started devouring the site (even though it opened up a new browser window -I hate that)

Five categories, blah blah blah, annoying music with an poorly placed mute button, blah blah blah, contest details. I read over the terms and conditions when I see this:

... At the time you send any Photo Entry, in whole or in part, to the LCBO, and whether or not your entry is selected as a winner, you irrevocably transfer, convey and assign to the LCBO all right, title and interest in and to your Photo Entry, in whole and in part, and all the intellectual property rights therein, throughout the world in perpetuity, including without limitation any and all copyrights and the registration, renewal, and derivative rights and you waive all moral rights ...

Full Stop. Come on LCBO - you want me to give you all the rights of each photograph I submit to you with the slim hope I could win a camera? I may be a poor Software Tester, but I know enough to know that this is a bad deal. This is more than the rights to display and use the photos - this is complete control transfered from me to you. Under this deal I wouldn't even be able to post submitted photos to my Flickr account or put them on this blog.

This smells like the LCBO trying to build up the stock photograph portfolio.

I'll be passing on this contest.

To any of you reading this that are considering entering this contest, I wish you luck but do consider the terms. You may not care what happens to your photograph and that's fine. But it's not fine for me.

If anyone from the LCBO wants to contact me, leave a comment and I'll get back to you right away.

*The grand prize is a photo package that includes a 10 megapixel camera, but they don't specify the make or model - perhaps they don't know yet...