Or is that a car of shells?
If you’re out and about in Surrey, usually near the beaches, you might just see this small, crafty car. The shot above is a close up showing the wonderful detail of the hood.
Pretty much every inch of the car is covered with shells, or glass beads of some kind. Very creative.
Here’s the entire car, parked in the lot at Crescent Beach this last summer. Local art at its finest.
Every once in a while, life seems to drift over to video games. LIke now for instance.
On the iPad, I’m helping some Angry Birds get their eggs back. On the XBox, I’ve just finished Call of Duty, Black Ops, and I’ve moved backward in the series to Call of Duty, World at War. It’s amazing how fast the day can fill up 😉
We’ll see how it goes. I was really hoping that Halo 4 would be out this year, but apparently it’s not due until the holiday season of 2012. Sigh. That has to be one of the best game series of all time, right up there with classics like Quake and Half-life.
This photo relates mostly to the Angry Birds. As soon as I sat down on a picnic bench at Green Timbers Lake, this little fellow flew down from a tree and started walking toward me. As he got closer and closer, his wings got wider and wider, showing more and more of his bright red plumage. He actually got quite close and let out a scream – ok, an angry chirp.
Guess I was supposed to run. When I didn’t, he turned slowly and walked away at an angle, watching me carefully for a few feet until he flew away. I guess I’d been warned and that was enough.
Now, about those eggs…
I spent a few minutes around 11:00 today thinking about our Canadian veterans. I’m sure thankful for their work and dedication to keeping us safe.
As a young man, I spent some time in the army cadets, navy league and naval reserves, but I really have no idea of what it’s like to serve in dangerous times. Some of us boomers were lucky enough to miss a war. There were various UN and NATO actions we contributed to as a nation, but so far, no all out war with another nation like there was with the two world wars.
I hope we can keep it that way, and perhaps spending a few minutes of silence with our families once a year on November 11 will help. Fingers crossed!
Asking “What do you do?” seems like an odd first question in a networking session.
For extreme networking, I guess it’s appropriate. But if we’re trying to get to know, like and trust others before we do business with them, why do we ask for the sales pitch first?
Just sayin.
My niece, down in Oz, is using my photo of a flower from Surrey’s City Hall as a basis for a painting. It’s almost done, and her art instructor wants her to name it. She sent me an email asking what it was, but I had no clue. I said I’d see if one of the City Hall gardeners could help.
What helpful people down at City Hall. The security guard looked up from his mulit-security camera monitoring station and smiled when I arrived at his desk. He put out a call on his radio to see if anyone had seen a gardener out about. When they radioed that they had, he asked them where, let me know and I was off.
Estimated time: 3 min.
A quick walk across the property and I was talking to the gardener. She took one look at the photo on my iPhone, smiled and said, “That’s easy. It’s a magnolia, Magnolia stellata to be precise.”
Estimated time: 3 min.
There were a hundred ways that could have been a much worse experience. But it wasn’t. It was great for me. And the guard and the gardener have a story to tell about how they helped a guy that came in today looking for the name of a flower in a photo on his iPhone; how something different happened today.
Some days, life is grand.
The OV movement in Vancouver (and the one in Victoria) seems to have lost its way. The folks in tents seem to have lost the sympathy that many of the rest of the 99% had with the cause. Now we have a very small, more militant group (of anarchists?), trying to talk for the 99% and egging the authorities on into some form of war.
The movement started out with some ‘demands’ that I could relate to:
– It is obscene how some people are ‘earning’ millions of dollars a year, while the people that do the work for them earn a pittance
-There is a lot of pollution in the world, and there has to be a better way to deal with it
– The cost of education is getting way out of hand, especially when you consider the wages young folks make
– and others, I’m sure
Those issues should be addressed, and soon.
But, and that’s a big But, when the participants resort to biting police and throwing bottles of urine at city workers, those folks lose all credibility. That’s no longer peaceful protest. That’s assault, and that’s a crime. They’ve just invited the police in to do what they do – restore some form of civility on a mob.
Guess we’ll see what happens. It is too bad though. It started as a noble cause.
There are times in life when you have a goal, and the path to get there seems pretty clear. You head in that direction, and with minor corrections along the way, you get to where you hoped to go, or close.
Other times the goal is less clear, but the path seems to lead you along. Along the way there are corrections, forks in the road where each possible path seems equal. Given that you have no clear goal, it doesn’t really matter which path you take. To paraphrase a famous cat (or was it a queen?), “either way, you’ll get there”.
Both scenarios can be satisfying, and it’s good to mix them up. Following the first keeps you focused, and following the second helps you explore.
I’ve spent a lot of time exploring, with occasional periods of focus. That’s served me well.
How about you? Do you take time for both?
Over the last few years, the City of Surrey has been developing networks of bikeways and walkways to encourage people to get out of their cars. Last summer, they finished off a couple of critical links in the form of bridges, one in South Surrey, and one in the Tynehead Park area of North Surrey.
Both bridges have a modern, striking design with colourful, animated lights. They cross over highways and let pedestrians and cyclists avoid the crazy-busy roads in the area. This bridge, near Tynehead Park, crosses Highway 1 and links up the residential areas to the north.
By all reports, the bridges are well received, and will do a lot to link up any future development in the areas north and south of the highway. In the meantime, they make great camera fodder 😉
Next August, my 3 year contract for the iPhone 3GS with Rogers is up. Unfortunately, that’s still 10 months away. The question now is whether or not to upgrade early to the iPhone 4S and pay the silly extra fees they want me to pay to do so.
I checked when the new phone came out. Rogers wants a $45 Early Upgrade Fee and a $35 Hardware Upgrade Administration Fee. I assume that the 45 bucks is either to move to a new contract before my time or finish paying off my 3GS. The 35 bucks is probably to pay the retailers for putting the SIM card in and setting things up. But why price all that and then say that there is also some $50 Hardware Upgrade Credit???? Would that be for my old phone?? Who knows.
The pricing of network services (including phone and cable) continues to amaze me, but that rant is for another post. grrr.
Anyway, the new iPhone has a faster processor and the camera is a huge improvement over my current iPhone camera. Those are really the two reasons I might upgrade before my time. I’m finding the old 3GS is running slower and slower with the OS upgrades and the camera is not quite to the point I’d like for a day-to-day point and shoot camera.
Most of the rest of what the 4S offers is nice, but not really that important to me. I’m also hearing about some problems with battery life and extra network usage by Siri, the new voice command and control assistant. iCloud still seems to be a work in progress as well, but perhaps that’s just my impression.
So with all that, the 4S sort of sounds like a stop gap to keep us Apple fans happy until the iPhone 5, which would bring iCloud and the phone together as one. Just speculation on my part, but there ya go.
So, would you upgrade your phone early for a little extra speed and a new camera? Or would you wait for the iPhone 5 next spring/summer? Inquiring minds would like to know.
It was quite a treat two days ago, when I got a call from SBofT asking if I was able to cover their Business Excellence Awards (BEA) on November 3, at Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel in Surrey. Their usual photographer, my shooting buddy, was unable to work that night. He usually has the event well covered.
The shoot covers a VIP session, where the nominees get to meet and greet before dinner, general networking before dinner, speeches and the award presentations themselves. There are usually several photo requests after the event as well – winners and the family, winners with the employees, people with the keynote speakers, etc.
Just for a bit of a change here, I’m going to link off to the SBofT photostream on Flickr. Photos from the event are up. I spent the morning doing some post-processing work and put a photo disc together by 2 pm. Heather, in the SBofT office, had them posted in about 5 minutes. She’s quick!
Unfortunately, none of the photos have titles, but you can find out who won what via the SBofT website.
Overall, I was happy with most of the shots. I used Nikon’s newish 24-120 f4 lens, which offers a good focal range for event work. Compared to a f2.8 lens, the f4 is a bit of a trade off with weight, but the focus is quite responsive.
That said, there were a few shots where I didn’t seem to get the focus where I wanted it. It could have just been camera shake, but it could also have been a combination of f-stop and focal length not giving me the depth of field I needed with the subject(s) I had.
I’ll have to experiment more with the lens. Each one has it’s own foibles; it just takes time and practice to get use to them to advantage.
donsca 