Thursday, March 29, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Reports from the dog walk #5
Still very climate focused. Lots of people in shorts, short sleeves and flip-flops - me ? I was wearing shorts. Kooper was panting and his tongue hanging out. The beautiful aroma on tree blossoms in the night air. At least 3 homes with air conditioners going. Ski gear displayed in Sporting Life's windows looks silly. Heavy belly full of chili, hope to feel better for my late night ultimate game in an hour.
Reports from the dog walk
March 19, 2012. Met up with a strange creature - shepherd like head but short legs...then there was his dog !
Feb 27th, 2012. I've recently started working for a new company and for the first time in my life, I'm working from home. I had a pretty busy day with conference calls and technical "ramping up", then had my head down doing photo editing in the evening. I didn't realize it, but I hadn't stepped out the house until I just walked Kooper close to 11pm. Much colder than the thermometer says with a wicked wind. Glad to be back home.
Feb 26th, 2012. Very mild winter. Buds on a a Cherry tree on Rosewell Ave. Flower buds on the older gentleman's lawn - white bell shapes. Lovely sunny morning, very still - turns out to be the best weather of the day.
Dec 6, 2011. Report from the dog walk: fueled by Kasabian tunes - can't wait until Toronto March gig; but then again - slow down I'm getting old.
There's a few others that I've posted in the past (on Twitter or Facebook) that I don't seem to be able to find.
Feb 27th, 2012. I've recently started working for a new company and for the first time in my life, I'm working from home. I had a pretty busy day with conference calls and technical "ramping up", then had my head down doing photo editing in the evening. I didn't realize it, but I hadn't stepped out the house until I just walked Kooper close to 11pm. Much colder than the thermometer says with a wicked wind. Glad to be back home.
Feb 26th, 2012. Very mild winter. Buds on a a Cherry tree on Rosewell Ave. Flower buds on the older gentleman's lawn - white bell shapes. Lovely sunny morning, very still - turns out to be the best weather of the day.
Dec 6, 2011. Report from the dog walk: fueled by Kasabian tunes - can't wait until Toronto March gig; but then again - slow down I'm getting old.
There's a few others that I've posted in the past (on Twitter or Facebook) that I don't seem to be able to find.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Reports from dreamland #1
Missed and ill prepared school tests (parents taking tests with their children), car trouble, snow and hills and rental cars, wardrobe malfunctions, dog trouble, late night business meetings, missed meals...not quite a nightmare, but hardly restful.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Quotes from the last week
From Felix J. Palma's The Map of Time, page 585 - "...sometimes the best way to find out what we want is to chose what we do not want".
From Fox's new TV Series Alcatraz, Episode 8 on the difference between spirituality and religion - "Spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward.”
From Fox's new TV Series Alcatraz, Episode 8 on the difference between spirituality and religion - "Spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward.”
Monday, February 20, 2012
At last, a good reason for a lottery
I'm not a big fan of lotteries. The fact that governments encourage gambling (and known addiction) is appalling. And the fact that lotteries (naturally) appeal mostly to the the less-wealthy of the population, makes the practice even more sinister.
But, people love to gamble and play the lottery. But what if they could play and potentially win something without sacrificing their hard earned money ?
I was travelling last week and the hotel I stay at next to my HQ in Cupertino (Kimpton's Cypress) is kind enough to deliver a paper of choice to its members staying at their hotels (membership is free). I chose the NY Times for its top-notch journalist and interesting non-news insights. I often keep papers for reading when I'm back home and have some spare time on the weekend.
I just read a wonderful little op-ed by Rhichard H. Thaler, called Making Citizenship Good Fun (Feb13th, 2012). It's not about citizenship, as-in immigration, but rather our responsibility to be good citizens, recycling, paying taxes etc. The article cites some wonderfully creative ideas from around the world to encourage good citizenship rather than what most of us face, negative reinforcement. A few of which reward good citizenship with the chance at a lottery, like dispensing lottery tickets for doggy waste in New Taipei City or attaching lottery tickets to restaurant receipts in mainland China (reducing cash transaction tax work-arounds).
Now that's the kind of lottery I could support. Reward people for doing the right thing with a chance at winning a few doubles and having some fun in the process.
But, people love to gamble and play the lottery. But what if they could play and potentially win something without sacrificing their hard earned money ?
I was travelling last week and the hotel I stay at next to my HQ in Cupertino (Kimpton's Cypress) is kind enough to deliver a paper of choice to its members staying at their hotels (membership is free). I chose the NY Times for its top-notch journalist and interesting non-news insights. I often keep papers for reading when I'm back home and have some spare time on the weekend.
I just read a wonderful little op-ed by Rhichard H. Thaler, called Making Citizenship Good Fun (Feb13th, 2012). It's not about citizenship, as-in immigration, but rather our responsibility to be good citizens, recycling, paying taxes etc. The article cites some wonderfully creative ideas from around the world to encourage good citizenship rather than what most of us face, negative reinforcement. A few of which reward good citizenship with the chance at a lottery, like dispensing lottery tickets for doggy waste in New Taipei City or attaching lottery tickets to restaurant receipts in mainland China (reducing cash transaction tax work-arounds).
Now that's the kind of lottery I could support. Reward people for doing the right thing with a chance at winning a few doubles and having some fun in the process.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Scarborough lakeshore landscape
Via Flickr:
Scarborough Bluffs.
Yes, this is actually in the city of Toronto !
Scarborough Bluffs.
Yes, this is actually in the city of Toronto !
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Morning neurons, incl. photography, music, sports and work
I'll glad Kooper woke me up early. I took another Saturday as the weekend day for a hangover, leaving me clear headed this morning (not a fan of hangover Sundays). Lots of neurons firing this morning, especially after our long walk. Beautiful morning out there kids.
Photography - I've been tackling photo organization and editing methods and choices for some time. I paid a visit to Thomas at 44wide on Friday and his simple advice for photographers (of my ilk) - just shoot in raw and use Lightroom. So I'm seeing if Lightroom (version 4 beta now available at no cost), fits my needs. But it gets complicated quick, as my wife is a little more stubborn than me and wants to stay with Photoshop Elements and doesn't want to bother with raw image processing, so I may have a setup that looks something like:
Music - still trying to create a formula that defines the PJMixer music taste(s). I've always said certain music fits best with certain times of the days or energy levels. Simple examples are downbeat electronica late at night, mellow folk-rock in the mornings and dance music when you need to be energized (ultimate pre-game). But a element that keeps playing with my musical neurons is the sound of horns - love 'em in electronica (Thievery Corporation) right through rock (Rolling Stones) and those big doses in soul and of course jazz. Now adding an accented female vocal element starts to shape the PJMixer formula. Then the variances for mood and time come into play, heavy bass and groove rhythms (man I can never spell that word) for urban music and later pm time slots; acoustic instrumentation for more organic sounds for daylight hours. I need to spend more time in the lab, but the formula is coming along nicely. Playlist for the dog walk this morning included Bon Iver and Noah and the Whale.
Work - I was a quite a week, resigning on Monday and trying to handle logistics of wrapping up 7 years with my old company and transitioning into the new company, starting with a quick trip to California for some training starting Valentine's Day (sorry darling). I'll now be working from home, which is a first for me, but looking forward to a change. I'm excited about the move, new challenges and some great opportunity. More later on other channels (Linkedin).
Sports - great sports day planned. Manchester United play Chelsea in just about 15 minutes. If you haven't noticed, Fox have started showing EPL games live on Sundays - great bonus for footy fans who can't afford Sportsnet World / Setanta. I'm cheering for Man U (a rare occasion) as Arsenal try to bump Chelsea out of the top 4 for a Champions League spot. After that, I've got a 3pm ultimate game with a new masters team, which works out perfectly to get home for Super Bowl sunday festivities - chili, beer plus.
Thanks Kooper.
Photography - I've been tackling photo organization and editing methods and choices for some time. I paid a visit to Thomas at 44wide on Friday and his simple advice for photographers (of my ilk) - just shoot in raw and use Lightroom. So I'm seeing if Lightroom (version 4 beta now available at no cost), fits my needs. But it gets complicated quick, as my wife is a little more stubborn than me and wants to stay with Photoshop Elements and doesn't want to bother with raw image processing, so I may have a setup that looks something like:
- "art" photography (raw images) processed, organized and shared with Lightroom
- occasionally dropping into Photoshop (Elements) for edit tools that I'm a fan of, but are missing from Lightroom, e.g. high pass filter.
- Casual family shots, JPGs from non-DSLR cameras, iPhone shots etc processed, organized and shared with Photoshop Elements
- exporting some art photos from Lightroom to Elements (need to do some research on how to do this properly - with the goal to avoid multiple copies of images, but ok for raws to be in Lightroom and JPGs to be in Elements)
- Note that there's a nice Picasa (Google+) plug-in for Lightroom that could help with sharing those family shots or broadening my sharing to Google+.
Music - still trying to create a formula that defines the PJMixer music taste(s). I've always said certain music fits best with certain times of the days or energy levels. Simple examples are downbeat electronica late at night, mellow folk-rock in the mornings and dance music when you need to be energized (ultimate pre-game). But a element that keeps playing with my musical neurons is the sound of horns - love 'em in electronica (Thievery Corporation) right through rock (Rolling Stones) and those big doses in soul and of course jazz. Now adding an accented female vocal element starts to shape the PJMixer formula. Then the variances for mood and time come into play, heavy bass and groove rhythms (man I can never spell that word) for urban music and later pm time slots; acoustic instrumentation for more organic sounds for daylight hours. I need to spend more time in the lab, but the formula is coming along nicely. Playlist for the dog walk this morning included Bon Iver and Noah and the Whale.
Work - I was a quite a week, resigning on Monday and trying to handle logistics of wrapping up 7 years with my old company and transitioning into the new company, starting with a quick trip to California for some training starting Valentine's Day (sorry darling). I'll now be working from home, which is a first for me, but looking forward to a change. I'm excited about the move, new challenges and some great opportunity. More later on other channels (Linkedin).
Sports - great sports day planned. Manchester United play Chelsea in just about 15 minutes. If you haven't noticed, Fox have started showing EPL games live on Sundays - great bonus for footy fans who can't afford Sportsnet World / Setanta. I'm cheering for Man U (a rare occasion) as Arsenal try to bump Chelsea out of the top 4 for a Champions League spot. After that, I've got a 3pm ultimate game with a new masters team, which works out perfectly to get home for Super Bowl sunday festivities - chili, beer plus.
Thanks Kooper.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Movie reviews - January 2012
Great prequel premise and story line, but I couldn't really get past the CG apes - their expressions weren't convincing to me. However, pretty entertaining and rather scary at times.
The Tree of Life (2011)
Very unusual film - full on art film with very sparse story and dialog. Very difficult to get into, but once I began absorbing the mood and visuals, I was glued. Superb acting, especially from the youngsters and beautiful cinematography. Definitely not for everyone but was pretty special in my book.
The Dilemma (2011)
Hard to categorize this one, serious plot and emotions, but lots of Vaughn driven humour. Perfect casting: Vaughn prime; James showing some depth; Queen Latifah rock solid and Ryder the evil villain. Lots of awkward moments through a cleverly crafted plot, but Vaughn banter was irresistible.
The Green Hornet (2011)
Very silly, but Rogen's humour was contagious and the car and effects were awesome. Christoph Waltz was superb (again) and added a full star to my rating.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Photo organization and editing on OSX
In response to a friend's Facebook question - can anyone share experiences with Picasa, iPhoto, Aperture, or Other on OSX ? I jotted down the following notes and thought I'd post it hear for those that may be interested.
I have over 50K photo files (JPGs and raw - I shoot in both and try to keep one or the other, but often keep original and edited versions) to manage, so I've tried a few different photo software products on different platforms.
I started off many years ago with Picasa on my PC. I still think it's a very good product and I recommend it to many people for organization and basic editing needs. I use it on occasion to post to my Google web albums and it seems to run fine on my Mac computers (Macbook and iMac). I only use iPhoto occasionally to get albums onto my iPhone.
But I've been using Photoshop Elements now for quite a few years. Loved it (v6) running on my PC until my library got too big and the PC too slow. So I moved to an iMac just last year with Photoshop Elements (v9). But the experience has been less than perfect and has exposed some bugs and different functionality on OSX. I'm sticking with it and have noticed that one really stupid bug (date changing) has been fixed. Note that I use PS for my raw processing/edits too.
As I wasn't 100% happy with Elements, I tried Aperture and Lightroom. Lightroom had all the organizing features I was looking for, but you still needed PS Elements or PS CS for edits so the price would be too high. I played around with Aperture for a little while - it seemed to have everything to needed but all the editing functions were completely different to what I've been learning in PS for many years. So I dropped it.
Good news is that you can try all these products out with full featured eval versions. I'm sticking with PS Elements on my iMac, my workflow works well for me and it's not having any consistent problems with my 50k+ library, and the thing I like the most is that PS is still the my common product in the market so you see lots of tips in the mags (although sometimes the features mentioned are only in PS CS).
I have over 50K photo files (JPGs and raw - I shoot in both and try to keep one or the other, but often keep original and edited versions) to manage, so I've tried a few different photo software products on different platforms.
I started off many years ago with Picasa on my PC. I still think it's a very good product and I recommend it to many people for organization and basic editing needs. I use it on occasion to post to my Google web albums and it seems to run fine on my Mac computers (Macbook and iMac). I only use iPhoto occasionally to get albums onto my iPhone.
But I've been using Photoshop Elements now for quite a few years. Loved it (v6) running on my PC until my library got too big and the PC too slow. So I moved to an iMac just last year with Photoshop Elements (v9). But the experience has been less than perfect and has exposed some bugs and different functionality on OSX. I'm sticking with it and have noticed that one really stupid bug (date changing) has been fixed. Note that I use PS for my raw processing/edits too.
As I wasn't 100% happy with Elements, I tried Aperture and Lightroom. Lightroom had all the organizing features I was looking for, but you still needed PS Elements or PS CS for edits so the price would be too high. I played around with Aperture for a little while - it seemed to have everything to needed but all the editing functions were completely different to what I've been learning in PS for many years. So I dropped it.
Good news is that you can try all these products out with full featured eval versions. I'm sticking with PS Elements on my iMac, my workflow works well for me and it's not having any consistent problems with my 50k+ library, and the thing I like the most is that PS is still the my common product in the market so you see lots of tips in the mags (although sometimes the features mentioned are only in PS CS).
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Coincidence - Nagra pops in in Alcaltraz
Watching the Golden Globes on Sunday night, my wife confuses Slumdog's Freida Pinto with the actress from Bend it like Beckham, Parminder Nagra. Unlike, Pinto who I'd seen recently in Rise of the the Planet of the Apes, I hadn't heard nor seen Nagra in a long time.
I decided to give the new Alcatraz series a try last night (very good I might add) and who is one of the stars - Ms. Nagra. I had thought there was a second coincidence, but I was mixing up Sam Neill with Derek Jacobi who I'd seen in The Gathering Storm on Sunday. Almost a double.
Also posted in my Only Coincidence ? blog.
Nagra pops up in Alcatraz
Watching the Golden Globes on Sunday night, my wife confuses Slumdog's Freida Pinto with the actress from Bend it like Beckham, Parminder Nagra. Unlike, Pinto who I'd seen recently in Rise of the the Planet of the Apes, I hadn't heard nor seen Nagra in a long time.
I decided to give the new Alcatraz series a try last night (very good I might add) and who is one of the stars - Ms. Nagra. I had thought there was a second coincidence, but I was mixing up Sam Neill with Derek Jacobi who I'd seen in The Gathering Storm on Sunday. Almost a double.
There have been lots of coincidences since I posted last in October, but unfortunately have been neglecting this blog.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Friday, January 06, 2012
Sunday, January 01, 2012
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