A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
Banksy is in the news for painting a live elephant as an artistic way to raise poverty awareness. A video of the elephant in question is available on Youtube.
While painting an elephant may have irked some animal rights activists, the video showing what he did with 500 of Paris Hilton’s CDs is much more interesting.
Remember what Banksy says, “Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.” Something I should be taking to heart more often.
I’ve been spending some time with my family in Medicine Hat over the last week. While I was here, we received some very bad news. A cousin of mine, Michael Scoville, passed away last Friday at the age of 26 years old.
Of all my cousin’s, I hung out with Mike more than any other. We lived in the same city for most of our lives and were pretty much the same age. We never went to the same school at the same time for very long but I was always amazed at how many people knew Mike all over the city.
Growing up we had our share of fighting between us but within the last ten years, or so, we made up and I enjoyed running into him at his parents house on the many occasions when they would invite us all over for dinner. It’s sad that he’s gone.
I may be headed for an involuntary hiatus from posting because my hard drive is beginning to act like it has Alzheimer’s and files are beginning to disappear. Each time I start my computer is worse than the last. Pretty soon I won’t even be able to boot the thing up. I should have started to migrate my photos and songs as soon as I saw it happening, but alas it looks like I might lose everything. C’est la vie—in the meantime I’m at least I’m enjoying the week visiting my sister and her family. Here are some photos of my cute nephews.
In the tradition of making movies out of Saturday Morning Cartoons from the 80’s, some folks in Hollywood are producing a feature length live-action Transformers Movie (flash site with teaser).
I haven’t actually decided whether or not I’m going to see this movie, but I’m posting this here because hearing the transforming sounds and seeing my childhood imagination being transformed into reality brought on some great memories and if nothing else, I think we could all use a little science-fiction nostalgia to brighten our day.
Flight Patterns by Aaron Koblin is an amazing air travel visualization video.
[The flight pattern visualizations] are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment.
(via)
I’m not exactly a professional photographer even though I have a very nice digital SLR camera. However, very often people assume that seeing a person carrying a professional looking camera is seeing a person that takes professional looking photos. This can be good and bad, because while I have been known to get some pretty good captures, I feel a little intimidated that people expect all my photos to be great. (I do my best.)
This last week has been Whoop-Up Days in Lethbridge, which is to say the Rodeo has been on at the Stampede and Exhibition Park and though I’ve lived here for almost 4 years, this was the first time I’ve been to the Lethbridge Rodeo. I took a bunch of photos that even though I know will probably never win any awards, they do give a pleasant taste of what the rodeo is all about.
The rodeo I remember as a kid was not nearly as entertaining as my experience on Friday and Saturday night. I remember sitting through extremely long breaks where it seemed that nothing was happening followed by short bursts of entertainment which if you were not careful, you might miss completely because hey what’s going on UNDERNEATH the stands? Needless to say I was always looking for entertainment. The other thing I remember about the rodeo as a kid was that there were a lot of cowboys smoking cigarettes and drinking beer—which coming from a non-smoking, non-drinking, somewhat religious family—made me extremely uncomfortable. The other thing I didn’t like about the rodeo as a kid was that we always sat so far away from the action. It was hard to see what was really happening.
That all changed this weekend. Well the drinking and smoking didn’t, but I came to realize that the breaks are actually not that long and this time I didn’t waste my time with all the suckers up in the stands, I got down right beside the field because my plan was to get some really nice photos. I was a little nervous just heading down there, because I didn’t know if you needed special permission or what? Well, I guess people just saw my camera and assumed I was a seasoned photographer and obviously was supposed to be there taking photos. It turns out that’s all it takes.
I had such a good time at the Rodeo on Friday night, that when my brother arrived in Lethbridge on Saturday, I talked him in to going with me for another night of photography fun. He’s got a lens that lets in more light and therefore is able to take photos later into the evening after the sun has gone down and he actually is a seasoned photographer. He gave me lots of good tips.
Anyway, Gary and I, each had our cameras out, shooting next to the Global TV camera man when we met a friendly guy from the Canadian reserves. He asked if we would mind taking a few shots of their mascot for him, since we had fancier cameras, and then just emailing him. We agreed and he gave us his card.
Well a little while later someone official looking came up to us and asked us if we had press passes. The old “carry a fancy camera and get into restricted areas” trick had used up all its juice.
But as we were getting told that if we didn’t have press passes then we would have to leave, I whipped out the business card I had just been given and explained that this guy asked us to shoot photos for him. What a stroke of luck because the guy knew who we were talking about and all of a sudden it was fine for us to be there. We were rodeo photographers again!
But the fanciest camera and all the permission in the world won’t necessarily help one to remember to set his white balance properly. I can’t believe I shot the whole night with my white balance set for fluorescent lights. Luckily Photoshop is helpful at fixing such issues. We had a lot of fun at the rodeo and Gary, as expected, got some really great rodeo photos (which he hasn’t uploaded yet).
You can check out the rest of my rodeo photos in my flickr set: Whoop-Up Days 2006.
WHO ACTUALLY USES THE CAPS LOCK KEY ANYWAY? Oops, I mean who actually uses the caps lock key anyway? People who like to shout, that’s who. But having spent upwards of 3 minutes contemplating the usefulness of the caps lock key, I for one agree, it’s time to do away with caps lock.
I should also mention that it’s high time we get rid of comic sans and while we’re at it let’s give the planet Pluto a demotion. Can you hear me? DEMOTE PLUTO NOW!
Upon further consideration caps lock is kind of handy for easy yelling. KNOW WHAT I MEAN?
Last night I enjoyed watching “La Grande seduction” with my friend—Amber L., (whom is coincidentally from Lethbridge and even works as a lifeguard at my old pool, but whom I only met recently on my trip to Quebec).
The movie was great. It’s about a tiny fishing village on a small island in Quebec where almost all of the residents are on welfare. When a much-needed boost, in the form of a new factory, is promised, providing they can secure a full-time Dr. into taking residence there, the mayor starts a massive recruiting project. The main problem being, the microscopic island doesn’t really have much to offer—so the villagers scheme together to make their little village a tiny piece of heaven for their potential MD, Dr. Lewis by creating an elaborate facade of how wonderful the place is. They even go so far as to tap his phone to “understand him better”; hilarity ensues.
Though it’s actually a French movie, we wimped out and watched it with English subtitles, because the two of us weren’t that confidant in our French skills, but I’d totally watch it again only in French this time. But despite the fact that it’s not in English, I highly recommend it. You might need to look for it under its English name, “Seducing Dr. Lewis”. (Personally I like the French title better). So go out and get it, I promise you won’t regret it.
I forgot to write about this when I found out about it but I guess it’s better late than never. A couple months ago my backmasking page was “Yahoo! Picks” June 3rd selection.
After years of neglect… Finally an upgrade at Blogger worth noting.
Some of the upgrades include:
Take Blogger’s New Features tour. If they would have done this about 6 months sooner, I wouldn’t have switched to WordPress.
And as a special treat for those of you that like to blog (or have friends that do), here is Sprites – I Started A Blog Nobody Read.