Category: Art

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Virtual Appearance != An Actual Appearance

Ray Harryhausen and his Armatures

For the last couple weeks I have been looking forward to hearing legendary visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen speak tonight at the University. I was hoping to take my camera and get a few shots of his stop motion armatures. I even picked up a couple of extra tickets for my parents, whom are going to be in town tonight—this was going to be a source of some much needed excitement. The only catch is, Mr. Harryhausen isn’t actually going to be here.

I first thought something was odd last week when I read on the tickets, “A VIRTUAL APPEARANCE BY RAY HARRYHAUSEN”, but I figured it had something to do with the title of the lecture, Grand Illusions. Upon re-reading the lecture description it hit me like a ton of bricks that the real grand illusion was the fact that Ray Harryhausen would only be making a virtual appearance, as in live via satellite from Los Angeles.

Skeleton Armatures

I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud and I’ll see what my folks think but I’m probably not even going to go. Frankly, I wouldn’t be much more disappointed if I’d just discovered they were merely showing a DVD interview with Mr. Harryhausen. Why would they bother paying him to speak, if they couldn’t afford to actually bring him here.

I’ve been to virtual lectures before, and they really leave a lot to be desired.

Now I know why there were so many tickets left over; I now also know why they are free. You get what you pay for I guess.

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South Park on Family Guy

I’m not sure why, since there are so many of them, but I’m always surprised when I run into die-hard fans of the Family Guy. On at least three occasions I have made the off-handed comment that it seems like the show has been specifically made for someone with attention deficit disorder—to which each of the people I was talking to said, actually I used to have ADHD.

I guess that explains a lot.

Given the enormous fan base, I decided that maybe I was just happening to catch “off” episodes that weren’t as funny as the truly great stuff that they must be putting out in order to create so many fanatics. So I pulled out my roommate’s “Best of Family Guy” DVDs and, as painful as it was, watched them straight through.

Ho-hum… and these were supposed to be funnier than all other episodes? Give me a break.

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that feels the show is highly over-rated. Jaime Weinman’s blog post “Why I Hate FAMILY GUY” nicely sums up my feelings.

I found a link today over at Cartoon Brew that let me know about Wednesday night’s episode of South Park in which they make fun of the Family Guy. Although South Park has offended me on numerous occasions (to the point that I no longer watch the show), I still think it has a collection of very intelligent writers and is very capable of creating memorable and often insightful commentary on the world around us. For your viewing enjoyment, here is a clip from Wednesday’s show:

Update: I guess the video no longer works because YouTube is cracking down on playing clips of tv shows.

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Drayton Valley Photographer

Actually an Okotoks Photographer Now

My sister, Jackie Hutchinson, is a photographer in Drayton Valley Okotoks, Alberta. She still gets up to Drayton Valley for special occasions.

Jackie Hutchinson Drayton Valley Photographer

This is a screen capture of the new website I put together for her. It’s a work in progress as she develops her portfolio, but so far she already has some really nice shots online.

Update: Here’s a screenshot of the newest iteration of her site (as of September 2009). I’m blown away by how great of a photographer she’s become.
Jackie Hutch - Drayton Valley Photographer

Check out jackiehutch.com to see more of her amazing photography.

Jackie and family have moved to Okotoks, Alberta.

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The High Level Bridge

High Level Train Bridge

I shot some photos yesterday around the city. This one above is a compilation of 9 images showing the Old Man River and The High Level Bridge. The bridge is Canada’s longest train bridge and is 100 years old this year. The trails on the ice are from the Canada geese that decided not to fly south for the winter. I guess it’s not cold enough this year to make it worth the long flight.

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Tales from Mexico

On Sunday we really cut it close making our plane. We only gave ourselves about 15 minutes of extra time assuming everything else went according to plan, which would have been fine except for a couple of mix-ups like Trev forgetting his runners. Not to mention he also forgot that Drew moved about a year ago and hence he accidentally went to Drew’s old house putting us slightly behind schedule for the road.

Once we got on our way things were pretty uneventful, but there was a near disaster when Forgetful Jones Wallace forgot to pick up his wallet on the other side of security which might have resulted in a missed flight due to no ID. I have been thanking my lucky stars that I haven’t yet done anything particularly embarrassing or potentially trip ending but remember the week is young. Anyway it’s all good and we are having lots of fun in the sun.

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Today we hired a charter to take us to a couple of different villas up the coast and had fun snorkeling as well as hiking around on a couple of different beaches. The boat ride was really a blast. All of a sudden Drew was hit with a wave of nausea and began a not so friendly reunion with his breakfast on the port side. He looked in quite a bit of discomfort so I didn’t think it would have been right to document it in pictures. However I´m pretty sure Steve and/or Trev got a photo.

While Drew was just kind of taking it easy we were learning that it’s the manta ray mating season right now. There are lots and lots of large and small manta rays scouting the area looking for action. We were amazed to see one giant manta ray breach the water completely. Steve and Trev hopped in to get a closer look and I captured a photo with the manta as one of its fins came up out of the water. When I jumped in myself I was too late they were long gone.

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When we got to town, we lounged around a bit, I picked up some stomach settling pills for Drew and eventually we hiked up to see a waterfall. Unfortunately when we got there we discovered it was pretty dry. Apparently they are on the verge of a water shortage in the village and so there isn’t a lot left over for the river, but despite that, it was still a nice hike.

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We had dinner on the beach, enjoyed the weather and scenery for awhile and then and headed back into town.

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New Nikon D70s Digital SLR Camera

My brand new Nikon D70sFor my birthday, coming up in a week from today, my mom got me a new digital SLR camera! I’m still learning all the settings, but I’m loving every minute of it.

It’s a Nikon D70s. I also got a few accessories for it, including a polarizing filter, a camera bag, and a 1gb memory card.

I’m a little hesitant to take it with me on my trip to Mexico, but I got it a week before my birthday so I could do just that. I’ll be watching it like a hawk; at the same time I think it will be worth it.

Here are 12 winter photos I took with my new camera.

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LED Throwies

Here’s a neat little project that anyone can do: make battery powered magnetic LED “throwies” that can be thrown and stuck to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighbourhood.

A throwie is made from a 10mm diffused LED, a small lithium battery, and a rare-earth magnet all taped together. They cost about $1 to make and the batteries last about a week.

throwies (LED magnets)

Instructables has a page of step-by-step instructions to make your own throwies.

Also, check out throwies in action.

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The Song Tapper

The Song Tapper is a neat web application that can help identify a song that maybe stuck in your head, but maybe you don’t remember the name of it. The way it works is to just tap the spacebar to the rhythm of each syllable in the lyrics of the song you want to identify and then the server returns several possible names and artists. It’s fun and surprisingly accurate.