Deeper Trail

Sunday KaptainK and JJ, myself and Suede, and JennV went for a wonderful trek out at Thetis Lake. The snow was a lot deeper there than in town, and it was quite beautiful to be out in. Of course the dogs that came with us absolutely loved it too. We took a different trail than normal and it took us up high to a lookout over the lake. It was pretty amazing. There was lots of snow, but the temp was just perfect for a nice walk. The trail had been packed down quite a bit which made it easy to follow the trail, but a little slippery at times, especially for JJ who was wearing running shoes. 🙂

Pics are here.

Of course now the snow is almost completely gone, and I am a little sad. It was pretty nice to see while it was here, and getting around was only difficult for a day or so. We might get some more before the weekend, but it is unlikely we will get as much as the last dump.

WSOD Keyboard

I am so very pissed off right now. Actually, I started being mad last night. You see, I bought a Universal Wireless Keyboard for my Tungsten T3 PDA.

When I got home last night I ripped open the package, grabbed the manual, and the disc, and installed the driver on to my pda. A quick resynch later, and I was good to go. I tapped the icon to launch the driver so I could enable receiving keyboard input, and WHAM WSOD (white screen o death). Strange that a PALMONE released beyboard driver would crash on my T3. No problem, a quick reboot should get things in order.

Here is where the problem is. The reset button wouldn’t work. I tried all the combos for hard resetting, and soft resetting, but my nice, expensive PDA was a steaming pile of slag. Nothing but the white screen.

I jumped onto the net, and lo and behold I find this. Turns out many people have had serious issues on their T3 with this driver. Many people report waiting until the battery drains completely. When this happens everything on the PDA is lost. Thankfully there are a couple solutions for this.

When I do get it running again, I can resynch with my computer. This should restore everything that used to be on there. Downside is that it will also reinstall the problematic driver.

My other course of action is when the PDA is back up and running I can slide my SD card into the T3, bring up my copy of BackupMan, and restore the last save point. Thankfully this software runs flawlessly, and every night at 3am it was doing backups, so I will only have lost changes I made yesterday.

In all I still don’t know the state of my PDA. This morning it looked like the battery was drained, but when I placed it in the cradle, the charging light didn’t come on. This is a bad sign in my book, so I may have to call PalmOne and complain. Shitty thing is that it is just out of warranty (I bought it on Dec 27 2003). I am hoping that tonight when I get home things will be in a better state.

I will have to remember to update the PalmOs before I slam in the SD card too since the T3 had issues with those before too.

Snowy Suede

Snow days are here again! We have had cold and snowy weather the past few days here in Victoria, and I must admit that it is pretty nice to get snow once in a while, as long as it doesn’t stay around too long. This morning Suede and I took Yoshi for a quick spin at the park before having to run some errands. He and Digger will get a better walk this afternoon.

On the way home these ice and snow encrusted ferns caught my attention. There were lots of icicles hanging off this rock, but the way the ice surrounded the ferns was pretty cool.

I did some playing in Paintshop with a few of these. The above one I aplied a soft focus filter.

This picture I changed to black and white, then darkened the darks a bit.

I duplicated this picture, deepend the colors, merged back to the original, then applied the soft focus. I like the way it looks. Kind of dream like.

I tried to make this picture colder looking by duplicating it, adding a blue filter, then merging back to the original.

Our cat Aprhodite is none too impressed with the white stuff.

Sendoff 2004

This is my sendoff to 2004. It was a great year that held many suprises and some big changes for me. Photographically speaking I am quite happy with how I have progressed. I fell my signal to noise ratio of pictures is getting better.

January

An awesome snow walk with Yoshi and Digger. I woke up extra early that morning for some unknown reason so I took the dogs to the off leash park for first tracks.

February

One of my most favorite riding photos from 2004. Taken at Broom Hill, I managed to freeze Shane in the air like I had intended.

March

Sue and I up at Point no Point. This was taken right before I asked Sue to marry me.

April

Cheena. May she rest in peace. This was Suede’s dad’s dog.

May

Some flowers on my front porch right after a lovely rain shower.

June

This is spook, Suede’s mom’s cat. This was right after Pat arrived home with her new puppy. The cat was a little “spooked” and climbed up here for saftey from the pup.

July

Taken at Christ Church Cathedral, this shot just speaks to me. The slight off axis tilt, the color, the composition.

August

Reflections have been big with me lately. This boat caught my fancy, and since the water was so calm, the reflection was quite intense.

September

A fluke that I spotted this shot. Originally I was shooting across the street from Esquimalt City Hall. As the sun was seting I headed back to my truck and cought this super shapr shadow.

October

Suede and I enjoying a beautiful suinset on our Mexican cruise.

November

A lucky catch on morning before work. This sunrise is facing east off the deck of the house we are renting. I had to stand inside, and hold the camera over my head since it was raining, and I wasn’t dressed to go out in it.

December

A wonderful photographic experience. The photoclubmet early one morning to catch a sunrise. After waiting for what felt like an eternity in near freezing temps, we witnessed a spectacular sight. The clouds in front added a lot of drama to the shots from that morning.

Benedict Decorations

Over the Christmas Holiday this year I had a very relaxing time, and took quite a few pictures. For the first time ever for either of us, Suede and I woke up Christmas morning in our own bed. My mom and sister had come down the night before with my moms dog Kodi. Yoshi and Sheba were a little confused by Kodi (a long haired Chihuahua). Christmas morning was relaxed with just the 4 of us. We opened our presents, then ate an awesome brunch of home made eggs benedict. Yum! Later in the day Suede’s dad and step-mom arrived, and we set about making Christmas dinner. Again, and awesome meal. KaptainK and JJ also came by for dinner, and brought their faithful companion Big D. In case you weren’t keeping track, that was 8 people, and 4 dogs at out place for dinner that night.

The rest of the past week has been a bit of a blur. Dogs walks pretty much every day. Mountains of laundry, and dishes were done. More people visited. Then the cleanup. Taking down the tree, putting away the decorations, putting away the loot. Phew, exhausting. I almost need a break from my vacation.

My Christmas gallery is here, and the slideshow is here.

Merry Christmas

The puppy dogs are all tucked in, the house locked up, the lights turned down. It is late, I am tired, and it is Christmas Eve.

I am ready to crawl in bed. I have been a good boy this past year, so I hope that Santa remembers to visit my house.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Twisted Season

Sunday Suede and I treated her mom, my mom, and my sister to a play at the Belfry. Since it is Christmas time, we chose a Christmas play. The twist was that it was an improv play. In fact, the title was A Twisted Christmas Carol.

In a word it was hilarious. Hands down this was the funniest improv I have seen. The plot follows that of the book, but it is made modern through suggestions from the crowd. Some of the the changes involved the characters, some of then involved the scenes. For example in our play, Scrooges business was transformed into a Ballroom Dance studio instead of the classic accounting firm. The set was magnificent. The backdrop they used throughout was that of a huge advent calendar. Made for some interesting cast entrances.

If you are looking for something to do this holiday season, I can’t recommend this show enough. Call and order tickets right now. You won’t be disappointed.

Limo Dancing

Friday nights party was quite a bit of fun. The limo picked us up around 5:15, and for the next hour and a bit we toured Victoria picking up other people. Once we arrived at Sauce I was introduced toa bunch of people, and the party got going. There was an open bar, an appies sitting out when we arrived. Around 7:30 the buffet dinner was served, and it was pretty good. After dinner the draw prizes were given away (Suede won a $20 gift certificate to Sauce), then the DJ started. He was alright, but he had a few problems with a few songs.

As the night wore on, the dancing on the tables started. It was quite funny to watch the reactions of passersby on the street when they saw the ladies dancing on the tables.

As the music got louder I started to not have as much fun as I was. I ended up leaving a little earlier than Sue, but still had a great time.

Free Ride

Tonight is Suede’s companies Christmas party. We won a free pass to the party including a limo ride there and home with complimentary champagne. The limo? It is one I never thought I would ride in.

Jammed Shooting

Today’s Photo Club meet was a little different. We met early. Very early. I set up the meet so we could be out at Witty’s Lagoon to catch the sunrise. Since sun up was supposed to be at 7:45, and we needed some travel time, I set the meeting time at 6:30 (to allow for stragglers).

I got up, got ready, and headed out to the truck and discovered frost. I hadn’t left time to scrape the windows, so I was going to be a couple minutes late. When I got to the meeting place, they had already left (I was 10 minutes late). Crap, I was a straggler. Add on the fact that to drive myself, I was going to need to stop and get gas, I thought I was going to miss it all.

Boy was I wrong!

I got to the parking lot, and headed down the stairs. I met up with the other 3, and set up my gear. I was trying some new film in my SLR, so I was pretty pumped to use it. Then we waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. The light was slow in coming. I was gettin concered that the sunrise would be vey unfulfilling. Then I saw a plane’s contrail through a break in the coulds. The rising sun had colored it pink! It was very cool, but it disappeared within seconds.

Part of the reason the sun was late in getting to us was that there was a cloud layer right along the water. Remember the frost on the truck? It was pretty damn cold! Gradually we saw the sun start to peek from behind the cloud, and we were not disappointed. Then the mayhem began. Somehow my film SLR jammed, and wouldn’t take pictures (I suspect I loaded the new film incorrectly). Then one of the ladies ran out of color film (sun rises in B&W aren’t so hot). Then the other gentleman that joined had his tripod tip over, and his camera went lens first into the sand (thankfully not a rock). Meanwhile I had pulled out my digital and continued shooting. The good golden light only lasted less than 10 or 15 minutes. Then it was over.

We had waited for close to an hour in the freezing cold, for 15 minutes of shooting. Crazy, but incredibly fun! I still managed to get some shots that I really like. One of the sunrises I might blow up, then crop so it is a panoramic. Not sure. Afterwards we headed to My Chosen Cafe for some warm drinks and good eats.