Author: gfox (old content)

Rhythmic Scurry

long beachI have always been drawn to the ocean. The rhythmic pounding of the surf. The ever changing landscape. Plants and animals that look so foreign it is difficult to comprehend that they also came from Earth.


long beach
Sometimes, during the winter when it is really stormy, I will head down to the beach to revel in the power of Mother Nature. I love the feeling of the wind trying to push me around, the spray of the ocean after pounding the rocks. The howl of the wind as it begins to hurt my ears.


Skip to the pictures?



long beach
In good weather I love exploring the beach. Jumping from rock to rock, poking around in tidal pools, turning rocks over to watch the crabs scurry about, are all wonderfully relaxing to me.


long beach
For me, the west coast, specifically Long Beach in the Pacific Rim National Park, is the epitome of beach going. This past weekend Sue and I headed up there to spend some time with my Mom and sister (it happened to be my Mom’s birthday too).


long beach
In a word, the trip was awesome. We arrived around 8 on Friday evening, spent some time with my Mom and sister, then went to bed. I woke up early on Saturday, so I grabbed my camera and tripod, and headed down to the beach to do some shooting. It was misty out over the water, and the tide was on it’s way out. The waves were breaking and provided a nice backdrop of sound. I headed to a rocky outcropping in search of some subjects, and found lots!


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After shooting for an hour or so I headed back and had some breaky. The four of us then headed into Tofino and wandered around the town a bit. Such a quaint little town. We hung around for a bit, then went to visit Sue’s friend Janet who was up there for the weekend doing some surfing.


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After lunch, my sister and I walked out to Sunset point. It had started to rain, very very lightly. It was more like aconstantly falling mist. Very neat. There is a high perch above a point, overlooking two different bays. The waves were rolling in, and when they hit the rocks below, it sounded a lot like thunder. Awesome. I took a few pictures of waves crashing and spraying, then we headed back.


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For dinner we went to the Tin Wis. It wasn’t my most favorite restaurant, but the salmon I ordered was excellent.


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Sunday morning I awoke to the mist still falling, but it ended, and the sun came out. The four us were out looking for shells, taking pictures, and going for a run (only one of us ran, care to guess which one?). My sister headed back to the room, but mom, Sue and I walked along the beach, barefoot. The water was actually warm. The tide was on the way in, so it was flowing back and forth across the sun-warmed sand.


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All too soon we had to pack up and head home. This was a very relaxing and fun weekend. I got to take lots of pictures, visit with my mom and sister, eat well, play games, and read.


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The only scary part happened on the way home while I was deleting some pictures from my camera. One deletion was taking a lot longer than it should have. An error message appeared on the camera saying something about corrupt data! I was scared I had lost all my pictures. Turns out I hadn’t, but I guess the camera’s index to the pictures got messed up. Phew, close one!


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long beach


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Relaxing Buddy

reflectivity
Today Sue and I head to the Pacific Sands Resort on Long Beach. It should be a nice, relaxing weekend away from home.

Yoshi will be staying at his own little resort. His weekend will include much romping and playing. He is staying at the Thetis Lake Boarding Kennel. Most of the time he stays there his buddy Digger is with him, but this time he is going stag.

Today is a little hectic though. Lots of things to do before I go, and I still have to work today! I just have to keep the end goal in mind. I hope to take a bunch of pictures this weekend too.

Big Rigs University

sting like a bee
Ouch. Last night while on a photo shoot out at Royal Roads University I got my finger pinched in a door. I was entering the Italian Gardens when it happened. I opened a door, walked through, and when I reached behind me to grab the door, it had swung shut, and my pinky was caught between the door, and the door frame. Ouch!

It was a pretty good place to shoot actually. Beautiful grounds, interesting buildings, wildlife, and to top it off, big rigs and pretty women. There were some professionals there doing a shoot of some new rigs. Not sure why they came all the way here (there were California license plates), but they did choose a nice setting. It was kind of interesting watching the professionals work though. Huge white screens to bounce light, the truck freshly waxed, the ground wet to look nice, the lady dressed in a shimmery dresss, and tons of helpers. People placing the hair on the model, people adjusting lights, people just standing and watching. Very cool.

My shoot went pretty well, but I struggled with the lighting. Everything was a bit cool and dark, and my camera seemed to want to lighten everything too much. Maybe I had the wrong settings. I need to consult the manual. I should have the pictures up tomorrow though.

Unholy Lesson

geers rules
Let me try on your hand and see if it fits
Don’t worry I won’t touch anything unholy with it
Let it be known today, if you got two hands
You’re supposed to pray

from Hand of God by Soundgarden

That’ll teach me to take care of my own backups. Sheesh. Thankfully my webhost had a pretty recent backup of a few key directories, and in the end I didn’t lose anything I couldn’t recreate myself. Lesson learned. All should be back to normal. Yay!

Restored Site

Good god am I ever stoooooopid. I just made a huge mistake this morning, and basically wiped out my site. rm -r is a powerful weapon, and somehow I used it wrong. I only wanted to delete a specific directory, and instead I blew away everything including that directory. My main blog has now been restored (I think), but I am still missing all my galleries. Some of them may be gone for good since I wasn’t very diligent about backing them up (again, a very stoopid thing to do).

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Time to contact my webhost to see if they can do a restore on a directory. I WILL be more diligent about that myself from now on.

Oh yeah, if you see anything amiss (outside of the galleries), please drop me a line.

Hurried Blocking

cross
I was a bit of an asshole today. I kind of feel good about it though.

When driving back to work from the mall today, I needed to turn left into the driveway at VMI. Problem was there was a lady stopped in front of if letting out a passenger. I honked, and she looked up at me I gave her a dirty look, but she didn’t really do much beyond that. Her passenger hurried a bit then scurried off. She pulled out, gave a little half smile as if to say oops, then drove off.

The thing that really got me was that 5 feet away (just in the driveway she was blocking), was a parking spot for visitors. She couldn’t use that eh? Stoopid lady. For that she should have her licence revoked.

The part that made me an asshole was the fact that her passenger was using a cane. Doesn’t matter to me though, she was blocking the driveway for no good reason at all.

Hilarious Mumbler

Tuesday night was another great concert night. Sue and I travelled to Vancouver to see Dave Matthews Band at GM Place. We met up with Erin and Christine ahead of time for dinner, then it was off to the show.

I had seen DMB one other time, and that concert was absoutely amazing. Excellent sound, wicked energy from the band, and by far the best light show at a concert I have ever seen.

This show had a lot to live up to.

I lived up to my hype though. Again the sound was excellent, the band was full of energy, and the light show excellent (not quite as good as last time). The music was so fluid that I had a hard time not believing I was listening to a CD. Of course the songs had some of the best solos I have heard, flowing from the song to solo after solo until each band member had their turn, then again blending back into the song.

Few concerts are perfect though. There was a large Jumbotron (for lack of a better word) that was above the band. It was a beautiful screen with crisp clear, and bright images. The problem was that it was so easy to watch the band on the screen, it distracted from watching the band. Several times I shook my head and realized that I had been staring at the screen for the past while, and hadn’t even really been watching the band (something I normally love to do).

Another distraction was that they sometimes toook large breaks in between the songs. To me it ruined the flow of the show, but I did notice that during a couple of the breaks, a technician was attempting to repair something on the massive drum kit. The breaks did highlight one aspect of the band, and that is their timing. After one long break, just as the crowd was starting to relax, all at once there was an explosion of sound and light emanating from the stage. It actually startled me.

The negatives aside, I really enjoyed the concert. The drummer was amazing, and alway, always, always had a huge grin on his face. The fiddler, had such energy, and really seemd to be having fun up there. The sax player, blended in perfectly. The keyboardist was OK, and basically did his job. The bassist was hilarious. Usually when the camera was on him he started dancing really funny, and aking fishy faces. I am not sure if he as in a strange mood, or if that is what he does.

Dave. What needs to be said about him. He is a mumbler. Smiling We were talking about it at dinner, and the few times he talked to the crowd, I had no clue what he was saying. Singing is a different matter, and that was excellent.

I all, I would rate this an excellent show, and would recomend anyone who likes his music to see him live.

Certainly Chaotic

What a weekend! A long weekend is something to be enjoyed, and I certainly have enjoyed this weekend. Sue and I sort of turned our house into a dog kennel when we agreed to look after Digger and Chester (in addition to Yoshi of course). A little chaotic at times, but how could we resist their little faces?
chesterchesterchester

We had friends over for dinner on Saturday night, Sunday was a work kind of day, amd I took Digger and Yoshi mountain biking, and today Sue and I went to visit Steve, Rhiannon, and Teagan.

Tomorrow we brave the ferries to go to Vancouver to see Dave Matthews! I am really looking forward to the show. It should be awesome. Time to go pack!