Machinery Project

I got out for a bit of a photo walk today in the gorgeous sunshine. Most of these pictures were taken near Point Hope Ship yard on Harbour Road. The chain link fence was a bit of a pain, and it would be awesome to have free run of the place for photo taking. I imagine there is a bit of risk in that though. There was lots of heavy machinery working and a few boats in dry dock getting worked on.

Some old buildings in the area were perfect for taking texture shots.

I happened to come across an open house for the UBC Blue Whale project. There are still in the process of getting this huge skeleton ready for display, but there was lots that was ready to be viewed. This was an amazing animal and its size cannot be described easily. The section in the photo below was likely around 20 feet long and there were a few more sections before it. Then the massive head.

There were few flowers in the industrial area, but I still managed to find some.


Studios Annoy

I saw this infographic on BoingBoing recently, and it really struck home for me. This is even more painful when you have an impatient child that just wants to watch their DVD and doesn’t understand why they have to watch previews and can’t skip things.

I’ve always wondered why movie studios think that it is a good idea to annoy and harass the customers that have paid for their product. To me that seems like a great way to drive away customers. Perhaps for my kids DVD’s that we have bought, I should make a backup copy that allows me to skip the unnecessary previews and ads.

The worst previews are the ones that advertise movies coming “this spring”. Once the DVD is a couple years old this just sounds silly.

via BoingBoing

Direction Moronic

This morning I was driving Sox to work, and the kids to daycare. We were heading along Catherine St to Esquimalt Ave. A car pulled up to a stop sign on a side street. I watched as the driver looked to her right, then proceeded to go all the while talking to someone in the car. She never looked left, the direction I was heading from.

I hit the brakes, and hit the horn. Visibly she whipped her head over to my direction and looked shocked. Yet she never hit her brakes, nor slowed. Glad I scared her.

Later today I was near Mayfair mall and I was wanting to turn right. The car in front of me wanted to turn left desptire two signs saying right turn only from 7am to 6pm. I honked and he glanced in the rear view at me. I hinked again and pointed right, then pointed to the sign. He pointed that he wanted to go left.

I know you want to go left, but you aren’t supposed to buddy. It doesn’t take a moron to see what you want. If you want to go left against a sign and noone is behind you, then I personally have no problem, but to hold up traffic while you make an illegal turn is moronic.

Beer Brewed

Today I bottled my latest batch of beer at Bedford Brewing.

My last batch wasn’t quite right and during its bottling I saw lots of foamy bottles. This usually means contaminated bottles. I wanted to avoid that again so I inspected my bottles very carefully and I was shocked that over half my bottles will have to be sent for recycling! There was lots of sediment, and some of them had mould growing in them. No wonder the last beer wasn’t right.

I was able to watch the hockey game while I bottle which was nice too. Olympic hockey, Canada versus Russia. Lots of excitement coupled with fresh beer. Mmmm.

This time around I brewed their New World Brown. Very tasty. I am enjoying a bottle of it right now 🙂

Ottawa Heaven

Here are my pics from the Ottawa trip. We had so much fun while we were there, and these pics are only a taste of what we saw and did.

The ice sculpture shots were difficult to shoot. It was bright out, and there was lots of snow, so I added +1 to the exposure so the snow didn’t look too gray. It was also very cold out, and I can’t operate my camera with bulky snow gloves so when I wanted to get a shot I would take off the gloves, shoot, put the gloves back on. I didn’t spend a lot of time checking my shots so there were a lot of throwaways due to bad exposure. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If I had more time I could have done more justice to the works.

Flying out of Victoria

My daughter hamming it up for the camera

Some tulips on the counter. I accidentally shot this in black and white, but I love how it turned out.

Ice sculptures near Ottawa City Hall. Very incredible works of art, and this is something that could not be done in Victoria due to weather. While we were there, we even got to see a friendly competition between carvers.

All sorts of tools are used to make ice sculptures.

Hot chocolate at the ice sculptures. Looks like my son is in heaven.

Skating on the canal. We went many times and each time it was a blast.

The fox family enjoying their trip.


Mmmmmm, beavertail!

All decked out for the cold.

Hockey on an outside rink.

The only snowy day we experienced in Ottawa. It was very cool to see so many people outside on the canal while it was snowing.

Pulling the sled this day was more difficult due to the fresh snow. Skating was fine but there was a lot more friction than I needed.


Errand Puke

Today was supposed to be an errand day for me and Amy. It started off well enough, but on our way to our second appointment I noticed Amy was starting to fall asleep. We were on our way to Costco and were driving along the highway.

A couple moments later I heard a wet splashing sound and looked in the rear view mirror to see Amy puke a few more times. I pulled over and stopped but we were at the side of the off ramp with traffic whizzing by very close. This was no place to try and clean her up. Thankfully I knew Sox was close by at a coffee shop with a friend so I boogied over there.

There was puke from head to toes and beyond. There was also no change of clothes for Amy. Sox and I cleaned here up as best we could and dressed her in a jacket and a pair of Elliot’s pants.

Rather than spending time out in public with a sick daughter, I packed her into Elliot’s car seat and we headed home. She had a small snack then insisted on a nap. She was sleeping before 12:30. She seems happy enough and doesn’t have a temperature, so who knows what is going on there.

I then had the task of cleaning off her car seat. Ewwwww.