Hellish Relaxing

What a weekend. As a Christmas present to me, Sox booked us in to Point No Point for a weekend. It was just what I needed. I’ve had a hellish few weeks, so the chance to get away from everything and spend some time with my wife relaxing, was sublime. The Eagle cabin (our usual) was gorgeous as usual. Overlooking the water we could hear the surf all weekend. Sox had to refrain from the hot tub this time, but I managed to get in a couple good soaks.

On Saturday we took a side trip to French beach, then back up to Sharky’s in Jordan River for some hot chocolate. Later, I took a hike on the Point No Point trails while Sox napped. Saturday night we ate dinner at the resort, and it was fabulous as always.

With some reluctance on Sunday we packed our belongings and headed home. I definitely felt relaxed and refreshed after the weekend. Back at home we dove into the continuing paint job. Hopefully we can finish this up quickly.

Yoshi Zing

You ever get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as soon as you realize (or it is pointed out) that you did something so utterly stupid that you will pay dearly for it?

This story started a couple weeks ago. Sox and I were going to paint a bunch of rooms in our house. We cleaned the walls, emptied the rooms, and generally did a lot of prep.

Last weekend some friends came over and helped us paint. We got 99% of it done in that weekend. All we had to do was some finishing touches, and paint our focus wall in the office. We had chosen Cranberry Zing. Very nice color. Very hard to get even across the wall. After 3 coats I think I have finally given up.

The story took a turn for the worse yesterday when we got a call from our dog walker. Seems Yoshi decided to chew on the plastic container (we know he likes to chew things) that I had used for painting the edges of the wall.

I hadn’t cleaned the container so there was some dried red paint in the bottom. Red latex paint. Red latex paint that didn’t dry all the way through.

The dog walker reported that there was dry paint on the carpet so we assumed that meant paint chips. There was that sinking feeling.

When we got home it was much worse than I thought. Paint smears that had dried were on the carpet in the office. Paint smears in the hallway. Smears on the hardwood and tile (easy to clean though), and paint on our couch (as well as a dog bed). There was even some paint on one of the counters (he must have gone counter surfing at one point). Uggh. Remember Cranberry Zing? A nice bright red color.

Down on our hands and knees we scrubbed and scrubbed until it was almost all out. Then I rented a carpet cleaner and cleaned the carpets. Not exactly what I was planning on doing that evening. I would have much rather been putting our things away in our newly painted rooms, but thankfully we seem to have gotten it mostly out. If you know where to look you will still be able to see a bit of red where there shouldn’t be any.

Today I am sore and tired, wondering when we will finally be finished this paint job. My fingers are especially raw today too. I just want to go home and crawl back into bed. Instead Sox and I have a weekend away (with no dog). Something relaxing, rejuvinating, and much needed.

Firefox Funny

Friday at work I downloaded Firefox 1.5 from getFirefox.com. After the download window opened, I noticed the mirror chosen. Kinda funny.

Paint Economy

Ahh Home Depot. I could see myself spending lots of money there. Wait, I just did. Sox and I decided that we need to spruce up the shack a little so we decided to paint. In retrospect we should have asked our landlord for some money for paint, but we didn’t.

I know people complain about big box stores, and I know I should help the local economy but the store is pretty convenient. Add on some knowledgable staff, and we are set for painting this weekend.

We still have some prep to do before we can actually paint, and I hope I can get it done before the work party starts. Washing the walls sucks big time. With that out of the way we will be able to spackle and sand.

If anyone is interested in joining the work party, we would be grateful, and you will be full of food and beer. Just let me know.

Best Blond Joke

I am constantly getting sent jokes by friends, most of which are quite funny. But this blonde joke takes the cake.

Love it!!!

Presumed Buried

Most evenings Aphro is sleeping on our bed. Tonight when I put something away in the room, I commented to Sox that the cat was missing. I presumed she was downstairs eating.

When Sox went into our room, she discovered Aphro had buried under the covers, and was sleeping soundly. Aphro is so cute some times.

Extraneous Downgrade

On this site I am using version Gallery 1.5.1. When I first discovered this software I thought it was awesome. It seemed fast, had an easy to use interface, I could get up and running in no time, configuration was a breeze, upgrading was simple, and it was stable.

There were rumours about Gallery 2 that was in the works. Something about a complete rewrite. It used a more modular development style, used a database backend, was supposed to be more configurable, and more exensible. When I could I downloaded a beta and gave it a test run.

The beta seemed stable enough, but lacked a lot of features that the regular stream already had. The admin interface was a bear; it felt overly complex and hard to grasp. Overall, it was also, very, very slow. So slow that I decided to dump it.

Over on another site I run (my baby blog [yes that means Sox is pregnant]) I decided to give Gallery 2 another go since it had been taken out of beta and released. I installed the files, got the database installed and the tables created, and set it up (the documentation was not straight forward),. I downloaded the necessary modules, enabled and configured them. So far so good.

Then I created my first album. The process was pretty familiar, but the end result was not what I liked. One of the stupid things that I dislike about Gallery 2 is the URL’s created for albums and pictures. I like clean URL’s with nice names, but even when I turn on the clean URL feature of Gallery 2, there was extraneous crap in the album URL’s (geeks get annoyed by the stupidest things). This software was also still way too slow.

I stuck with it for a while, but never grew to like it like the original it is supposed to replace. Yesterday I did a downgrade from Gallery 2 to 1.5.2-RC1.

I am much hapier. The interface is familiar (lame reason to downgrade), but the performance is back, the features I like are back, the ease of use is back. I dumped the crap I didn’t like and ended up with what I do like.

I sincerely hope that the Gallery team can fix the problems they have created. I think it is admirable that they chose to start from scratch the way they did. There is absolutely no way that the team will be able to please everyone. I don’t agree with some of the decisions they made (particularly the UI issues), and I wish them the best of luck because in my mind, they are going to have to make some drastic changes to get me to upgrade again.

My problem now is that the version I am using wil eventually be phased out. No more new development eventually, so what happens when there is a security flaw found? Apparently security fixes will continue to be released for this version, which I really hope is true. Still, makes me wonder if that will be the case.

2005 Photography in Review

Last year I did a year in photography gallery. I chose my best/favorite shot from each month, and made a special gallery containing just those picture. I continue this tradition today.

This is my 2005 Year in Review

Taken at Thetis lake, this was one of the very few snow days in Victoria in 2005.

A Macaulay Point Park walk with Yoshi. Nice sunny February day. I had looked through these trees many times before, but the light, the sky, and the clouds combined perfectly for this shot.Taken at Thetis lake, this was one of the very few snow days in Victoria in 2005.

This is an unusual shot of cherry blossoms done in black and white. In the camera I bumped up the contrast to achieve this almost infrared effect. Beyond this and the resizing, there are no enhancements.

This is one of my most favorite pictures of the entire year. I saw this scene in my head as I looked at a slowly dripping fountain. I was able to achieve what I envisioned.

Taken days after I got married. I love the colors, I love the rings, I love the depth of field, I love my wife.

The was one of the most amazing plants I photographed this year. While on this shoot I neglected to double check my camera’s settings. I was shooting ISO 1600 the entire time. This shot wasn’t ruined too badly though. I corrected the white balance, and bumped the contrast to accentuate the white.

A craggy old tree up at Rathtrevor beach, a wonderful backdrop, and a slight spotlight tokeep the eye interested. For some reason I can stare at this picture for hours.

At a wedding reception for some very good friends the kids were entertained by clowns who did some face painting. E here was a ferocious lion. I can never get over how lucky I was with this shot. The right location, right timing, the right pose. I love it.

Sunsets can be hard to capture. What you see is hardly what you get. I took many shots this day, but this is one of my favorites. The setting sun, the textured water, the fading colors.

Taken in Ottawa during the fall, the colors were a little more muted that previous years (or so I am told). On the way to a walk we drove through this bridge. After the hike we stopped a few times along the way so I could take some pictures.

A smooth lake with a mirror finish, mist rising lazily, people out walking dogs. There definitely is an element of luck in photography.

This was the highlight shot for December. Tough month photography wise. I didn’t get out very often due to Christmas plans. For this shot I stopped down the aperture, and bumped up the exposure time. With the shutter open I took half the time to zoom in, and the other half to expose the leaf. This creates a somewhat dreamy leaf.

Renovated Christmas

Christmas this year was pretty awesome. Sox, her mum, and I joined my sister and my mom at mom’s newly renovated house in Nanaimo. We went up on the 24th, spent a lazy day with the dogs

ate some yummy food

and dreamed of what was under the tree for the next day.

Christmas morning we opened our stockings, played with the toys inside, ate a fabulous eggs benedict breakfast, then settled into opening the gifts.

It was a pretty tiring morning.

Games and fun were had.

Christmas dinner was yummy.

Soon it was time to turn in.

Boxing day Sox and I took Yoshi for a walk on the beach,

enjoyed the sunset,

then loaded our car and headed off to Powell River to visit her dad and step-mom.

On the 27th we took the dogs for a walk around Mud Lake. Very lush and wet forest.

The 28th saw us board the ferry

for the return trip to the island, and the drive home. Very relaxing and fun despite the amount of travelling in such a short time.

Tidbits Season

Some tidbits for my neglected blog.

Friday at work there was a bit of a celebration for the team members who worked on one of the projects that our customer GA’d. The celebration was an indoor rock climbing session at CragX here in Victoria. I hadn’t been climbing there in close to 10 years I think. It certainly was a blast. We had a couple hours to play there, and I made the most of it. By the time we were ready to leave, my arms were pretty fried. The last climb I attempted I got up about 10 feet, then my arms gave out, and I came down to the ground (quickly). The belayer wasn’t expecting that, and by the time the slack was taken up by the rope stretching, my harness was pretty tight, and my tippy toes were just barely touching the ground. Yowch. Back at the office, typing was quite difficult. My fingertips felt like they had been sandpapered off. Very odd feeling.

Saturday I had a course I signed up for. An 8 hour long Photoshop course. I got a lot out of the course, but I think a couple of the other people in the class got pretty lost by the end of it. For me, it was a great way to complement, and pull together all the knowledge I already had. Photoshop has some pretty powerful features. I currently use PaintShop Pro at home, but I think that translating what I learned will not be that difficult. Some of the info on color management will be put on hold until I start printing at home

Sunday I had a great mountain bike ride with Yoshi and a couple other people. Not a very long ride, but it had been a while since I had been out. Yoshi certainly enjoyed it.

Tonight was the annual trip to Butchart Gardens to see the lights. A little wet, but the nice thing was this kept the crowds down. Each year there is something different. The have finished the 12 days of Christmas, so this year they added an outdoor skating rink.

I originally wanted to have separate entries for all of these, but I am running out of steam. The Christmas season is catching up to me, and I am definitely ready for a break.

muddylaces

Spreading mud since 1975.