Family And more Family

This summer has been a family filled one.

Firstly My Aunt, my fathers sister made her first visit to Nakusp and I think it was her first one to Canada, then we had a collective birthday party for my father and nephew, who's birth days were 9 days a part and we spilt the difference by having the events on the 20th. The events are not remarkable and every thing went well. So here are a few images to highlight the events.

Goals

Greetings Bloggies.

A warm welcome from the air conditioned depths of the Castlegar public library. I never could understand why Library has that first R, I can't hear it. Any way. This is a bit of a afternoon quicky. I reviewed a post from the beginning of June in which I was nervous about the challenges facing me prior to my going to BCIT. I am still some what nervous about that project and the big challenges it will put on my plate. But I have been working hard for the last month, I have started to get back the habit of working. I now have, a complete funding application, which is waiting on the civil servant to review it. That was the first hurdle. It came together well, I was told that it was more solid then other applications of the same type that have passed through that office.

I have also solved a bigger challenge, I have gotten a room at BCIT residence. At this point I have a very good shot at getting the funding I need, I have the base of operations I need. The intangibles are also coming along. I have a growing handful of industry contacts with varying degrees of openness, including two open invites to pay the office a visit when I am in town. That number will grow much larger by the time I visit Vancouver in August.

I am chipping away at other things as well, though they are taking longer because they are tougher to learn. I have made some progress in learning HTML, Python and I have focused strongly on Java in the last two weeks. I got a lead on a book Thinking in Java, and Its my aim to work through this book, even if I can hardly do a chapter a day and gain some understanding of the theories governing object oriented programing. Hopefully this will translate well into other areas of computer science and push me forward in the program.


Yay Me.

The Visitor

He is back

I have spoken with his human, they know he pays us visits. He is prone to making him self at home.




Extra toes.




I am not a cat person
That cat does not live here. Or at least that is what I tell him.

A Ride

Greetings Bloggies.

There is no much to say here. Yesterday it was a warm sunny afternoon. I was in need of some exersise. I went for a bike ride and went farther then I have so far this year. I am slowly getting back some of the shape I lost after 2.5 years in a bush camp and not riding for nearly three years. At last my legs and lungs are the controling factor not my ass's tollerance of the bike's seat. I went 90% of the way into town by way of the rail road track and back the same way. It was a deceptive grade on the way down it took more effort then I would like addmt to come back the way I came. At least I skipped out of the worst climbing until last slog up into Crescent bay.
I also stopped a long the way and shot some kids, but it looks like my camra and I had a dissagreement and I shut it off before it wrote all the images to the card so no Goat images.



I thought about, I even walked down that way But I did not ride down that trial. It was at once steep, but not impossibly so, it was steep and loose. There was too much of the loose and coarse gravel that would have beaten me up and thrown me around like a thingy.

Cola

Greetings Bloggies.

A lunch time quicky.

I am not above a little junk food or soda pop from time to time. Last week when I thought I was going to have to go to Nelson for a favor I picked up a 6 pack of Coke because I like to have a drink of the stuff half way through the drive, it helps me keep alert. Getting it in advance would save me having to pay gas station prices. I did not go on that trip.

Now I wonder just how much coke does a person need. It was a six pack of 710ml bottles, or at total of 4.26 liters. The excess of soda that this represented did not show up fully till after I started drinking it out of a medium sized glass, I just kept refilling it.
I seem to recall 300 mil or so being the norm for individual servings. Is no wonder people are getting super sized.

Repost

I am not normally one to repost things that I find else where on the web but this on makes me laugh. I also know at least two readers of this blog have watched some BSG.



We're F&*Ked

Traffic

Greetings Bloggies.

A little experiment from a few weeks back in vancouver.
I took a series of photos down Burard street in Down town Vancouver, The photos were taken in rapid sequence and stitched into a MP4 with my macs on board tools. I should have reduced the time between frames but its good enough. Enjoy.

Claws Returns

Greetings Bloggies.

We have a guest, in a season of guests we have an uninvited member of self proclaimed royalty. The neighbors cat, who was absent for all of the winter and much of the fall has come back. Our six toed nearly 20 pound beast has wandered back up this way. He has not made him self known since his last visit in which he got chased out of our house by the late Obo. That might very well have been Obies last great display of force.

Well I knew the cats name once I have since forgetten, we call him Pinko and he seams to listen. Since that is in general the best you can hope to get out of a cat its not bad. He will through him self at you with some force its rather amusing.
Lacking any other camera I put the computer on the floor and used the web cam for some candid cat shooting.



Add your own caption



No Lolz here

Wild Life

Hi Bloggies

Some new pictures today. A deer that seems to have taken up residence some where near our house and some Osprey that were watching the shore line near Bay view estates on Saturday. The Osprey proved to be tough to shoot, low contrast against the sky and a camera at just took too long to fully power on to make quick shooting easy.

A Foods Rights

I have to vent.

I cooked dinner last night. I was hungry and also not in the mood to eat what ever disharmonious creation mother had in mind. I created a simple sauce with red and yellow pepers white and red onions some diced tomatoes, some herbs from the garden and let it reduce to a think consistency. I added some prawns after so as not too over cook them. Cooked up some pasta and called a day. I did not call dinner it was good in the pan and would keep for a while. So I ate my meal and left the rest for the rest.

Well mother comes in from the garden looks at the dish and rushes out to the freezer and dumps a load of frozen peas in to the thing. I took offense. I had cooked a meal with the ingredients of my choice, it was generally healthy, the flavors had some time though perhaps not enough time to cook into the sauce. It was good as it was. I did not mind so much the getting of the green onions that was a reasonable garnish but the peas were trespassing.

This even feeds into my thesis, mother over cooks things. I do not mean that she generally burns food or such, I mean that she adds too many ingredients in the name of healthy. I am now sick at the site of kale. I had my last of it when she cooked a Fritata, which not only lacked the firm texture it could have had it was underlain with such a large mass of soggy kale that by and large it tasted like pickled nails.
Mother it does not need green to be healthy. I cooked it was my idea, don't edit until its left overs.

An Opinion

Hi there.

A quick rant.
I get tired of hearing it again and again, its not what you know its who you know. I have spent and will spend again, a great deal of time and energy building up the what I know part of the equation, only to have the what I know thing thrown in my face again and again. It tires me. But despite my dislike for this reality I will just have to suck it up and deal.

I still don't like it.

A..... Gastropod

Greetings Bloggies.

I am trying to get more photos out, I have my tinny nikon juiced up and ready to go. I am trying to make do with that beasty. The results are mixed. Faced with its weak performance with things moving fast. So I found my self a willing, if ignorant peace of subject mater I figure I might as well try to have some fun. So last night I snapped a few of a slug on our gravel walk way.




Blessed be the phylum Mollusca, which has brought us such tasty things as squid, clams, muscles and snails. Though on this occasion I am eating neither.

Jonesing

I made a tactical error on Monday. In the quest to find a library book on HTML for my planned website transfer project I picked up a National Geographic field guild to photography. The HTML book is too old dating to round 2006, meaning it was researched and written around 2005, at the time the standards that are the norm now were just coming out of draft. It will do for the basics but will it work over all remains to be seen.

As for the camera book, it makes me want to get a new one. I have been reading the chapters on Digital SLRs. I want that control. I want to have high quality images. I have a camera, my old little nikon but its just not the tool I want. Must start making money again. Damn capitalism.



The Lamented and Late Power Shot G9 WIth Telephoto extension, in November at the Wall center.

Vancouver

Greetings Again bloggies.

THose you you might know that I was part of a hasty trip to Vancouver. For reasons that some of you know and the rest can guess at. My mission was not completed to my standards due to having access to a different camera, with abilities that were some what more limited to what I had gotten used to. However, it did a fine job on most things. There were some nice cityscapes to be had. The view from the Wall center has its merits.

So enjoy my effort at urban shooting.


Community Garden Davy and Burrard street. A nice patch of green on a multi-million dollar patch of down town


Pretty flowers on the way to some where.



Tick TocK Tick Tock


UBC, Has wood, Kind of. Cement cord wood who would have thought.


Inside the Chan Center Prior to the big show.


Your intrepid Blogger, laptop and book, a semi still life.



Science world from the road, a view new to me having only gone that way by sky train. Your next stop is Main Street, Science World.



St' Paul's Hospital Christmas lights long turned of, With light and camera reflecting in the window for a unwanted but interesting after the fact effect.


1/3 of the wall center, by building count a larger percent based on floor count. A rather tall building.


The sun sets its not working over time even in the big city.

Previously unblogged

Greetings Bloggies.

Its been sometime since I have produced a post of content. This one will not involve me narrowly escaping with my life as some would believe happened out on Box lake. I like to believe the case is being over stated. Now I am going to up date you all on a adventure in April.

I had gotten wind of a development retreat that was happening not too far away at a cost that was low, though that was lost to cost of the gas to get too and from. It proved highly different from what I was expecting. I am not sure what I got out of it. It turns out that a bunch of outdoor fanatics and a weekend in the mountains is not my thing. The lake, was miss named it snowed very nearly every day and the whole lot of them could use a good slap in the face by Adam Smith.

A visible slap by an invisible hand would get these people thinking clearer. I should say that I am not opposed to the ideas of sustainability and conservation that these folks stand for but I really do think that their language and attitudes drive a wedge between there organization and industry. Capitalism seemed too dirty a word.

I got some photos out that trip. My favourates being the easter island head wood stove heating my cabin.


Odd People, throwing cows around in the name of education.



Really now I just got over winter, I did not want any more.



Bow , before your new god. I said Bow



I can't hear you bowing.





There may have been some rocky out crops on the drive down the road but you did not hear that from me.

We Will be moving

The time line is not yet certain but it will happen. As it has been stated I will be going to BCIT and as part of the training they want me to be able to produce a simple web site before I come there. The logical thing will be for me to start blogging in a HTML rich environment rather then the simple google blogger space. I will keep this site up so don't worry. But before the summer is out there will be Beta version of this site on a new home.