It’s not officially Christmas yet where I am, but it’s only about six hours away on the east coast of Canada, so that’s close enough.
As most people know, I moved back to my home town back in January to be closer to some of my old friends and of course my family. The last time I lived in Chilliwack in any capacity was when I was 18 years old, right before heading off for the city and university. So, this is my first Christmas as a resident of Chilliwack in about 14 years. Pretty wild now that I think about it.
Thankfully we don’t really buy many gifts these days (since I’m pretty crappy ...
Ah yes, here we are. Given that we’re only four days away from Christmas, I’m starting to think that maybe I should do some of my Christmas shopping. I’m a pretty big shopping procrastinator though, so I imagine it’ll be down to the wire. Strangely enough, I haven’t really gotten into the Christmas mood yet, which is rather unusual given how much I enjoy Christmas.
Last Christmas I ended up working through most of the holidays, so this year I’ve decided to take it easy and enjoy a bit of downtime. While I have a few things that I’m going to be working on passively, I’m just going ...
Courtney Summers is an author of young adult books and also a client of BraveNewCode’s; we’ve been really fortunate to work with her a few times and help her out with a few iterations of her website.
A few months ago I was joking on Twitter with Courtney that it would be cool if she found a way to put me in her next book. Well, Courtney got the final version of her book to proof last night, and sure enough, she managed to sneak me in.
As you can see, there’s a character in her new book, Some Girls Are, named Duane Storey. I can finally scratch “being a character in a young adult book targeted ...
Back in grade twelve, the graduating class of my high school, Sardis Senior Secondary School, performed a pretty cool version of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas for the entire school. I was kind of in the choir, even though we didn’t really sing. My friend Landy was actually the grinch, and he looked pretty hilarious wearing those green tights.
The title of this post is a reference to something the grinch says near the end when he ponders the real significant of Christmas. Without a doubt, Christmas is a hard season for a lot of people. The commercialization of the season puts a lot of pressure ...
Everyone has a bunch of movies they like to watch over Christmas. Without a doubt, my favourite Christmas movie is actually Die Hard. I love watching Bruce Willis blow stuff up over the holidays. If there’s a special someone on the couch next to me, Love Actually rates fairly highly as well.
How about you guys? What are your favourite movies to watch over the holidays? ...
Without a doubt, shooting in low-light conditions is one of the most challenging aspects of taking photographs. I would still probably rate weddings a bit more challenging (since most weddings include some elements of low-light in addition to outdoor shots), but it’s definitely near the top of my difficulty scale.
With the advent of digital cameras, most SLR bodies now have the ability to allow the user to arbitrarily increase the ISO setting on the camera in order to improve the low-light responsiveness. So obviously when a photographer encounters a low-light situation, he or she can simply ...
It’s one of those questions that everyone always asks you at parties — what do you do? I guess the normal answer is to tell people what you do for a living, which in my case would currently be web development. That being said, some people tend to tell people what they are trained to do. For example, if you have a CA, you’d say you’re an accountant, or if you have a mechanical engineering degree, you’d say you’re a mechanical engineer. If you took software engineering, you’d say you were a software engineer.
I did my undergrad in engineering physics, which is one of the few engineering ...
Normally when I photograph and event I have a blog entry up prior to heading down and actually taking photos. Unfortunately I didn’t get around do doing an entry before Friday’s night’s event, so I thought I’d do one now.
I went down to Surrey the other day to photograph the ‘Jessie Farrell and Friends’ concert for JRFM. Also playing during the show were Jaydee Bixby, The Higgins, and Chad Brownlee. The event was in support of JRFM’s Basics for Babies!, which is why I offered to help out and snap some photos in support of the cause.
Truthfully, it’s been quite some time since ...
It was a great show, and I’ve just started processing all the photos. You can check out the full set over on Flickr. I still have a lot more to put up, but I’m beat so I’m hitting the sack.
My favourite shot so far is this one of Kathleen Higgins.
Not sure why I like it, but I just do. ...
I’m about to get in the car and head out to Surrey. Jessie Farrell is headlining a charity event in Surrey called Basic’s for Babies. JRFM gave me a photo pass for the event, so I’m going to help out the cause by heading down and taking some photos of the event.
The show starts at 7:30pm, so I’m hoping to get there a bit early and figure out the logistics of taking photos in a seated concert venue. I’ll post a few photos tomorrow most likely. ...
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve seriously been considering doing a bit of travel. Part of that is complicated by my desire (at some level at least) to purchase an apartment sometime soon. I met with a realtor today to go over some listings in the area, and am slowly transitioning from passive looking into active looking. I’m really not sure of my timeline yet if I were to buy something, but probably sometime in the next 3 to 6 months.
I’m also seriously debating heading to Serbia for a few months in the spring or summer. My friend Milan lives in a little town called Novi Sad, ...
It doesn’t happen very often, but today was one of them. The main reason I was frustrated today is because more and more people seem to be treating each other (or at least me) as simply a marketing target. I used to get inquiries on my site of a personal nature via my contact form. That still happens, and I always enjoy that when it happens (in fact, I think that’s one of the biggest positives about blogging — being exposed to and forming relationships with people you may never meet), but more and more I’m getting random press releases from Vancouver marketing companies and other firms ...
With the economy still kind of in the toilet and Christmas just around the corner, many food banks are finding that their coffers just aren’t as full as they used to be. Recently in Chilliwack there was a big food bank drive to try and remedy some of that. While many people have the luxury of being able to afford a nice Christmas dinner at home with their families, not all of them do.
To that end, Dale and I have put together a Food Bank Drive where the proceeds will go towards the purchase of many non-perishable items that will hopefully make Christmas a bit brighter for a few families. For ...
Well, maybe not *above*, but at least *at* Starbucks. Feels weird being back into the groove again to be honest. I have never been on a two week vacation before, and it’s strange coming back again and trying to fire the engines up again, especially when the engines have been soaked in beer for two weeks.
I’m down at my local Starbucks in Vedder Crossing here trying to get everything in order so that I can hit everything hard again starting tomorrow. I started the evening with 400 messages in my inbox, and am down to around 15 now, which is a nice improvement. Once my inbox gets past about ...
Everyone keeps asking me if there’s going to be another WordCamp Whistler this year. Unfortunately the answer is no (at least for the January – March period), not because there’s not enough interest (in fact, many people approached me during the social last year and said what a great time they had, and how they wanted to do it again), but because the 2010 Olympics are happening around the same time, and the logistics of that event will basically make it impossible to pull off this year.
So while I make no promises, perhaps there will be a late 2010 version or and early 2011 version of WordCamp ...
One on the aspects of vacation that I always enjoy is getting time to reflect on things without the noise of the real world interfering. A couple of times I sat by the pool, staring through my book and thinking about things back home, about the last year, about my life, about the future. It’s really hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year since I packed up my things in Vancouver and headed back to Chilliwack.
I spent eight out of the last fourteen years in university. While I had some really great times back in school, and met some really great friends, most of those eight years were ...
For the most part, I don’t really keep up with celebrity gossip, and can’t remember the last time I paid any notice to any of those garbage magazines in the super markets. When I was down in Punta Cana, I caught something one day about Tiger Woods but didn’t really understand what had happened. Jump ahead a few days later, and the TV was full of information about his alleged affairs.
Nobody is perfect, and everyone slips up from time to time. That said, when two people step up to that alter and proclaim their love for each other, it really is something that I believe shouldn’t be taken ...
Yesterday was a long day. I left the resort at around 11am, which is 7am PST, and spent the next 14 hours or so travelling back home. The flight from Punta Cana to Calgary was around 7 hours, after which we sat at the airport for over an hour waiting for the next leg of the flight. The flight to Vancouver was a little over and hour, and then my dad and I headed back to Chilliwack, arriving around 11:30pm I believe.
It was around 31C when I left Punta Cana, and around -2C when I got back to Chilliwack, so obviously that’s a pretty noticeable temperature difference. I had a really good sleep in ...
I’m currently at the Punta Cana airport doing a quick entry on my iPhone. John and Rebecca just got here and apparenly Rebecca has free drink tickets to a bar here. So I imagine we will probably have a few drinks before boarding.
Dale has one more day on the resort, and then he’s heading home. Not exactly ideal, but it was hard to align Vancouver and Toronto with the flights. We all had a really great time on the resort and forged a few new great memories.
I am however looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight, and going for a little drive in my car tomorrow. I’ll spend this weekend ...
